I really appreciate your use of the word “gender-questioning.” If not for the awful weight given the idea of gender identity now, I honestly think I’d be pleased to see more gender exploration, in adolescents and adults. I remember being a young teenager and *loving* being mistaken for a boy - I’d dress like a boy, teach myself to walk like a boy, and drop my voice in the hope of fooling people. Not because I had any issues whatsoever with my girlhood, aside from the normal swings of early puberty, but because I loved knowing that I had control over other people’s perceptions of me. I got the same thrill taking on a silly nickname (I thought it was cool; I was wrong) and asking my teachers to switch to it - it was a real sense of power when they did.
And no one batted an eye. No one treated any of it as exceptional, aside from my mom finding my baggy clothes a little stupid-looking. I deeply enjoyed looking like a boy when I chose for a couple years, and then I grew out of it. I look back on that time fondly, and see no reason any kid shouldn’t get to experiment and play that way, without having to *become* something.
I think kids do better when they learn early on that there is flexibility available to them. I think gender presentation is a rich area for testing the limits of that flexibility. I think the affirmative model takes the fun of that kind of identity formation away from them.
Mar 14, 2022·edited Mar 14, 2022Liked by The 21st Century Salonnière
I promise I will post again, I have some stuff in the works. When I do, I have a post in mind that will run with a title like "Work Sucks For Everyone." The idea is so many complains I see about work are funneled through other causes: mental health, gender, race, "hustle culture", bad bosses, etc etc. But work just sucks! And I'm not even saying "capitalism sucks." Look at Star Trek, they have tons of crappy jobs too
It's an issue where we've denied all sense of universality, so everything has to be funneled through one of the corporate-approved identity boxes. You can't just be an outsider, down on your luck, etc for normal human reasons. It has to be funneled through some (usually identity based) issue. For many teens, that's trans issues. Your life can't just suck for the normal reasons that human existence sucks. It has to suck for one of the acceptable reasons.
I felt this way about the Simone Biles topic, where it seemed more like a "gymnastics is dangerous an abusive" issue than a "this one person had mental health problems" issue
You've again poured out many of the thoughts swirling in my head - except you've imposed considerable order on the swirl. This is such a complex set of issues that it's really hard to think through them.
Having paid my respects to complexity, I want to focus in on one facet - what I'm increasingly seeing as the fulcrum of the blind-affirmation model when it comes to transition in young people: the suicide threat.
Why are so many liberals unable to see that thousands of kids are being harmed? They've bought the line that it's transition - stat! - or watch these kids die. And what kind of monster would take that chance? Now, I think we may be starting to see some cracks in the suicide-threat edifice; I've been closely watching the comments sections of WaPo and NYT, and increasingly self-identified liberals are starting to question why we're seeing such a massive wave of gender-dysphoric youth. Still, the threat of dead children shuts down critical thinking like nothing else. (As a mother of two young adults who's dealt with serious mental illness in my family, I get that.)
The suicide threat is also the strongest factor (imo) pushing otherwise-skeptical parents into line. Those parents either end up affirming, or they enter a desperate period of seeking help from professionals and institutions that are almost unanimously affirming the child's demand for immediate social transition and blockers or hormones. I've heard too many stories of therapists who - sometimes on a first visit, sometimes in front of both parent and child - will state out loud that it's better to have a trans child than a dead one. The skeptics are up against a system that will hide the child's trans identification because - sing it again! - that child is otherwise likely to end up dead. And if the child says their skeptical parents are transphobic (as every YouTube trans guy has proclaimed), all the more reason to worry about that child imminently trying to end their life.
Of course, the adolescents who've been coached through social media know that threatening suicide is their most potent weapon in getting their parents to comply. There's a fascinating moment in a talk given by Jack Halberstam where they say that *of course* children know that suicide threats will get them what they want. (Halberstam gained academic fame with the book Female Masculinity and subsequently adopted a trans self-definition in midlife after living for most of their life as a butch lesbian.) Halberstam is a more nuanced thinker than many who write about trans issues. In their 2018 book Trans*, Halberstam even raised questions about prematurely stabilizing and reifying a fixed identity in gender-nonconforming kids. But in this talk, Halberstam treats the suicide threats as an example of trans ingenuity, getting desires/needs met in a world hostile to trans people. My takeaway: some people within the trans community understand that the suicide threat is greatly inflated but choose to wink, nod, and look away.
This *is* a population with tons of mental health troubles, and I have no doubt that these kids are more likely to engage in suicidal ideation than kids without a trans identification. Whether their rates of ideation, attempts, and completed suicide outstrip those of other youth with similar levels of mental health problems is an open question. Jack T*rban has so dominated the "research" in this area that we won't get real research-based answered anytime soon. I've rarely seen such openly ideological, methodologically shoddy quantitative "research." Yet he's become the go-to guy when mainstream reporters want a source on youth transition and mental health.
As an aside, the "epidemic of trans murders" serves as a similar fulcrum for adult transitioners when it comes to shutting down dissent. (Why try to resolve conflicting rights when you can just accuse the TERFs of literally killing trans women?)
But back to the children and young adults. I think the only way to move toward the kind of long-term exploratory therapy these young folks need is to debunk the suicide threat. One path in that direction is to point out that any child who's suicidal *needs* wraparound psychological services and thorough psychotherapy before making any lifelong decisions. That child is far from competent to consent! You made this argument very cogently in this essay, Salonniere. But we also urgently need real research driven by methodological rigor and the sort of compassion that seeks truth, not clicks.
I'm very curious if others have ideas about how to address the suicide threat. I, too, was present at the detrans forum on Saturday and my heart just hurts. Of course there's so much more that needs attention, from the overall mental health crisis in Gen Z to the influence of online communities and on and on. But the path to more reasoned discussion will be blocked unless we can get beyond the belief that it's transition-or-die.
What a well written article and sadly true to the core.
On a more personal note.
I've had an apprenticeship at a place for people who've been out of work for a many years and weirdly mentally ill folks too (Talking about everything from depression to aspergers). My fear was getting a downward spiral due to this negative environment - legit nobody was a "normally" functioning human being in society, when in fact I wanted to turn my life around after spending 3 years before that working through all my childhood traumas and my frail mind.
The number of trans people was incredibly high and the people would give themselves some kind of positive feedback loops and many more would join in or at least dye their hair, color nails, march/protest for lgbtq right and the like. It really is a mass soziogenic psychosis. Living in a complete bubble. And funnily everyone had access to free mental health counseling as this part of the area we folks lived and included in the apprenticeship.
Did it help? Well let's just say even the health professionals were very much in support of these drastic measures and the only one warning people of the consequences got fired by higher ups, while under tears from all the bashful comments. It was tragic to say the least.
Anyways, I fell in love with this incredibly kind and stunning girl. Knowing very well what tail of problems could be attached to her.
We talked, spend time together and the feelings became stronger, but then one day she told me "well anyways in 2 weeks I'll get my first hormone shots - I'm so excited and everyone is cheering me on"
This was a soul crushing, fear inducing some kind of worst case scenario.
Oh yeah, did I mention she had a relationship with someone from the trans community overseas, while we were starting to get together? And before that one bad relationship after another mostly with people from this community? (what a coincidence)
It was all kind of confusing, yet here I was applying everything I learned the past years and being a "better" person and supporting the "people in need" .
She wrote the person one message - they both agreed.
Now I was in a relationship with this person I was very much in love with, but still fully aware of how crazy this all is. I knew from day one, that she was heavily influenced by her bubble always getting feedback loops from the same people, same ideas, same mental illnesses etc.
One term I truly started to hate was "Oh that's so relatable - haha so funny".
It's not funny nor is it a laughing matter. I realize it's coping etc. and sometimes dark humour is helpful, but getting bombarded 24/7 with basically "you are a piece of s*it* and agreeing isn't going to help.
She loved me head over heels and I was getting what I sought for all my life and indulged in it - all of it. Too much - too soon, probably.
Now she had all the problems you listed a young person might experience in your article and on top of that sexual trauma, ptsd and which sadly she didn't get diagnosing for some kind of autism or ocd, but it wasn't the kind, which is a huge burden even on other people.
Getting back to the trans topic.
She was all aboard it, until the first "negative" side effects started. She started growing hair all over her body, the clitoris changed (a very unique experience not only for her), voice, skin etc. you know it.
She was very very upset by some of these changes and I seriously started to question her decision making. Did she truly think this through? What was she expecting? Hormones to get rid of her problems? It's exactly how you described it and of course it is. Any person, who can approach this topic rationally and neutral should come to this conclusion, but she couldn't.
Well how could she? Her last 20 years were a huge mess. She was getting influenced all day and wasn't able to grow on her own.
Even her sister, which she sees as her mother since her real mom left, was transitioning multiple times. Her sister too has very severe mental issues (borderline, ptsd etc.)
And it broke my heart seeing that everyone in her life has a hugely negative impact on her and she can't see it, because it's all she knows and loves.
This is when I decided, I need to help and not only support her. Very bad move for a relationship, but how was I supposed to know. It was a first for me too.
I started to give her little pushes in the other direction, tell her how things really are. Use a lot of calm and rational approaches.
This often offended her, because she was a person living almost only by her emotional thoughts and not by what makes sense and helps the most.
"Why can't you just leave me with my feelings - why does everything have to make sense"
It was a very fine line between actually getting her to move in a healthy direction or pushing her to much and she taking it up in a negative way.
She never lashed out at me. She avoided confrontations almost religiously. When I used to play video games and slap my desk lightly after having a frustrating death she would instantly cry, get scared and leave the room. She was hurt this much. So I adapted my behaviour - never trying to hurt her. Also very bad choice.
After some time of talking to her about her transitioning and telling her there might be a point where I will not love her anymore due to her changes, she was devastated.
I called her by her new name, said he instead of she. I did it all to support her, but I never lost myself and the accuracy of science.
Oh, she absolutely hated her real given name and I had to ask for permission to use it. It was complicated when she first visited my parents...
So after these talks she said she wanted to stop the hormone therapy, because she wanted to keep the relationship going and wasn't a big fan of some of her changes.
To me it felt like she took this as something where she had to admit defeat.
After a while I was able to call her she again. She was getting better and the love was strong as ever. Now instead of a male name she used an abbreviation of her first name.
One thing that never stopped was her living in this bubble.
TikTok, Tumblr and Instagram. Truly a horrible combination for mentally ill people. So the arguments never really stopped and it got increasingly more difficult to get through with sense, because she actually started believing what some truly delusional people said in 30 second videos, which somehow coreccted what 20 scientific papers found.
I started getting frustrated. My future life was on the line. I saw little improvements over the months and I wanted to talk to her in a more serious note. What we are and were we are. We were in our mid twenties back then. As a female her thoughts of getting children and settling down were getting stronger and generally she was a very genetically femine person. With a very strong motherly nature and quite typical female hobbies.
And yet her she was completely denying multivariate statistics on
gender studies.
She is hard feminist and I'm a rational thinker. So also a lot of debate happened. I agreed on feminism from the pre cold war. But told her that modern feminism is the absolute worst and is splitting society left and right.
That evening didn't end well that's all I will say.
So after over a year now I couldn't get truly to her anymore. All my attempts trying to help her find counseling failed. She took up all the bubble talks and things worsened after I had a serious message to her about how I view our current relationship.
I told her what I think is necessary for a working relationship or functioning human being (cleaning up, taking care of yourself, learning finances etc.)
It was all just very basic things normally teens will start to get a hold on. And I was very patient with her. I gave her months to make changes or see her trying to improve.
The reaction?
She took it as a personal attack and that I wanted to break up.
This never was said or my intention, in fact I even told her it's not, because I know how her anxiety works.
But the fun part was she didn't act differently and I didn't event know for a couple of weeks that the relationship was over for her. I was still very lovey dovey making plans for valentines.
We didn't see each other for 4 weeks and when we met again, she was the coldest, most distant person ever to me and it broke my heart. How can someone numb themselves this quickly?
She spiraled downwards and hurt herself physically. Consuming social media 24/7, substance abuse and talking with people from the same circle.
We did talk again many weeks later, saying we can work this out if we get help - that she needs help and time. I still loved her - still to this day where I'm writing this comment.
(She hasn't improved.)
Yet somehow, I lost the love of my life (Yes this sounds very weird, but I only put in the bad points of the relationship, legit everything else was like a dream or something you would see in a movie - she was fantastic)
to modern society it feels. I got to know her very deeply and she truly is manipulated by her surroundings and online agenda to a point where she is unable to live a life or even form her own opinion. She is getting offended for everyone and everything
Tries to help everyone else, but herself
She sees no point on herself anymore.
Do I hate the trans community or all the negative social circles?
No I don't.
I truly feel sorry for all these lost souls and wish that they can find themselves and live a happier life.
This modern phenomenon needs to stop and we have to spread awareness before we will lose a generation to something so avoidable.
I just wish I wouldn't have been a part of all this mess. And I somehow feel like a failed man - not being able to save my love.
Sorry for this long post, but I thought you might value anothers person hands on experience. Of course this was by far not all that was to it.
Mar 14, 2022·edited Mar 14, 2022Liked by The 21st Century Salonnière
As the almost-retired elder at my company, the first rule I have taught my "mentees" is: If there is a problem, always first look internally. Assume it's us, not the customer or vendor. Most of the time, the problem (and therefore the solution) is internal. Only look outside if you have already eliminated the internal as the source of the problem.
I think your example of the friend who always thought another city would bring happiness shows the same thing. Almost always, the best place to start solving problems is a look in the mirror. But our society finds that idea to be lacking in sufficient compassion. And then we wonder why problems only get worse....
Hey 21...way late to the party here, but just wanted to say thanks for putting this out there. In all honesty, though I've seen much written on the subject of "trans", this is the first time I've seen a piece such as this. Admittedly, I don't spend a lot of time seeking out information on this subject, but at least I've now seen a cogent and well explained perspective beyond the "automatic affirmation" scenario of which you write, and which indeed seems to be the default position of nearly all of what I have read about this subject. I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that there is a multitude of people out there just like me who've never heard of Detrans Awareness Day and have no idea of the reasons for its existence. So, props for providing me with a new perspective to bring to bear on my thinking about this subject.
Thank you so much for continuing to speak out so eloquently and persuasively on this important issue. I find your argument about happiness set-points particularly convincing because I think we all can relate. Just recently my husband changed jobs because (he thought) his job was making him miserable. He was happy for a couple of weeks, and then was back to being his regular, somewhat unhappy and dissatisfied, self. The old job wasn’t the problem and the new job isn’t the solution. (Although he will point out that at least his new job pays more!) I suspect most of us have examples like this from our own life.
The difference with trans issues for unhappy kids is that the “fix” is not a new job or a new city, which, even if it only makes us happier for a short time, has no lingering side-effects. “Fixing” unhappy kids who think they’re trans requires amputating healthy body parts and a lifetime of drugs. We--not only parents but also doctors--should be very careful before we impose such radical medical procedures on patients, especially when we have no evidence that it will work.
I had a thyroidectomy to treat thyroid cancer several years ago, and now I’m on thyroid pills for life. Thyroid meds are cheap, easily accessible, and are fairly well-tolerated. And even so it is a pain and a worry to be dependent on them. I have to get up an hour early to take my pill so it will be absorbed before I have my morning coffee. At the start of Covid I was worried that there would be supply-chain disruptions and I wouldn’t be able to get my pills. We live close enough to Ukraine that I am again worried about disrupted supply chains. All this is a fair price to pay not to have cancer, but I wouldn’t wish dependence on medication on anyone who is physically healthy. Adults have the perfect right to decide for themselves which medical procedures they will undergo. But with kids?We should think very carefully first.
I really appreciate your use of the word “gender-questioning.” If not for the awful weight given the idea of gender identity now, I honestly think I’d be pleased to see more gender exploration, in adolescents and adults. I remember being a young teenager and *loving* being mistaken for a boy - I’d dress like a boy, teach myself to walk like a boy, and drop my voice in the hope of fooling people. Not because I had any issues whatsoever with my girlhood, aside from the normal swings of early puberty, but because I loved knowing that I had control over other people’s perceptions of me. I got the same thrill taking on a silly nickname (I thought it was cool; I was wrong) and asking my teachers to switch to it - it was a real sense of power when they did.
And no one batted an eye. No one treated any of it as exceptional, aside from my mom finding my baggy clothes a little stupid-looking. I deeply enjoyed looking like a boy when I chose for a couple years, and then I grew out of it. I look back on that time fondly, and see no reason any kid shouldn’t get to experiment and play that way, without having to *become* something.
I think kids do better when they learn early on that there is flexibility available to them. I think gender presentation is a rich area for testing the limits of that flexibility. I think the affirmative model takes the fun of that kind of identity formation away from them.
I promise I will post again, I have some stuff in the works. When I do, I have a post in mind that will run with a title like "Work Sucks For Everyone." The idea is so many complains I see about work are funneled through other causes: mental health, gender, race, "hustle culture", bad bosses, etc etc. But work just sucks! And I'm not even saying "capitalism sucks." Look at Star Trek, they have tons of crappy jobs too
It's an issue where we've denied all sense of universality, so everything has to be funneled through one of the corporate-approved identity boxes. You can't just be an outsider, down on your luck, etc for normal human reasons. It has to be funneled through some (usually identity based) issue. For many teens, that's trans issues. Your life can't just suck for the normal reasons that human existence sucks. It has to suck for one of the acceptable reasons.
I felt this way about the Simone Biles topic, where it seemed more like a "gymnastics is dangerous an abusive" issue than a "this one person had mental health problems" issue
You've again poured out many of the thoughts swirling in my head - except you've imposed considerable order on the swirl. This is such a complex set of issues that it's really hard to think through them.
Having paid my respects to complexity, I want to focus in on one facet - what I'm increasingly seeing as the fulcrum of the blind-affirmation model when it comes to transition in young people: the suicide threat.
Why are so many liberals unable to see that thousands of kids are being harmed? They've bought the line that it's transition - stat! - or watch these kids die. And what kind of monster would take that chance? Now, I think we may be starting to see some cracks in the suicide-threat edifice; I've been closely watching the comments sections of WaPo and NYT, and increasingly self-identified liberals are starting to question why we're seeing such a massive wave of gender-dysphoric youth. Still, the threat of dead children shuts down critical thinking like nothing else. (As a mother of two young adults who's dealt with serious mental illness in my family, I get that.)
The suicide threat is also the strongest factor (imo) pushing otherwise-skeptical parents into line. Those parents either end up affirming, or they enter a desperate period of seeking help from professionals and institutions that are almost unanimously affirming the child's demand for immediate social transition and blockers or hormones. I've heard too many stories of therapists who - sometimes on a first visit, sometimes in front of both parent and child - will state out loud that it's better to have a trans child than a dead one. The skeptics are up against a system that will hide the child's trans identification because - sing it again! - that child is otherwise likely to end up dead. And if the child says their skeptical parents are transphobic (as every YouTube trans guy has proclaimed), all the more reason to worry about that child imminently trying to end their life.
Of course, the adolescents who've been coached through social media know that threatening suicide is their most potent weapon in getting their parents to comply. There's a fascinating moment in a talk given by Jack Halberstam where they say that *of course* children know that suicide threats will get them what they want. (Halberstam gained academic fame with the book Female Masculinity and subsequently adopted a trans self-definition in midlife after living for most of their life as a butch lesbian.) Halberstam is a more nuanced thinker than many who write about trans issues. In their 2018 book Trans*, Halberstam even raised questions about prematurely stabilizing and reifying a fixed identity in gender-nonconforming kids. But in this talk, Halberstam treats the suicide threats as an example of trans ingenuity, getting desires/needs met in a world hostile to trans people. My takeaway: some people within the trans community understand that the suicide threat is greatly inflated but choose to wink, nod, and look away.
This *is* a population with tons of mental health troubles, and I have no doubt that these kids are more likely to engage in suicidal ideation than kids without a trans identification. Whether their rates of ideation, attempts, and completed suicide outstrip those of other youth with similar levels of mental health problems is an open question. Jack T*rban has so dominated the "research" in this area that we won't get real research-based answered anytime soon. I've rarely seen such openly ideological, methodologically shoddy quantitative "research." Yet he's become the go-to guy when mainstream reporters want a source on youth transition and mental health.
As an aside, the "epidemic of trans murders" serves as a similar fulcrum for adult transitioners when it comes to shutting down dissent. (Why try to resolve conflicting rights when you can just accuse the TERFs of literally killing trans women?)
But back to the children and young adults. I think the only way to move toward the kind of long-term exploratory therapy these young folks need is to debunk the suicide threat. One path in that direction is to point out that any child who's suicidal *needs* wraparound psychological services and thorough psychotherapy before making any lifelong decisions. That child is far from competent to consent! You made this argument very cogently in this essay, Salonniere. But we also urgently need real research driven by methodological rigor and the sort of compassion that seeks truth, not clicks.
I'm very curious if others have ideas about how to address the suicide threat. I, too, was present at the detrans forum on Saturday and my heart just hurts. Of course there's so much more that needs attention, from the overall mental health crisis in Gen Z to the influence of online communities and on and on. But the path to more reasoned discussion will be blocked unless we can get beyond the belief that it's transition-or-die.
What a well written article and sadly true to the core.
On a more personal note.
I've had an apprenticeship at a place for people who've been out of work for a many years and weirdly mentally ill folks too (Talking about everything from depression to aspergers). My fear was getting a downward spiral due to this negative environment - legit nobody was a "normally" functioning human being in society, when in fact I wanted to turn my life around after spending 3 years before that working through all my childhood traumas and my frail mind.
The number of trans people was incredibly high and the people would give themselves some kind of positive feedback loops and many more would join in or at least dye their hair, color nails, march/protest for lgbtq right and the like. It really is a mass soziogenic psychosis. Living in a complete bubble. And funnily everyone had access to free mental health counseling as this part of the area we folks lived and included in the apprenticeship.
Did it help? Well let's just say even the health professionals were very much in support of these drastic measures and the only one warning people of the consequences got fired by higher ups, while under tears from all the bashful comments. It was tragic to say the least.
Anyways, I fell in love with this incredibly kind and stunning girl. Knowing very well what tail of problems could be attached to her.
We talked, spend time together and the feelings became stronger, but then one day she told me "well anyways in 2 weeks I'll get my first hormone shots - I'm so excited and everyone is cheering me on"
This was a soul crushing, fear inducing some kind of worst case scenario.
Oh yeah, did I mention she had a relationship with someone from the trans community overseas, while we were starting to get together? And before that one bad relationship after another mostly with people from this community? (what a coincidence)
It was all kind of confusing, yet here I was applying everything I learned the past years and being a "better" person and supporting the "people in need" .
She wrote the person one message - they both agreed.
Now I was in a relationship with this person I was very much in love with, but still fully aware of how crazy this all is. I knew from day one, that she was heavily influenced by her bubble always getting feedback loops from the same people, same ideas, same mental illnesses etc.
One term I truly started to hate was "Oh that's so relatable - haha so funny".
It's not funny nor is it a laughing matter. I realize it's coping etc. and sometimes dark humour is helpful, but getting bombarded 24/7 with basically "you are a piece of s*it* and agreeing isn't going to help.
She loved me head over heels and I was getting what I sought for all my life and indulged in it - all of it. Too much - too soon, probably.
Now she had all the problems you listed a young person might experience in your article and on top of that sexual trauma, ptsd and which sadly she didn't get diagnosing for some kind of autism or ocd, but it wasn't the kind, which is a huge burden even on other people.
Getting back to the trans topic.
She was all aboard it, until the first "negative" side effects started. She started growing hair all over her body, the clitoris changed (a very unique experience not only for her), voice, skin etc. you know it.
She was very very upset by some of these changes and I seriously started to question her decision making. Did she truly think this through? What was she expecting? Hormones to get rid of her problems? It's exactly how you described it and of course it is. Any person, who can approach this topic rationally and neutral should come to this conclusion, but she couldn't.
Well how could she? Her last 20 years were a huge mess. She was getting influenced all day and wasn't able to grow on her own.
Even her sister, which she sees as her mother since her real mom left, was transitioning multiple times. Her sister too has very severe mental issues (borderline, ptsd etc.)
And it broke my heart seeing that everyone in her life has a hugely negative impact on her and she can't see it, because it's all she knows and loves.
This is when I decided, I need to help and not only support her. Very bad move for a relationship, but how was I supposed to know. It was a first for me too.
I started to give her little pushes in the other direction, tell her how things really are. Use a lot of calm and rational approaches.
This often offended her, because she was a person living almost only by her emotional thoughts and not by what makes sense and helps the most.
"Why can't you just leave me with my feelings - why does everything have to make sense"
It was a very fine line between actually getting her to move in a healthy direction or pushing her to much and she taking it up in a negative way.
She never lashed out at me. She avoided confrontations almost religiously. When I used to play video games and slap my desk lightly after having a frustrating death she would instantly cry, get scared and leave the room. She was hurt this much. So I adapted my behaviour - never trying to hurt her. Also very bad choice.
After some time of talking to her about her transitioning and telling her there might be a point where I will not love her anymore due to her changes, she was devastated.
I called her by her new name, said he instead of she. I did it all to support her, but I never lost myself and the accuracy of science.
Oh, she absolutely hated her real given name and I had to ask for permission to use it. It was complicated when she first visited my parents...
So after these talks she said she wanted to stop the hormone therapy, because she wanted to keep the relationship going and wasn't a big fan of some of her changes.
To me it felt like she took this as something where she had to admit defeat.
After a while I was able to call her she again. She was getting better and the love was strong as ever. Now instead of a male name she used an abbreviation of her first name.
One thing that never stopped was her living in this bubble.
TikTok, Tumblr and Instagram. Truly a horrible combination for mentally ill people. So the arguments never really stopped and it got increasingly more difficult to get through with sense, because she actually started believing what some truly delusional people said in 30 second videos, which somehow coreccted what 20 scientific papers found.
I started getting frustrated. My future life was on the line. I saw little improvements over the months and I wanted to talk to her in a more serious note. What we are and were we are. We were in our mid twenties back then. As a female her thoughts of getting children and settling down were getting stronger and generally she was a very genetically femine person. With a very strong motherly nature and quite typical female hobbies.
And yet her she was completely denying multivariate statistics on
gender studies.
She is hard feminist and I'm a rational thinker. So also a lot of debate happened. I agreed on feminism from the pre cold war. But told her that modern feminism is the absolute worst and is splitting society left and right.
That evening didn't end well that's all I will say.
So after over a year now I couldn't get truly to her anymore. All my attempts trying to help her find counseling failed. She took up all the bubble talks and things worsened after I had a serious message to her about how I view our current relationship.
I told her what I think is necessary for a working relationship or functioning human being (cleaning up, taking care of yourself, learning finances etc.)
It was all just very basic things normally teens will start to get a hold on. And I was very patient with her. I gave her months to make changes or see her trying to improve.
The reaction?
She took it as a personal attack and that I wanted to break up.
This never was said or my intention, in fact I even told her it's not, because I know how her anxiety works.
But the fun part was she didn't act differently and I didn't event know for a couple of weeks that the relationship was over for her. I was still very lovey dovey making plans for valentines.
We didn't see each other for 4 weeks and when we met again, she was the coldest, most distant person ever to me and it broke my heart. How can someone numb themselves this quickly?
She spiraled downwards and hurt herself physically. Consuming social media 24/7, substance abuse and talking with people from the same circle.
We did talk again many weeks later, saying we can work this out if we get help - that she needs help and time. I still loved her - still to this day where I'm writing this comment.
(She hasn't improved.)
Yet somehow, I lost the love of my life (Yes this sounds very weird, but I only put in the bad points of the relationship, legit everything else was like a dream or something you would see in a movie - she was fantastic)
to modern society it feels. I got to know her very deeply and she truly is manipulated by her surroundings and online agenda to a point where she is unable to live a life or even form her own opinion. She is getting offended for everyone and everything
Tries to help everyone else, but herself
She sees no point on herself anymore.
Do I hate the trans community or all the negative social circles?
No I don't.
I truly feel sorry for all these lost souls and wish that they can find themselves and live a happier life.
This modern phenomenon needs to stop and we have to spread awareness before we will lose a generation to something so avoidable.
I just wish I wouldn't have been a part of all this mess. And I somehow feel like a failed man - not being able to save my love.
Sorry for this long post, but I thought you might value anothers person hands on experience. Of course this was by far not all that was to it.
As the almost-retired elder at my company, the first rule I have taught my "mentees" is: If there is a problem, always first look internally. Assume it's us, not the customer or vendor. Most of the time, the problem (and therefore the solution) is internal. Only look outside if you have already eliminated the internal as the source of the problem.
I think your example of the friend who always thought another city would bring happiness shows the same thing. Almost always, the best place to start solving problems is a look in the mirror. But our society finds that idea to be lacking in sufficient compassion. And then we wonder why problems only get worse....
Hey 21...way late to the party here, but just wanted to say thanks for putting this out there. In all honesty, though I've seen much written on the subject of "trans", this is the first time I've seen a piece such as this. Admittedly, I don't spend a lot of time seeking out information on this subject, but at least I've now seen a cogent and well explained perspective beyond the "automatic affirmation" scenario of which you write, and which indeed seems to be the default position of nearly all of what I have read about this subject. I'd say it's a pretty safe bet that there is a multitude of people out there just like me who've never heard of Detrans Awareness Day and have no idea of the reasons for its existence. So, props for providing me with a new perspective to bring to bear on my thinking about this subject.
Thank you so much for continuing to speak out so eloquently and persuasively on this important issue. I find your argument about happiness set-points particularly convincing because I think we all can relate. Just recently my husband changed jobs because (he thought) his job was making him miserable. He was happy for a couple of weeks, and then was back to being his regular, somewhat unhappy and dissatisfied, self. The old job wasn’t the problem and the new job isn’t the solution. (Although he will point out that at least his new job pays more!) I suspect most of us have examples like this from our own life.
The difference with trans issues for unhappy kids is that the “fix” is not a new job or a new city, which, even if it only makes us happier for a short time, has no lingering side-effects. “Fixing” unhappy kids who think they’re trans requires amputating healthy body parts and a lifetime of drugs. We--not only parents but also doctors--should be very careful before we impose such radical medical procedures on patients, especially when we have no evidence that it will work.
I had a thyroidectomy to treat thyroid cancer several years ago, and now I’m on thyroid pills for life. Thyroid meds are cheap, easily accessible, and are fairly well-tolerated. And even so it is a pain and a worry to be dependent on them. I have to get up an hour early to take my pill so it will be absorbed before I have my morning coffee. At the start of Covid I was worried that there would be supply-chain disruptions and I wouldn’t be able to get my pills. We live close enough to Ukraine that I am again worried about disrupted supply chains. All this is a fair price to pay not to have cancer, but I wouldn’t wish dependence on medication on anyone who is physically healthy. Adults have the perfect right to decide for themselves which medical procedures they will undergo. But with kids?We should think very carefully first.
Beware simple solutions to complex problems. Perfect description of what has gone wrong in our society.
Now apply that to other problems. First up- to cure poverty, blame it all on racism and give people money.