Eliza your writing is exquisite. You have done lovely justice to the parents stories. I wonder if you have a plan to write about parents of adult children who have transed? There are many of us whose children are 25 and older, past the age we hope their brains have developed into full rational organs. If I hear one more time, "He's and adult, what can you do" I will explode. We elders looked forward to continuing relationships with our children as we age. Such a heartbreak and loss. Who do we turn to?
Such a cruel cult and arguably the first one in the history of modernity to target children and to be backed by the power of the state. No wonder some parents have taken their own lives. No one talks about their trauma.
In my data collection on trans widows and trans orphans, I've found that the children of men who suddenly took on a female persona, often claiming also to be "mother," have a shockingly high rate of suicidal ideation and serious suicide attempts leading to a hospitalization. I have data on 47 trans widows, who had a total of 30 children. Of those 30 (and this probably involves under reporting, as for some the children are still very young) there are 6 who expressed suicidal ideation. Of those 6, three made serious attempts and had to spend time in hospital. None of these circumstances was documented in any study involving "children of transition." This is a cult of sanctioned, sanctified and glamorized narcissism.
Not the first one, for sure. Hitler -Jugend, young pioneers, The communist Youth league of China, In pre-modern time - Children crusaders... I am no history buff but I am sure there were/are more.
Yes they were toxic cults for sure but they didn’t genitally mutilate and sterilise kids, significantly damage their health for life and render then forever dependent on doctors.
You’re absolutely right. Suicide is never the best option. Apart from anything else, when the affected child does eventually come to their senses, even if it takes 20 years, they’ll have their parent’s suicide on their conscience. Maybe parents need self help groups along the lines of Al Anon?
Exactly. It’s a real sanity saver for a lot of people, even if they just cherry pick out all the good bits and ignore the references to a higher power, which a lot of people don’t relate to. There’s a lot to be said for the philosophy you summed up so succinctly above. And also for group support. Seeing other people in the same situation through no fault of their own helps people realise they’re not at fault either.
It is important for more people to hear the stories of these parents, whether happy or sad. Like you say, they are all still unfolding. Thank you, Eliza.
It must be so hard. So many similar stories. My youngest cousin has 6 year old twins, one of each, and I'm praying the madness will have passed by the time they get online. Thankfully I don't have to deal with this in my day to day life, though my early efforts to talk to my best friend about it were met with defensiveness, even though she doesn't know any trans people (and we're both 60). Interestingly, it took a close friend of hers getting trans-widowed for her to start being more receptive to me talking about it and accepting that all is not right with this movement, though if I bring up what's happening in schools I think she flat-out doesn't believe me because it's too upsetting to be true, or thinks it's extremely rare. Other stuff, like the stuff Genevieve Gluck is writing about, she refuses to hear, it's too dark. Baby steps.
This hit close to home. It’s not only “gender affirming” providers who are undermining parent-child relationships. My daughter has suffered mood disorders, decided it was trauma, went through 2 hospitalizations, full time residential care, etc. Of course I was frantic, desperate. I was terrified by the threat of suicide.
In trauma-informed care, parents are suspect. Even though I wasn’t the “toxic” parent, at one point she cut me off for months, any disagreement or difference was potential grounds for alienation. I walked on eggshells. I was instructed by therapists to validate (very similar to affirm). I groveled regularly. Everything normal was actually a form of abuse. Normal differences were grounds for ending relationships--someone’s “wrong” tone or opinion about a movie was grounds for cutting them off (this happened, I’m not exaggerating).
In the past year she seems to have stabilized, become more normal, stopped therapy (she prefers Chinese medicine--fine!). Our relationship has been more normal, I’ve started trusting her again.
Then the other day via text she raged at me for something (I was normalizing abuse, apparently), and I groveled again. I’m hoping it’s passing.
Online, on sites like Discord, teens are being groomed to amplify minor passed misadventures into major trauma events. The medical community does not seem fully aware of the extent to which this is happening.
Other parallels: she would claim not to remember her childhood at all (because trauma, although no one, including her, would ever tell me what that traumatic experience was). Then she would claim to remember things I knew were impossible. It was so confusing--who is this person who no longer knows her own history?
The therapeutic manipulation to reach this state, I wonder, might have been similar.
Interesting. My (trans-identifying) 20-year-old daughter also claims to remember nothing from childhood. She had a lovely childhood, and no signs of gender dysphoria at all. No family trauma. Strangely, I saw her post on reddit that one of her siblings had died (not true).
"the actual childhood past might not support the present condition, so it has to be disappeared"
That's what I think is happening. Yes, learning about other cults has been useful. "Heaven's Gate: Cult of Cults" was a great documentary series. I had no idea there was a castration component!
“A Very British Cult” podcast was useful in that there’s a lot about the families. The family that tried to get someone out of the cult failed and is still cut off. The family that stood by, tried not to openly intervene (but didn’t cheerlead, either), has their family member back now, and that person said it was easier to turn to his family to help him leave precisely because they hadn’t tried to force the issue before.
Cults don’t want members to be around their families, and they insist that any family resistance is grounds for excommunication, making it harder for members to leave the cult because they’re cut off from their families. So hard for families to watch the destruction but not try to intervene in order to just maintain contact!
While families of more traditional cults might find a cult expert to advise them this way, families of the trans identified are trapped by the overwhelming force of a mostly united mental health system operating as the muscle for the cult.
Catalonia - my daughter (21, trans-identifying) also claims to have almost no memories of childhood. But seeing that post must have been disturbing- I'm sorry to hear that.
I worry that an entire generation or cohort, perhaps divided by class, are being instilled with the notion that they have suffered trauma that is permanent, is buried in the body, and can be triggered at any time. Therapists have the incentive to find it everywhere.
When I was seeing a therapist to cope with this situation with my daughter, she suggested that I myself had unresolved trauma that we needed to treat. Telling her I was fine, that I had moved on, etc, wasn't good enough. We actually did EMDR over zoom because my parents divorced! Ugh.
I am afraid that early exposure to unlimited screen time and social media may indeed caused trauma-like damage to their developing brains that is "permanent, is buried in the body, and can be triggered at any time". I hope I am wrong.
This resonates deeply and perhaps explains why the therapeutic world, including residential care, is "captured" so completely, when it comes to the affirming model. Thank you for sharing this.
Beautifully written. The image and connection with fairy tales is powerful. And you really get across the painful parental dilemmas. Adolescence has always been a bumpy time of stressed relationships between parents and children. But now, with the digital world feeding into gender confusion, a healthy argument between parents and children - which used to be part of the teenager learning to separate - is now fraught with danger of real separation and surgery. I have 2 grandchildren and I hope that by the time they reach puberty, these stories will be out in the world. We have so much to learn from them.
Thank you Eliza!! The article is spot on, a heart wrenching read and wonderful.
This entire ideology is like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers planting their pods and the Pied Piper leading children off a cliff combined with Hansel and Gretel finding the house covered with candy where Red Riding Hood finds the Wolf wearing her Grandma’s nightgown laying in wait...
it's very hard to discuss with anyone so for parents so much is forced underground. their feelings end up stifled. it's so lonely and disempowering. nightmarish for families.
"nightmarish", indeed. I sure don't envy parents having to deal with that or the prospect of it. How old are your own kids? Old enough to have missed the malign influences of "gender ideology"?
Though there is some merit in the concept, at least as an umbrella term for sexually dimorphic personalities and personality types. Not least in grappling with and accepting various forms of "gender non-conformance".
my kids are all in their twenties and in the thick of it. this bullshit is the sea they swim in. i just feel very glad they aren't younger. it's aggressively pushed in nz even in preschools. we government fund and affirm transition in nz.
Sorry to hear that your older son is the one most badly affected. Whole issue clearly tears up a lot of families -- those responsible need to be held to account, to say the least.
But a major part of the problem is, as Francis Bacon put it some 400 years ago, that "shoddy and inept uses of words lay siege to the intellect in wondrous ways". We seem incapable of defining our categories with the requisite degree of precision and intellectual honesty. I found an oldish essay at Psychology Today to provide some useful perspectives, and an avenue into the issue. A salient quote or two:
PT: "None of this categorizing is a problem unless we start insisting that these categories are deeply reflective of external nature. It’s not, we like to think, that some categories are just useful, or helpful, or shorthand filing systems admitting of exceptions—but that they are essences built into the very fabric of reality."
Closer to home, for both of us, you might "enjoy" my post on "Statistics Departments Corrupted by Gender Ideology" -- both New Zealand's and Canada's own:
Of particular if infamous note relative to NZ's is this bit:
NZ Stats: "Sex reassignment occurs where a person has undergone the necessary treatment to permanently change their sex. If a person's sex is indeterminate at birth, sex assignment occurs when they undergo treatment to become male or female."
Rank bloody insanity when our Statistics Departments, supposedly gatekeepers on scientific principles and literacy, are peddling such claptrap. I had submitted a lengthy essay to Canada's -- paid several hundred bucks for editing services -- in response to their "call for consultation" -- Google Docs link in the post -- which had exhibited similar levels of that.
No response yet of course, crickets, so had planned on contacting the Minister in charge; those responsible should be fired, if not hung, drawn and quartered -- figuratively speaking of course ... 🙂 But really seriously chaps my hide; I expect that is even more so for those with more "skin in the game".
PT: "For the last three hundred years or so, the advance of science has been in lockstep with the insight that is what really exists are processes, not essences."
But kind of set me back on my heels when I first read it. It had initially been deleted -- after some transactivists got their knickers in a twist -- but PT eventually, after some objections, found their spines and republished it.
Gotta say that the president of the flat earth society seems to have badly misunderstood 'The Truman Show'- the idea wasn't that everyone was secretly in a tv show and didn't know it, it was just Jim Carrey, everyone else, including the mayor, was an actor. This really falls short of the intellectual rigor I expect from that organization and I will be directing my charity $ elsewhere in the future.
Beautiful piece. It is a stand out piece that so completely underscores the complexity of this ideology for adolescents and families. Thank you for sharing your gift with us
My daughter, 21, he/him, on the cusp of starting testosterone - because Plume, a fresh hell - as I scramble madly with delay tactics while hatching the subtle and elegant (quixotic) intervention that will cause the scales to come crashing down. When that happens - it has to - I'll pick her up and fireman-carry her over the obsidian shards in my bare feet and lay her down and she'll remember and ask for a bowl of porridge like she did 9 years ago at bmi15.
"The look in his eyes as he contemplates this analogy is tragic. I think it helped my daughter to recognize that sometimes people hold on to beliefs that aren’t true because it provides them with some kind of capital."
This....everything we do is in pursuit of status. Ideas don't matter, ideologies don't matter. What matters is the respect we feel we garner by pursuing one path over another. That's what I've come to believe since the great capitulation of the suits to Trump.
Eliza your writing is exquisite. You have done lovely justice to the parents stories. I wonder if you have a plan to write about parents of adult children who have transed? There are many of us whose children are 25 and older, past the age we hope their brains have developed into full rational organs. If I hear one more time, "He's and adult, what can you do" I will explode. We elders looked forward to continuing relationships with our children as we age. Such a heartbreak and loss. Who do we turn to?
Would you be open to doing an interview with me (you can anonymize details as necessary) for my Genspect column?
I emailed you. Of course I will.
The new UK judicial review requested is 18-25 and vulnerable adults for this reason. So grateful to Ritchie Herron for making this issue more visible!
Such a cruel cult and arguably the first one in the history of modernity to target children and to be backed by the power of the state. No wonder some parents have taken their own lives. No one talks about their trauma.
Beautifully written piece.
In my data collection on trans widows and trans orphans, I've found that the children of men who suddenly took on a female persona, often claiming also to be "mother," have a shockingly high rate of suicidal ideation and serious suicide attempts leading to a hospitalization. I have data on 47 trans widows, who had a total of 30 children. Of those 30 (and this probably involves under reporting, as for some the children are still very young) there are 6 who expressed suicidal ideation. Of those 6, three made serious attempts and had to spend time in hospital. None of these circumstances was documented in any study involving "children of transition." This is a cult of sanctioned, sanctified and glamorized narcissism.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3APYP-hqSc&t=1s
Not the first one, for sure. Hitler -Jugend, young pioneers, The communist Youth league of China, In pre-modern time - Children crusaders... I am no history buff but I am sure there were/are more.
Yes they were toxic cults for sure but they didn’t genitally mutilate and sterilise kids, significantly damage their health for life and render then forever dependent on doctors.
Thanks for sharing, Coastal Elite. Wise words.
You’re absolutely right. Suicide is never the best option. Apart from anything else, when the affected child does eventually come to their senses, even if it takes 20 years, they’ll have their parent’s suicide on their conscience. Maybe parents need self help groups along the lines of Al Anon?
Exactly. It’s a real sanity saver for a lot of people, even if they just cherry pick out all the good bits and ignore the references to a higher power, which a lot of people don’t relate to. There’s a lot to be said for the philosophy you summed up so succinctly above. And also for group support. Seeing other people in the same situation through no fault of their own helps people realise they’re not at fault either.
It is important for more people to hear the stories of these parents, whether happy or sad. Like you say, they are all still unfolding. Thank you, Eliza.
It must be so hard. So many similar stories. My youngest cousin has 6 year old twins, one of each, and I'm praying the madness will have passed by the time they get online. Thankfully I don't have to deal with this in my day to day life, though my early efforts to talk to my best friend about it were met with defensiveness, even though she doesn't know any trans people (and we're both 60). Interestingly, it took a close friend of hers getting trans-widowed for her to start being more receptive to me talking about it and accepting that all is not right with this movement, though if I bring up what's happening in schools I think she flat-out doesn't believe me because it's too upsetting to be true, or thinks it's extremely rare. Other stuff, like the stuff Genevieve Gluck is writing about, she refuses to hear, it's too dark. Baby steps.
This hit close to home. It’s not only “gender affirming” providers who are undermining parent-child relationships. My daughter has suffered mood disorders, decided it was trauma, went through 2 hospitalizations, full time residential care, etc. Of course I was frantic, desperate. I was terrified by the threat of suicide.
In trauma-informed care, parents are suspect. Even though I wasn’t the “toxic” parent, at one point she cut me off for months, any disagreement or difference was potential grounds for alienation. I walked on eggshells. I was instructed by therapists to validate (very similar to affirm). I groveled regularly. Everything normal was actually a form of abuse. Normal differences were grounds for ending relationships--someone’s “wrong” tone or opinion about a movie was grounds for cutting them off (this happened, I’m not exaggerating).
In the past year she seems to have stabilized, become more normal, stopped therapy (she prefers Chinese medicine--fine!). Our relationship has been more normal, I’ve started trusting her again.
Then the other day via text she raged at me for something (I was normalizing abuse, apparently), and I groveled again. I’m hoping it’s passing.
Online, on sites like Discord, teens are being groomed to amplify minor passed misadventures into major trauma events. The medical community does not seem fully aware of the extent to which this is happening.
Other parallels: she would claim not to remember her childhood at all (because trauma, although no one, including her, would ever tell me what that traumatic experience was). Then she would claim to remember things I knew were impossible. It was so confusing--who is this person who no longer knows her own history?
The therapeutic manipulation to reach this state, I wonder, might have been similar.
Interesting. My (trans-identifying) 20-year-old daughter also claims to remember nothing from childhood. She had a lovely childhood, and no signs of gender dysphoria at all. No family trauma. Strangely, I saw her post on reddit that one of her siblings had died (not true).
I wonder--the actual childhood past might not support the present condition, so it has to be disappeared?
All of this suggests how much more malleable humans are than most of us like to think.
I’m finding that learning about cults is useful.
"the actual childhood past might not support the present condition, so it has to be disappeared"
That's what I think is happening. Yes, learning about other cults has been useful. "Heaven's Gate: Cult of Cults" was a great documentary series. I had no idea there was a castration component!
“A Very British Cult” podcast was useful in that there’s a lot about the families. The family that tried to get someone out of the cult failed and is still cut off. The family that stood by, tried not to openly intervene (but didn’t cheerlead, either), has their family member back now, and that person said it was easier to turn to his family to help him leave precisely because they hadn’t tried to force the issue before.
Cults don’t want members to be around their families, and they insist that any family resistance is grounds for excommunication, making it harder for members to leave the cult because they’re cut off from their families. So hard for families to watch the destruction but not try to intervene in order to just maintain contact!
While families of more traditional cults might find a cult expert to advise them this way, families of the trans identified are trapped by the overwhelming force of a mostly united mental health system operating as the muscle for the cult.
This was a good one and really got me to start seeing the parallels. It's chilling.
Catalonia - my daughter (21, trans-identifying) also claims to have almost no memories of childhood. But seeing that post must have been disturbing- I'm sorry to hear that.
Don't forget the mandatory "I am going to my hamster's funeral" facial expression.
I worry that an entire generation or cohort, perhaps divided by class, are being instilled with the notion that they have suffered trauma that is permanent, is buried in the body, and can be triggered at any time. Therapists have the incentive to find it everywhere.
When I was seeing a therapist to cope with this situation with my daughter, she suggested that I myself had unresolved trauma that we needed to treat. Telling her I was fine, that I had moved on, etc, wasn't good enough. We actually did EMDR over zoom because my parents divorced! Ugh.
I am afraid that early exposure to unlimited screen time and social media may indeed caused trauma-like damage to their developing brains that is "permanent, is buried in the body, and can be triggered at any time". I hope I am wrong.
I think I love your therapist.
This resonates deeply and perhaps explains why the therapeutic world, including residential care, is "captured" so completely, when it comes to the affirming model. Thank you for sharing this.
Beautifully written. The image and connection with fairy tales is powerful. And you really get across the painful parental dilemmas. Adolescence has always been a bumpy time of stressed relationships between parents and children. But now, with the digital world feeding into gender confusion, a healthy argument between parents and children - which used to be part of the teenager learning to separate - is now fraught with danger of real separation and surgery. I have 2 grandchildren and I hope that by the time they reach puberty, these stories will be out in the world. We have so much to learn from them.
Thank you Eliza!! The article is spot on, a heart wrenching read and wonderful.
This entire ideology is like the Invasion of the Body Snatchers planting their pods and the Pied Piper leading children off a cliff combined with Hansel and Gretel finding the house covered with candy where Red Riding Hood finds the Wolf wearing her Grandma’s nightgown laying in wait...
I’m so confused... 🤦🏼♀️
it's very hard to discuss with anyone so for parents so much is forced underground. their feelings end up stifled. it's so lonely and disempowering. nightmarish for families.
"nightmarish", indeed. I sure don't envy parents having to deal with that or the prospect of it. How old are your own kids? Old enough to have missed the malign influences of "gender ideology"?
Though there is some merit in the concept, at least as an umbrella term for sexually dimorphic personalities and personality types. Not least in grappling with and accepting various forms of "gender non-conformance".
my younger three will survive it. my older son is being trashed.
my kids are all in their twenties and in the thick of it. this bullshit is the sea they swim in. i just feel very glad they aren't younger. it's aggressively pushed in nz even in preschools. we government fund and affirm transition in nz.
Sorry to hear that your older son is the one most badly affected. Whole issue clearly tears up a lot of families -- those responsible need to be held to account, to say the least.
But a major part of the problem is, as Francis Bacon put it some 400 years ago, that "shoddy and inept uses of words lay siege to the intellect in wondrous ways". We seem incapable of defining our categories with the requisite degree of precision and intellectual honesty. I found an oldish essay at Psychology Today to provide some useful perspectives, and an avenue into the issue. A salient quote or two:
PT: "None of this categorizing is a problem unless we start insisting that these categories are deeply reflective of external nature. It’s not, we like to think, that some categories are just useful, or helpful, or shorthand filing systems admitting of exceptions—but that they are essences built into the very fabric of reality."
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hive-mind/202003/terf-wars-what-is-biological-sex
Closer to home, for both of us, you might "enjoy" my post on "Statistics Departments Corrupted by Gender Ideology" -- both New Zealand's and Canada's own:
https://humanuseofhumanbeings.substack.com/p/statistics-departments-corrupted
Of particular if infamous note relative to NZ's is this bit:
NZ Stats: "Sex reassignment occurs where a person has undergone the necessary treatment to permanently change their sex. If a person's sex is indeterminate at birth, sex assignment occurs when they undergo treatment to become male or female."
Rank bloody insanity when our Statistics Departments, supposedly gatekeepers on scientific principles and literacy, are peddling such claptrap. I had submitted a lengthy essay to Canada's -- paid several hundred bucks for editing services -- in response to their "call for consultation" -- Google Docs link in the post -- which had exhibited similar levels of that.
No response yet of course, crickets, so had planned on contacting the Minister in charge; those responsible should be fired, if not hung, drawn and quartered -- figuratively speaking of course ... 🙂 But really seriously chaps my hide; I expect that is even more so for those with more "skin in the game".
thank you. i will read. canada and nz are ground zero for this crap.
that psychology today quote rocks
Some rather brilliant insights therein -- like:
PT: "For the last three hundred years or so, the advance of science has been in lockstep with the insight that is what really exists are processes, not essences."
But kind of set me back on my heels when I first read it. It had initially been deleted -- after some transactivists got their knickers in a twist -- but PT eventually, after some objections, found their spines and republished it.
Gotta say that the president of the flat earth society seems to have badly misunderstood 'The Truman Show'- the idea wasn't that everyone was secretly in a tv show and didn't know it, it was just Jim Carrey, everyone else, including the mayor, was an actor. This really falls short of the intellectual rigor I expect from that organization and I will be directing my charity $ elsewhere in the future.
Yes. I also know several other parents who may also be open to talking to you. I will email you.
Thank you, Eliza, for getting these stories out - and for your beautiful writing. I will - and encourage others to - share widely.
Beautiful piece. It is a stand out piece that so completely underscores the complexity of this ideology for adolescents and families. Thank you for sharing your gift with us
My daughter, 21, he/him, on the cusp of starting testosterone - because Plume, a fresh hell - as I scramble madly with delay tactics while hatching the subtle and elegant (quixotic) intervention that will cause the scales to come crashing down. When that happens - it has to - I'll pick her up and fireman-carry her over the obsidian shards in my bare feet and lay her down and she'll remember and ask for a bowl of porridge like she did 9 years ago at bmi15.
"The look in his eyes as he contemplates this analogy is tragic. I think it helped my daughter to recognize that sometimes people hold on to beliefs that aren’t true because it provides them with some kind of capital."
This....everything we do is in pursuit of status. Ideas don't matter, ideologies don't matter. What matters is the respect we feel we garner by pursuing one path over another. That's what I've come to believe since the great capitulation of the suits to Trump.
Extraordinary piece.
Beautifully written. 💕