The seeds I’ve sown…

Be warned—this is an essay of hope. I’ve debated writing it because while there have been times over the past two and a half years when I desperately needed to read something like this, other times it would have added to my distress. So, choose what’s right for you. If you’re interested in snippets of conversations that I believe have helped my daughter on the path toward desistance, read on. If not, I don’t blame you. This stuff is capital “H” hard. Additionally, let me be the first to acknowledge that a multitude of other factors unique to my daughter and our situation obviously have also been in play. So please, take from this only what resonates with you. It is in no way meant to be prescriptive.

Let’s set the stage…

When school started in fall 2021, my girly, headstrong daughter announced to her teachers, out of nowhere, that she wanted to go by a male name. We found this out from a sympathetic school counselor, and so began our journey into the upside-down world of trans ideology.

In the first six months she went from bisexual, non-binary, they/them, and being okay with using her birth name at home, to “pansexual,” rewriting her life history, and full of trans requests, which included waxing poetic about one day chopping off body parts and starting on T. She was 12.

The new trans identity granted her instant belongingness in the LGBTQ crowd at school, a first-ever friend group, tons of attention and praise, a social justice claim, a lauded purpose, and a catch-all explanation for every negative feeling she had ever had about her lonely, neurodiverse, puberty-ravaged self. Like so many other parents of trans-identifies kids, I didn’t know what I didn’t know. I’ve always been progressive and left leaning politically, so initially I tried to be supportive while drawing a hard line at permanent changes before she even requested them. I held out on the name for eight months, masculine pronouns for a year, then caved. I allowed clothes from the boys’ department, binders, and a short haircut. I took her to the pride parade. But all the while, I remained deeply disconcerted and privately convinced that this wasn’t really her. Something else had taken hold of her. I just didn’t know exactly what or how to address it.

But about ten months ago (so twenty months into our journey), the activist GSA teacher invited a trans-identified person to speak to the club (unbeknownst to us parents), which resulted in my daughter coming home filled with righteous urgency to be put on “completely safe and reversible” puberty blockers ASAP. And this is when I finally, by necessity, set about educating myself. I can’t tell you why it took that long. Maybe I was in survival mode. Maybe I was worried about being called a bigot. Maybe it still felt presumptuous to think I knew my daughter better than she knew herself. (Spoiler: I 100% did. Because she’s a child, and children do not know themselves. Have you ever met a 30-year-old who hasn’t changed since 13, 15, 18? I rest my case.)

I learned about ROGD, social contagions, mind-control groups, the online ideology spread, the silencing of dissenters, the lack of scientific research, and threats to women’s rights. I found Gender—A Wider Lens, PITT, Genspect, Irreversible Damage, and everything in between. I also did a deep dive into my daughter’s past in the context of both her social life and our family to form an understanding of the traits and circumstances that made her particularly vulnerable, as well as our role as parents in shaping them. (To be clear, I’m not talking self-blame here, but objective acknowledgement that family relationship dynamics is one of several contributors to how our kids see themselves.) And then, armed with this new knowledge, I set out gardening. Or, more specifically, “planting seeds”—a phrase much repeated in advice to parents of gender-confused kids.

Nine months ago, the ground was mostly arid and infertile, but then two “fortuitous” events occurred. First, the GSA teacher with a savior complex called CPS on us over bogus claims that were quickly dismissed, but it was enough of a shock to our family to rattle my daughter to tears (and doubts about the teacher), and so water was introduced. Next, a toxic relationship made our daughter distance herself from the friend group, and with that, the constant cloud cover that is “trauma bonding” eased. Enter light.

Now, as much as I’ve questioned, in retrospect, our decision to socially affirm and believe I would act differently today with the knowledge I now have, I also think that doing so helped maintain a connection with my daughter throughout all this. She felt somewhat supported, so she never turned on us completely. But when the school influences receded, there was still one big problem—she had no idea how I felt. Our relationship was built on a lie and lies make for terrible fertilizer.

The first step, therefore, was for my husband and I to anchor ourselves in reality once more—to change the ph level of our home, you might say, if you’re not yet tired of the gardening analogy. We did this by ceasing to use masculine pronouns and instead opting for the language acrobatics of no pronouns, by (quietly) using my daughter’s birth name when we spoke about her just the two of us, and by using a more neutral nickname version of her “preferred” name whenever we absolutely needed to address her with a name. This may sound like a small shift because it didn’t explicitly involve her, but Seed 1 had to be planted within ourselves. That we were the adults in the room. That we could undo an uninformed mistake because we now knew more. That change was possible.

Seed 2: You are a priority to me.

While I worked to build up the nerve to have an actual gender talk with my daughter, I focused most of my free time on deepening our relationship. I listened while she processed what had happened in her friend group, which led to talks about what she’d observed among peers—the clout of victimhood and preoccupation with internet-fueled mental health self-diagnoses so prevalent in her generation. We went for walks, we picked berries, we baked, we laughed.

Seed 3: You have agency to move on to something better.

She was nervous about starting high school without friends so we made lists of traits she wanted to see in new friends, and then another list of traits she might foster in herself to attract those kinds of people. I found her extracurricular activities that aligned with her future career goals and encouraged doing those as well as working on inner qualities like resilience and persistence that might aid those pursuits. I made sure she felt listened to and supported as a person.

Seed 4: People believe in the wrong thing all the time.

We started watching Leah Remini’s Scientology and the Aftermath together “for fun,” a strategic choice to introduce concepts like self-delusion, group think, and science vs. spiritualism into our environment. We also talked about other cults, how they recruit, and how to avoid being gullible.

Still the lie lived on, and it bothered me on an existential level, but note that up to this point, our interactions were not about gender. Not that I wasn’t thinking about it constantly—believe me, I was. I did, however, keep a list of sentiments I wished to express to her if the opportunity arose.

Seed 5: You are more than a gender.

Then finally, it happened. Someone “misgendered” her, and I saw my opening. I started gently: “You can’t control how other people see you.” She sort of agreed. Then I asked how much emotional energy she really wanted to spend starting high school on trying to make people see her a certain way knowing her limited control over that. I spoke to her future goals—that she had big ambitions and awesome qualities she wanted people to see in her. And I expressed my concerns that instead of others seeing her as “the loyal friend,” “the talented artist,” or “the ambitious student,” excessive focus on policing other people’s language could result in them only seeing her as “the trans kid.” Was she willing to let her discomfort with her body limit her that way?

Seed 6: It’s important to picture the future.

Next, I asked her which was more important to her: To not have to deal with her female body or to be “one of the guys.” I already knew the answer because, except for a period of six to eight months, her aesthetic had stayed pretty feminine, and she loathed the immaturity of her male peers. When she responded that she definitely didn’t want to be “one of the guys,” I asked where she pictured fitting in, then, if she was going to pass for a guy, but not really wanted to be one of them? Would that be a functional identity in the real world considering the real world differs quite a lot from the echo chambers online?

Seed 7: There is more than one way to look at gender.

So far so good, but then came the dreaded question. Did I see her as a boy? To my (naïve) surprise, she had actually convinced herself that we, her family, had bought the ruse. Correcting that misconception was dramatic. While I didn’t answer yes or no, I shared what I now think was novel information to her—that there are different ways to look at and define gender. I explained that I don’t believe in a gendered soul, but in science, biology, psychology—and that many others agree with me.

That the binary nature of male/female is the same in all mammals and has been a stable trait for millions of years.

She was hurt that we weren’t on the same page. I let her know that it was okay for us to have different ways of seeing things and that she was doing what she was supposed to be doing as a teen (exploring, pushing boundaries, testing identities), while my role as a parent was to think of the bigger picture (her present and future health and well-being anchored in science-based facts and observable reality). When she accused me of not accepting her for who she is, I countered that quite the opposite, I accept her for exactly the person she is. That every day I see, accept, and love all of her, and I will never stop. Because of the time I’d spent deepening our bond earlier, she knew this to be true even in her angry state.

Seed 8: You are growing and changing every day.

I left gender alone for a bit after this, but if she tried a new outfit that had an obvious more feminine style, I would compliment how grown up it made her look because I knew that would resonate more than beauty (and it was true). We also had good conversations about feelings and how anxiety and other mental health stressors frequently trick us into believing things that aren’t real. I explained that feelings of sadness, fear, and loneliness can all be experientially valid and painful, but the underlying causes vary wildly, and the human mind is terrible at interpreting what feelings mean. Feelings are also fleeting and distress over figuring yourself out is normal for teenagers.

Seed 9: That feeling of your body as “other” is likely your neurodiversity.

Adding to the discourse on fickle feelings, I used an example of how forgetting to eat can make you “hangry” to remind her that her neurodiversity had always made body awareness difficult. And when the mind/body connection is weak, physical discomfort can easily be interpreted as something else, and like the body is “doing things to you” as opposed to “being you”. Learning to read your body’s signals will make it a familiar friend.

Seed 10: Gender ideology is a spiritual belief system.

When she brought up gender next it was to express frustration that I wasn’t coming around to “her side,” and that every time she tried to present “evidence” for her cause, I shot it down. I reiterated again that our understanding of and language for this differed. Her position was based on beliefs (which is fine—I believe in freedom of thought) and mine on science, and that she couldn’t hope to convince me without actual hard evidence (of which there is none).

Seed 11: This isn’t your fault.

In the same conversation, I also told her that I thought it was awfully unfair what had been done to her in forums online. That she and her peers were sold lies about trans as the unquestionable, settled answer to their distress. (This was an important seed for me because I wanted to help alleviate any possible guilt at having been wrong and give her a way to save face.)

Seed 12: The Internet is not your friend.

Someone at her school had an eating disorder, which led to a talk about body image with that girl as a proxy in the conversation. How that girl’s perception of herself wasn’t true, why that girl wasn’t feeling comfortable in her skin, and the role of impossible beauty standards that have been imposed on female bodies for eternity. We talked about how fake social media is and why it’s important to understand how algorithms work. We also watched The Social Dilemma around this time.

Seed 13: Gender ideology is misogynistic.

Our next conversation centered mainly around feminism since she’s always claimed to be one, and she wanted to know why I had mentioned that I found gender ideology to be misogynistic. In response, I asked what she thought would happen to women’s progress if we bought the activist narrative that every remarkable historical woman who broke gender norms by taking on traditionally male pursuits must have been a man. And I asked who she thinks benefits most from young women being convinced that they’re “born wrong” and becoming lifelong medical patients instead of pursuing healthy relationships, educations, and careers. Would she consider it possible that there are as many valid ways to be a girl/woman as there are girls/women in the world?

Seed 14: You can’t be a feminist while rejecting your own femaleness.

A little later we returned to misogyny as it relates to religions. She asked why women so often have inferior status in many religious groups with more traditional gender roles. When she agreed with my explanation that historically, patriarchal groups have found it necessary to suppress female power as a means to retain control, and expressed outrage over this, I asked her how that was different from her denying her own female power by claiming a male gender identity. In both situations, women lose. I know that stuck with her a while.

Altogether, my daughter and I have had only three conversations specifically around gender in the past six months, but we talk often and deeply about life, relationships, and values, and we spend quality time together that allows me to ask a lot of open-ended questions. So how has this played out for us?

When school started after our first (and most upheaving) conversation, I noticed immediately that she was easing up on policing pronouns in school. It still bothered her enough to mention it, but often she chose to let it go. She also actively screened potential friends for the traits she wished to see in others and herself, thereby naturally leaning toward more “normie” peers. Instead of making her whole personality about gender, she has gradually shifted her focus toward her future career goals, including choosing content related to that on YouTube, and she has a more nuanced understanding of the fact that two things can be true at once. She and I can disagree, but we can still love each other and enjoy each other’s company. While she still hasn’t explicitly connected the dots of the self-diagnosis epidemic online to include “gender dysphoria,” she’s reflecting more thoughtfully on her past behaviors and can observe in real time that feelings aren’t static based on how much she’s changed in this past year. She’s making peace with her body and trying to listen to what it’s telling her. She’s embracing her femininity, if not yet fully, her femaleness than her femininity, and she’s announced her desistance from calling herself a trans boy.

It starts with a bang and ends with a fizzle. Isn’t that what they say? I’m hopeful that my family is in the fizzle stage. There are holdover beliefs, a lingering urge toward social justice, persistent discomfort with certain terms, and indoctrinations still in need of addressing. But the seeds have sprouted, and I’m cautiously optimistic a fine harvest is somewhere on the horizon.