The Making of a Gender Critical, Captured Kid

Two and a half years ago my daughter made the declaration that she believed herself to be a boy, a declaration that I would hear, sometimes seemingly verbatim, embedded in the stories of the plethora of parents with whom I now share an ill-begotten kinship.

Much like any virus, be it bacterial or cerebral, our children’s immersion into gender ideology inevitably runs its course. This epidemic affliction might be remedied with a heavy dose of disentanglement if caught early, rendered less remorseless with prolonged and persistent guidance, or progress to its fruition despite our best efforts. The crystal ball is broken… so we watch and wait, we research and referee, without a clue as to how this will end for our beloved children.

The tenacious approach I’ve taken with my equally tenacious teen is not one that will slip seamlessly into every family dynamic, nor will it be useful at every stage of this infection of identity alteration. Even for her, and even for me, it has yet to be proven fruitful as she still intends to take the drugs and have the surgeries when she turns 18. I do, however, now see a much more grounded adolescent slowly reacquainting herself with reality, attributable in part to my tireless efforts to shroud her in an armor of information and truth.

Shortly after my yet to be severed tie to the rabbit holes most of us have seen many a midnight from within, I began to share my treasure trove of cautionary tales, frightening facts and shocking sociopolitical developments with my daughter. I quickly concluded that bombarding her with the same mountain of discovery that I myself found to be utterly exhausting was simply not going to help. I was spinning my well-intended wheels directly into her one-part pubescent, three-parts indoctrinated angst, with nothing but exasperation gained.

I had to become, or at least had to approximate becoming, strong, smart and strategic in order to carry out the most taxing parenting I’ll likely ever have to do, so I took a proverbial breath and started over.

Having been on the receiving end of a few uncharacteristic bursts of backlash from my newly captured kid, I opted for brief, strategically planned conversations, each with a singular focus and each spaced out to allow for an equally strategic recovery period. Plucking a piece of wisdom from an interview with a parent on a podcast or taking a nugget of knowledge from a psychiatrist in a documentary, I would gather my thoughts, mentally rehearse my opening line, steady myself, and step over that threshold into uncomfortable conversation territory.

I would leave my daughter with a tidbit or two of “something I found out and thought was important enough to share” or ask her a thought-provoking question and then quickly slip away to flip the laundry. Just as the seeds we plant for our captured kids grow over time, so did the ease of these educating encounters.

Though there are still moments of communication breakdown between us, my daughter and I now speak openly about her distaste for the phrase, “I identify as”, my commitment to working behind the scenes to “help save the world”, and everything in between. In two years of hindsight, it seems we have successfully overruled the unspoken law of the gender “cult” that warned us both not to talk about the things we disagree on.

To further relieve the tension in the home, I had to cultivate the confidence to speak with a casual transparency on the topic of gender ideology, along with the DEI pipelines that keep it flowing freely through schools, institutions and our homes. In doing so, I act as an example of conviction and dedication to the things I think are important. Wedged into my confident conviction, albeit feigned on the hard days, is respect for my daughter and her ever-nudging position, which is now more in line with mine than the TRA’s, based on a few of her recent retorts.

Checking off the “smart” box with a clever idea from another crusading Mother, I began to offer my daughter $20, sometimes more, sometimes less, to sit with me and watch documentaries, interviews, clips and collections of my choosing- something we do to this day. I have always been upfront about the nature of the content, though few words were ever needed there, and these offers come with no camouflage or coercion- she is simply welcome to take it or leave it.

It was here that I began to see the emergence of my teenager’s inner gender critic, with her recognition of puberty blockers as “an awful medical scandal”, drugs she once deemed necessary and lifesaving for herself, along with her revoked endorsement of “non-binary” as “an actual thing”.

Key to these successful sit-downs are the conversations they inspire, so the pause and play privileges are all hers for any question, comment or even sarcastic remark she’d like to make- though Helen Joyce, Dr. Miriam Grossman and Prisha Mosely, among others, are no longer recipients of these. After a year and a half of this, my child now comes to me and asks if I’d like to watch “one of my shows” with her when she’s looking for a little extra cash- a solid sign that she is a willing participant and a covert clue that she is truly interested in learning more.

Airing out the cloud of ideology and creating space for a fresh breeze of critical thinking to waft in, I continued to look for opportunities to gently drop a piece of important news here and a dusting of ideologic insanity there. My efforts to “normalize” a Gender Critical perspective, slowly stripping away the untouchable arrogance from the domineering dogma we’ve been strong armed into addressing, were beginning to bloom.

In a strategic fashion, I began to placidly plant booklets like “Dear Daughter”, “Gender Detransition” and “Reality Girl Zine” on top of a staple stack of mail or on the side table for my curious kid to leaf through. Scrubbing the last specks of secrecy from my latest read like “Lost in Trans Nation” or “Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans”, they too would find themselves liberated from the bedside table to the common areas from time to time.

Car ride conversations once shadowed by the very real fear that my daughter would pull the handle and jump out have evolved into healthy debates and deep discussions, often initiated by that very same kid.

A fundamental overlay to my (hopefully) smart, strong and strategic attempts to help my daughter reclaim a tight grip on reality and her sense of self, is a kaleidoscope of empathy and compassion, void of judgement and laced with a heavy layer of love.

For now, for today, I am the proud mother of a daughter who laughs when I call her a “TERF” based on a markedly based comment she makes, and who assures me that she sees my sincerity as I attempt to recollect the rest of her from an insidious ideology that has harmed so many of our children-the proud Mom of a self-declared 90% Gender Critical kid.