The parent trap

Louise Bourgeois

Jamie Reed drew this post—in a Reddit community frequented by parents of “trans” kids—to my attention. The author describes herself as a “very confused mama” and briefly lays out her family’s story: her daughter came out as trans at age 14 (“very out of the blue”), something her parents “fully supported from day one.”

Under the sway of the trans narrative, her role as a mother—“to love and support my child no matter what”—got twisted around to mean things like following her child’s lead, finding a “really supportive endo[crinologist],” and making sure her daughter’s school treated her like a boy. With the support of her parents—and, of course, the involvement of her doctors—this girl started testosterone and underwent a double mastectomy.

But a few months after going under the knife, her daughter started to express regret, ultimately quitting testosterone, re-identifying as female, and distancing herself from her affirming parents (who still refer to her as their “son”):

I can kind of accept that it’s been a huge change (even though it’s one he wanted for so long) and that any major surgery is likely to have a huge impact but I was in no way prepared for the hate and blame that has been hurled out way.

He now says we “rushed” him and that if we’d questioned him more he wouldn’t have had surgeries and possibly not hormones (although he goes back and forth on this).

In short, he thinks he’s ruined his life and body and that we are responsible for that.

All I have ever wanted for my child is that they felt loved, supported, secure, no matter how he identifies and this has just thrown me for a loop. I can’t eat. I can’t sleep. I’m crippled with guilt that maybe they’re right and I don’t know what to do any more.

It was a huge adjustment to move from having a daughter to having a son. But I loved my son fiercely, and without question. Now I’m being asked to readjust to potentially having a daughter again, but also being blamed for taking the only course of action we could reasonably have taken at the time and it feels so overwhelming for all of us.

I don’t know what to do for the best. Following his lead, we thought surgery was “best” and now we’ve been cut off because he is so angry, hurt and confused in the aftermath of having had his top surgery. We are still funding therapy because whether it was the right or wrong course of action, obviously he should be supported but oh my days I don’t know where to put my head.

I keep saying son but the last contact we had he needed to “give some time to being female” again and I’m just in such a dark place trying to figure out which end of me is up.

This family is in a terrible position and the mother is wracked by guilt, unsure whether she did right or wrong by her child. It’s clear she tried to do right. I believe her when she says all she ever wanted was for her child to feel “loved, supported, and secure.” She came to believe that loving, supporting, and protecting her child required affirming her child’s trans identity.

She didn’t come to this conclusion by herself. She sought medical assistance for her distressed child. It’s possible that she shopped around for an affirming doctor (e.g., the “really supportive endo” she tracked down), but what patients and parents seek and what medical providers offer are two separate questions. No matter what patients and parents want, medical providers have a responsibility to ‘do no harm.’ The doctors involved in this young woman’s care harmed her.

She describes herself as a long-time active member of r/cisparenttranskid, saying she has “held hands with many of you through our journeys.” But now that her child’s “gender journey” has taken an unexpected detour—now that she “do[es]n’t really know where else to go” with her sense of guilt and horror—the community turns on her.

A few apologize in advance for their skepticism, leaving open the possibility that the mother’s post may be genuine, before belittling her family’s story as playing into a “common trope” about regret.

Others suggest that her child has fallen under the dangerous influence of “detransitioners. Or rather, ‘detransitioners.’” One trans-identified man suggests that the daughter’s expressions of regret and desire to return to her female identity may stem from the “success” of her transition!

I have an unsubstantiated theory as to how some folks fall down this rabbit hole. See, transition is a process. The further you get through it, the more milestones you hit, the more you tend to drop off from the community. Being trans just takes up less and less of your life. Not to mention that your community of support is struggling where you've been successful - you tire of the grief you've moved on from and they often build some resentment towards people whose transition is going better than their transition. People just kind of peel away. As a trans woman who has been in online trans communities for closing on two decades I know a lot of folks who have followed that sort of process. You never lose the closest friends you made in the community but you gradually break away You need to fill that hole where that old community was with new people. Sometimes it's a local book club, sometimes it's a mean girl clique on Facebook, sometimes it's a niche hobby/interest community, and sometimes it's a hate group. I've seen that, sadly. Hate groups thrive on love-bombing - welcoming people in and providing an answer for why there is a hole in their life (because almost everyone seeking community/companionship has some kind of hole that needs to be filled). Sometimes the answer as to why you feel like your life hasn't gotten better after a big accomplishment is "immigrants", sometimes it's other things, sometimes it's "you've fallen into societal indoctrination and to feel better you need to break free." It provides a better answer than "life doesn't get as good as you want quickly as you'd like."

Yes, perhaps the daughter’s transition was so successful that she pulled away from the trans community and then fell in with a “hate group” after being “love-bomb[ed].” This is the most parsimonious explanation.

Others suggest that the “son” must have “[fallen] down a rabbit hole of some sort.”

Others predict the daughter will “retransition,” like “many” detransitioners do:

It's hard to tell what your kiddo is going through, but one thing to consider is that most people who detransition do so for external reasons.  (E.g. to avoid stigma and discrimination etc), and many re-transition later (link at bottom).  

Therefore, the mother, the doctors, the world were not too supportive of a child’s mistaken trans identification but rather not supportive enough! (Somehow the answer to failures of gender-affirming care is always more affirmation, not less!)

Another commenter compares adolescent gender distress to a life-threatening cancer diagnosis:

Here's a hypothetical for you: if your child had a rare form of cancer, and the recommended treatment had a 99% success rate but 1% failure rate and treatment would alter their body but save them from suffering for years and possibly premature death, would you have chosen no treatment just in case your child was in the 1%, or would you have followed the evidence and chosen treatment?  That's what you did, and if it didn't work, that's bad luck, and not your fault.  I presume you had experts see your child through years of treatment and followed their recommendations.  So all you can do now is give your child time and space.

What parent could have done otherwise?

Several insist on that “1%” regret/failure rate—whether to marginalize the mother’s experience (“This is a 1 percent scenario and very odd”) or to comfort her (“You could not have known that your kid would be in the 1%.”):

Transition takes years and has lots of check points and mandatory therapy. The fact that they also took hormones and had top surgery 9 months ago is even more odd.

They would most likely have started to feel unsure or distressed way way way earlier.

The only way that I can think to make this realistic is maybe the kid got involved in some religion/cult, or conspiracy theorist group? Maybe an abusive relationship?

I'm leaving this up for now because if this is true you deserve help but just so you are aware most people are going to believe this is fake because it is so rare and unlikely. If you have more specific details that may help.

In other words, this mother’s account must be fake, designed to provoke parental anxieties. Or if not fake than rare (1%!). Or if not fake or rare than reversible (she’ll surely retransition!). Or if not fake or rare or reversible, then the child must have “fall[en] down a rabbithole” or gotten herself “involved in some religion/cult.”

It can’t be that a child can express a desire to transition, undergo years of therapy, clear “lots of check points,” and still end up with regret and distress and blame.

None of these parents will be able to sleep soundly at night if this mother’s story could one day be theirs.