Malevolent Benevolence

My breath still catches and my stomach still lurches as I remember the betrayal.

It’s 9 AM Eastern time, 7 AM for my daughter at college out west.  It’s not an unusual time for her to call, as, like me, she is an early riser.  Yet, my maternal radar sounds internally as I see the caller ID.

“Hi, Sweetie!!!” I say in the impossibly upbeat voice that I’ve cultivated over the years to drown out the silently trumpeting ROGD elephant in the room.

“Are you planning on suing my school?”  She asks without preamble in a voice opposite mine—cold, monotone, and seething.

“What?” I gasp.

“Someone told me that you are planning on suing my school.”

“I don’t understand…That makes no sense…What???”  But I’m starting to comprehend.

“I heard that you’ve been talking about me in book club and want to sue my school’s health center.”

There it is.  My mind is reeling, but somehow I stay composed enough to answer:

“Yes, I do talk about you in book club.  We are a group of mothers who discuss books, of course, but even more, we share our love for, pride in, and, most importantly, our worries about our children.  I have explained to the group of women whom I thought I could trust to hear me, understand me, and protect my confidence, what I have learned about gender ideology and what I fear you might do to yourself, and how easy it is on college campuses and at Planned Parenthood to get testosterone.  But I have never indicated or even thought that I might sue your school.  You know me, I am not litigious, and I believe you haven’t even been prescribed anything by them, so how does this make sense?”

That is almost verbatim what I said.  I was able to respond like that because for the last six years, I have been constantly on guard for any discussion about, disagreement over, and crisis around my daughter’s (ROGD) trans identity.

Her anger deflates, as I think she believes me and deep down knows that all I want is for her to be okay.  I manage to learn a bit about the distressing game of telephone that began in book club.  A member’s best friend is the mother of one of my daughter’s good friends who, like most of her generation, is a staunch LGBTQI+++++ “supporter”  (which I put in quotation marks not to be snarky, but to highlight how not questioning someone’s sudden transgender identity and desperation for body modification might be the opposite of supportive). This fellow reader could not “sit” with what I was saying and felt that my daughter needed to be protected, so she told her friend who told my daughter’s friend who told my daughter.  Who then called me.

These mothers could not “sit” with my worry that my child might take testosterone and damage her body.  They could not “sit” with my worry that my child would amputate her two healthy breasts from which throughout a prolonged period of childhood she pretended to nurse dozens of her beloved cat stuffed animals.  (Wait, maybe she’s a furry? Should I get a litter box for her dorm room?  How the &^%* can I actually have any humor left at all?).  

In ensuing conversations I had with both of these women, I stayed calm and tried to convey that I knew they were coming from a place of caring, but that they actually really could not comprehend (and I told them I was happy for them because it meant that they do not have a loved one caught in this generation’s answer to self hatred, uncertainty, and fear of growing up; see “Anorexia”) what has happened to my daughter.  “But,” they both exclaimed, “You had an Obama sticker on your car!”  “But,” they both gushed, “Your daughter is one of the most confident, happy, strong kids we know!”  When I tried to describe the tangle of self harm wounds she hid under long sleeves, the former plunge into self starvation, the countless nights I spent hours helping her fall asleep as she sobbed uncontrollably, often unable to put anything into words, but sometimes able to whisper, “I’ll never look like you, Mommy, or Violet or Emma (very tall, thin friends from her all girls middle school).

No moment of pause occurred for these two warrior women braced to combat my transphobia and child abuse.  “So, do you believe anyone is actually trans?”  “So, what about being gay?”  I tried to explain how homophobic and misogynistic the surge in trans identity in today’s youth is, referencing the LGB Alliance’s work, the concept of “transing away the gay,” how my daughter is passionately in love with another young woman, and that it breaks my heart that they project to the world a heterosexual relationship.

I told them that I felt deeply hurt by the breach of the sanctity of personal conversations in book club and by their resistance to my painful and clear knowledge of what has happened to my own child.  But more importantly, I beseeched them to understand that I fear for all the young women, and growing numbers of boys, too, who are being led down harmful paths by well-meaning but misguided and ill-informed “support and affirmation,” which I now call Malevolent Benevolence.  I shared some more resources (select Gender: A Wider Lens episodes, the “Dysphoric: Fleeing Womanhood Like a House on Fire” documentary, the books by Shrier, Joyce, Stock, and Selin-Davis) which one of them said she probably wouldn’t have the time to delve into but didn’t really need to since she would never change her mind about supporting “what people know to be true of themselves.”

My voice hoarse and my heart broken, I told them both that I was not angry about their betrayal.  I told them that I understood they thought they were right and noble and supportive.  I told them that if they ever reflect on anything I shared and have a moment when the ideological house of cards starts to fall and reveals the actual harm that the People Behind the Curtain - the activists, surgeons, endocrinologists, captured therapists, pediatricians, teachers, and, most directly, the Glitter Moms like them - are actually doing, I would be ready and willing to resume the conversation.