It is a wreck. I did everything I could to stop the crash of my daughter. As a mom, I was shunned, blamed, and told I was a hateful transphobe. The whole family shattered, and every relationship I have has changed. I'm left alone standing looking at the wreckage and have little support. Most people just look the other way and hope the wreckage somehow works out okay.
I am so sorry! I have lost friends and colleagues because I have interrogated the gender madness. To lose a child to this horror is a tragedy that was unimaginable as recently as a decade ago. I hope that you can find support and a foundation for hope on sites like this one, and in the developing international opposition to the gender cult.
My heart goes out to you. I, too, have never felt so alone. One friend's reaction (I've known her 35 years, a bridesmaid at my wedding) to news of my son's coming out was "Cool!" Another even older friend (long-distance) celebrated my new "daughter" in a glowing email. His former godmother insists "she" is an adult and I need to accept she knows what's best for herself, shrug, shrug. Even my therapist (ex-, but the damage was done) shamed me for mourning my son even as I accepted (for two years) my new daughter. But the cognitive dissonance is eating away at me, and the loss, and the complete erasure of my son's past. Only this new wannabe woman exists now, and I don't know her at all. I hope you find peace, or at least someone to talk to. I understand.
Thank you for all of your hard work. I am curious, however, if you have accurate counts on the number of adolescents who have been given puberty blockers, HRT, and surgery. When conversing with others that support the transgender movement, they are universally of the opinion that the numbers are small. I believe the number to be in the thousands or tens of thousands, but cannot find any reliable data. It seems as if the medical establishment is trying to hide these data. Again, thank you for highlighting all of the efforts to bring this to an end.
Note this is the number who start. So 17,000+ started from 2017-2021 alone. Maybe some who started puberty blockers are double counted when they start hormones. But I'm thinking certainly over 20,000 if you add in 2022-2024 so far.
Leor Sapir in a recent city journal essay on the asps gave the number of surgeries on minors.
Planned Parenthood is giving hormones to 40,000 and some fraction there is 18-25s. See the recent Jennifer Block article in the free press
I live in BC, and, incidentally, have sat down at a table for a meal with five young women between the ages of 17-26 who have had bilateral mastectomies to remove their healthy breasts. One is autistic. One is lesbian. One was a runaway. One asserted she was a boy as a four-year-old. One was clearly struggling with adolescent angst and a broken family. All of them had body dysmorphia issues, but surgery is never the solution.
When I get pushback on my alarm, I’m told the “numbers are tiny,” so I shouldn’t be so concerned about “such a minuscule part of the population.” These people also assert that there are extensive safeguarding procedures, therapy, and parental permission requirements for minors. How have they managed to avoid seeing what I have seen? A “mature minor” can go to the doctor alone here, doctors are not permitted to do anything but “affirm,” and there is no age requirement for blockers, hormones, or a mastectomy here.
Is it convenient ignorance? I, too, want the data. For starters, how many bilateral “gender affirming” mastectomies were performed in my province in the past four years? And if I can access the age of the patients, I know the majority will be under-25s.
Perhaps if I could present this data, it would break through the denials of the well-meaning people who say “it’s none of my business what other people’s kids do with their bodies”?
Our medical system is in crisis. “Gender affirmation” surgeries take up an exorbitant amount of medical resources, and they are NOT “life-saving care.” Nor are they ethical, at any age. There has never been a surgical procedure to cure emotional distress. We tried that before. We look back on it in horror.
Indeed. I remember reading of a man who had a "predilection" for gayness who changed that because he wanted to have kids. And probably wasn't prepared for the shoddy if not unethical recourse to surrogates which is rather too common among gay men. Similarly with sperm donors for gay women.
Society may reasonably tolerate homosexuality, but I don't think it particularly wise to venerate it as is typical of too many of the LGB crowd -- "Pride" going before a fall, and all that.
> “the following lines the Adrienne Rich poem, Diving into the Wreck …”
Thanks for the link to that poem – I’ve periodically wondered what it was all about. Though myths are not without substantial value in themselves. But ‘nice’ use of the poem as a theme for your own post, even if it may be seen as somewhat “overwrought”.
However, while you and Curtis make some good points, there are any number of questionable assertions and claims therein, this comment of yours being something of an antiscientific howler – more or less a substantial part of your stock-in-trade:
Matt: “…we are all still waiting for the double-blind laboratory test that can detect or measure gender identities in humans”.
For one thing, while you more or less usefully concede sex and gender are entirely different kettles of fish – “…activists deliberately confuse the words ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ …” – and that “gender” refers to something more or less real – “medically correcting gender non-conformity” – your rather "obstinate" inability to connect “gender” to “gender identity” vitiates your best efforts.
Rather moot exactly how we might define and quantify “gender identity”, but, given “gender”, it really isn’t much of a stretch to a more or less scientific definition for the former. Paraphrasing a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP] article on “personal identity” – arguably a close analogue – we might say:
SEP [paraphrased]: "Outside of philosophy, [gender identity’] usually refers to [sexually dimorphic personality traits] to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. Someone’s [gender identity] in this sense consists of those [feminine and masculine personality traits] she takes to 'define her as a person' or 'make her the person she is', and which distinguish her from others."
Given your awareness of 4th Wave, you might want to take a close look at a generally very good essay there – co-authored by Colin Wright – which more or less emphasizes the definition of gender as those “sexually dimorphic personality traits”:
4thWave: “This essay has been updated with a new graphical representation of sex-related differences in personality.”
IF gender IS, more or less, those sexually dimorphic personality traits – clearly detectable with “double-blind laboratory tests” – and IF “gender identity” is the perception of one’s gender – one’s personality traits – THEN it is not “inconceivable” that similar tests are possible for gender identity. Logic 101, HTH …
It is a wreck. I did everything I could to stop the crash of my daughter. As a mom, I was shunned, blamed, and told I was a hateful transphobe. The whole family shattered, and every relationship I have has changed. I'm left alone standing looking at the wreckage and have little support. Most people just look the other way and hope the wreckage somehow works out okay.
I am so sorry! I have lost friends and colleagues because I have interrogated the gender madness. To lose a child to this horror is a tragedy that was unimaginable as recently as a decade ago. I hope that you can find support and a foundation for hope on sites like this one, and in the developing international opposition to the gender cult.
My heart goes out to you. I, too, have never felt so alone. One friend's reaction (I've known her 35 years, a bridesmaid at my wedding) to news of my son's coming out was "Cool!" Another even older friend (long-distance) celebrated my new "daughter" in a glowing email. His former godmother insists "she" is an adult and I need to accept she knows what's best for herself, shrug, shrug. Even my therapist (ex-, but the damage was done) shamed me for mourning my son even as I accepted (for two years) my new daughter. But the cognitive dissonance is eating away at me, and the loss, and the complete erasure of my son's past. Only this new wannabe woman exists now, and I don't know her at all. I hope you find peace, or at least someone to talk to. I understand.
It's a long game, and I truly believe you will be vindicated.
An excellent article on an important book.
This article was beautifully written. Thank you, Matt.
Thank you for all of your hard work. I am curious, however, if you have accurate counts on the number of adolescents who have been given puberty blockers, HRT, and surgery. When conversing with others that support the transgender movement, they are universally of the opinion that the numbers are small. I believe the number to be in the thousands or tens of thousands, but cannot find any reliable data. It seems as if the medical establishment is trying to hide these data. Again, thank you for highlighting all of the efforts to bring this to an end.
Reuters has some numbers, lower bounds.
Youth in transition, putting the numbers on....
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-transyouth-data/
Note this is the number who start. So 17,000+ started from 2017-2021 alone. Maybe some who started puberty blockers are double counted when they start hormones. But I'm thinking certainly over 20,000 if you add in 2022-2024 so far.
Leor Sapir in a recent city journal essay on the asps gave the number of surgeries on minors.
Planned Parenthood is giving hormones to 40,000 and some fraction there is 18-25s. See the recent Jennifer Block article in the free press
I live in BC, and, incidentally, have sat down at a table for a meal with five young women between the ages of 17-26 who have had bilateral mastectomies to remove their healthy breasts. One is autistic. One is lesbian. One was a runaway. One asserted she was a boy as a four-year-old. One was clearly struggling with adolescent angst and a broken family. All of them had body dysmorphia issues, but surgery is never the solution.
When I get pushback on my alarm, I’m told the “numbers are tiny,” so I shouldn’t be so concerned about “such a minuscule part of the population.” These people also assert that there are extensive safeguarding procedures, therapy, and parental permission requirements for minors. How have they managed to avoid seeing what I have seen? A “mature minor” can go to the doctor alone here, doctors are not permitted to do anything but “affirm,” and there is no age requirement for blockers, hormones, or a mastectomy here.
Is it convenient ignorance? I, too, want the data. For starters, how many bilateral “gender affirming” mastectomies were performed in my province in the past four years? And if I can access the age of the patients, I know the majority will be under-25s.
Perhaps if I could present this data, it would break through the denials of the well-meaning people who say “it’s none of my business what other people’s kids do with their bodies”?
Our medical system is in crisis. “Gender affirmation” surgeries take up an exorbitant amount of medical resources, and they are NOT “life-saving care.” Nor are they ethical, at any age. There has never been a surgical procedure to cure emotional distress. We tried that before. We look back on it in horror.
Thanks for telling us in such detail about this important book.
A minor point: the former head of Mermaids is Susie (not Jackie) Green.
Show me the evidence that homosexuality is permanent as you stated. I’ll wait.
Indeed. I remember reading of a man who had a "predilection" for gayness who changed that because he wanted to have kids. And probably wasn't prepared for the shoddy if not unethical recourse to surrogates which is rather too common among gay men. Similarly with sperm donors for gay women.
Society may reasonably tolerate homosexuality, but I don't think it particularly wise to venerate it as is typical of too many of the LGB crowd -- "Pride" going before a fall, and all that.
> “the following lines the Adrienne Rich poem, Diving into the Wreck …”
Thanks for the link to that poem – I’ve periodically wondered what it was all about. Though myths are not without substantial value in themselves. But ‘nice’ use of the poem as a theme for your own post, even if it may be seen as somewhat “overwrought”.
However, while you and Curtis make some good points, there are any number of questionable assertions and claims therein, this comment of yours being something of an antiscientific howler – more or less a substantial part of your stock-in-trade:
Matt: “…we are all still waiting for the double-blind laboratory test that can detect or measure gender identities in humans”.
For one thing, while you more or less usefully concede sex and gender are entirely different kettles of fish – “…activists deliberately confuse the words ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ …” – and that “gender” refers to something more or less real – “medically correcting gender non-conformity” – your rather "obstinate" inability to connect “gender” to “gender identity” vitiates your best efforts.
Rather moot exactly how we might define and quantify “gender identity”, but, given “gender”, it really isn’t much of a stretch to a more or less scientific definition for the former. Paraphrasing a Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy [SEP] article on “personal identity” – arguably a close analogue – we might say:
SEP [paraphrased]: "Outside of philosophy, [gender identity’] usually refers to [sexually dimorphic personality traits] to which we feel a special sense of attachment or ownership. Someone’s [gender identity] in this sense consists of those [feminine and masculine personality traits] she takes to 'define her as a person' or 'make her the person she is', and which distinguish her from others."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-personal/#ProPerIde
Given your awareness of 4th Wave, you might want to take a close look at a generally very good essay there – co-authored by Colin Wright – which more or less emphasizes the definition of gender as those “sexually dimorphic personality traits”:
4thWave: “This essay has been updated with a new graphical representation of sex-related differences in personality.”
https://4thwavenow.com/2019/08/19/no-child-is-born-in-the-wrong-body-and-other-thoughts-on-the-concept-of-gender-identity/
IF gender IS, more or less, those sexually dimorphic personality traits – clearly detectable with “double-blind laboratory tests” – and IF “gender identity” is the perception of one’s gender – one’s personality traits – THEN it is not “inconceivable” that similar tests are possible for gender identity. Logic 101, HTH …