How many ROGD female teens have ever experienced orgasm? I don’t know the answer, of course, but I do know that, despite being in her late teens, my own trans-identifying kid has never even kissed anyone, boy or girl. She mistrusts her body, likely because she hasn’t yet become acquainted with it. Yet she’s suddenly sure that she wants to undergo radical sex change surgery, which, along with a host of other irreversible somatic changes wrought by cross-sex hormones, will destroy her chances of ever experiencing sexual fulfillment, whilst massively reducing the dating pool of potential partners of either sex.
When my daughter was 4 years old I began to teach her about mind control also known as brainwashing. I did so because once she was attending public school, immediately I could see how she was being influenced.
I had already begun to limit and oversee what she was viewing in terms of TV and movies but now that she was socializing and going to public school (preschool at that time) and I couldn’t be there to make sure she wasn’t being exposed to ideas that I wouldn’t expose her to I felt it was time to act. I realized I needed to start assisting her to develop discernment and to better understand her mind and thought processes. To understand the difference between your own thoughts and what is being suggested to you.
Mind control is a topic I’ve been aware of and studied avidly since my teens in the 80’s. At age 14 I could see it happening. Advertising being just the tip of the iceberg. It goes much farther than simply manipulating people emotionally to get them to buy a product, and thankfully I somehow realized it. I often felt insulted by TV commercials as a kid. “Do they really think I am that stupid to not see what they’re doing?“ I would often think. Commercials made me angry.
I went to my parents and said to them “we are all being brainwashed through the TV, movies, music and even the ‘choices’ at stores which are made for us regarding the options made available” to paraphrase. My parents just rolled their eyes. It was a big deal to me and still is.
Throughout my life since, I’ve gotten better and better at seeing subtext, hidden messages, the suggestions, the subliminal, the “in between the lines”. But the programming has become such a sophisticated ever evolving science and so insidious, no matter how aware you are of it, you will still find yourself pulled in.
It’s an exhausting task to hold onto one’s mind these days. I am very aware of it and have studied it ongoing, yet I nonetheless get pulled in. I didn’t grow up with devices. I barely even watched TV. Kids these days are extremely vulnerable, more than ever thanks to being plugged in as they are.
Does media mimic reality? Or does media influence and direct narratives which become reality- more so? People watch and they believe. Boy do they.
Now we have internet and all that comes with it.
I emphasized to my daughter that what she sees on TV or in whatever media- is not real. Movies are not real. None of it is real. Even so called reality shows are not real. We are watching enactments, a scripted scenario. When we watch stories portrayed on TV on the internet etc., there is constantly the suggestion that these stories are based in a reality. The reality of “this is how humans behave” and this is “how things are”. It gets confusingly confirmed because truth is used in the process.
What is enacted often does mimic what many have likely experienced in reality. Reality is exploited in the process. Though nonetheless none of it is real. What is real is you sitting their watching and processing what you are watching.
I had already noticed prior to being a mom that many tv shows and movies directed at young people have the storyline that parents and children are at odds with each other. Parents don’t listen. Parents don’t/can’t understand. Parents are ridiculous. Parents are a bummer. Children can’t talk to their parents. Over and over and over.
In reality there are many challenges for families which are very real of course. This truth and others are exploited in these storylines. But I believe these are worsened even more by the narratives and subtext contained in the “programming”.
I saw this narrative of parents at odds in show after show after show. It’s one of the primary messages hammered into children’s minds from a very young age on up. They develop and grow up with it. By the time they are teens it’s a solidified narrative integrated into consciousness and subsequently it becomes a reality.
I began to point this narrative out to my daughter. I began to teach her how to see the subtext for herself in all media and messaging. What are they saying that they aren’t actually saying outright? What is the subtext? What is being suggested to you?
I think it’s also important to note that in my family honesty is extremely important to us. Honesty and communication. Telling each other the truth and no matter how uncomfortable it may be, is an expression of love. No ‘little’ lies either. A lie is a lie. There’s always an appropriate way to tell the truth. It’s work. Gotta do the work.
Regarding the parents and children at odds narrative I explained to my daughter how what we see in media is not real. The stories are not real. Just because a TV show presents something to us as if “this is how things are” or “this is how people behave” WE do NOT have to live OUR lives according to what these shows present. We have the power to create our lives according to how we want our lives to be. We have each other. We are a lifelong team. We will have challenges requiring us to do the work- all relationships require a lot of work- but we will do it. No matter what, we are a team. I repeated this as she grew. Over and over. I exampled it with her.
Now she is 17 this month. I just hope I’ve done enough. We are all bombarded constantly. It’s getting worse. It’s time to real eyes that we are indeed at war. We are at war for our own minds and bodies. I’m seeing many people who are aware of the programming, it seems more than ever. We do need to assertively teach our children about mind control. We need to teach our children to be able to program themselves- otherwise the world definitely will.
It’s sad that we have to. But this world requires it.
As a therapist who has seen more than a few ROGD kids in the last few years, my experience is that most of them don’t know or care about sexuality in terms of having sex with another human. It’s not even in their radar. The demographic that I have come into contact with is young teen female falling victim to social contagion or teen/young adult male falling somewhere on autism spectrum and being indoctrinated online.
My ROGD kid has never kissed a boy or a girl. I told him to try out what he's got first before undergoing an irreversible surgery to change it. I told him that I've had sex for more guys than he has, and I've never even called myself LGBTQ etc + or whatever it is now. I just experimented and found that I was a very straight man. I hope he can at least try.
This is a very interesting point. I think about this frequently. The label we use for our own behavior/interests is important. If you, as a man, have an encounter with a man, you can either call yourself "experimenting" or "gay". The label then changes your behavior.
In the trans case, the label of "trans woman" or "trans girl" that these boys, who have never used Mr. Johnson for its sexual role, changes their behavior. Instead of seeking out women/girls to have an encounter, they think about making themselves into a "cute girl" and doing something with other guys? trans men?
I think part of the response from the parent needs to be resisting the use of the "trans" label.
Ironically, it is allowing themselves to have those early fumbling sexual experiences that will guide them on a path to figuring this stuff out. We have to try to get them to develop true in person connections and relationships. Its been so hard with covid and the internet. We learn so much about ourselves along the way when we risk doing that!
This sums it up very well. It’s taken me a while to figure it all out. All the crazies telling us to accept that they are “born in the wrong body” and affirm their delusions make me so angry. Maybe if it were their child they’d feel differently. Also, maybe if the medical community wasn’t so political and in the pocket of big pharma, these poor kids and their parents would get the truth (true informed consent) and get real care and not be rushed into hormones and surgeries.
Does it really boil down to this: a small group of powerful men with AGP are driven to turn themselves on, while a large group of ROGD girls are driven to turn themselves off? It looks that way to me. Some clinical research would be illuminating.
My theory is that a small group of AGPs have found a way to process their shame by making gender identity into a big social concern, thereby gaining special protection, hence the need to turn as many kids as possible trans. Shame and its avoidance is a huge driver of human behaviour…
I agree with your theory. They don't seem to be showing much shame now, do they? We are told that shame is wrong in any context. Only wrong thinking people who are bigots would fail to celebrate anything.
Next we will have normalized "Minor Attracted People", MAPs.
I agree. Then, other things feed into it like our education system thinking that it's not answerable to parents, companies like Johnson & Johnson out to make $$ on "T", The Dems always wanting the next "Civil Rights" movement, the Reps being lame and not taking on the "cultural stuff", censoring of non-Woke views in media, etc.
I think that there is a lot of sense to this. "The Emperor's New Gender". When you are convincing yourself that 2+2=rutabaga, it helps that a lot of people agree with you.
There was a psych experiment in which a subject was put into a room in which all other persons were stooges or collaborators. There were 2 sticks, one OBVIOUSLY shorter than the other. EVERYONE in the room stated that the longer stick was shorter (stated an obvious falsehood). Many of the subjects agree - were convinced to publicly state an obvious falsehood by peer/public pressure.
That's what's going on with public support for trannies. Everyone says that it is true, so it must be, right? If you disagree, you are a transphobe, right?
Brilliant. I think it says a lot about the social context of sex and sexuality over the past few decades. Men were raised with a lot of entitlement to sex, hence many men with disorders related to sex. The last 20 years were a backlash to that, telling girls to be strong and stand up to sexual abuse. But we never told girls they can also accept being human and vulnerable. That strength and vulnerability make you a whole human being. We made it sound like vulnerability is a bad thing. And we made it seem like all that is out there in the world around sex is danger, toxic people, predators, pregnancy and disease. Kids are learning not to trust others or themselves. Why would a girl want that? Why would a boy want to take on the blame for all that? As a woman in her 40s, I am just getting into my body, my sexuality, to have fun, take a chance with someone and mess it up, not to take it all so seriously, to trust myself. We made the stakes too high for kids to ever have a chance to discover that.
I love that comment. The only thing I would add is the toxic influence of internet porn on our messaging to girls about what they can expect as women. I think it will be shown to have played a huge role in ROGD.
So many parents of ROGD girls have been talking about this - their children viewing depraved and violent pornography and then essentially deciding "I want to be the abuser, not the abused." person in that warped sexual power-fantasy. Porn was mostly 'fine' amongst adults who had already learned the difference between real life and not - but these children haven't and they absorb it as the 'truth.'
I don’t think the ROGD girls want any part of it, certainly not the part of the abuser. For them, identifying as male is mainly about not wanting to be a sexualized young woman. “Trans man” is the only other option, at least for now., but don’t put it past the TRAs to invent some new varieties!
I meant this in the binary-option sense of wanting to not be someone who is being degraded and/or hurt - not that they themselves wanted to hurt someone else. I wonder if this plays into the non-binary demographic as well.
Research? Research in the trans area is shit, and will remain shit going forward.
Why? Several reasons:
1) Trannies will not cooperate
2) Trannies actively work together to cobble lies about trans together - online forums give the "correct answer" to various questions
3) The authors of "research" are advocates, and are dishonest in their presentations. I am working with others on a recent study which has gotten a lot of press, but is completely and shamefully dishonest in analysis, conclusions, and the actual performance of the study
4) Numbers of trannies are small
5) There are multiple subtypes of trannies and they do not have the same profile, so a research project involving multiple cases is not useful
6) The questions of most research are stupid. For instance, often the question is "how satisfied are you with your breast removal surgery?" Well, them breasts are gone, and they are not coming back, so everyone is "satisfied". Satisfaction is honestly one of the stupidest and least useful of all research outcomes but you see it frequently.
7) Many longitudinal studies see terrible drop-out rates.
I was thinking about research subjects drawn from the detrans community. There’s no shortage of them in the ROGD cohort, but we never hear about the grown men detransitioning, do we. After I posted that comment, I remembered that there’s a detrans study (maybe two?) by Lisa Littman, who is neither biased nor shoddy. Maybe she answered my question-- I need to do some reading! At any rate, the prevalence of bad research doesn’t obviate the need for good research. Rather, the former should be shamed into oblivion by the latter. Wouldn’t that be fun to watch!!
Lisa, who I know in another context, is a legit researcher. She is having a huge fight to get ROGD accepted. You are correct, she is looking at detransitioners.
The trannie pimps in this area of research have a dedicated opposition to ROGD. When they use the idea, as some do, they use it incorrectly - defining a group as "ROGD" when it did not follow her original description. Others simply flat-out refuse to agree that there is any validity to the idea. The notion, which is found in both gay and trannie thinking, is that the sexual/gender alternative that they favor is BIOLOGICALLY DETERMINED from conception. That means that NO social alteration is accepted. Thus, "conversion therapy" which tries to inject a moment of thoughtful evaluation prior to the surgery, is wrong, even evil. The notion that psychotherapy can be used prior to aggressive gender-positive approaches is anathema, because it has a hint of "these may be psychological issues, not determined by the complete constitution from conception".
I'm reading a piece in Quillette about a scholar who was career-cancelled because he used the ideas of evolutionary psychology in social psych. This is completely unacceptable in most social psych, which holds that man is a completely malleable animal, with no "animal nature". Evolutionary psychology suggests that males are better at hunting due to evolutionary development, women are better at nurturing children. For the religion of "tabula rasa", the blank slate, there can be no difference between males and females.
This is also the key think in the trannie insanity. There is, by the "tabula rasa" thinking, no difference between males and females, and so a male can be in a female body. It's nuts, but this is a current insanity.
Yet they'll say that "gender" is both innate and "fluid"... Religions always have contradictory dogma and dismiss contradiction with hand waving as the point is to "believe". These adult AGPs want to cover up that they have an adult sexual fetish. Hence, they've removed the word "sex" from transexual and carry on about being "born in the wrong body" as if anyone could be. We are our bodies. I really like the idea of dropping "trans" altogether in favor of newly minted on PITT" Biophobia".
The notion that people with mental illness and fetishists currently dominate in all of our institutions blows my mind every day. Psychotherapy is the kindest thing possible.
I have heard him interviewed on a podcast, yes. I don’t know how many other middle-aged male detransitioners there are, though. His religious epiphany strikes me as highly atypical, but at least he broke the spell!
If a religious epiphany is what it took... It sounds like he was in a very bad way. Anyhow, he might have some data regarding male detransitioners since he's been helping others for awhile now - if you were interested to look into it.
Hi George - maybe you have heard from WomenareHuman.com about publishing photos & concerns regarding Kansas Rep Steve Byers? He's the former high school band teacher who changed his name to "Stephanie" in 2014 and has been married to Affirmative Care therapist Lori Haas for the last 45 years. If you have not heard anything, another site that might be interested/helpful is https://mercatornet.com/sex-and-society/transgender/
Byers is being a cry-bully and the news is taking his side over a female legislator who is not comfortable sharing the women's room at the state house with him. - LM
I'm afraid I don't. Do they know about how he is "cry-bulling" about the use of the state house bathroom? Maybe Mercatornet would pick it up? I feel like we need to develop a comprehensive list of these AGP activist men who assault our society.
I too am part of the fumbling snogging generation. I wonder often when confronted with TRA ideology and what it is doing to the next generation, about the old question asked by Lenin: what is to be done?
How on earth can we persuade young folk that despite the pains and intensity of adolescence, the vast majority of us come through it to lead reasonably stable lives. Sure we may look back and think that perhaps we should not have done this or that, but we are alive and kicking! The new generation seems to want to avoid this completely. Worse though is the adults who are enabling this and doing so from within the institutions of state and society that we are supposed to trust to care for us all.
So how do we persuade pubescent teenagers just to get out there into the real world of fumbling and snogging?
You don't persuade pubescent teenage girls to just get out there... etc. You create an environment where it's OK to say "no" to boys. I'm dead serious. Autistic kids in particular don't tend to reach any kind of emotional maturity until age 25, and are often not ready for sex and romantic relationships. I know. I was one. Being pushed toward that is, IMO, what's *causing* the problem. Teenagers need a way to say NO to all that, without being treated like freaks. I wanted nothing whatever to do with boys at that age-- thank heaven it was before the trans fad-- but there I was with unwanted new boobs, getting unwanted attention from boys (and creepy middle-aged men), and having no idea how to deal with that-- I knew I wasn't ready for a relationship, and I knew that "relationships" meant sex, which I also was not ready for. How to get them to just leave me alone? I found a solution: I shaved my head and dressed in ugly menswear for a few years. All that time, boys hardly even looked at me-- like a cloak of invisibility. It was such a relief! I never identified as a man, I have never been a lesbian, and I'm now a happily married (10+ years) completely straight mom of 3.
But those were really confusing years, the pressure to get into a sexual relationship I didn't want was a big part of that (I actually had a roommate say "we've got to get you laid!" when she found out I was a virgin at the shocking age of 19), and what I needed was some friggin SPACE to just grow up at my own pace.
For some of us, "the real world of fumbling and snogging" isn't the right place to be at 14, 16, or even 20, and having well-meaning people try to give us a shove in the "right" direction does more harm than good. Late bloomers, baby. Late. Bloomers. It does happen.
You know what a *lot* of autistic people-- girls and boys-- have in common, other than feeling uncomfortable in their own skin and unsure about their sexuality? Tactile hypersensitivity. Most literature on autism is about children, so how this relates to intimate relationships rarely comes up, but... they do grow into adults. And for many, things that involve *touching other people* are weird, nerve-wracking, and need to be approached slowly, with patience and understanding, in an environment of trust, respect, and affection. "Just get out there and snog someone" is really not the best goal. For someone with tactile issues, there is a really, really fine line between pleasantly arousing, and nightmarish get-me-out-of-here horrible. How many awkward teenage girls have the skill to communicate with a partner about that? How many hormone-addled teenage boys would respond appropriately if they did? I think many autistic teenage girls have an instinctive understanding of this problem, and aren't ready to deal with it. AND PEOPLE SHOULD RESPECT THAT AND BACK THE HELL OFF. Why does everyone have to be sexual at the "average" age? Doesn't the word "average" imply a range?
Maybe instead of "get out there and snog" the goal should be more like: Get out there and find someone you trust, respect, like, and have fun with, and who trusts, respects, likes, and has fun with you. Those are the important things anyway: sex can wait. And maybe, just maybe, if that's the message I'd been getting from family and peers as a teen, I could have skipped the "shave my head and dress like a dude" phase. It's not bad advice for normies, either.
Some coaching about how to deal with unwanted attention from creepy men wouldn't have hurt either. That sh*t was terrifying.
Thank you for this. It has made me reconsider my opinion. Of course there must be room for girls to say NO to the advances of hormone addled boys, and there must surely be some way of teaching boys to respect the personal space of girls. Us older men must take responsibility here and demonstrate that life without instant gratification is both necessary and socially acceptable. Thanks you again for telling your story.
Thanks for considering it. The important thing is that respect and courtesy are important for *everyone*, not just autistic teens (who are the primary victims of ROGD). But not everyone is ready for a physical relationship at the same age, for autistic girls in particular that age may be WAY older than it is for normies... and other people need to respect that. At least *some* of the time, becoming "a boy" or becoming "androgynous" is a really handy way to get off the everybody-has-to-have-a-boyfriend train. Everybody DOESN'T have to have a boyfriend. There are NO negative long-term consequences to NOT having sex before you're ready.
Thanks for writing this. I work with parents all over through Genspect Parent Advocacy and this is the norm. ROGD kids have no experience with sexuality, little understanding of what they are running from, according to all the parents I talk to.
For many here, the online Quillette has many many many pieces about sex and transgender. There is a 7-part series "When sons become daughters" which talks about the impact of M2F trannie stuff on the kids, the parents, and the family.
Can we recognize this as a unique, asynchronous developmental pathway that isn't all that untypical for a certain type of kid? Of course, this profile is vulnerable to trans ideology, but I truly believe for some it's a "useful" way to avoid some legitimately dangerous aspects of adolescence that this group is just not yet ready for. I discuss this briefly in the piece I published today, "What's Working" and more in depth in "Defining Trans" If we navigate this with care, maybe we can reframe it as temporarily adaptive? Curiosity, compassion, and reframing can help us keep our kids close and maintain faith all will turn out okay.
What’s key is that the parents need to be making these decisions. Not the child. To pass a law that dictates that schools and medical facilities. We are allowing these children to keep secrets from their parents. It’s wrong on every level. I know because it happened to my 14 yr old child.
"allowing these children to keep secrets from their parents"...
I'm 100% with you that medical professionals shouldn't be keeping secrets from parents, unless the child has reported abuse by family members that must be reported to law enforcement, and telling the parents would endanger the child.
However. I used to *be* a super-awkward teenage girl, I did go through a few years of deliberate, calculated "ugly" (see above comments) in order to avoid the highschool/college "dating" scene, and if trans had been a thing when I was that age, I'd have been vulnerable to it. I was also extremely secretive with my parents. Not because I was getting into anything bad (quite the opposite!-- never drank, never tried drugs, didn't hang out with a bad crowd), but because my mother had an absolutely terrible track record of respecting our privacy, and anything I said to her could and would be used to attack or embarrass me in the future. I had had quite enough of telling my mom something mildly embarrassing (and what *isn't* mildly embarrassing at that age?), and then having her repeat it, as a "funny anecdote" in front of other adults, often within my hearing. With her, NOTHING WAS PRIVATE.
So when I encounter the idea in these comboxes that, basically, "children shouldn't have any privacy"... I'm horrified. I know all parents aren't the same as my parents, and there are probably all sorts of families out there, but gosh, have you ever asked yourself if maybe there's a *reason* your kid doesn't trust you with the intimate details of his/her private life? How well have you respected your kid's privacy in the past? Do you tell cute little stories about them to their relatives and your church friends, without considering whether the child actually *wants* the whole freaking world to know that? Has the child ever shared something private with you, that you then used to punish them, or gain emotional leverage over them?
I mean... I can't help thinking that maybe, just maybe, if your kid is locking you out of his/her life, could there be a reason for that?
I agree with this. I think children do need more privacy and trust. That said, social transitioning is a powerful psycho-social intervention that should not be undertaken by school staff without parental support.
And you acknowledge this in your comment. As a parent who's worked with non-profits dealing with at-risk adolescents, we do need to re-visit the assumption that most parents are abusive--we need to be better at supporting families to repair and nurture healthy attachment rather than thinking they have to micro-manage their kids.
Exactly! Privacy to a teenager is super duper important. But a sex change is a different issue. There is just no way you’re going to convince me that this many kids are trans. Ridiculous! Come on people! Don’t let what happened to Sage, happen to your child. Please!
Well, obviously. But I think from a family perspective, having a kid who wants to keep his or her entire outside-the-home life secret from parents does kind of point to problems at home. Not necessarily abuse. There are just a lot of ways for a parent-child relationship to go poorly, and a child being secretive is a red flag for that. It doesn't "just happen".
So yeah, 100% schools shouldn't be transitioning kids without their parents' knowledge. That is creepy as hell and should be prosecutable. But it's a two-way street, IMO-- we're not talking about kids who have a great relationship with their parents. Maybe some of that could stand to be addressed on the parent side of things too?
I agree with you. However, don’t forget to add that these children have experienced some form of trauma which needs to be addressed way before gender. This is my granddaughter’s story. Thanks for sharing your excellent thoughts.
Thank you. Excellent points that many parents need to hear and think about. And I actually had a mother very similar to yours. I didn’t even know what a period was until I got it. I thought I was dying. I told my mom and then she explained it. Then she called EVERYONE and told them I got my first period! Unbelievable! So when I adopted my Sage, we would sit on her floor and talk about everything. What happened to her was truly because of severe trauma as a baby. Her mind blocked it all out but her body never forgot that trauma. So she was a prime target for what happened. These school counselors taught her how to lie to me. Had they called me in for a meeting, Sage never would have run away. Thank you for sharing your story. Every person out here has similar stories to share. We need to ban together and change some stupid laws allowing children to make decisions they are far to young to make. Let them me kids! You’re only a kid once. Society is killing them. It is only going to get worse. And so I’m on my knees every night praying for every single child in this messed up world.
TL:DR: For a lot of teens, the trans thing is about BOUNDARY ISSUES, and those often start with their parents. A little self-awareness would go a long way.
Boundary issues and individuation. It might be helpful for parents to think about other possible ways these teens might have chosen to do the biological work of separating themselves from their families. My kid has used her transID to avoid more dangerous typical teen behavior--unfortunately this isn't the case for all families. And I agree, more self-awareness and modeling responsibility for the quality of our current experience.
I agree that it is in no way okay for schools or medical facilities to concretize a transient identity that is serving a temporary need for the adolescent, and to act on a child's behalf without parental input. We have frayed the natural attachment bonds between parent and child and made parenting all the more difficult as a result. My daughter lives a double life--pretending to be a boy at school and coming home to a family that loves her as the girl she was born as.
I agree 100%. These laws have forced teachers and doctors to keep secrets from the parents. So in effect, allowing our children to lie. No morals! And these laws are not only damaging our children but killing them, too. Why are we giving schools the right to teach these children, at such a young age, about sexual preferences? They aren’t even comfortable with their own changing bodies yet!
My 36 YO daughter identifies as "lesbian" and "asexual", but, in my opinion, she is really not comfortable with interacting with others. Especially sexually. She never dated in HS, prom, whatever (I didn't either). She didn't date in college except a little, and I doubt any sex occurred. Even when she was in kindergarten, she was timid and frequently teary, a natural bully target due to her inability and unwillingness to defend herself.
Not only are many of our kids (especially autistic teens) disconnected from their bodies, especially those who spend a lot of time online - but many I think are escaping from the scary worlds of a) sexualisation and b) pregnancy/childbirth - and that's why talking to them about how medical transition might impact on their sexual function or fertility is not concerning to them, or is even, I wonder, seen as an advantage.
For what it's worth, I was an autistic teenage girl avoiding sexualization, and horrified by the idea of childbirth. I was not emotionally mature enough to even *go on a date* (we're talking dinner and a movie, not sex), until age 23-- I did not know how to manage the modern expectations about dating=sex. I don't even like shaking hands with people I've just met, just that little bit of skin contact squicks me out. It takes me a long time to get to know people so well that *hugging* them is okay, and there has to be a lot of trust even then. But people expect to jump into bed on the second or third date? Uh... how about no, no, and also NO. I avoided dating for YEARS because I knew that this was an expectation, and I was in no way on board with it... but I also wasn't religious so I didn't have a convenient excuse for chastity. But what are you supposed to do? A guy flirts with you a little, and you hand him a card printed with "I'd be happy to go out with you, but only if you're willing to stay completely hands-off for at least a year"? There's a social-signalling problem here. We don't social-signal, and we don't read social signals. But we still have needs and expectations and boundaries that need to be communicated clearly. Trying to leap into the dating scene without the social skills to enforce our boundaries is dangerous. Particularly for girls. Girls know this, and if the culture at large won't protect them, they will find ways to protect themselves. Cosplaying as a boy is pretty darn effective.
FWIW, I met my husband at 26, married at 29, and we're very happy, thanks. We talked online for a year before I ever met him in person, and his mom came along on our first date. It's OK to make your own dating template. The standard one doesn't work for everybody.
Can I make a couple suggestions?
1) I would have benefitted HUGELY from having someone familiar with the contemporary dating scene and also basic personal safety for women, sit down and talk me through the unstated expectations, and various ways to *not* get into a situation where sex feels obligatory, to protect myself from date-rape, how to arrange a date so that if things go awry, I'm not vulnerable, etc. How do you let a guy know you won't sleep with him, without being rude? In what situations is it OK, or even necessary, to be rude? I had an awful problem with being hit on by creepy older men in public, and the only rule I knew was "be nice"-- so I'd feel obligated to keep responding to these creeps trying to talk me up, smiling and nodding, all the while absolutely panicking inside, like crap is this guy going to follow me home? What do I do now? How do I get rid of him? I had no idea!-- and this informed my reticence about dating: if this apparently nice guy who is asking me out turns out to be a creep, how do I get away?? Autistic people have a hard time with tricky social situations, and sex/dating is *the trickiest* social situation. We need coaching. We do *not* need to be left to just figure it out like everyone else.
May I politely suggest that NO girl is ready to date, until she knows these things and can be assertive enough to enforce her own boundaries? If you're at a stage of development where you're still learning that, nobody should be encouraging or pressuring you to date.
2. Childbirth and being out-of-touch with my body: Everybody just LEAPS to tell their childbirth horror stories. And then, the women who had a good experience are guilted into silence. If the birth of your child went well, you're not allowed to mention it, because it might make so-and-so who had the scary emergency C-section after 72 hours of hard labor feel bad. Screw that! Little ears are listening! And when all they hear are the bad stories, what are they *supposed* to think? Any sane person would be scared sh*tless. At some point in my early twenties I acquired a copy of Ina May Gaskin's book, Spiritual Midwifery, at a thrift shop. She tells the other side: how pregnancy and childbirth works, how to manage complications, and how to give women the best shot at things going *right*. And what it looks like when childbirth goes well. It changed my whole outlook on the physical reality of being a woman. I have never encountered a more truly, wonderfully, body-positive writer, and this book was life-changing. It took the fear out of things (and, I've had 3 kids now without any drugs or interventions, and I can vouch for what she says! Truth!). A few years later, I also read two books on fertility charting, the Toni Weschler classic, "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" and another one called "The Garden of Fertility" (I forget the author). I used their charting system for at least five years before I ever had sex. It wasn't about sex: it was about getting to know my body and what it was *doing* and why, and it was extremely helpful. I'd recommend it to *any* woman, but particularly to intelligent, data-oriented girls who are anywhere on the autistic spectrum and like geeking out on the data-collection-and-analysis side of things. Between Gaskin and Weschler, I got over my "I don't like my body and I have no idea what it's doing" problem. Just putting that out there in case it might help someone else... Maybe for normie girls, the extremely unhelpful overview you get in biology class is enough, but some of us need more detail. These ladies, and their books, gave me the info I needed, in the excruciating level of detail I needed. If I had girls, I'd make these books available to them.
I don't remember much about my adolescence, but I remember 1 thing - when I learned that my conception involved my dad putting "his thing" inside my mom, I was completely horrified. It seemed so gross and disgusting.
But we were told it was "normal," atleast in the larger culture, and not given an avenue to escape material reality. Gender, sex, and sexuality is now seen as something we can medicalize our way out of it.
We spend this huge amount of time telling our children "your privates are yours and no one should touch them". Then sex time comes. "Share those privates, but get permission for every little step, preferably in writing and notorized."
We have put so many barriers around sex in this attempt to protect children from every possible thing. Could this be the problem?
This post rather unintentionally highlighted for me something I was unaware of, that being that girls and women seem to find or remember the advent of puberty as a terrifying, or at least concerning, time. I didn't really notice this as my female peers were going through this in grade school and I appreciate the candor so I can watch for this in my daughter when it's her time.
even if you've been well educated about sexual development, I don't think that any woman would forget her first period. Can you imagine pulling down your knickers to have a pee and finding blood in them? That is always going to be a shock.
Honestly, no not really. Sure I can try but I know that's never going to be my reality so it doesn't really strike home. Just glad I had an opportunity to reframe my take on it eight-ish years before my daughter will be facing that.
Our children are not in their bodies. They are in their heads. Our schools don't prioritize body based education and learning. We are all afraid of our bodies in this culture. Cultures where they don't don't have this crisis going on. Liberals like myself are justifiably angry about sexual exploitation but our kids have now learned that sex is dangerous. They have not learned how to enjoy their bodies. It's all an intellectual exercise.
But are they? What schools are doing is implanting mental constructs labeled as sex education. If they really understood what people need to develop at a healthy optimum sexually they’d be going about it totally differently. It wouldn’t even be focused on sex. Healthy sexuality is a result of being a healthy human developing from a strong foundation.
They cannot teach what they are not and what they themselves do not understand.
When my daughter was 4 years old I began to teach her about mind control also known as brainwashing. I did so because once she was attending public school, immediately I could see how she was being influenced.
I had already begun to limit and oversee what she was viewing in terms of TV and movies but now that she was socializing and going to public school (preschool at that time) and I couldn’t be there to make sure she wasn’t being exposed to ideas that I wouldn’t expose her to I felt it was time to act. I realized I needed to start assisting her to develop discernment and to better understand her mind and thought processes. To understand the difference between your own thoughts and what is being suggested to you.
Mind control is a topic I’ve been aware of and studied avidly since my teens in the 80’s. At age 14 I could see it happening. Advertising being just the tip of the iceberg. It goes much farther than simply manipulating people emotionally to get them to buy a product, and thankfully I somehow realized it. I often felt insulted by TV commercials as a kid. “Do they really think I am that stupid to not see what they’re doing?“ I would often think. Commercials made me angry.
I went to my parents and said to them “we are all being brainwashed through the TV, movies, music and even the ‘choices’ at stores which are made for us regarding the options made available” to paraphrase. My parents just rolled their eyes. It was a big deal to me and still is.
Throughout my life since, I’ve gotten better and better at seeing subtext, hidden messages, the suggestions, the subliminal, the “in between the lines”. But the programming has become such a sophisticated ever evolving science and so insidious, no matter how aware you are of it, you will still find yourself pulled in.
It’s an exhausting task to hold onto one’s mind these days. I am very aware of it and have studied it ongoing, yet I nonetheless get pulled in. I didn’t grow up with devices. I barely even watched TV. Kids these days are extremely vulnerable, more than ever thanks to being plugged in as they are.
Does media mimic reality? Or does media influence and direct narratives which become reality- more so? People watch and they believe. Boy do they.
Now we have internet and all that comes with it.
I emphasized to my daughter that what she sees on TV or in whatever media- is not real. Movies are not real. None of it is real. Even so called reality shows are not real. We are watching enactments, a scripted scenario. When we watch stories portrayed on TV on the internet etc., there is constantly the suggestion that these stories are based in a reality. The reality of “this is how humans behave” and this is “how things are”. It gets confusingly confirmed because truth is used in the process.
What is enacted often does mimic what many have likely experienced in reality. Reality is exploited in the process. Though nonetheless none of it is real. What is real is you sitting their watching and processing what you are watching.
I had already noticed prior to being a mom that many tv shows and movies directed at young people have the storyline that parents and children are at odds with each other. Parents don’t listen. Parents don’t/can’t understand. Parents are ridiculous. Parents are a bummer. Children can’t talk to their parents. Over and over and over.
In reality there are many challenges for families which are very real of course. This truth and others are exploited in these storylines. But I believe these are worsened even more by the narratives and subtext contained in the “programming”.
I saw this narrative of parents at odds in show after show after show. It’s one of the primary messages hammered into children’s minds from a very young age on up. They develop and grow up with it. By the time they are teens it’s a solidified narrative integrated into consciousness and subsequently it becomes a reality.
I began to point this narrative out to my daughter. I began to teach her how to see the subtext for herself in all media and messaging. What are they saying that they aren’t actually saying outright? What is the subtext? What is being suggested to you?
I think it’s also important to note that in my family honesty is extremely important to us. Honesty and communication. Telling each other the truth and no matter how uncomfortable it may be, is an expression of love. No ‘little’ lies either. A lie is a lie. There’s always an appropriate way to tell the truth. It’s work. Gotta do the work.
Regarding the parents and children at odds narrative I explained to my daughter how what we see in media is not real. The stories are not real. Just because a TV show presents something to us as if “this is how things are” or “this is how people behave” WE do NOT have to live OUR lives according to what these shows present. We have the power to create our lives according to how we want our lives to be. We have each other. We are a lifelong team. We will have challenges requiring us to do the work- all relationships require a lot of work- but we will do it. No matter what, we are a team. I repeated this as she grew. Over and over. I exampled it with her.
Now she is 17 this month. I just hope I’ve done enough. We are all bombarded constantly. It’s getting worse. It’s time to real eyes that we are indeed at war. We are at war for our own minds and bodies. I’m seeing many people who are aware of the programming, it seems more than ever. We do need to assertively teach our children about mind control. We need to teach our children to be able to program themselves- otherwise the world definitely will.
It’s sad that we have to. But this world requires it.
As a therapist who has seen more than a few ROGD kids in the last few years, my experience is that most of them don’t know or care about sexuality in terms of having sex with another human. It’s not even in their radar. The demographic that I have come into contact with is young teen female falling victim to social contagion or teen/young adult male falling somewhere on autism spectrum and being indoctrinated online.
Trans Dr Marcie Bowers says kids that go.on puberty blockers never experience orgasm: https://twitter.com/libbyemmons/status/1520807905049694211?s=20&t=LjPae_ldDNBNDyAuymkM9g
Of course. They're mutilating the body nature has given them.
😞
My ROGD kid has never kissed a boy or a girl. I told him to try out what he's got first before undergoing an irreversible surgery to change it. I told him that I've had sex for more guys than he has, and I've never even called myself LGBTQ etc + or whatever it is now. I just experimented and found that I was a very straight man. I hope he can at least try.
This is a very interesting point. I think about this frequently. The label we use for our own behavior/interests is important. If you, as a man, have an encounter with a man, you can either call yourself "experimenting" or "gay". The label then changes your behavior.
In the trans case, the label of "trans woman" or "trans girl" that these boys, who have never used Mr. Johnson for its sexual role, changes their behavior. Instead of seeking out women/girls to have an encounter, they think about making themselves into a "cute girl" and doing something with other guys? trans men?
I think part of the response from the parent needs to be resisting the use of the "trans" label.
Ironically, it is allowing themselves to have those early fumbling sexual experiences that will guide them on a path to figuring this stuff out. We have to try to get them to develop true in person connections and relationships. Its been so hard with covid and the internet. We learn so much about ourselves along the way when we risk doing that!
Since all interactions with kids seem to in virtual, the ability to have these physical encounters seems more and more limited.
This sums it up very well. It’s taken me a while to figure it all out. All the crazies telling us to accept that they are “born in the wrong body” and affirm their delusions make me so angry. Maybe if it were their child they’d feel differently. Also, maybe if the medical community wasn’t so political and in the pocket of big pharma, these poor kids and their parents would get the truth (true informed consent) and get real care and not be rushed into hormones and surgeries.
Does it really boil down to this: a small group of powerful men with AGP are driven to turn themselves on, while a large group of ROGD girls are driven to turn themselves off? It looks that way to me. Some clinical research would be illuminating.
My theory is that a small group of AGPs have found a way to process their shame by making gender identity into a big social concern, thereby gaining special protection, hence the need to turn as many kids as possible trans. Shame and its avoidance is a huge driver of human behaviour…
I agree with your theory. They don't seem to be showing much shame now, do they? We are told that shame is wrong in any context. Only wrong thinking people who are bigots would fail to celebrate anything.
Next we will have normalized "Minor Attracted People", MAPs.
If all goes well with the Trans agenda, MAPs are the next group that will have their shame ameliorated at the rest of society's expense.
I agree. Then, other things feed into it like our education system thinking that it's not answerable to parents, companies like Johnson & Johnson out to make $$ on "T", The Dems always wanting the next "Civil Rights" movement, the Reps being lame and not taking on the "cultural stuff", censoring of non-Woke views in media, etc.
I think that there is a lot of sense to this. "The Emperor's New Gender". When you are convincing yourself that 2+2=rutabaga, it helps that a lot of people agree with you.
There was a psych experiment in which a subject was put into a room in which all other persons were stooges or collaborators. There were 2 sticks, one OBVIOUSLY shorter than the other. EVERYONE in the room stated that the longer stick was shorter (stated an obvious falsehood). Many of the subjects agree - were convinced to publicly state an obvious falsehood by peer/public pressure.
That's what's going on with public support for trannies. Everyone says that it is true, so it must be, right? If you disagree, you are a transphobe, right?
Brilliant. I think it says a lot about the social context of sex and sexuality over the past few decades. Men were raised with a lot of entitlement to sex, hence many men with disorders related to sex. The last 20 years were a backlash to that, telling girls to be strong and stand up to sexual abuse. But we never told girls they can also accept being human and vulnerable. That strength and vulnerability make you a whole human being. We made it sound like vulnerability is a bad thing. And we made it seem like all that is out there in the world around sex is danger, toxic people, predators, pregnancy and disease. Kids are learning not to trust others or themselves. Why would a girl want that? Why would a boy want to take on the blame for all that? As a woman in her 40s, I am just getting into my body, my sexuality, to have fun, take a chance with someone and mess it up, not to take it all so seriously, to trust myself. We made the stakes too high for kids to ever have a chance to discover that.
I love that comment. The only thing I would add is the toxic influence of internet porn on our messaging to girls about what they can expect as women. I think it will be shown to have played a huge role in ROGD.
So many parents of ROGD girls have been talking about this - their children viewing depraved and violent pornography and then essentially deciding "I want to be the abuser, not the abused." person in that warped sexual power-fantasy. Porn was mostly 'fine' amongst adults who had already learned the difference between real life and not - but these children haven't and they absorb it as the 'truth.'
I don’t think the ROGD girls want any part of it, certainly not the part of the abuser. For them, identifying as male is mainly about not wanting to be a sexualized young woman. “Trans man” is the only other option, at least for now., but don’t put it past the TRAs to invent some new varieties!
I meant this in the binary-option sense of wanting to not be someone who is being degraded and/or hurt - not that they themselves wanted to hurt someone else. I wonder if this plays into the non-binary demographic as well.
Research? Research in the trans area is shit, and will remain shit going forward.
Why? Several reasons:
1) Trannies will not cooperate
2) Trannies actively work together to cobble lies about trans together - online forums give the "correct answer" to various questions
3) The authors of "research" are advocates, and are dishonest in their presentations. I am working with others on a recent study which has gotten a lot of press, but is completely and shamefully dishonest in analysis, conclusions, and the actual performance of the study
4) Numbers of trannies are small
5) There are multiple subtypes of trannies and they do not have the same profile, so a research project involving multiple cases is not useful
6) The questions of most research are stupid. For instance, often the question is "how satisfied are you with your breast removal surgery?" Well, them breasts are gone, and they are not coming back, so everyone is "satisfied". Satisfaction is honestly one of the stupidest and least useful of all research outcomes but you see it frequently.
7) Many longitudinal studies see terrible drop-out rates.
I love how you just say trannies unapologetically. Lol I'm so used to everyone beint so pc anymore that ppl being blunt is such a breath of fresh air.
I was thinking about research subjects drawn from the detrans community. There’s no shortage of them in the ROGD cohort, but we never hear about the grown men detransitioning, do we. After I posted that comment, I remembered that there’s a detrans study (maybe two?) by Lisa Littman, who is neither biased nor shoddy. Maybe she answered my question-- I need to do some reading! At any rate, the prevalence of bad research doesn’t obviate the need for good research. Rather, the former should be shamed into oblivion by the latter. Wouldn’t that be fun to watch!!
Lisa, who I know in another context, is a legit researcher. She is having a huge fight to get ROGD accepted. You are correct, she is looking at detransitioners.
Insane that she is having trouble at this point.
The trannie pimps in this area of research have a dedicated opposition to ROGD. When they use the idea, as some do, they use it incorrectly - defining a group as "ROGD" when it did not follow her original description. Others simply flat-out refuse to agree that there is any validity to the idea. The notion, which is found in both gay and trannie thinking, is that the sexual/gender alternative that they favor is BIOLOGICALLY DETERMINED from conception. That means that NO social alteration is accepted. Thus, "conversion therapy" which tries to inject a moment of thoughtful evaluation prior to the surgery, is wrong, even evil. The notion that psychotherapy can be used prior to aggressive gender-positive approaches is anathema, because it has a hint of "these may be psychological issues, not determined by the complete constitution from conception".
I'm reading a piece in Quillette about a scholar who was career-cancelled because he used the ideas of evolutionary psychology in social psych. This is completely unacceptable in most social psych, which holds that man is a completely malleable animal, with no "animal nature". Evolutionary psychology suggests that males are better at hunting due to evolutionary development, women are better at nurturing children. For the religion of "tabula rasa", the blank slate, there can be no difference between males and females.
This is also the key think in the trannie insanity. There is, by the "tabula rasa" thinking, no difference between males and females, and so a male can be in a female body. It's nuts, but this is a current insanity.
Yet they'll say that "gender" is both innate and "fluid"... Religions always have contradictory dogma and dismiss contradiction with hand waving as the point is to "believe". These adult AGPs want to cover up that they have an adult sexual fetish. Hence, they've removed the word "sex" from transexual and carry on about being "born in the wrong body" as if anyone could be. We are our bodies. I really like the idea of dropping "trans" altogether in favor of newly minted on PITT" Biophobia".
"Blank Slate" is ridiculous but I think it has long appealed to most teachers who have the wishful thinking that they can take anyone and turn out Einstein. You probably saw evolutionary biologist Colin Wright's piece in the WSJ yesterday: https://www.wsj.com/articles/elon-musk-tweeted-my-cartoon-woke-progressive-left-wing-media-right-viral-twitter-politics-culture-liberal-center-11651504379?st=9i21t27uyr9uc2w&reflink=article_email_share
The notion that people with mental illness and fetishists currently dominate in all of our institutions blows my mind every day. Psychotherapy is the kindest thing possible.
You've heard of Walter Heyer, right?
https://waltheyer.com/ "WALT HEYER identified as a transgender woman for 8 years and now has a passion to help others who regret gender change."
I have heard him interviewed on a podcast, yes. I don’t know how many other middle-aged male detransitioners there are, though. His religious epiphany strikes me as highly atypical, but at least he broke the spell!
If a religious epiphany is what it took... It sounds like he was in a very bad way. Anyhow, he might have some data regarding male detransitioners since he's been helping others for awhile now - if you were interested to look into it.
Hi George - maybe you have heard from WomenareHuman.com about publishing photos & concerns regarding Kansas Rep Steve Byers? He's the former high school band teacher who changed his name to "Stephanie" in 2014 and has been married to Affirmative Care therapist Lori Haas for the last 45 years. If you have not heard anything, another site that might be interested/helpful is https://mercatornet.com/sex-and-society/transgender/
Byers is being a cry-bully and the news is taking his side over a female legislator who is not comfortable sharing the women's room at the state house with him. - LM
Actually have not. I went thru the "Contact" form. Do you have another approach?
I'm afraid I don't. Do they know about how he is "cry-bulling" about the use of the state house bathroom? Maybe Mercatornet would pick it up? I feel like we need to develop a comprehensive list of these AGP activist men who assault our society.
Well said.
I think you capture the situation well. - LM
What a sad story. Thank you for sharing.
I too am part of the fumbling snogging generation. I wonder often when confronted with TRA ideology and what it is doing to the next generation, about the old question asked by Lenin: what is to be done?
How on earth can we persuade young folk that despite the pains and intensity of adolescence, the vast majority of us come through it to lead reasonably stable lives. Sure we may look back and think that perhaps we should not have done this or that, but we are alive and kicking! The new generation seems to want to avoid this completely. Worse though is the adults who are enabling this and doing so from within the institutions of state and society that we are supposed to trust to care for us all.
So how do we persuade pubescent teenagers just to get out there into the real world of fumbling and snogging?
You don't persuade pubescent teenage girls to just get out there... etc. You create an environment where it's OK to say "no" to boys. I'm dead serious. Autistic kids in particular don't tend to reach any kind of emotional maturity until age 25, and are often not ready for sex and romantic relationships. I know. I was one. Being pushed toward that is, IMO, what's *causing* the problem. Teenagers need a way to say NO to all that, without being treated like freaks. I wanted nothing whatever to do with boys at that age-- thank heaven it was before the trans fad-- but there I was with unwanted new boobs, getting unwanted attention from boys (and creepy middle-aged men), and having no idea how to deal with that-- I knew I wasn't ready for a relationship, and I knew that "relationships" meant sex, which I also was not ready for. How to get them to just leave me alone? I found a solution: I shaved my head and dressed in ugly menswear for a few years. All that time, boys hardly even looked at me-- like a cloak of invisibility. It was such a relief! I never identified as a man, I have never been a lesbian, and I'm now a happily married (10+ years) completely straight mom of 3.
But those were really confusing years, the pressure to get into a sexual relationship I didn't want was a big part of that (I actually had a roommate say "we've got to get you laid!" when she found out I was a virgin at the shocking age of 19), and what I needed was some friggin SPACE to just grow up at my own pace.
For some of us, "the real world of fumbling and snogging" isn't the right place to be at 14, 16, or even 20, and having well-meaning people try to give us a shove in the "right" direction does more harm than good. Late bloomers, baby. Late. Bloomers. It does happen.
You know what a *lot* of autistic people-- girls and boys-- have in common, other than feeling uncomfortable in their own skin and unsure about their sexuality? Tactile hypersensitivity. Most literature on autism is about children, so how this relates to intimate relationships rarely comes up, but... they do grow into adults. And for many, things that involve *touching other people* are weird, nerve-wracking, and need to be approached slowly, with patience and understanding, in an environment of trust, respect, and affection. "Just get out there and snog someone" is really not the best goal. For someone with tactile issues, there is a really, really fine line between pleasantly arousing, and nightmarish get-me-out-of-here horrible. How many awkward teenage girls have the skill to communicate with a partner about that? How many hormone-addled teenage boys would respond appropriately if they did? I think many autistic teenage girls have an instinctive understanding of this problem, and aren't ready to deal with it. AND PEOPLE SHOULD RESPECT THAT AND BACK THE HELL OFF. Why does everyone have to be sexual at the "average" age? Doesn't the word "average" imply a range?
Maybe instead of "get out there and snog" the goal should be more like: Get out there and find someone you trust, respect, like, and have fun with, and who trusts, respects, likes, and has fun with you. Those are the important things anyway: sex can wait. And maybe, just maybe, if that's the message I'd been getting from family and peers as a teen, I could have skipped the "shave my head and dress like a dude" phase. It's not bad advice for normies, either.
Some coaching about how to deal with unwanted attention from creepy men wouldn't have hurt either. That sh*t was terrifying.
Thank you for this. It has made me reconsider my opinion. Of course there must be room for girls to say NO to the advances of hormone addled boys, and there must surely be some way of teaching boys to respect the personal space of girls. Us older men must take responsibility here and demonstrate that life without instant gratification is both necessary and socially acceptable. Thanks you again for telling your story.
Thanks for considering it. The important thing is that respect and courtesy are important for *everyone*, not just autistic teens (who are the primary victims of ROGD). But not everyone is ready for a physical relationship at the same age, for autistic girls in particular that age may be WAY older than it is for normies... and other people need to respect that. At least *some* of the time, becoming "a boy" or becoming "androgynous" is a really handy way to get off the everybody-has-to-have-a-boyfriend train. Everybody DOESN'T have to have a boyfriend. There are NO negative long-term consequences to NOT having sex before you're ready.
Thanks for writing this. I work with parents all over through Genspect Parent Advocacy and this is the norm. ROGD kids have no experience with sexuality, little understanding of what they are running from, according to all the parents I talk to.
For many here, the online Quillette has many many many pieces about sex and transgender. There is a 7-part series "When sons become daughters" which talks about the impact of M2F trannie stuff on the kids, the parents, and the family.
https://quillette.com/2021/06/18/when-sons-become-daughters-its-time-to-admit-that-reflexive-affirmation-has-been-a-mistake/
The author discusses all kinds of topics. Regrettably, he does not solve the problem.
Can we recognize this as a unique, asynchronous developmental pathway that isn't all that untypical for a certain type of kid? Of course, this profile is vulnerable to trans ideology, but I truly believe for some it's a "useful" way to avoid some legitimately dangerous aspects of adolescence that this group is just not yet ready for. I discuss this briefly in the piece I published today, "What's Working" and more in depth in "Defining Trans" If we navigate this with care, maybe we can reframe it as temporarily adaptive? Curiosity, compassion, and reframing can help us keep our kids close and maintain faith all will turn out okay.
Gosh yes, as a former socially-awkward, emotionally-immature teenage girl, this. 100 times yes.
What’s key is that the parents need to be making these decisions. Not the child. To pass a law that dictates that schools and medical facilities. We are allowing these children to keep secrets from their parents. It’s wrong on every level. I know because it happened to my 14 yr old child.
"allowing these children to keep secrets from their parents"...
I'm 100% with you that medical professionals shouldn't be keeping secrets from parents, unless the child has reported abuse by family members that must be reported to law enforcement, and telling the parents would endanger the child.
However. I used to *be* a super-awkward teenage girl, I did go through a few years of deliberate, calculated "ugly" (see above comments) in order to avoid the highschool/college "dating" scene, and if trans had been a thing when I was that age, I'd have been vulnerable to it. I was also extremely secretive with my parents. Not because I was getting into anything bad (quite the opposite!-- never drank, never tried drugs, didn't hang out with a bad crowd), but because my mother had an absolutely terrible track record of respecting our privacy, and anything I said to her could and would be used to attack or embarrass me in the future. I had had quite enough of telling my mom something mildly embarrassing (and what *isn't* mildly embarrassing at that age?), and then having her repeat it, as a "funny anecdote" in front of other adults, often within my hearing. With her, NOTHING WAS PRIVATE.
So when I encounter the idea in these comboxes that, basically, "children shouldn't have any privacy"... I'm horrified. I know all parents aren't the same as my parents, and there are probably all sorts of families out there, but gosh, have you ever asked yourself if maybe there's a *reason* your kid doesn't trust you with the intimate details of his/her private life? How well have you respected your kid's privacy in the past? Do you tell cute little stories about them to their relatives and your church friends, without considering whether the child actually *wants* the whole freaking world to know that? Has the child ever shared something private with you, that you then used to punish them, or gain emotional leverage over them?
I mean... I can't help thinking that maybe, just maybe, if your kid is locking you out of his/her life, could there be a reason for that?
I agree with this. I think children do need more privacy and trust. That said, social transitioning is a powerful psycho-social intervention that should not be undertaken by school staff without parental support.
And you acknowledge this in your comment. As a parent who's worked with non-profits dealing with at-risk adolescents, we do need to re-visit the assumption that most parents are abusive--we need to be better at supporting families to repair and nurture healthy attachment rather than thinking they have to micro-manage their kids.
Amen!! Yes!
Exactly! Privacy to a teenager is super duper important. But a sex change is a different issue. There is just no way you’re going to convince me that this many kids are trans. Ridiculous! Come on people! Don’t let what happened to Sage, happen to your child. Please!
Well, obviously. But I think from a family perspective, having a kid who wants to keep his or her entire outside-the-home life secret from parents does kind of point to problems at home. Not necessarily abuse. There are just a lot of ways for a parent-child relationship to go poorly, and a child being secretive is a red flag for that. It doesn't "just happen".
So yeah, 100% schools shouldn't be transitioning kids without their parents' knowledge. That is creepy as hell and should be prosecutable. But it's a two-way street, IMO-- we're not talking about kids who have a great relationship with their parents. Maybe some of that could stand to be addressed on the parent side of things too?
I agree with you. However, don’t forget to add that these children have experienced some form of trauma which needs to be addressed way before gender. This is my granddaughter’s story. Thanks for sharing your excellent thoughts.
Thank you. Excellent points that many parents need to hear and think about. And I actually had a mother very similar to yours. I didn’t even know what a period was until I got it. I thought I was dying. I told my mom and then she explained it. Then she called EVERYONE and told them I got my first period! Unbelievable! So when I adopted my Sage, we would sit on her floor and talk about everything. What happened to her was truly because of severe trauma as a baby. Her mind blocked it all out but her body never forgot that trauma. So she was a prime target for what happened. These school counselors taught her how to lie to me. Had they called me in for a meeting, Sage never would have run away. Thank you for sharing your story. Every person out here has similar stories to share. We need to ban together and change some stupid laws allowing children to make decisions they are far to young to make. Let them me kids! You’re only a kid once. Society is killing them. It is only going to get worse. And so I’m on my knees every night praying for every single child in this messed up world.
TL:DR: For a lot of teens, the trans thing is about BOUNDARY ISSUES, and those often start with their parents. A little self-awareness would go a long way.
Boundary issues and individuation. It might be helpful for parents to think about other possible ways these teens might have chosen to do the biological work of separating themselves from their families. My kid has used her transID to avoid more dangerous typical teen behavior--unfortunately this isn't the case for all families. And I agree, more self-awareness and modeling responsibility for the quality of our current experience.
I agree that it is in no way okay for schools or medical facilities to concretize a transient identity that is serving a temporary need for the adolescent, and to act on a child's behalf without parental input. We have frayed the natural attachment bonds between parent and child and made parenting all the more difficult as a result. My daughter lives a double life--pretending to be a boy at school and coming home to a family that loves her as the girl she was born as.
I agree 100%. These laws have forced teachers and doctors to keep secrets from the parents. So in effect, allowing our children to lie. No morals! And these laws are not only damaging our children but killing them, too. Why are we giving schools the right to teach these children, at such a young age, about sexual preferences? They aren’t even comfortable with their own changing bodies yet!
Running away from sexuality? Wow, so accurate.
My 36 YO daughter identifies as "lesbian" and "asexual", but, in my opinion, she is really not comfortable with interacting with others. Especially sexually. She never dated in HS, prom, whatever (I didn't either). She didn't date in college except a little, and I doubt any sex occurred. Even when she was in kindergarten, she was timid and frequently teary, a natural bully target due to her inability and unwillingness to defend herself.
For someone who's timid and unwilling to defend herself, avoiding romantic entanglements is a rational, self-aware life choice.
Not only are many of our kids (especially autistic teens) disconnected from their bodies, especially those who spend a lot of time online - but many I think are escaping from the scary worlds of a) sexualisation and b) pregnancy/childbirth - and that's why talking to them about how medical transition might impact on their sexual function or fertility is not concerning to them, or is even, I wonder, seen as an advantage.
For what it's worth, I was an autistic teenage girl avoiding sexualization, and horrified by the idea of childbirth. I was not emotionally mature enough to even *go on a date* (we're talking dinner and a movie, not sex), until age 23-- I did not know how to manage the modern expectations about dating=sex. I don't even like shaking hands with people I've just met, just that little bit of skin contact squicks me out. It takes me a long time to get to know people so well that *hugging* them is okay, and there has to be a lot of trust even then. But people expect to jump into bed on the second or third date? Uh... how about no, no, and also NO. I avoided dating for YEARS because I knew that this was an expectation, and I was in no way on board with it... but I also wasn't religious so I didn't have a convenient excuse for chastity. But what are you supposed to do? A guy flirts with you a little, and you hand him a card printed with "I'd be happy to go out with you, but only if you're willing to stay completely hands-off for at least a year"? There's a social-signalling problem here. We don't social-signal, and we don't read social signals. But we still have needs and expectations and boundaries that need to be communicated clearly. Trying to leap into the dating scene without the social skills to enforce our boundaries is dangerous. Particularly for girls. Girls know this, and if the culture at large won't protect them, they will find ways to protect themselves. Cosplaying as a boy is pretty darn effective.
FWIW, I met my husband at 26, married at 29, and we're very happy, thanks. We talked online for a year before I ever met him in person, and his mom came along on our first date. It's OK to make your own dating template. The standard one doesn't work for everybody.
Can I make a couple suggestions?
1) I would have benefitted HUGELY from having someone familiar with the contemporary dating scene and also basic personal safety for women, sit down and talk me through the unstated expectations, and various ways to *not* get into a situation where sex feels obligatory, to protect myself from date-rape, how to arrange a date so that if things go awry, I'm not vulnerable, etc. How do you let a guy know you won't sleep with him, without being rude? In what situations is it OK, or even necessary, to be rude? I had an awful problem with being hit on by creepy older men in public, and the only rule I knew was "be nice"-- so I'd feel obligated to keep responding to these creeps trying to talk me up, smiling and nodding, all the while absolutely panicking inside, like crap is this guy going to follow me home? What do I do now? How do I get rid of him? I had no idea!-- and this informed my reticence about dating: if this apparently nice guy who is asking me out turns out to be a creep, how do I get away?? Autistic people have a hard time with tricky social situations, and sex/dating is *the trickiest* social situation. We need coaching. We do *not* need to be left to just figure it out like everyone else.
May I politely suggest that NO girl is ready to date, until she knows these things and can be assertive enough to enforce her own boundaries? If you're at a stage of development where you're still learning that, nobody should be encouraging or pressuring you to date.
2. Childbirth and being out-of-touch with my body: Everybody just LEAPS to tell their childbirth horror stories. And then, the women who had a good experience are guilted into silence. If the birth of your child went well, you're not allowed to mention it, because it might make so-and-so who had the scary emergency C-section after 72 hours of hard labor feel bad. Screw that! Little ears are listening! And when all they hear are the bad stories, what are they *supposed* to think? Any sane person would be scared sh*tless. At some point in my early twenties I acquired a copy of Ina May Gaskin's book, Spiritual Midwifery, at a thrift shop. She tells the other side: how pregnancy and childbirth works, how to manage complications, and how to give women the best shot at things going *right*. And what it looks like when childbirth goes well. It changed my whole outlook on the physical reality of being a woman. I have never encountered a more truly, wonderfully, body-positive writer, and this book was life-changing. It took the fear out of things (and, I've had 3 kids now without any drugs or interventions, and I can vouch for what she says! Truth!). A few years later, I also read two books on fertility charting, the Toni Weschler classic, "Taking Charge of Your Fertility" and another one called "The Garden of Fertility" (I forget the author). I used their charting system for at least five years before I ever had sex. It wasn't about sex: it was about getting to know my body and what it was *doing* and why, and it was extremely helpful. I'd recommend it to *any* woman, but particularly to intelligent, data-oriented girls who are anywhere on the autistic spectrum and like geeking out on the data-collection-and-analysis side of things. Between Gaskin and Weschler, I got over my "I don't like my body and I have no idea what it's doing" problem. Just putting that out there in case it might help someone else... Maybe for normie girls, the extremely unhelpful overview you get in biology class is enough, but some of us need more detail. These ladies, and their books, gave me the info I needed, in the excruciating level of detail I needed. If I had girls, I'd make these books available to them.
I don't remember much about my adolescence, but I remember 1 thing - when I learned that my conception involved my dad putting "his thing" inside my mom, I was completely horrified. It seemed so gross and disgusting.
But we were told it was "normal," atleast in the larger culture, and not given an avenue to escape material reality. Gender, sex, and sexuality is now seen as something we can medicalize our way out of it.
For many girls and boys it's a rejection of sexuality, they're not gay, they are traumatized.
We spend this huge amount of time telling our children "your privates are yours and no one should touch them". Then sex time comes. "Share those privates, but get permission for every little step, preferably in writing and notorized."
We have put so many barriers around sex in this attempt to protect children from every possible thing. Could this be the problem?
I think it is because there are so many groomers out there, ready to prep a child.
This post rather unintentionally highlighted for me something I was unaware of, that being that girls and women seem to find or remember the advent of puberty as a terrifying, or at least concerning, time. I didn't really notice this as my female peers were going through this in grade school and I appreciate the candor so I can watch for this in my daughter when it's her time.
even if you've been well educated about sexual development, I don't think that any woman would forget her first period. Can you imagine pulling down your knickers to have a pee and finding blood in them? That is always going to be a shock.
Honestly, no not really. Sure I can try but I know that's never going to be my reality so it doesn't really strike home. Just glad I had an opportunity to reframe my take on it eight-ish years before my daughter will be facing that.
Our children are not in their bodies. They are in their heads. Our schools don't prioritize body based education and learning. We are all afraid of our bodies in this culture. Cultures where they don't don't have this crisis going on. Liberals like myself are justifiably angry about sexual exploitation but our kids have now learned that sex is dangerous. They have not learned how to enjoy their bodies. It's all an intellectual exercise.
Oh schools are actually teaching "pleasure" of sex. That isn't the answer eithern
But are they? What schools are doing is implanting mental constructs labeled as sex education. If they really understood what people need to develop at a healthy optimum sexually they’d be going about it totally differently. It wouldn’t even be focused on sex. Healthy sexuality is a result of being a healthy human developing from a strong foundation.
They cannot teach what they are not and what they themselves do not understand.
Yes, they are actually teaching kids about pleasure in sex. They're teaching them how to touch themselves even. It is sick. Yes, I agree.