Somebody’s Precious Daughter

My son and I stopped at our favorite fast-food restaurant after music lessons tonight. It’s our post-piano ritual. 

We walked in behind a grizzled, older man, probably in his mid-sixties, who was at least 6’2”, wearing a tight-fitting mini-dress, stilettos, and a pink leather collar with spikes through it. He was pretty over-dressed for a burger joint at 6 pm on a weeknight, but when you’re hell-bent on making a point, no stage is too small. My son and I glanced at each other. It was a clownish display. I felt a mix of aversion and pity. But we both understand that suggesting this is anything other than a beautiful expression of identity is frowned upon in these troubled times of ours. 

The bedazzled gentleman got his pick-up order from a young woman behind the counter. She was a little over five feet tall. I’d put her age at maybe 22ish. Clearly female, no question. As the man wearing a skirt walked toward the door with his order, the two of them shared what I assumed was a joke because they both laughed, and she said quite loudly as he left, “Hey, I’ve been on T for three months!” They “air high-fived” each other. She then proceeded to take our order. I observed her small fingers clicking away on the keypad, her soft facial features, smooth skin, short stature, and full figure. She didn’t have makeup on and had a short haircut, but neither of these things have anything to do with whether someone is a woman or not. She just is a woman. Period. 

As my son and I ate our burgers, my stomach was in a knot. I prayed. Another victim of the cult. Has anyone told her what could happen? Has anyone let her know she’s setting herself up for heart disease, high cholesterol, various cancers, vaginal atrophy? Osteoporosis? Mood dysregulation? Infertility? Does she know she will be on this drug for the rest of her life, a drug that every cell in her body will do its best to try to counteract? Does she know about early-onset dementia? Does she know that if she stays on “T”, she will invariably need a hysterectomy within a few years? Has anyone been brutally honest with her?

I prayed to God that if He wanted me to say something to this woman, He’d have to give me a really good sign and provide the right words, because I didn’t want to embarrass her (or myself). I just wanted to eat my enormous greasy cheeseburger and leave.

As we dumped our trash and gathered our things, I noticed she was completely alone at the counter, right on the end, and no one was in line. 

Crap. The chance I hoped I wouldn’t have.  

I quietly approached and asked her if I could have a moment of her time. I told her I’d overheard her say that she was on T and asked her gently if she’d been made aware of the side-effects of this powerful drug. I said I didn’t want to offend her or be intrusive. 

I had no idea what to expect. My heart was pounding. Would she tell me to f*ck off? Would she call the manager and tell her some uppity woman was being transphobic? 

Rather, she looked mildly annoyed, and condescendingly replied that yes, she had been made aware of the risks, and that she is in the medical field, working with people who “study these things.” I said I was concerned for the health of young people who go on these medications, as we don’t really know the long-term effects. She said hormone-replacement therapy has been around “longer than most people realize” and that “not going forward with hormone treatment has been demonstrated to have negative mental health effects.” I let her know that I’ve heard horror stories about young people like herself who didn’t fully understand what they were getting into. She replied that “there are horror stories with any course of medical treatment.” True, I said, but we haven’t been studying this long enough to know. She shrugged. 

She was much better-prepared than I was. I wished her a good night, and thanked her, and said again that I was simply concerned for her as such a young person. 

I felt… terrible. Nauseous. Shaky. 

What struck me later was how scripted her response felt. It would have been more natural for her to say, “Hey lady, SCREW YOU! Who do you think you are, anyway? It’s none of your damn business what I do! I’m going to get my manager…”, at which point I would have had no idea what to do but would not have been particularly surprised. Would I be outed as an TERF? A bigot? Would I be asked not to return to my son’s favorite restaurant? 

It also struck me that she looked sad. It’s not always easy to read what’s behind people’s expressions, but there is an emptiness that one can sometimes sense. A hollowness behind the eyes. A vacancy. A loneliness. Is it possible that I’m reading more into it than was there? Absolutely. 

I don’t know if I did the right thing. I think I did? But maybe I was being a presumptuous ass? No one could have accused me of being purposely disrespectful (I made sure we were not overheard and I spoke very quietly), taking too much of her time (the whole interaction was maybe thirty seconds long), angry (I wasn’t), or condescending (all I could think of was, “Please, let her at least entertain the idea of reconsidering. This is somebody’s precious daughter.”)

I mean, I like to think that if I overheard a pregnant woman say she was going to start taking Accutane to deal with her skin problems, I would have spoken up and at least asked her if she was aware of the birth defects this causes. 

Is this different? I don’t know. 

My hope and prayer are that, at the very least, I put a proverbial pebble in her shoe. She can keep walking on it, but it’s going to be annoying. Eventually, you have to decide what to do about that pebble. I wanted her to have to reconcile another person’s doubt with her certainty. Perhaps one night after work she’ll research some things online that the transphobic lady said (maybe she’s given me a less-flattering moniker by now), in order to disprove the idea that synthetic testosterone causes heart problems in women and find that there is information out there that she has not considered. Perhaps a video will pop up of a young woman who has no breasts anymore, whose vocal cords have been permanently thickened by testosterone, and for whom orgasms have become unbearably painful due to vaginal atrophy and abnormal clitoral growth. And maybe she’ll watch it. 

Maybe she’ll tell her doctor (provided she has one) that she wants to wait awhile before scheduling “top surgery” (otherwise known by its less-palatable name, “irreversible radical bilateral mastectomy”). Maybe she’ll ask The People At School Who Study These Things about some new information she found, and their scripted responses will make her wonder, “Do they really know what they’re talking about? Is it possible that this isn’t the best way to deal with my distress?” 

After her compatriots rally around her and tell her how horrible it was that some uppity middle-aged TERF questioned her gender identity and who clearly hates trans people and thinks it would be better for her to “un-alive herself” than take hormones, she will she think, “Wait, she wasn’t rude to me. She seemed genuinely concerned….” 

A crack in the wall. That’s all I was after. 

Our brains aren’t really done growing until we’re in our mid-20s. She isn’t there yet. Maybe all I can hope is that I gave a few more neural connections time to form before she does the next big thing, and maybe those neural connections will help her see beyond her immediate feelings. That’s a big ask when you’re barely old enough to buy alcohol. 

Maybe? Or maybe she’s never given it another thought. Maybe the seed fell on dry ground and was blown away by the unwavering certainty of her fellow cultists. Maybe all I did was solidify her resolve. 

I have no way of knowing, but I sure think about her a lot. 

After all, she’s somebody’s precious daughter.