Who are these boys?

And what happened to them?

Suddenly, they seem to be everywhere.

He looks in my eyes, frightened as a feral cat, but pleading for validation at the same time. He’s new at the restaurant I frequent. He must be only 19 or 20. His only job is to pour the water and greet customers, but the hand holding the pitcher shakes, and the water spills onto our table. In a deep, quivery voice, he asks us if we want a menu. He is six feet tall, with long brown hair and blue eye makeup. Pretty good job on the makeup, I can’t help but note. He is thin, with small breasts and a prominent Adam’s apple. My elderly mother says, “Isn’t she coming back to clean it up?” (“She” doesn’t.) He “passes,” as far as my mother is concerned. My sister and I look at one another across the table and just nod. He’s another one.

I am shopping at Whole Foods. He is stocking the grapes and cherries, wearing a flowered dress, long blonde hair tied up in a ponytail. He has small breasts and an Adam’s apple. His large, unmistakably male hands fumble with a bag of cherries, and they spill out into the bags. He abandons his task and moves away when I come to choose some grapes.

I am taking a Tai Chi class. The instructor asks each of us to introduce ourselves and say what we hope to get from the class. The first person in the circle to speak has spiked purple hair and says his name is Jessica, his pronouns are “she/her and they.” He is under the age of 25, probably on a scholarship offered by the Tai Chi school as part of their social justice commitment. I think to myself: well, at least he wants to invest in his mental and physical health. I don’t believe Jessica is a woman, but I try to release the impulse to judge him. I am not there to judge anybody, but to learn and heal myself. Most of the people in the room are middle-aged, and most of them state their pronouns in a smug and well-practiced manner. I do not state my pronouns. The instructor then thanks everyone who shared their pronouns and says she should have asked us for that herself. That’s it. I will never go back to the Tai Chi class.  

I wonder, who are these awkward boys with their tiny breasts? Why do I now see them every time I go out, usually in low-level jobs they are barely performing? Have they been previously hiding, slowly cultivating their fabricated appearance, but are now emboldened to “come out” en masse? Is it that businesses are desperately trying to hire “queer folk” to meet their social justice quotas, even if these young people are mentally unstable?

Some see the gender cult as a mass delusion. Some see it as cultural indoctrination by powerful people who want to profit from normalizing gender ideology. Some see it as a mental illness. It’s all true, but it doesn’t matter when you are face to face with these lost boys. You can be angry at these boys for putting on “woman face” if you wish. I can understand that response because I am a woman, and these young men pretending to be women are not.

But anger is not what I feel. I feel only deep sadness and sorrow. Because I know who these boys are. They used to be healthy, happy children. They are young people who have been grievously harmed. They are the collateral damage of a culture gone very wrong. They are the boys of friends of mine. They are the boys of parents whose anguished stories I have read on PITT. Even the parents who would never read PITT and who “affirm” are conflicted. They too miss their sons, even as they lie to themselves and the world.

Behind every one of the lost boys, I see a grieving parent.

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