Think My Kid is Trans? You'd Better Prove It.

Repost of an essay from first published August 5, 2021

Here’s how it goes now. You’re in a family therapy session and the psychologist looks at you somberly and says “What you need to do now is accept that this is not your son, it’s your daughter. This may be hard, but after mourning for your son, in time you will accept your daughter and all will be well!”

You burst into tears, hug your child and say, of course I will love you no matter what. You accept the inevitable and schedule a trip to the gender clinic and another therapy session.

THIS IS RIDICULOUS. We need to stop and we need to stop now.

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

If you are going to tell me that my boy - observed at birth, with no disorders of sexual development - is a girl, you’d better be able to prove it. And not just sort of prove it - prove it beyond the shadow of a doubt, with extraordinary, overwhelming evidence, test results, and statistically significant, indisputable studies.

If you told me my kid had cancer, I’d look over the test results, pore over the research, join a study, and seek a second opinion. If my son needed knee surgery, I would explore all the pros and cons, and think about the lifelong impacts and alternative options before moving forward in any direction. But, I’m supposed to accept, unquestioning, a crazy idea like my male child is a girl and needs to alter his body to make it match some invisible internal identity? No. That is crazy and it’s time to call out all medical professionals on this.

I will not accept without proof. Not just that this is the diagnosis for the condition my kid has (if any), but that this “transition” thing is the appropriate treatment for it, and that alternative treatments have been considered and ruled out, and differential diagnosis has been conducted.

But you won’t come up with any proof because there isn’t any. This is all made up, religious, ideological nonsense and deep down we all know it. If you had proof you wouldn’t need to threaten me that my child will kill himself if I don’t go along. Real science doesn’t need to rely on threats and intimidation. And don’t you dare medicalize or operate on my child based on your theories and concepts of gender fluidity, which have zero basis in biological fact.

Tell me that there is such a thing as transgender and you can define it? Prove it.

You tell me my kid has this condition (or state of being) of transgender? Prove it.

Tell me my kid needs new pronouns or he will kill himself? Prove it.

Tell my kid needs cross-sex hormones to be happy? Prove it.

Tell me there is no alternative diagnosis for my child? Prove it.

Tell me that no alternative non-medical/body-modifying, endocrine disorder inducing treatments are available? Prove it.

Tell me my kid needs to be castrated to be his true self? Prove it.

I dare you.

Oh, and if you can, THEN we’re still going to have to have a chat about your proof that the proposed “treatment”, which we know will make my child a medical patient for life is A) going to work to resolve his problems for the rest of his life and B) going to be safe for his body and not introduce additional life-threatening risks.

You’d better believe I’m going to make you prove that too before you get your hands on my child.

All you other parents out there - what level of proof are you going to ask for before you allow your child puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and surgeries? Are you ready to just take someone’s word for it? Or, like me, are you going to ask them to prove it?