Thank you, Eliza. This is me. Well, I am standing at the point where the ‘two roads diverge.’ After two years of not using the new name of choice and of not accepting the concept that she was born in the wrong body, the ultimatum has been given to me. I must capitulate or she will remove herself from our lives in order to protect herself. Her memory (and therapist?) has created tall tales of emotional abuse in her childhood (which was glorious with siblings who concur). I am the enemy. Dad is perfect. In her own words, it feels like her heart is being punched when referred to as female. Hearing her given name brings her to tears. Ironically, this gender ideology that has been brought into our lives, brings us all to tears. Daily.
I am realizing there is no out. No win. Any decision to use or not use new names, to accept and go along or not, is losing. It will always be a lie if I agree to the demands. And, it is like a virus. Any decision we make affects our entire family. My husband, my marriage, my other children, their spouses. At every meal, every holiday, every visit. This is it. The poisonous parasite has entered our lives. I am currently isolated in a very cold part of New England for a week while I decide which road I will take. To make it worse, if our daughter estranges due to my ‘incorrect’ decision, she takes our beautiful and joy filled baby granddaughter with her. I don’t think I can bear that pain. This is excruciating. 💔
"I am realizing there is no out. No win. Any decision to use or not use new names, to accept and go along or not, is losing. It will always be a lie if I agree to the demands." -- It's such a trap, for kids and parents alike. If a kid can't reject the ideology, they're trapped. The parents are trapped with no good options the moment the kid can't reject the ideology.
My heart goes out to you, Sweet Caroline. The emotional blackmail is harsh and the fact that mental health practitioners go along with this is astonishing. I was the mother who dealt with father saying he's to be called "Mama-Something" and I used extreme frugality to get my 2 sons through college with no loans, with a financial cushion in young adulthood. They suddenly stopped talking to me 3 years ago, in the aftermath of JK Rowling saying we aren't "menstruators." I thought my sons would respect that, but their tech mogul father's influence increased exponentially, unbeknownst to me. I've changed my will. I will not have my hard-earned money go to these causes. The doctors will eventually admit this is malpractice. You can find me at uteheggen.substack.com to get in touch, if you want someone to talk to. Perhaps raising a daughter will grow your daughter out of this. Does the grandchild's father go along?
Please be aware that there is a supportive community for you at Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans: https://www.pittparents.com/
There are no right answers to your situation. Parents at PITT make different decisions based on all kinds of different reasons. All that matters is that all the parents there know the sex of the children they raised and are fighting the same struggle out of deep love for their kids.
I haven't seen my only daughter for three years; her sibling, my only son, abandoned me 1.5 years ago because I would not go along with her delusions. Many assume that kids who estrange themselves are leaving an abusive family. I assure you this is not the case. My children and I were very close until this evil entered our lives and ripped our family to shreds. As difficult as it is, I will continue to uphold the truth and I will not give into ending my life. I am incapable of coddling dangerous mind and body altering delusions. I refuse to rewrite the past. I love my children that much.
"For trans-identified young people, estrangement shows how serious you are about your new identity. You may have doubts about transition, sure, but you wouldn’t cut off your family over nothing. Estrangement proves you mean it."
I was talking with a detransitioner. I mentioned that I thought this was a cult and she said absolutely, with blood rituals (social, hormones, surgeries) and as you say Eliza, "estrangement proves you mean it."
We need to stop framing this as an innocuous fad or social contagion. Neither one damages the one in the cult or the family around them like this does. We need to stop saying gender non conforming children/teens/YA or LG caught up in this. I know far more who are none of those indoctrinated into this. For some reason, a seed that their character traits that they thought caused them pain allowed to fester and grow. Magnus Hirschfeld allowed the first operations. Psychopathic Money took up the reigns and created what we have now along with Butlers drivel.
11/21 is the last time I saw my son. 9/23 is the last time I saw my ally son. It's very painful.
I am so so sorry. I know there are so many parents in this awful place. I do think most of these young people will come out of it but the damage is so extensive.
I read Reddit posts of estranged young people encouraging each other not to "weaken" and reply to their cut-off parents who sent them messages around the holidays. And these were not even trans-identifying young people! Are kids are even more die-hard.
Beautiful writing, Eliza. I have always believed that self-hatred and shame are what motivates my son. Yes, how absurd that we are expected (demanded!) to celebrate our children's destruction of their bodies and personalities.
Every time I read in online trans communities rants about why parents can't just get with the program, it's "just" a new name or they're "just" breasts or whatever, I want to say: here's how your parents see it. You are rejecting yourself, a person they created and raised and loved. They will never ever celebrate that or think it's a good thing.
In addition most of these 'kids' aren't doing very well in their lives. Everything focused on what is 'gender' has sent them on a long detour away from stability and the ability to support themselves in any comfortable way. Alongside this ideology, for many, is a strong belief that they are victims of capitalism. How many are living very financially insecure lives because all they can see is gender?
Such a poignant article, thank you Eliza. My heart goes out to these parents.
I do hate the "Of course, adults are free to make those decisions " argument. Do we turn away from a person about to jump off the bridge because he is an adult? Are we to cheer and push him off because it's his decision to make? (Even as I write this, I think of MAiD expansion in Canada and realize that in modern society this argument falls flat... )
Agreed. As parents it's our job to say "I think that is a dangerous decision". In other realms we are criticized for not doing so. Our western society blames parents whose children go off the rails and shoot people saying they should have 'done something'. If we say anything now we are vilified and excluded. Somehow it's ok for them to 'jump' if it is what they choose. How have we become so hands off? How many of us have lost family because we just couldn't accept the damage our adult children were doing to themselves. Really no one is able to understand this quagmire unless they have lived it.
Eliza, this article is very painful to read, but so necessary for people to see what gender ID illness does to families. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to write. As the parent of adopted children with Reactive Attachment Disorder, I see so many parallels. RAD often is at its worst around age 17, as the children begin moving towards college and living on their own. I have to wonder how brain development and hormones play into this issue.
Thank you Eliza for your beautiful writing and understanding of this subject.
Our elder daughter disappeared into the trans cult eight years ago--I haven't seen her since. She didn't even give us a chance to respond to pronoun/name demands. (I think she knew we wouldn't be on board with a sudden new gender identity.)
At this time, she was in college--enmeshed in a a peer group, including faculty mentors, whom were much fascinated with gender identities.
Fortunately, she is in contact with her father. He generally doesn't use the trans name; he avoids pronouns. It is awkward. He simply tries to maintain contact, to have a relationship with her outside of the identity.
He has asked her why she refuses to be in contact with her mother. She doesn't wish to discuss it, but makes vague mentions of right-wingers, everyone else goes along with it, and the fact that her mother (me) has dared to send her some GC posts via email. Yes, I am guilty of that. I now avoid these communications. Her main message to her father was that she will never, ever, ever become a detransitioner.
The obstinance (and consequent obsession) about detransition always seems like a tell to me. I hope that she will come out of it. I think most of them will, but with many years lost to this. Wishing you all the best.
Eliza, this piece is a gift! Our family has been estranged from our son for what will be 10 years in May. He disappeared suddenly while in college due to online grooming. (I wrote “Trust Transferred from Parent to Predator” in PITT and “Gaslit Guardians: This is What Trans is all About for Us.”) Thankfully our son’s only ally sibling has come around so we now have the support of our entire family. Our experience has given me opportunity to connect with numerous families over the years and do some writing to help people understand this capture. But, none of it provides the depth that this piece has. Well done and thank you from the bottom of my heart!
As you mentioned, parental estrangement is extremely common these days, not only within the trans community. I can’t help but notice that if one wants to completely tear down an existing culture and replace it with something different, pitting the generations against each other and removing people from mixed-age family groups and into same-age, ideologically homogeneous groups is exactly how you’d go about it. Both the Chinese cultural revolution and the Nazis pitted children against their parents. It’s a well-known technique. So who is pushing the “no contact” movements online? And what’s their goal? I think this is bigger than trans ideology - the trans cult is just one of the ways that bad actors are trying to destroy western societies.
I think it more organic and more a product of an online mentality where you can filter and block anything that upsets you and sever connections with a button, misapplied to real life. But I could be very wrong about that. Certainly, breaking ties between generations is a feature of some very dark times in human history.
Maybe it did happen organically. I just see the same ideas and same words coming from multiple places, and the same groups of ideas, and it makes me think there was an intentional effort to drive these ideas into the mainstream.
Nothing says “I’m easily manipulated” more than being both queer and pro-Muslim, two positions that should be completely incompatible. And yet there are thousands of them. So who’s doing the manipulating?
My vote is on China based on my experiences with a Chinese national and communist party member who had obviously been told to try to influence me.
I suspect billionaire men who think they are women, coupled with woke social justice (be kind, etc.), University professors and their activism funded by those billionaires, the arrival of internet, social media and smart phones. Add covid for a lot of these kids more recently. A perfect poison cocktail.
I think that’s certainly true for the trans movement. But there seems to be a much broader push online for people of all ages to go no contact with their families for a variety of smaller reasons. You can see it on Reddit, even in moms’ groups (“your mother asked if you were going to give your four month old baby food?! She will never respect your authority as the parent, you should not allow her around your child!”). I can’t believe that has all been driven by the trans movement. I tend to think the trans movement is one branch of an overall “remake society” plan. I definitely agree with you that there are multiple factors - I think the beliefs of those who think they are going to save the world through global depopulation, veganism, and communism have combined with attitudes being encouraged those who want to see western society erupt into civil wars and are trying to radicalize people in all directions, into a mish-mash of harmful beliefs. Then you can combine that with opportunists who take advantage of this overall mess to try to make themselves a buck or satisfy their own sexual appetites. One thing those groups all have in common is that it’s a lot easier for them to accomplish their aims if they separate young people from their families and prevent them from accessing their families’ values and the wisdom of older people.
I think there could be something of that going on. It might be partly organic (or have developed naturally), but then been used deliberately by the tech giants.
The rapid development of tech in the information age may be one of the contributing factors to the trend you're seeing. Fifty years ago, youth went through rebellious phases, but adults were much more competent in virtually every area of life. Now, many of us, individually, are demonstrably idiots, unable to keep up with the endlessly changing electronic landscape, and any knowledge we might have bestowed on our children has been amalgamated into the Cloud and accessible from their devices.
However, I suppose our tech overlords might be deliberately undermining the generation ties - they're using divide-and-conquer tactics between any and every faction they can. We are in the hands of psychopathic billionaires. All bets are off.
I’m inclined to see it as organic, but definitely part of a broader cultural shift towards a censorious authoritarian that celebrates cancelling anyone with opinions or politics critical of contemporary social justice progressivism.
It's my husband, who now claims female identity, that influenced my sons to reject me a few years ago. I still write to them. Birthdays and Mothers Days are hard, but I've learned to make plans for a rewarding day out in the woods. Even when friends offer to host you on those days, it's hard, as watching their happy families enlarges the holes in our lives. Particularly cutting are my own relatives, who reward this rejection of me as "virtue signaling" of how "accepting and tolerant" they are. Trans widows are often estranged from entire swaths of friend and relative circles. I have no problem at all with the language of the Executive Order naming it "Gender Extremism." I thought perhaps my sons would soften, upon seeing the survey results showing the US majority rejecting males in female sports. Rather the opposite occurred. They've doubled down and adopted phrases like "gender expression." I'm hopeful that the doctors who have been quietly skeptical will gather some courage and speak out. Only the medical profession can admit they made a mistake. We must propose the logical, sensible remedies for the anxiety of cross-sex ideation, because the core of mental health "experts" are addled, and won't. I put The Wellness Checklist out where I'm able.
PITT is a supportive community for parents from all walks of life who are struggling with the Trans moral panic among their children. There's a lot of grief expressed, some anger, a lot of compassion for each other, and mostly a lot of deep, unbreakable love for their lost children.
Thank you, Eliza. This is me. Well, I am standing at the point where the ‘two roads diverge.’ After two years of not using the new name of choice and of not accepting the concept that she was born in the wrong body, the ultimatum has been given to me. I must capitulate or she will remove herself from our lives in order to protect herself. Her memory (and therapist?) has created tall tales of emotional abuse in her childhood (which was glorious with siblings who concur). I am the enemy. Dad is perfect. In her own words, it feels like her heart is being punched when referred to as female. Hearing her given name brings her to tears. Ironically, this gender ideology that has been brought into our lives, brings us all to tears. Daily.
I am realizing there is no out. No win. Any decision to use or not use new names, to accept and go along or not, is losing. It will always be a lie if I agree to the demands. And, it is like a virus. Any decision we make affects our entire family. My husband, my marriage, my other children, their spouses. At every meal, every holiday, every visit. This is it. The poisonous parasite has entered our lives. I am currently isolated in a very cold part of New England for a week while I decide which road I will take. To make it worse, if our daughter estranges due to my ‘incorrect’ decision, she takes our beautiful and joy filled baby granddaughter with her. I don’t think I can bear that pain. This is excruciating. 💔
Thank you for your beautiful writings.
"I am realizing there is no out. No win. Any decision to use or not use new names, to accept and go along or not, is losing. It will always be a lie if I agree to the demands." -- It's such a trap, for kids and parents alike. If a kid can't reject the ideology, they're trapped. The parents are trapped with no good options the moment the kid can't reject the ideology.
My heart goes out to you, Sweet Caroline. The emotional blackmail is harsh and the fact that mental health practitioners go along with this is astonishing. I was the mother who dealt with father saying he's to be called "Mama-Something" and I used extreme frugality to get my 2 sons through college with no loans, with a financial cushion in young adulthood. They suddenly stopped talking to me 3 years ago, in the aftermath of JK Rowling saying we aren't "menstruators." I thought my sons would respect that, but their tech mogul father's influence increased exponentially, unbeknownst to me. I've changed my will. I will not have my hard-earned money go to these causes. The doctors will eventually admit this is malpractice. You can find me at uteheggen.substack.com to get in touch, if you want someone to talk to. Perhaps raising a daughter will grow your daughter out of this. Does the grandchild's father go along?
Please be aware that there is a supportive community for you at Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans: https://www.pittparents.com/
There are no right answers to your situation. Parents at PITT make different decisions based on all kinds of different reasons. All that matters is that all the parents there know the sex of the children they raised and are fighting the same struggle out of deep love for their kids.
I haven't seen my only daughter for three years; her sibling, my only son, abandoned me 1.5 years ago because I would not go along with her delusions. Many assume that kids who estrange themselves are leaving an abusive family. I assure you this is not the case. My children and I were very close until this evil entered our lives and ripped our family to shreds. As difficult as it is, I will continue to uphold the truth and I will not give into ending my life. I am incapable of coddling dangerous mind and body altering delusions. I refuse to rewrite the past. I love my children that much.
I am so sorry. Very much wish you and your family all the best.
"For trans-identified young people, estrangement shows how serious you are about your new identity. You may have doubts about transition, sure, but you wouldn’t cut off your family over nothing. Estrangement proves you mean it."
I was talking with a detransitioner. I mentioned that I thought this was a cult and she said absolutely, with blood rituals (social, hormones, surgeries) and as you say Eliza, "estrangement proves you mean it."
We need to stop framing this as an innocuous fad or social contagion. Neither one damages the one in the cult or the family around them like this does. We need to stop saying gender non conforming children/teens/YA or LG caught up in this. I know far more who are none of those indoctrinated into this. For some reason, a seed that their character traits that they thought caused them pain allowed to fester and grow. Magnus Hirschfeld allowed the first operations. Psychopathic Money took up the reigns and created what we have now along with Butlers drivel.
11/21 is the last time I saw my son. 9/23 is the last time I saw my ally son. It's very painful.
I am so so sorry. I know there are so many parents in this awful place. I do think most of these young people will come out of it but the damage is so extensive.
I read Reddit posts of estranged young people encouraging each other not to "weaken" and reply to their cut-off parents who sent them messages around the holidays. And these were not even trans-identifying young people! Are kids are even more die-hard.
Yes, I've seen a lot of those, too.
I’m sorry. Both. Thank you for reminding me. My ally daughter could cut us out, too. She is already mad we do not accept our ‘son’.
Beautiful writing, Eliza. I have always believed that self-hatred and shame are what motivates my son. Yes, how absurd that we are expected (demanded!) to celebrate our children's destruction of their bodies and personalities.
Every time I read in online trans communities rants about why parents can't just get with the program, it's "just" a new name or they're "just" breasts or whatever, I want to say: here's how your parents see it. You are rejecting yourself, a person they created and raised and loved. They will never ever celebrate that or think it's a good thing.
In addition most of these 'kids' aren't doing very well in their lives. Everything focused on what is 'gender' has sent them on a long detour away from stability and the ability to support themselves in any comfortable way. Alongside this ideology, for many, is a strong belief that they are victims of capitalism. How many are living very financially insecure lives because all they can see is gender?
My daughters says, you just need to hop on board! Ugh.
Such a poignant article, thank you Eliza. My heart goes out to these parents.
I do hate the "Of course, adults are free to make those decisions " argument. Do we turn away from a person about to jump off the bridge because he is an adult? Are we to cheer and push him off because it's his decision to make? (Even as I write this, I think of MAiD expansion in Canada and realize that in modern society this argument falls flat... )
Agreed. As parents it's our job to say "I think that is a dangerous decision". In other realms we are criticized for not doing so. Our western society blames parents whose children go off the rails and shoot people saying they should have 'done something'. If we say anything now we are vilified and excluded. Somehow it's ok for them to 'jump' if it is what they choose. How have we become so hands off? How many of us have lost family because we just couldn't accept the damage our adult children were doing to themselves. Really no one is able to understand this quagmire unless they have lived it.
Eliza, this article is very painful to read, but so necessary for people to see what gender ID illness does to families. I can’t imagine what it must have been like to write. As the parent of adopted children with Reactive Attachment Disorder, I see so many parallels. RAD often is at its worst around age 17, as the children begin moving towards college and living on their own. I have to wonder how brain development and hormones play into this issue.
That’s me…and my son. Almost 2 years now 😓 Your article is 🎯
Thank you Eliza for your beautiful writing and understanding of this subject.
Our elder daughter disappeared into the trans cult eight years ago--I haven't seen her since. She didn't even give us a chance to respond to pronoun/name demands. (I think she knew we wouldn't be on board with a sudden new gender identity.)
At this time, she was in college--enmeshed in a a peer group, including faculty mentors, whom were much fascinated with gender identities.
Fortunately, she is in contact with her father. He generally doesn't use the trans name; he avoids pronouns. It is awkward. He simply tries to maintain contact, to have a relationship with her outside of the identity.
He has asked her why she refuses to be in contact with her mother. She doesn't wish to discuss it, but makes vague mentions of right-wingers, everyone else goes along with it, and the fact that her mother (me) has dared to send her some GC posts via email. Yes, I am guilty of that. I now avoid these communications. Her main message to her father was that she will never, ever, ever become a detransitioner.
Detransition--It is a forbidden topic.
P.S. I am not a right-winger.
The obstinance (and consequent obsession) about detransition always seems like a tell to me. I hope that she will come out of it. I think most of them will, but with many years lost to this. Wishing you all the best.
Thank you!
Eliza, this piece is a gift! Our family has been estranged from our son for what will be 10 years in May. He disappeared suddenly while in college due to online grooming. (I wrote “Trust Transferred from Parent to Predator” in PITT and “Gaslit Guardians: This is What Trans is all About for Us.”) Thankfully our son’s only ally sibling has come around so we now have the support of our entire family. Our experience has given me opportunity to connect with numerous families over the years and do some writing to help people understand this capture. But, none of it provides the depth that this piece has. Well done and thank you from the bottom of my heart!
And thank *you*, Eliza, for writing that makes us want to subscribe!
As you mentioned, parental estrangement is extremely common these days, not only within the trans community. I can’t help but notice that if one wants to completely tear down an existing culture and replace it with something different, pitting the generations against each other and removing people from mixed-age family groups and into same-age, ideologically homogeneous groups is exactly how you’d go about it. Both the Chinese cultural revolution and the Nazis pitted children against their parents. It’s a well-known technique. So who is pushing the “no contact” movements online? And what’s their goal? I think this is bigger than trans ideology - the trans cult is just one of the ways that bad actors are trying to destroy western societies.
I think it more organic and more a product of an online mentality where you can filter and block anything that upsets you and sever connections with a button, misapplied to real life. But I could be very wrong about that. Certainly, breaking ties between generations is a feature of some very dark times in human history.
Maybe it did happen organically. I just see the same ideas and same words coming from multiple places, and the same groups of ideas, and it makes me think there was an intentional effort to drive these ideas into the mainstream.
Nothing says “I’m easily manipulated” more than being both queer and pro-Muslim, two positions that should be completely incompatible. And yet there are thousands of them. So who’s doing the manipulating?
My vote is on China based on my experiences with a Chinese national and communist party member who had obviously been told to try to influence me.
I could just be seeing conspiracies though.
I suspect billionaire men who think they are women, coupled with woke social justice (be kind, etc.), University professors and their activism funded by those billionaires, the arrival of internet, social media and smart phones. Add covid for a lot of these kids more recently. A perfect poison cocktail.
I think that’s certainly true for the trans movement. But there seems to be a much broader push online for people of all ages to go no contact with their families for a variety of smaller reasons. You can see it on Reddit, even in moms’ groups (“your mother asked if you were going to give your four month old baby food?! She will never respect your authority as the parent, you should not allow her around your child!”). I can’t believe that has all been driven by the trans movement. I tend to think the trans movement is one branch of an overall “remake society” plan. I definitely agree with you that there are multiple factors - I think the beliefs of those who think they are going to save the world through global depopulation, veganism, and communism have combined with attitudes being encouraged those who want to see western society erupt into civil wars and are trying to radicalize people in all directions, into a mish-mash of harmful beliefs. Then you can combine that with opportunists who take advantage of this overall mess to try to make themselves a buck or satisfy their own sexual appetites. One thing those groups all have in common is that it’s a lot easier for them to accomplish their aims if they separate young people from their families and prevent them from accessing their families’ values and the wisdom of older people.
I think there could be something of that going on. It might be partly organic (or have developed naturally), but then been used deliberately by the tech giants.
The rapid development of tech in the information age may be one of the contributing factors to the trend you're seeing. Fifty years ago, youth went through rebellious phases, but adults were much more competent in virtually every area of life. Now, many of us, individually, are demonstrably idiots, unable to keep up with the endlessly changing electronic landscape, and any knowledge we might have bestowed on our children has been amalgamated into the Cloud and accessible from their devices.
However, I suppose our tech overlords might be deliberately undermining the generation ties - they're using divide-and-conquer tactics between any and every faction they can. We are in the hands of psychopathic billionaires. All bets are off.
I’m inclined to see it as organic, but definitely part of a broader cultural shift towards a censorious authoritarian that celebrates cancelling anyone with opinions or politics critical of contemporary social justice progressivism.
It's my husband, who now claims female identity, that influenced my sons to reject me a few years ago. I still write to them. Birthdays and Mothers Days are hard, but I've learned to make plans for a rewarding day out in the woods. Even when friends offer to host you on those days, it's hard, as watching their happy families enlarges the holes in our lives. Particularly cutting are my own relatives, who reward this rejection of me as "virtue signaling" of how "accepting and tolerant" they are. Trans widows are often estranged from entire swaths of friend and relative circles. I have no problem at all with the language of the Executive Order naming it "Gender Extremism." I thought perhaps my sons would soften, upon seeing the survey results showing the US majority rejecting males in female sports. Rather the opposite occurred. They've doubled down and adopted phrases like "gender expression." I'm hopeful that the doctors who have been quietly skeptical will gather some courage and speak out. Only the medical profession can admit they made a mistake. We must propose the logical, sensible remedies for the anxiety of cross-sex ideation, because the core of mental health "experts" are addled, and won't. I put The Wellness Checklist out where I'm able.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOi-ESSgE7U&t=436s
The words did come together.
I hope all the parents here know about Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans:
https://www.pittparents.com/
PITT is a supportive community for parents from all walks of life who are struggling with the Trans moral panic among their children. There's a lot of grief expressed, some anger, a lot of compassion for each other, and mostly a lot of deep, unbreakable love for their lost children.