When my daughter approached me and her father more than four years ago to tell us that she was a transgender boy, the floor dropped out beneath me. As I came quickly to understand, she was the embodiment of the Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD) girl: well-meaning liberal parents, everything princessy and pink as a child, a chest full of dress-up clothing, and complete impatience for people who saw her short haircut and couldn’t see that OBVIOUSLY she was a girl. Obviously! But when she started high school, my cool baby feminist introduced herself as “Tommy,” and—again, another cliché—her teachers and the entire school administration conspired to call her “Tommy” and he/him at school, all the while using her real name to our faces, the faces of the only parents she’ll ever have.
"I even lost a 30-year friendship with a woman I considered my best friend in my field. This is a woman who once scolded me for “not trying hard enough” to breastfeed my daughter, and now she’s completely on board with medicalizing teenagers and amputating healthy body parts."
This has been one of the hardest parts of me to grapple with throughout this entire gender mess. Twentysome years ago, when I was having my first child, I fell into the cult of natural parenting. I didn't take it as far as some women but I dabbled in organic food, we had cheddar bunnies not goldfish, cloth diapers, breastfeeding, natural vaginal birth... for the most part, this was on-line, but out of it I did make some real life friends... it was a very pro-woman community. We were women, we were mothers, and gosh darnit we were going to fulfill our destinty and be the best mothers we could be. It was a very empowering form of feminism... respect for how the female body was special, for the things we could do that was unique to us, an appreciation of these things... women were meant to give birth! Women were meant to breastfeed! Etc. But of course paired with women can do ANYTHING, it wasn't like being mothers was ALL we could do... it was a healty balance between respect for womanhood and knowing it didn't limit us.
Over the years... I have drifted in and out of different on line communities and different real life friend groups... as the kids have grown it's gotten a lot harder to winnow down "the perfect mother" into a neat little list of ways to be perfect... and a lot of these women now, these women who were once so proud of what it meant to be a women, what amazing things our bodies can do... they are leading the band when it comes to trans issues. Women I thought would have cheered their daughters on to bravely tackle puberty are instead telling their daughters, who are saying "I don't like this," that maybe they are trans. That boys can have periods, too. The maybe they are non-binary. They are quick to correct anyone on line who mentions women or girls and periods that "not only women have periods."
They are leading the parade with "transwomen are women!" and "sex work is work!" and so many other things that chip away at women's protections and what a wonderful thing it is to be a woman. They are happily erasing woman centered language from everything surrounding birth in the name of "inclusion."
I keep joking that "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding" is going to be re-released as "The Peoply Art of Chestfeeding."
The shift in this population makes my head spin. Women you'd think would be strong supporters of our daughters as women - and our sons as men, really, since the goal was to be a good MOTHER, not only a good mother to daughters - have thrown themselves headlong into a movement that is destroying children's mental and sometimes physical health.
Dear Mama Ain't Playin, please ask the admin for my email. I've been trying to contact you and want to share some unexpected connections I've found about trans and goth culture.
Thank you so much for sharing this. It is amazing to me how our society has been cowed into a position of speaking blatantly false things for fear, when if the majority simply spoke the truth this would never have become a thing, at least IMO.
Glad your daughter made it through. We’re still loving and praying for our daughter (not that that will stop at any point).
Thank you! I related to your article in so many ways. Our family is sooo close to being on the other side of this. Our daughter still is identifying as a boy at school but we are moving now to another state so she can go back to being a girl. She is looking forward to the move. One on one private conversations are the way to go when it will affect your kid to speak out publicly. I have been deeply disappointed by some friends and family but also supported by others. I love bringing this issue up with taxi drivers, waiters, repair-people, and other random people I run into when having casual conversations.
I. Love. This. I have been filling my calendar--now that my daughter is graduating from the very small education community she's been a part of the last two years--with mothers. Mothers of the children I've come to know while working in the same community. To apologize and explain why I had to navigate carefully while my daughter was there and to encourage them to inoculate their children against this dangerous movement and to make sure they are well-informed about what their children are learning. I agree we must model "real life", compassion, and productive communication skills. So good. Thank you for this piece!
New York's useful idiot governor Kathy Hochul just signed a bill to allow "non-binary" blah blah blah to put an X on their driver's license. When this obvious nonsense is encrypted into law we've got a very, very, very serious problem. It's poisoned the medical industry: What is your gender? is asked, instead of What is your sex? I respond: I DO NOT HAVE A GENDER. My SEX is female. I suggest organizing a protest. People need to get out on the streets and make a VISUAL IMPACT against this gas lighting nonsense.
Thank you for this. It supports us in our need to be honest and upright with our kids. I told mine that I cannot use those pronouns, because it is a violation of my rights as a free citizen to accept reality and science. My daughter isn't happy with me and shuts down conversations with excuses about her school work, but that doesn't stop her going out with friends (who affirm, confirm and support, rather than question and wonder.... they lay along)...
But I told her, it's about free will. And SO I can quote Martin Luther, replacing "Scriptures" by Science:
"Since your most serene majesty and your lordships require of me a simple, clear and direct answer, I will give one, and it is this: Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures and by clear reason (for I do not trust in the pope or councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted. My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise."
Thank you for this essay and for speaking up. As a mom of a trans identifying teen in Canada I AM terrified to speak up and I'm immensely grateful for you and for anyone who has the courage to speak up. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
I am a progressive activist who has supported LGBT causes, rights and liberation my entire life. The modern iteration of transgender social contagion has caused me to revise my views due to the medical mutilation and disabling of healthy children. My commitment to second and third wave feminism is also quite offended by the stereotyping of women and young autistic women wanting to opt out of their sex.
I am repelled by the erasure of gays and lesbians from the rainbow coalition who shame them for their “genital preferences” and call them “transphobic” for not wanting to sleep with the opposite sex. It’s the “cotton ceiling” or the “boxer ceiling,” depending on whether lesbian and gay men are targeted. There are workshops for gay men to get over their aversion to vaginas.
I am not OK with being a nonconsensual NPC in older men’s autogynephilia for whom youth transition gives cover, the ultimate beard. When we ratify their illusion of womenhood, they get “gender euphoria” which is code for boners. I am not OK with children performing sexually suggestive dances in kid’s drag shows. Which also gives certain people boners. I am also not OK with the boners men get when they attempt to “chestfeed” infants, who become another prop in their urge to quell “dysphoria.”
Gender Ideology destroys lives. I recently advanced that bold statement and laid out the reasons why in this essay. It is an overview of the industry and its effects. I talk about what they do not want you to know. So does Matt Walsh’s new documentary What Is A Woman?"
Second, I hear this alot "I think xxx about gender identity/transgender issues AND I'm a liberal/liberal academic!!" Are the two perspectives incongruent? ... or is this a defense of "my view has credibility bc I'm not a right-wing conservative bigot"?
Why is that preface needed? Can only liberals love their children, support them, and also want to protect them from harm?
Maybe because this "movement" started with you? Not you personally... but with liberals/academics. If this would have been identified correctly from the beginning as a manifestation of mental illness and not a brave new civil rights issue, we wouldn't currently have to be stealthy and anonymous when communicating about it or risk losing our friends or jobs. That ship has sailed though unfortunately.
This never should have come as far as it has, but the ideology was nurtured and promoted through liberal academia, media, and politics, and of course all those who profit. Now we all are affected, including me and my family.
It definitely HAS to be liberals and liberal academics predominantly who do the work to stop the monster they created. And it needs to be loud, constant, and transparent - hiding the truth (i.e. reality) and being too cowardly to speak up is what gave this ideology the room to grow. Liberals have to lead the way, no one else can bc OF COURSE anyone not a liberal is racist, homophobic, misogynistic, etc. and are de facto unbelievable and transphobic (whatever that means).
Every person who opposes the trans ideology is demonized... where have I seen that tactic deployed before?
Glad to hear you have your daughter back from the brink.
Also glad to see other science professionals share my experience - privately, colleagues are trans-skeptical and resent the pronoun police, but are afraid to speak out. In public, they wear pride pins and talk about 'pregnant people'. It's madness.
There’s an enormous amount of secondary gain for the parents of children who are transgender. Imagine, if the diagnosis were true (rare), would you call Barbra Walter’s, have a reality show, and march with your child in a sexualized pride parade? Hardly.Hopefully you would treat your child with TLC like any other ( I dare say) mental illness and keep it a private issue. This may start from the child being exposed on the internet but it’s perpetuated by parental ignorance and misguided love and often times a bizarre variation of munchausen by proxy.
Yes yes and yes! We need those who are not going through this with their children but understand what is happening to speak up. Please be a voice for those of us who are too afraid to talk because we don’t want to cause any more damage to the relationship we have with our children.
"I even lost a 30-year friendship with a woman I considered my best friend in my field. This is a woman who once scolded me for “not trying hard enough” to breastfeed my daughter, and now she’s completely on board with medicalizing teenagers and amputating healthy body parts."
This has been one of the hardest parts of me to grapple with throughout this entire gender mess. Twentysome years ago, when I was having my first child, I fell into the cult of natural parenting. I didn't take it as far as some women but I dabbled in organic food, we had cheddar bunnies not goldfish, cloth diapers, breastfeeding, natural vaginal birth... for the most part, this was on-line, but out of it I did make some real life friends... it was a very pro-woman community. We were women, we were mothers, and gosh darnit we were going to fulfill our destinty and be the best mothers we could be. It was a very empowering form of feminism... respect for how the female body was special, for the things we could do that was unique to us, an appreciation of these things... women were meant to give birth! Women were meant to breastfeed! Etc. But of course paired with women can do ANYTHING, it wasn't like being mothers was ALL we could do... it was a healty balance between respect for womanhood and knowing it didn't limit us.
Over the years... I have drifted in and out of different on line communities and different real life friend groups... as the kids have grown it's gotten a lot harder to winnow down "the perfect mother" into a neat little list of ways to be perfect... and a lot of these women now, these women who were once so proud of what it meant to be a women, what amazing things our bodies can do... they are leading the band when it comes to trans issues. Women I thought would have cheered their daughters on to bravely tackle puberty are instead telling their daughters, who are saying "I don't like this," that maybe they are trans. That boys can have periods, too. The maybe they are non-binary. They are quick to correct anyone on line who mentions women or girls and periods that "not only women have periods."
They are leading the parade with "transwomen are women!" and "sex work is work!" and so many other things that chip away at women's protections and what a wonderful thing it is to be a woman. They are happily erasing woman centered language from everything surrounding birth in the name of "inclusion."
I keep joking that "The Womanly Art of Breastfeeding" is going to be re-released as "The Peoply Art of Chestfeeding."
The shift in this population makes my head spin. Women you'd think would be strong supporters of our daughters as women - and our sons as men, really, since the goal was to be a good MOTHER, not only a good mother to daughters - have thrown themselves headlong into a movement that is destroying children's mental and sometimes physical health.
Mama Aint Playing, please ask the admin to receive the message I sent for you.
Dear Mama Ain't Playin, please ask the admin for my email. I've been trying to contact you and want to share some unexpected connections I've found about trans and goth culture.
Thank you so much for sharing this. It is amazing to me how our society has been cowed into a position of speaking blatantly false things for fear, when if the majority simply spoke the truth this would never have become a thing, at least IMO.
Glad your daughter made it through. We’re still loving and praying for our daughter (not that that will stop at any point).
Thank you! I related to your article in so many ways. Our family is sooo close to being on the other side of this. Our daughter still is identifying as a boy at school but we are moving now to another state so she can go back to being a girl. She is looking forward to the move. One on one private conversations are the way to go when it will affect your kid to speak out publicly. I have been deeply disappointed by some friends and family but also supported by others. I love bringing this issue up with taxi drivers, waiters, repair-people, and other random people I run into when having casual conversations.
I. Love. This. I have been filling my calendar--now that my daughter is graduating from the very small education community she's been a part of the last two years--with mothers. Mothers of the children I've come to know while working in the same community. To apologize and explain why I had to navigate carefully while my daughter was there and to encourage them to inoculate their children against this dangerous movement and to make sure they are well-informed about what their children are learning. I agree we must model "real life", compassion, and productive communication skills. So good. Thank you for this piece!
New York's useful idiot governor Kathy Hochul just signed a bill to allow "non-binary" blah blah blah to put an X on their driver's license. When this obvious nonsense is encrypted into law we've got a very, very, very serious problem. It's poisoned the medical industry: What is your gender? is asked, instead of What is your sex? I respond: I DO NOT HAVE A GENDER. My SEX is female. I suggest organizing a protest. People need to get out on the streets and make a VISUAL IMPACT against this gas lighting nonsense.
Thank you for this. It supports us in our need to be honest and upright with our kids. I told mine that I cannot use those pronouns, because it is a violation of my rights as a free citizen to accept reality and science. My daughter isn't happy with me and shuts down conversations with excuses about her school work, but that doesn't stop her going out with friends (who affirm, confirm and support, rather than question and wonder.... they lay along)...
But I told her, it's about free will. And SO I can quote Martin Luther, replacing "Scriptures" by Science:
"Since your most serene majesty and your lordships require of me a simple, clear and direct answer, I will give one, and it is this: Unless I am convinced by the testimony of the Scriptures and by clear reason (for I do not trust in the pope or councils alone, since it is well known that they have often erred and contradicted themselves), I am bound by the Scriptures I have quoted. My conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. Here I stand. I cannot do otherwise."
When all respect is lost, then we are free.
Thank you for this essay and for speaking up. As a mom of a trans identifying teen in Canada I AM terrified to speak up and I'm immensely grateful for you and for anyone who has the courage to speak up. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
Good Candace Mercer review:
"What Is A Woman? Review of a Cultural Turning Point
The most important documentary of the year breaks the spell and is a reckoning for gender ideology," https://candacemercer.substack.com/p/what-is-a-woman-review-of-a-cultural?s=r
Intro:
"TRIGGER WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS
I am a progressive activist who has supported LGBT causes, rights and liberation my entire life. The modern iteration of transgender social contagion has caused me to revise my views due to the medical mutilation and disabling of healthy children. My commitment to second and third wave feminism is also quite offended by the stereotyping of women and young autistic women wanting to opt out of their sex.
I am repelled by the erasure of gays and lesbians from the rainbow coalition who shame them for their “genital preferences” and call them “transphobic” for not wanting to sleep with the opposite sex. It’s the “cotton ceiling” or the “boxer ceiling,” depending on whether lesbian and gay men are targeted. There are workshops for gay men to get over their aversion to vaginas.
I am not OK with being a nonconsensual NPC in older men’s autogynephilia for whom youth transition gives cover, the ultimate beard. When we ratify their illusion of womenhood, they get “gender euphoria” which is code for boners. I am not OK with children performing sexually suggestive dances in kid’s drag shows. Which also gives certain people boners. I am also not OK with the boners men get when they attempt to “chestfeed” infants, who become another prop in their urge to quell “dysphoria.”
Gender Ideology destroys lives. I recently advanced that bold statement and laid out the reasons why in this essay. It is an overview of the industry and its effects. I talk about what they do not want you to know. So does Matt Walsh’s new documentary What Is A Woman?"
First, good essay.
Second, I hear this alot "I think xxx about gender identity/transgender issues AND I'm a liberal/liberal academic!!" Are the two perspectives incongruent? ... or is this a defense of "my view has credibility bc I'm not a right-wing conservative bigot"?
Why is that preface needed? Can only liberals love their children, support them, and also want to protect them from harm?
Maybe because this "movement" started with you? Not you personally... but with liberals/academics. If this would have been identified correctly from the beginning as a manifestation of mental illness and not a brave new civil rights issue, we wouldn't currently have to be stealthy and anonymous when communicating about it or risk losing our friends or jobs. That ship has sailed though unfortunately.
This never should have come as far as it has, but the ideology was nurtured and promoted through liberal academia, media, and politics, and of course all those who profit. Now we all are affected, including me and my family.
It definitely HAS to be liberals and liberal academics predominantly who do the work to stop the monster they created. And it needs to be loud, constant, and transparent - hiding the truth (i.e. reality) and being too cowardly to speak up is what gave this ideology the room to grow. Liberals have to lead the way, no one else can bc OF COURSE anyone not a liberal is racist, homophobic, misogynistic, etc. and are de facto unbelievable and transphobic (whatever that means).
Every person who opposes the trans ideology is demonized... where have I seen that tactic deployed before?
Glad to hear you have your daughter back from the brink.
Also glad to see other science professionals share my experience - privately, colleagues are trans-skeptical and resent the pronoun police, but are afraid to speak out. In public, they wear pride pins and talk about 'pregnant people'. It's madness.
There’s an enormous amount of secondary gain for the parents of children who are transgender. Imagine, if the diagnosis were true (rare), would you call Barbra Walter’s, have a reality show, and march with your child in a sexualized pride parade? Hardly.Hopefully you would treat your child with TLC like any other ( I dare say) mental illness and keep it a private issue. This may start from the child being exposed on the internet but it’s perpetuated by parental ignorance and misguided love and often times a bizarre variation of munchausen by proxy.
For therapists looking for NON-AFFIRMATION APPROACHES, other therapists recommend:
https://genderexploratory.com/
genderexploratory.com
Gender Exploratory Therapy Association
Any comments for the author, please email Pitt@genspect.org
Yes yes and yes! We need those who are not going through this with their children but understand what is happening to speak up. Please be a voice for those of us who are too afraid to talk because we don’t want to cause any more damage to the relationship we have with our children.