“I view trans identity as a magical cloak that protects the eating disorder"
Conversation with a mom trying to find help for her trans-identifying child
My latest column for Genspect is a conversation with a mom navigating her daughter’s trans identity while trying to find help for her serious eating disorder.
Here’s an excerpt:
Three years ago, Katherine’s world turned upside-down when her teenage daughter—we’ll call her Lauren—came out as transgender in a Google Doc. She knew that her daughter—and her daughter’s friends—had been trying on new identities and struggling to adjust to the changes puberty brings. Just a few months earlier, Lauren had come out as gay—an announcement her parents took lightly, given Lauren’s year-long crush on a boy in her class. “I knew sexual orientation can take awhile to figure out,” Katherine said. But trans came out of nowhere.
The Google Doc declaration had Katherine confused and concerned. “My kid is a writer, so I’ve read hundreds and hundreds of pages of her writing over the years. It was obviously not written by her. And it was so hard to follow. At one point, she said she was a gay boy and then, at the end, said she was nonbinary.” When Katherine and her husband tried to talk to their daughter, Lauren broke down: “She was hysterical and crying. She was so sure we were going to kick her out.” The time Lauren had spent immersed in online trans communities had convinced her that her family would reject her and that she would end up on the street. These communities “made her believe we were the enemy.” Her parents did everything they could to reassure Lauren and help her feel safe and loved.
Katherine paused. “We made a critical error at that point.” Katherine and her husband took Lauren to see the pediatrician who they had known and trusted for years. “It didn’t occur to me to talk to the doctor ahead of time. In every other case where we’ve had some fear, she’d calmly say, ‘this is what the science says.’ So I had no reservations about telling her this. I expected her to be logical. I expected her to ask more questions that would get to the root of my daughter’s concerns.”
But that’s not what happened. Instead, the pediatrician said: “Oh, how wonderful! Where are you in your gender journey? Have you chosen a new name and pronouns?” and immediately offered a referral to a gender clinic.
“It was one of the worst moments of my life,” Katherine reflected. “We begged our daughter to delay coming out to give us time to research and understand her point of view. She wanted us to do all the announcements with our family and friends and we weren't willing to do that without understanding it ourselves. She reluctantly agreed and I started researching.”
At first, Katherine found only pro-trans materials, resources that echoed the pediatrician’s line: “Oh, that’s wonderful, you have a son now.” But she kept digging. “My degree was in pre-med. I know you can’t change your chromosomes. I took clinical anatomy. I’ve held reproductive organs in my hands. I know you can’t ignore reality.”
Finally, Katherine couldn’t postpone the visit to the gender clinic any longer. Her daughter insisted.
“I think I’m the only parent I’ve ever heard of where they took their child to the gender clinic and they were sent away.” The intake coordinator was a “lovely woman” who spent a lot of time speaking with Lauren and her parents. At the end of the appointment, she said she didn’t think Lauren was a good fit for the gender clinic. Katherine felt a rush of relief: She’s not trans.
After Jamie Reed blew the whistle on the Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital, Katherine thought she finally understood why. “I think this article solves the mystery of why my daughter is the only child I’ve ever heard of being turned away from a gender clinic. I now suspect it’s because the intake coordinator there was seeing the same trends as Reed and turned us away because of my daughter’s anorexia, ADHD, and anxiety diagnoses. I was so grateful at the time that I didn’t ask questions. But I’ve always wondered.”
Meanwhile, Lauren’s struggles with anorexia had come roaring back. “Right after that, we had to put her in the hospital. And since then she’s been in the hospital twice and she spent months in a residential clinic, where she came in contact with other trans-identified girls and learned new tricks—like cutting, she had never done that. She was exposed to things she had never thought of herself. And I think that was traumatic. It made getting better harder.”
Katherine and Lauren didn’t know it, but they weren’t alone in their experiences. Over the past few years, I’ve spoken to several former staff members of residential eating disorder clinics. The women I spoke to said social contagion is a huge problem in residential facilities. “We have to be constantly on hyper-alert to prevent clients from cross-contaminating their disordered behaviors… negative body talk was redirected every time, in the moment, if possible.” But when a patient came out as trans, strict rules bent and broke. Negative body talk was suddenly allowed—even encouraged—if patients who identified as trans voiced hatred for their breasts and hips or expressed the desire for breast amputation. Consequently, trans ideation—like other maladaptive and self-harming behaviors—spread like “wildfire” in residential settings.
“The most frustrating thing has been trying to get help for her eating disorder,” Katherine said. “Clinicians only wanted to talk about her gender identity. They see trans identity as a causative thing: the trans identity is trying to come out and the anorexia is the result of that.” But Katherine saw things differently: “I view trans identity as a magical cloak that protects the eating disorder.”
What troubled kids need is safe environments with lots of positive role models. We seem to have lost this wisdom so completely that instead we put them in unsafe environments, disconnect them from their families, and enable them to spend most of their time with other troubled kids. How can this approach help them?? Has no one any sense in child psychiatry??
Excellent article thank you.