Scorched Cornfields

Our son was four months old when my husband sent a registered letter to my parents' house where the baby and I were staying, stating that he no longer wanted to live with either of us. Immediately my thoughts went to three frozen embryos, brother or sister of our son, three potential human beings to whom I had the responsibility of giving a chance to live. What is going to happen to the embryos, I thought? You see, my son, and subsequent two other children, were from an egg donor—one single, youngish woman, which made them all the more special to me.

A few years later, my first daughter was born. She was a normal, joyful little girl with suspected symptoms of ADHD and autism. At the time, that was not a problem. She was just a little different from the other kids. She had friends and did reasonably well at school considering that she contended with three languages, as we are a multi-language household.

In hindsight I see what could have gone wrong at many points. 

My husband and I had a contentious relationship. Perhaps I should have divorced earlier yet I wanted my children to have a father. But he was not a committed dad or a committed husband. He was a self-serving, cold man. That must have been a shock to them, as it was for me.

Perhaps I shouldn’t have gone back with him to his home country. But we moved from Spain to the U.K. where his house was in terrible shape. I alone, and at times my parents, worked whole summers, then years, to improve it. 

By that time, my third child, another daughter, was born.

Two months before the first Covid lockdown my oldest daughter, then almost 16, came out as trans. I would later recognize the letter she sent us from the exact same version written by other trans-identified kids to their parents. It was basically a template.

My two other children immediately affirmed her, no questions asked. I naively followed suit and went through the motions unwillingly and with foolish energy. This was followed by one appointment with an affirming, lazy social worker and a trip to the Emergency unit due to her threat of suicide, all when lockdown was imminent, and people were dying. 

The school reached out to offer me some support, but I failed to accept it. I was affirming, yet waveringly. The school officials found themselves obliged to change her name on the registry. 

Then the COVID lockdown hit.

My daughter began feeding me lies about studies that did not exist, about male brains in female bodies. I swallowed it all, awed and baffled at once, in the bleakness of COVID. My Masters in psychology and research methods made no difference. I believed that transwomen could be lesbians and transmen could be gay. I watched other trans teens walk past our house on their way to school and I drowned in wintry sorrow, my heart going out to them. I believed that the mastectomy that lay ahead was unavoidable, and I bought a binder for her.

My daughter had become my oracle and I thought I detected a genius in her. I revered her, reveled in her word, and adored her. 

She became a control freak around me: internet searches, password changes, telephone calls were frantically monitored. She sat in the stairs outside the sitting room and stood at the door to the kitchen to listen in. This made me nervous and jumpy. She was everywhere.

After the second lockdown I discovered online support groups for parents of trans-identified kids. It took a while before I would start to accept as real what lay in front of my eyes. I felt guilty, scared, trapped, cornered, then also cheated, furious. My intellect expanded before this new material and I bonded with people, parents, detransitioners, gays and lesbians and bisexuals. I was free.

My daughter had enjoyed success in getting an entire secondary school to accept her name change and preferred pronouns, all at age fifteen. She belonged to a large worldwide community. She was wielding the power of a dictator. For her there was no going back. Her personal and social investment was enormous. I was left facing a disturbing person and situation. I no longer knew where to turn.

In the meantime, her much younger sister was being indoctrinated for months in the trans cult, the same way I had been. And by the time my older daughter struck her little sister, my baby girl, considered me to be an evil, abusive, neglectful, and neglecting mother. What did my trans-identified daughter do? On Christmas Eve the police came to our house. She had called them to report me. They took me to a jail cell where I was held on nine counts of abuse, including transphobia, threats to kill and lifelong physical abuse. I was never charged. The police do not believe in the trans stuff but they have their hands tied, I am told. 

That night, my daughter had sneered at me over dinner. The leer on her face I shall never be able to forget.

My youngest daughter did not come back. She now lives with her dad—the same dad who never attended a school meeting or event. They live in a derelict environment, with the blessings of U.K. social services. I am also told that they are captured by gender ideology. My daughter attends the school that once reached out to help me but now holds fundraising events for LGBTQ+ charities.

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