Update from the Author: The below is a repost of my essay from last year—you can find the original version here. In the comments, some readers requested an update on how my desisted son fared during his camp experience. I didn’t include it in the original essay, however, prior to my son’s departure for camp, after I learned about the trans identified female counselor, my husband and I took the risky step of a heart-to-heart conversation with our son.
Thank you for addressing older kids. My son just turned 20. He is in college. I have no way to help him. He wants no guidance. He has cut off all communication ( unless he needs something of course). We no longer support him financially or through insurance and I have no idea who he’s living with. The media focuses on young children but there are so many of us out there wondering what we can do to deprogram our adult children. There is nothing but to sit, wait, and hope. It’s excruciating. I’m so glad that your son came back to you.
My heart breaks for the parents, too. They are us. But without honesty my goodwill is just condescension.
One thing I’d say to all adults involved in this is... DON’T.
Camp administrators and counselor’s parents: Why are you gleefully sending foxes into henhouses?
If you have to send foxes, send them honestly. Don’t BS us with “oh it’s fine, they all identify as male.” Not good enough. There has to be some way for parents to insist on having a nonconfused counselor. “So, my son’s counselors will all be realmales, right?” (I don’t say “cis,” any better ideas?) If the camp can’t promise that, then tell them “Sorry, I only choose camps that take child safety seriously.”
It's not perfect (I agree with Lunafalls that some woke parents will actively seek “inclusive” camps) but it’s something.
I'm embarrassed to admit I never even thought about summer camp trans exposure, but this is the worst of all! Children are away from their parents for weeks at a time and are even more susceptible to influence and indoctrination than they would be at school, where at least they go home every night.
Trans counselors as "role models" . . . trans kids and teens bunking and showering with opposite-sex campers . . . and pronouns, pronouns everywhere. And the once-trusted American Camp Association is fully onboard with it all. I'm speechless.
I am the parent of a female camp counselor identifying as he/they and you can bet your bottom dollar that my heart is breaking for HER and wondering what in the name of all that's right in the world the camp was thinking in hiring her...to lifeguard with her breasts bound and her shirt off in front of all these impressionable kids. Do the parents who are paying the money for their kids to go to this camp even have a clue about what they're paying for? I bet not. I would not want my young children so exposed. God help us all.
Wow, she lifeguards with her breast bound? Sounds so unsafe! If nothing else, she needs her full lung capacity unrestricted by binding in case she actually needs to save someone. What are they thinking indeed. Wishing safety and sanity to you, your daughter, and the kids in her camp. So sorry, Jean.
I am so happy that your son returned to being your son - such great news! The trans-cult rollercoaster ride is so unpleasant and so frightening, you are lucky to have been able to get off and walk away with your son in tack. I don't know why I was stunned that the camp would allow a female to be at the male camp - I understand that she now identifies as a "he" but this cult has enough power to make everyone pretend and play along. It is almost ludicrous to me! I am glad that your son was able to stay focused and not be lured back into the darkness. I hope he continues to excel and prosper. Your story does indeed give us all hope.
My child has attended the same camp for 7 years, and it's been an amazing experience for her. She is also a desisted ROGD teen. After all we've been through with gender issues, I felt really uncomfortable when I dropped her off and saw that her cabin mates all had big nametags with names and pronouns on their bunks. And there were 2 he/him kids in her FEMALE cabin (tobe fair, both he/hims were in fact female). So I reviewed the camp policies, and found that, just this year, they have updated their DEI statement to include a big section on gender identity (this marginalized group gets way more attention in the DEI policy than any other group). And it basically states that anyone claiming any gender ID can have access to any space they want
Fortunately , all her counselors were actually female, biologically and otherwise. Her camp was only 5 nights. And my daughter seems solid in her biological female gender identity these days. She's even become quietly critical of trans activism. But I'm not sure where I stand with future camp sessions. I certainly don't want her having a biologically male cabin counselor, or males in her shower area. It's really changing the face of summer camp in a sad way.
I have a real problem with the obviously male adult counselors with the she/they pronouns dressed in miniskirts and heavy makeup. The one my child had was obviously doing it for the shock factor and flaunting it in our faces. Some of them are just narcissistic evil people.
You’re more fortunate than us--our desisted daughter was put into a freshman dorm room with a trans-ID’d male! In a (formerly) women’s dorm! When I called her college to ask about their trans policies & to point out that he had just non-consensually turned the dorm into a co-ed dorm, they were non-plussed.
I am looking forward to the day that those college administrators are embarrassed about these policies & will cringe at their memory. The world is crazy, friends, but as the poster above suggests, the official sanction of this nonsense seems to be peaking more kids & making them want to distance themselves from this bs.
She is--but believe me, move-in day was weird. All of the parents (of the trans-ID'd boy and the parents of the girls in his suite) were all smiley and friendly, pretending that this was just a normal Freshman move-in! (I got the hell out of there as soon as I could.)
In a better world, the authorities would recognize such summer camps for the agents of chaos they are and ban them for the sake of protecting children's physical and mental health, bolstering parental authority and protecting society as a whole. It's not an infringement on people's freedom of association to suppress a dangerous subculture built on lies.
Yes, or at least require full and candid disclosure: "we assign staff based on self-identification" or "based on biology" or "we assign staff who match your child based on biology AND self-identification"
I feel horrible for the author of this excellent piece. For my kids entire lives they’d heard me talk about the youth group in which I grew up, and my participation later as an advisor and then as a long time donor. In 2021 I started to get a weird twinge about my beloved group and immediately stopped my annual donations, including reneging on a prior promise. What set me off was their insistence that kids get experimental COVID shots to attend camp, a policy they still have today. (I realize some of you will disagree with me on this point and that’s fine.) But as I continued to examine their policies I learned that stating in 2018, a year after bringing in a DEI consultant, they started allowing dorming by gender identity at overnights and camps. Back in high school, as a horny young man, I would have jumped on the opportunity for adults to sanction letting me sleep in a room full of 16 year old girls I could make out with all night! Anyway, despite decades of history with this group, I quickly told my kids that our family’s association with the group is over immediately and permanently and that we’d find other organizations that more closely match our values. This gender stuff is a cult and I’ll do whatever I can to prevent my kids’ exposure until their identities are more mature and stable. Sometimes that means giving up on organizations for which we have great memories and for which we had great expectations.
Sorry, can't be with you on the COVID vaccination. First, it's just plain wrong.
More to the point in this context, it harms the cause of reining in trans activist excesses when people espouse fringe conspiracy theories that have no more scientific validity that does gender-identity ideology.
Hesitancy regarding vaccination, specifically covid vaccines, is not "plain wrong" or a "fringe conspiracy theory". There is quite a large body of research that gives covid vaccine hesitancy a great deal of scientific validity. Gender identity ideology is, in fact, closely linked with scientifically invalid positions such as pro covid vaccine and pro masking cultism. It's mainly the same people, with the same intellectual shortcomings, who advocate for both.
You’re welcome to your opinion. I do not accept your “fringe conspiracy theory” attack anymore than I’d agree that “gender is a choice.” If you’re smart enough to question the “proven science” that’s fueling cross sex hormones and puberty blockers in kids, perhaps you’ll also be open minded enough to read the extremely well-credentialed COVID shot skeptics’ Substacks and, like me, spend hundreds of hours tracking down source data (which often showed the opposite of what the science community was espousing.) But either way, it won’t make any difference to me as my kids will never be injected.
Thank you for pointing out, it was the insistence on experimental shots that set you off. Those who have been fooled by one big pharma/corrupt government PSYOP are going to be vulnerable to the other PSYOPs. They are all connected.
That was exactly my connect-the-dots revelation as well...that Big Pharma is literally devoid of morals and will readily sacrifice Childrens’ health for profits. But I’ve gotten pushback on PITT in the past regarding COVID jabs, and I have plenty of other Substacks in which to discuss those. I’m not sure how many parents on PITT are like me: my kids have never questioned their gender and seem relatively well adjusted. But my intense distrust of pharma, media, government and “well-intentioned” adults in positions of influence over children led me to proactively learn about the trans phenomenon.
Some ppl see how the medical community and science has been infiltrated on this subject, but refuse to believe it can be the same in different subjects. Sadly.
It's easier to fool someone than to convince them they've been fooled.
Can you share how you approached your son and how he desisted? My 16 yo son announced he is a she a month ago..out of the blue...no telltale signs, nothing. This announcement was preceded by a extremely bad freshman/Sophmore high school experience resulting in extreme isolation, among other things. I know my son so confused and has fallen into this ideology that makes him included. I just don’t know how to help him change his narrative without him closing the door. Any information or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. 🙏
I told my kids what I was told. Gender is a concept stolen from
linguistics. Words are gendered. People cannot be gendered. In the 60’s/70’s society wanted to make homosexuality more palatable so they started using gender instead of sex on forms and applications. Then people starting to just use sex and gender interchangeably and that’s where confusion came in. You are a boy bc you are XY chromosomes no such thing as gender. You can BELIEVE you are a girl but you’d just be pretending. Get him a DNA test so he can see the medical proof. Try to get him into some good Christian youth groups with other boys and girls. See if a pastor would be good enough to get some well grounded girls to be his guide at a Christian youth camp. Get him into math science summer camp. Get counselors to assign him some sweet girls to be his helper. Etc.
I am interested in Stoic thinking. Stoic ideas emphasize that you control yourself, that you improve yourself.
Consider giving him a copy of "How to think like a Roman Emperor" by D Robertson, which is a biography of Marcus Aurelius, as well as an exposition of Stoic ideas.
True. There are some. My daughter was in theatre 2004-2008. She palled around with a guy that was clearly gay. She is not, and has never been interested in anything other than normal sexual stuff. Some theatre kids are normal.
Thank you, George. Two months before he told me, I removed him from the public high school and he finished his Sophmore year at a small independent school that teaches kids 1:1. I don’t know if he was introduced there. I do know that though he was very happy with his new school he was alone and did spend hours on the internet. My son is blind for all intents and purposes though he has sone tunnel vision out of one eye so traditional programs and sports have been a challenge as he’s gotten older. He loves science & Math but because of difficulties with access that has been hard as well. He’s currently at a school of the blind for 6 weeks with other visually impaired/blind kids and I pray he finds the inclusion he seeks with them, though nowadays this gender fluidity is everywhere...
Thank you..he’s been taking piano for years (though not seriously) and has shown a bit of interest in guitar. I will look into it. He’s always loved classical music and always web to sleep with goldenberg variations since a toddler ..until recently. Thank you🙏
The trannie counsellors are NOT ACCEPTABLE. Unite with other parents, and get them OUT of the camp. As others have noted, you are spending BIG BUCKS to indoctrinate and groom your own children into the tranniensanity.
vote with your dollars. this stops immediately as soon as parents withhold money. instead of sending your kids away to be indoctrinated by god knows who, rent some camping equipment and spend a week in the woods with them or pitch tents in the backyard, invite some of their friends and have at home camping. the stakes are too high to risk this
For every family that pulls their children out, there might be several others with terminally woke parents who are thrilled that the camp is so "inclusive" in its hiring.
true, but any hit to their bottom line is a hit to their bottom line. let them destroy their children; you don't have to go along.
i get enraged when i see parents jumping on the trans bandwagon. where are the fathers to say no to their soft wives who want to "be nice" to their trans identifying children? ah yes, they've all been pussified by talk of toxic masculinity
I don't have hard stats but I actually see more moms being worried out of their minds about trans crap and dads thinking that it's just a stage that will pass.
Thank you for sharing! <3
Thank you for addressing older kids. My son just turned 20. He is in college. I have no way to help him. He wants no guidance. He has cut off all communication ( unless he needs something of course). We no longer support him financially or through insurance and I have no idea who he’s living with. The media focuses on young children but there are so many of us out there wondering what we can do to deprogram our adult children. There is nothing but to sit, wait, and hope. It’s excruciating. I’m so glad that your son came back to you.
Other options to summer camp ..
https://www.volunteerworld.com/en/volunteer-abroad/animal?tm=tt&ap=gads&aaid=adabsE5XzwUMV&gclid=EAIaIQobChMIsObi47yagAMVHSqtBh3W5g-FEAAYAiAAEgICKfD_BwE
So happy to hear this
You couldn't pay me enough to send my son there knowing they have those
e ppl there. 😳
Glad he has remained desisted.
My heart breaks for the parents, too. They are us. But without honesty my goodwill is just condescension.
One thing I’d say to all adults involved in this is... DON’T.
Camp administrators and counselor’s parents: Why are you gleefully sending foxes into henhouses?
If you have to send foxes, send them honestly. Don’t BS us with “oh it’s fine, they all identify as male.” Not good enough. There has to be some way for parents to insist on having a nonconfused counselor. “So, my son’s counselors will all be realmales, right?” (I don’t say “cis,” any better ideas?) If the camp can’t promise that, then tell them “Sorry, I only choose camps that take child safety seriously.”
It's not perfect (I agree with Lunafalls that some woke parents will actively seek “inclusive” camps) but it’s something.
I just discovered this article on the Women's Liberation Front website, and thought it was relevant to today's topic:
https://womensliberationfront.org/wolf-tracks-entries/is-your-child-gearing-up-for-summer-camp
Horrible!
I'm embarrassed to admit I never even thought about summer camp trans exposure, but this is the worst of all! Children are away from their parents for weeks at a time and are even more susceptible to influence and indoctrination than they would be at school, where at least they go home every night.
Trans counselors as "role models" . . . trans kids and teens bunking and showering with opposite-sex campers . . . and pronouns, pronouns everywhere. And the once-trusted American Camp Association is fully onboard with it all. I'm speechless.
I am the parent of a female camp counselor identifying as he/they and you can bet your bottom dollar that my heart is breaking for HER and wondering what in the name of all that's right in the world the camp was thinking in hiring her...to lifeguard with her breasts bound and her shirt off in front of all these impressionable kids. Do the parents who are paying the money for their kids to go to this camp even have a clue about what they're paying for? I bet not. I would not want my young children so exposed. God help us all.
Yes, Jean, sending you and your daughter all my best wishes. God help us ALL.
Wow, she lifeguards with her breast bound? Sounds so unsafe! If nothing else, she needs her full lung capacity unrestricted by binding in case she actually needs to save someone. What are they thinking indeed. Wishing safety and sanity to you, your daughter, and the kids in her camp. So sorry, Jean.
I would never send my trans-desisting kid into such a hotbed of cult ideology, but I'm glad it worked out okay for you.
I would have a hard time saying what I would or wouldn't do unless it was happening to me. <3
Not me. I know what I would or wouldn't do. I would never place any child of mine anyplace where gender cultism had a strong influence. Never.
I am so happy that your son returned to being your son - such great news! The trans-cult rollercoaster ride is so unpleasant and so frightening, you are lucky to have been able to get off and walk away with your son in tack. I don't know why I was stunned that the camp would allow a female to be at the male camp - I understand that she now identifies as a "he" but this cult has enough power to make everyone pretend and play along. It is almost ludicrous to me! I am glad that your son was able to stay focused and not be lured back into the darkness. I hope he continues to excel and prosper. Your story does indeed give us all hope.
My child has attended the same camp for 7 years, and it's been an amazing experience for her. She is also a desisted ROGD teen. After all we've been through with gender issues, I felt really uncomfortable when I dropped her off and saw that her cabin mates all had big nametags with names and pronouns on their bunks. And there were 2 he/him kids in her FEMALE cabin (tobe fair, both he/hims were in fact female). So I reviewed the camp policies, and found that, just this year, they have updated their DEI statement to include a big section on gender identity (this marginalized group gets way more attention in the DEI policy than any other group). And it basically states that anyone claiming any gender ID can have access to any space they want
Fortunately , all her counselors were actually female, biologically and otherwise. Her camp was only 5 nights. And my daughter seems solid in her biological female gender identity these days. She's even become quietly critical of trans activism. But I'm not sure where I stand with future camp sessions. I certainly don't want her having a biologically male cabin counselor, or males in her shower area. It's really changing the face of summer camp in a sad way.
I have a real problem with the obviously male adult counselors with the she/they pronouns dressed in miniskirts and heavy makeup. The one my child had was obviously doing it for the shock factor and flaunting it in our faces. Some of them are just narcissistic evil people.
You’re more fortunate than us--our desisted daughter was put into a freshman dorm room with a trans-ID’d male! In a (formerly) women’s dorm! When I called her college to ask about their trans policies & to point out that he had just non-consensually turned the dorm into a co-ed dorm, they were non-plussed.
I am looking forward to the day that those college administrators are embarrassed about these policies & will cringe at their memory. The world is crazy, friends, but as the poster above suggests, the official sanction of this nonsense seems to be peaking more kids & making them want to distance themselves from this bs.
I am looking forward to the day that those college administrators are facing civil and criminal charges.
Holly shit. Is your daughter ok with her male roommate?
She is--but believe me, move-in day was weird. All of the parents (of the trans-ID'd boy and the parents of the girls in his suite) were all smiley and friendly, pretending that this was just a normal Freshman move-in! (I got the hell out of there as soon as I could.)
In a better world, the authorities would recognize such summer camps for the agents of chaos they are and ban them for the sake of protecting children's physical and mental health, bolstering parental authority and protecting society as a whole. It's not an infringement on people's freedom of association to suppress a dangerous subculture built on lies.
Yes, or at least require full and candid disclosure: "we assign staff based on self-identification" or "based on biology" or "we assign staff who match your child based on biology AND self-identification"
Right on. What self-respecting boy wants a fake man for a counselor?
I feel horrible for the author of this excellent piece. For my kids entire lives they’d heard me talk about the youth group in which I grew up, and my participation later as an advisor and then as a long time donor. In 2021 I started to get a weird twinge about my beloved group and immediately stopped my annual donations, including reneging on a prior promise. What set me off was their insistence that kids get experimental COVID shots to attend camp, a policy they still have today. (I realize some of you will disagree with me on this point and that’s fine.) But as I continued to examine their policies I learned that stating in 2018, a year after bringing in a DEI consultant, they started allowing dorming by gender identity at overnights and camps. Back in high school, as a horny young man, I would have jumped on the opportunity for adults to sanction letting me sleep in a room full of 16 year old girls I could make out with all night! Anyway, despite decades of history with this group, I quickly told my kids that our family’s association with the group is over immediately and permanently and that we’d find other organizations that more closely match our values. This gender stuff is a cult and I’ll do whatever I can to prevent my kids’ exposure until their identities are more mature and stable. Sometimes that means giving up on organizations for which we have great memories and for which we had great expectations.
Good for you. 👏🏻👏🏻
Sorry, can't be with you on the COVID vaccination. First, it's just plain wrong.
More to the point in this context, it harms the cause of reining in trans activist excesses when people espouse fringe conspiracy theories that have no more scientific validity that does gender-identity ideology.
Hesitancy regarding vaccination, specifically covid vaccines, is not "plain wrong" or a "fringe conspiracy theory". There is quite a large body of research that gives covid vaccine hesitancy a great deal of scientific validity. Gender identity ideology is, in fact, closely linked with scientifically invalid positions such as pro covid vaccine and pro masking cultism. It's mainly the same people, with the same intellectual shortcomings, who advocate for both.
Exactly. And as time goes on, we are proven more and more right.
You’re welcome to your opinion. I do not accept your “fringe conspiracy theory” attack anymore than I’d agree that “gender is a choice.” If you’re smart enough to question the “proven science” that’s fueling cross sex hormones and puberty blockers in kids, perhaps you’ll also be open minded enough to read the extremely well-credentialed COVID shot skeptics’ Substacks and, like me, spend hundreds of hours tracking down source data (which often showed the opposite of what the science community was espousing.) But either way, it won’t make any difference to me as my kids will never be injected.
Well said.
Thank you for pointing out, it was the insistence on experimental shots that set you off. Those who have been fooled by one big pharma/corrupt government PSYOP are going to be vulnerable to the other PSYOPs. They are all connected.
Amen to that!
That was exactly my connect-the-dots revelation as well...that Big Pharma is literally devoid of morals and will readily sacrifice Childrens’ health for profits. But I’ve gotten pushback on PITT in the past regarding COVID jabs, and I have plenty of other Substacks in which to discuss those. I’m not sure how many parents on PITT are like me: my kids have never questioned their gender and seem relatively well adjusted. But my intense distrust of pharma, media, government and “well-intentioned” adults in positions of influence over children led me to proactively learn about the trans phenomenon.
Some ppl see how the medical community and science has been infiltrated on this subject, but refuse to believe it can be the same in different subjects. Sadly.
It's easier to fool someone than to convince them they've been fooled.
Can you share how you approached your son and how he desisted? My 16 yo son announced he is a she a month ago..out of the blue...no telltale signs, nothing. This announcement was preceded by a extremely bad freshman/Sophmore high school experience resulting in extreme isolation, among other things. I know my son so confused and has fallen into this ideology that makes him included. I just don’t know how to help him change his narrative without him closing the door. Any information or thoughts would be greatly appreciated. 🙏
I told my kids what I was told. Gender is a concept stolen from
linguistics. Words are gendered. People cannot be gendered. In the 60’s/70’s society wanted to make homosexuality more palatable so they started using gender instead of sex on forms and applications. Then people starting to just use sex and gender interchangeably and that’s where confusion came in. You are a boy bc you are XY chromosomes no such thing as gender. You can BELIEVE you are a girl but you’d just be pretending. Get him a DNA test so he can see the medical proof. Try to get him into some good Christian youth groups with other boys and girls. See if a pastor would be good enough to get some well grounded girls to be his guide at a Christian youth camp. Get him into math science summer camp. Get counselors to assign him some sweet girls to be his helper. Etc.
I am interested in Stoic thinking. Stoic ideas emphasize that you control yourself, that you improve yourself.
Consider giving him a copy of "How to think like a Roman Emperor" by D Robertson, which is a biography of Marcus Aurelius, as well as an exposition of Stoic ideas.
Thank you..he is an avid reader. I just sent him this title 🙏
Does your son fall into any HS groups? Band? Theatre? Art? Sports? Chess? Debate? Science? Math?
Get him involved with stuff. Maybe move him to another school if the current school is toxic.
Does he have a device in his room at night? This is the Road to Perdition. Get it out.
Get him involved in stuff.
Good luck finding 3 non-LGBT identifying kids in HS theater and art clubs.
True. There are some. My daughter was in theatre 2004-2008. She palled around with a guy that was clearly gay. She is not, and has never been interested in anything other than normal sexual stuff. Some theatre kids are normal.
Thank you, George. Two months before he told me, I removed him from the public high school and he finished his Sophmore year at a small independent school that teaches kids 1:1. I don’t know if he was introduced there. I do know that though he was very happy with his new school he was alone and did spend hours on the internet. My son is blind for all intents and purposes though he has sone tunnel vision out of one eye so traditional programs and sports have been a challenge as he’s gotten older. He loves science & Math but because of difficulties with access that has been hard as well. He’s currently at a school of the blind for 6 weeks with other visually impaired/blind kids and I pray he finds the inclusion he seeks with them, though nowadays this gender fluidity is everywhere...
Many persons who are visually impaired find that music is a good choice.
Thank you..he’s been taking piano for years (though not seriously) and has shown a bit of interest in guitar. I will look into it. He’s always loved classical music and always web to sleep with goldenberg variations since a toddler ..until recently. Thank you🙏
The trannie counsellors are NOT ACCEPTABLE. Unite with other parents, and get them OUT of the camp. As others have noted, you are spending BIG BUCKS to indoctrinate and groom your own children into the tranniensanity.
vote with your dollars. this stops immediately as soon as parents withhold money. instead of sending your kids away to be indoctrinated by god knows who, rent some camping equipment and spend a week in the woods with them or pitch tents in the backyard, invite some of their friends and have at home camping. the stakes are too high to risk this
For every family that pulls their children out, there might be several others with terminally woke parents who are thrilled that the camp is so "inclusive" in its hiring.
This is what we've come to.
true, but any hit to their bottom line is a hit to their bottom line. let them destroy their children; you don't have to go along.
i get enraged when i see parents jumping on the trans bandwagon. where are the fathers to say no to their soft wives who want to "be nice" to their trans identifying children? ah yes, they've all been pussified by talk of toxic masculinity
I don't have hard stats but I actually see more moms being worried out of their minds about trans crap and dads thinking that it's just a stage that will pass.
as i said, dads have been pussified