That Could Be My Son

That could be my son. This thought has been stabbing at me for the past two days since they identified Charlie Kirk’s killer. And, if I’m being honest, it’s been niggling at me for the last three years with every senseless shooting perpetrated by a lone, white, young male.

That could be my son. It’s not just that Tyler Robinson looks a little like my 19-year-old. It’s also not that he, too was raised in a loving, conservative home. No, it’s that Tyler Robinson, like my son, went from being a highly intelligent and well-adjusted (albeit slightly socially awkward) boy with a promising future to a radicalized young adult—and seemingly overnight.

Three and a half years ago, my son chose trans. Tyler Robinson chose murder. It is my belief that these young men (and all the other lone, white young male shooters) have a common starting point.

Let me begin by saying they are all culpable. Whether it’s invading women’s spaces or assassinating innocent souls, only they themselves are to blame for their actions. With that out of the way, I’d like to talk about what got them there. Because if we can begin to understand, perhaps things can begin to change.

When people throw the label “monster” on them, and the rad-fems dismiss all trans-identified boys as AGP creeps, and the ignorant paint them all as sexual perverts, I want to scream “BUT WE SET THEM UP FOR FAILURE!”

We have been telling boys for well over 20 years now that their base instincts are primitive and disgusting. We have told them again and again that their mere presence is a threat to women. Not their actions—their presence. I support the good that came from the #metoo movement (it was a needed correction, for sure), but a lot of damage came with the fallout.

Our boys became hyper-aware that every interaction they have can be misinterpreted and cast as suspicious. That it can lead to being cast out of friend groups, ostracized at school, labeled a misogynist. So when pubertal urges began in their teenage years, they were not only adjusting to these new feelings, they became terrified of them.

And that's just the male part of their identity! They also absorbed and internalized the message that their whiteness carried with it a history of grave harm. In the last three decades, in a mostly well-intentioned effort to correct the wrongs of the past, our educators have taught a message loud and clear: white supremacy and patriarchal systems have harmed millions of people throughout history.

How could our boys not begin to hate what they saw in the mirror? They were born with two immutable traits that the rest of the world defines as threatening, two traits that put them at great risk for social rejection. For most boys, they find safety in a like-minded group of friends through sports or clubs or a music group at their school. They are safe because they are known (and there is strength in numbers). Their real-life interactions tell them they are okay, they are decent human beings, they are wanted. They are not a threat. But for our boys—our highly intelligent, sensitive, slightly awkward ASD trait boys—most didn’t have that safety net. Making friends “IRL” was never easy. And so maybe they scratched that itch online. They found their people in the virtual world. Some found it on Discord, others on gaming platforms, and still others in very dark recesses of the internet.

And here is where the problem begins to bear rotten fruit. Unlike their well-adjusted male counterparts, their real-life exposure to peer groups begins to stand more and more in sharp contrast to their online spaces of full acceptance. Virtually, they are able to tweak and massage whatever image they want to project. They cultivate the person they wish they really were. And so that internalized self-hatred? That deep shame over being white and male? It morphs into something extremely sinister. They stand at the crossroads of three radicalized paths: rejecting their maleness, fighting as a radical ally, or becoming the very threat the world says they are.

But let’s pause for a moment and remind ourselves of what else was going on during this era. At the same time that being white and male was increasingly becoming a social liability, the world began to lie about the mutability of one of those traits. Since 2010, there has been a massive spike in transgender-identification among late teens and young adults. While the largest increase was seen with transgender-identified females, the boys quickly followed—since 2011, the UK alone saw a 1,200% rise in transgender-identified males.

And it is no wonder! Back to our crossroads: these boys now had a choice to opt-out of their maleness. I am here writing in PITT because that is exactly what my boy chose. Four years ago, when our son was 15, our family experienced a deeply traumatic event that ended with the truly brutal loss of our closest community and a move across the country.

So how does this connect to Tyler Robinson?

It is my belief that these intelligent and sensitive boys, without a healthy way to reinforce a stable sense of self through peer interaction, had to find a way to survive their own existence. Whether it was a burning need to explain their suffering (brought on by social isolation or trauma), a desperate desire to literally rid themselves of those unwanted traits, or a fierce and tormented longing to belong somewhere . . . they did what they had to do.

“Becoming a woman” was my boy’s escape from self-hatred. With that choice came instant acceptance (and not just online). It also offered a ready-made explanation for his pain (bonus: no need to confront the trauma he had just endured!). For others, adopting the role of a “warrior ally” is their ticket out of self-shame. They fuse their identity so tightly with the cause against white supremacy and patriarchy that it tips into radicalization. And still others, in a huge, defiant f-you, throw themselves into the alt-right corners of the manosphere.

We all loved our boys well. We did not over-love them (one of the many accusations hurled at us parents). We saw their social isolation and stepped in, building them up as best we knew how. We sent them off to college, unaware of the depth of their insecurities, the intensity of their pain, or the fierceness with which they craved acceptance at any cost. How easily their minds could twist logic through mental gymnastics, bending reasoning around narratives that explained their suffering while shifting blame onto someone else.

And then they made their choices. Some “became women,” rewriting themselves to escape self-hatred. Some dove headfirst into alt-right white supremacy, lashing out in defiance. Some donned the armor of radicalized leftist warrior identities, fighting the very world that never fully accepted them. Different paths, same root. That’s the conversation we desperately need to have.