The Break Up of Families in the Transgender World
I used to very close to my sweet son. He told me everything. He wrote a lovely paper about me for an 8th grade assignment about the person you are closest to. A year later he declared he was “trans”.
Now I feel my whole family is gaslighting me.
My son tells me he’s a girl, my daughter. My sister is telling me there have always been trans people and I need to accept it.
My son stopped talking to me, although I never stopped talking to him, thinking of him, loving him unconditionally.
My sister, once as close to me as a twin, stopped talking to me as well. (To be fair, I stopped talking to her as well over this.)
No matter what my son said, I did not buy into it. I had done my research. I knew what was going on. He was brainwashed. But I would never - will never - give up on him.
No matter what I told my sister, she couldn’t - wouldn’t - try to understand.
When will my son get exhausted by this delusion? When will my sister read the truth?
My son thinks trans was why he felt different, and transgender gave an answer and a set of steps to take to resolve his conflict—name change, pronoun change, hormones, and surgeries. It must have felt systematic and logical to my autistic son.
My sister believes that trans is the new gay. She cannot be made to see the very real differences.
They have both been fed a lie and I’m caught in the middle with truth. I miss them both.
I’m living a dystopian novel. I’m losing my mind.
“The Party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.” - George Orwell, 1984
I grew up in Soviet Russia and even was a member of a youth communist party wing for a few years before the USSR collapsed. You need to keep you mind sane and wait. We ended up in a delusional time when every radio, paper and tv talking lies pretending that everything is fine while nobody believes in it and country deteriorates. We just need to wait and fight for every sane mind.
We had a similar experience with my husband’s family. It amazes me that our siblings can possibly think that they understand the situation better than us, the parents! It is an awful feeling to be gaslit by your own siblings, who have accompanied you through the journey of raising children and caretaking for elderly parents. On this one issue they will not back you up? On this issue alone, they are unwilling to listen or learn… Only to judge?! Why, at the mention of trans, do otherwise reasonable people become slack-jawed cult followers and instant experts? The feeling of betrayal is immense, and our relationship has been changed forever.