Be a parent, not a pansy
Note: 1 This is not the approach I take in private consulting/counseling with clients. At least not all in one go. Speaking to real people in real time is different than a message to a general audience.
Note 2: Comments are closed because I do not have the patience for the number of readers who have an emotional problem hearing this.
(This is actual caring for your interests, which you may be able to understand once your initial defensiveness wears off).
Shocked parents of newly minted “trans” kids who announce their new identity in young adulthood: You have some responsibility for what happened. I know you don’t want to hear this. I know many of you will think I’m “hating on” you.
I am not. I have compassion for your situation. This has touched my family, too. A young boy in my family nearly went down the path. I helped stop that path. No, I’m not the “savior.” I was just one necessary obstacle that helped stop it.
All of this is to say that I do, in fact, understand what you’re going through. But that means I also see, parents, from your own writing about this, what you have done to set your child up for “falling into this with the wrong friends.”
That’s right. You helped do this. And if you want to help stop it, you must take honest and humble stock of your enabling behavior and work to set it right.
How do I know that your parenting contributed to this? From your own words. Here is what I read from you in your shock:
“We let him do whatever he wanted and supported him in everything. Why is this happening?”
“We raised her in feminist-egalitarian household and shielded her from patriarchy.”
And now, today, when your son is 19 and tells you he’s a troon, I read this from you:
“We call him by his chosen name, but we really struggle inside.”
“We try to gently ask him why he believes he’s a woman.”
Blunt talk: do you fucking hear yourselves? Why are you calling him by his “chosen name?” Why are you gently asking him questions that aren’t even real instead of calling out his lie and telling him, “no”?
Because you were “gentle parents,” even before that term was widespread. You inverted the parent child relationship, as most of you Millennial and GenX parents have done. You decided that you were never, ever going to be in authority. You decided to let your little darlings “blossom” like a flower. Any icky parental boundaries would have crushed your little darling, right?
This is on you. You helped do this. Yes, I’m “blaming” you, as you no doubt wish to yell in the comments that aren’t open to you. A more mature way to understand what I’m doing is to see it as “correctly recognizing your responsibility as parents, and placing that responsibility appropriately. With you.”
You’re not bad people. You’re not unloving. You’re not wicked.
But you were inadequate parents in some key areas. Can you please hear that and accept it, while also understanding that it’s not a statement that you’re wicked, abusive and irredeemable? It’s not that statement.
It’s time to take responsibility as parents belatedly. This is your opportunity to look clearly at your “supportive” and “hands-off” egalitarian parenting approach. Contrast it with, I don’t know, say, all of parenting history. You may begin to see that it was not a wise choice to treat all firm and loving parenting as “abuse.” You are now seeing the blossoming fruit of two generations of parents refusing to be adults and to mold their children, and to set boundaries for them.
Here’s another shocker for you, and it’s good for you. Do you know what I eventually said when the parents of a young boy in my extended family were going along with this? When they were trying to make me do things like hide school pictures of the young boy as a boy, and trying to make me say the pronouns?
“No. I’m not playing this game. Do not ever order me to lie again. Do not lecture me about the pronouns. Let me tell you this: if you go further with this insanity, I will risk my relationship with you to stop you. I will be an obstacle, and I will buck you at every turn. I will not stand by and let you let this happen to this young child. You are wrong, and you may not do this. I will stop you if I can.
I love you. I know that you are scared. But loving you does not mean I’m going to allow you to live in a cult and let this boy live a lie until his dick is cut off.”
What can you do now? Stand up like adults:
-Stop calling your “trans” kid by their “chosen names.”
-Stop pretending you think they can be the fantasy creature they claim to be.
-Stop it with the pronouns. Right now.
-Refuse to make any concessions to a fake reality. No special names. No avoiding using sexed pronouns so that you don’t have to say the truth.
-Be a parent and tell your child NO. Do you want to help save them? Then buck up and risk being “hated” by your child.
This is on you. You are at least partially responsible for what “happened to” your kid. That doesn’t make you bad or worthless.
But you are not innocent angels blindsided by this. You owe your children better.