Social Worker Helps Girl Raise Money on GoFundMe for Testosterone; 2 Female Friends also Transition
This is a transcript of a Partners for Ethical Care (PEC) parent story. The original version can be found here, and the podcast version can be found here, as part of PEC’s podcast series, “The Witness: True Stories of Children and Gender Identity.
We have been estranged from our daughter for over 3 years now. Our story began in the Fall of 2016 when my daughter declared that she was transgender. She had just had her senior pictures taken for her high school yearbook, for which she wore a short red dress, jewelry and make-up. She had never shown signs of gender confusion so this new identification took me completely by surprise. The terminology that she used indicated that she must have learned this on the Internet. I knew this was serious and so my husband and I immediately sought the help of a therapist who specialized in LGBT teens. This turned out to be a huge mistake as the therapist just affirmed her male identity, validating her belief that she was born in the wrong body.
She soon gave away her beautiful clothes and push-up bras, purchased boy clothing and a binder, stopped wearing make-up and perfume, and cut her hair extremely short. She passed as a boy. Once, while we were eating dinner at a restaurant, the waiter referred to her as "sir". My sons looked at me as if wondering why I hadn't corrected him. I was too stunned by his mistake but also at the look of satisfaction on my daughter's face.
When she went to college, we found out that she had arranged to room with another gender non-conforming girl. She spent a lot of time in the Safe Zone where she was surrounded by members of the LGBT community. Before her first semester ended, she was insisting on taking testosterone. We knew that we couldn't stop her because she was 18, but we tried to buy time by requiring that she wait until she graduated from college before taking any hormones. She wouldn't agree to waiting so we withheld her tuition payment. With help and encouragement from a former friend of mine who is a social worker, she set up a GoFundMe to raise money for her tuition and medical expenses, claiming that "he had been kicked out by his parents because he was transgender." It went viral overnight, raising over $13,000! Donations flooded in from her middle school and high school friends, her guidance counselor, teachers, and several anonymous donors. She became a celebrity on campus, was interviewed by her school newspaper and even a local TV station. No one ever called us to verify her story.
My previously level-headed daughter chose to leave our family, including her 3 younger brothers, to follow this transgender cult just before Christmas 2017. She started taking testosterone a few weeks later and within 6 months, her voice had dropped and she had grown a full beard. We would never hear that sweet little voice of hers again. I was devastated! Eventually, she had to drop out of college and get a full-time job to pay for her living expenses and hormones which she got from Planned Parenthood. She cut off all communication with us, deleting her email account and blocking us (including her brothers) on all social media. Last summer, despite the pandemic, she quit her job and moved across the country, setting up another GoFundMe for top surgery. Sadly, she had her breasts amputated just before Thanksgiving.
Over the past 4 years, I have spent countless hours researching the transgender epidemic that is consuming the lives of so many adolescents and young adults, especially girls. My daughter is one of 3 girls from her small, private high school who have had their healthy breasts removed. This is clearly a social contagion and in an effort to build awareness of the dangers, I have talked with school administrators, college deans, journalists, medical professionals, therapists, politicians and even my priest. None of these people truly understood the frustration that I felt. After being told repeatedly how to accept my transgender child, I finally found the right support network among gender critical parents in an organization called Parents of ROGD kids.
As parents, we feel completely helpless in the fight to save our children from this evil monster that lurks on the Internet. The destruction that this epidemic causes affects the entire family; siblings, grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins. Society has normalized the transgender narrative, schools and the media have promoted it and our politicians are passing laws that will pave the way for the mass sterilization and mutilation of an entire generation. Most egregiously, the medical community is making a killing off of our vulnerable children who become lifelong medical experiments, and they need to be stopped. Despite the anxiety, grief and sorrow that I feel as a mother who has essentially lost her only daughter, I have found strength in fighting this transgender movement. We have to speak up and let our voices be heard. If we don't, who will?
I'm so sorry. You're not alone.
I am so sorry to hear about your tragedy. When our family was bombed by the cult mid way through our daughter's high school years (grooming had been going on for a few years but we didn't know) the leader of the "Gay-Straight Alliance" group was electronically contacting a younger sibling asking for any information re: "abuse" like "denying medical care" (ie, cross sex hormones) and talking about CPS. Suddenly smug 20 something teachers and parents of other teens we knew were acting like we'd become terrible people and joyously calling our daughter "he". It is much better not to have a therapist than to go to an affirming one. The school was suggesting such a one for our daughter and also suggesting I needed a separate therapist myself in order to accept the dogma. This is indeed a cult.