Gender Transitioning and the Agony of Parents – Part 2

on March 3, 2023

An earlier article highlighted two parental accounts of the horror and helplessness of parents watching the “gender transitioning” of their children against parental advice, aided and abetted by school officials, professional counselors, and family and friends. A third and final parent in the documentary here reviewed, “Dead Name,” struggled unsuccessfully with his son, who began “transitioning” seemingly in response to a new and severe medical problem, several earlier medical problems, and the loss of his mother. The effort ended with his death, possibly as a result of the attempt to physically change to the opposite sex.

A Tragic Life Ended in Delusion

The third parent, Bill, said that his son, who had many medical problems (including the loss of a leg and cancer) told his father in February 2019 that he was transgender. Bill asked his son, Sean, to “send me the information, and then we can talk about it later.” Then Bill went into “deep research” to try to “get as much information as possible” about transgenderism.

Sean had had many physical problems. When he was 2½ years old, his parents noticed that his left cheek was twice the size of his right cheek. It was determined to be a rare form of cancer. His leg was removed as a result. Three years later, it was discovered that he had a type of leukemia. This resulted in a bone marrow transplant. In Sean’s childhood, there was no indication of gender dysphoria. He played dodge ball and hockey. His goal was to go to the Rochester Institute of Technology and develop an artificial leg that would take commands from the brain.

Bill said that Sean likely had less social interaction after his mother died. While at RIT, it was discovered that he had stage 4 colon cancer. Then Sean decided that he was transgender, and was “determined to get hormones and become a girl as quick as possible.” Bill believes that Sean “just fell into the wrong crowd.” Sean intended “to live with three girls.” Bill said he later discovered that all of the girls “were involved heavily into the trans thing.” In a recording of Sean’s voice, he said he had been doubting his sexuality since late high school, but didn’t know what to call what he felt. Bill said that people at RIT convinced Sean that he was depressed and unhappy because he was in the wrong body. In anything other than transgenderism, Bill said, what personnel at RIT were suggesting “would be criminal.” But with the “affirmative model” of transgenderism, Bill as the parent was regarded as the criminal.

Bill said that Sean tried to get cross-sex hormones from an endocrinologist. The endocrinologist at RIT refused to prescribe the hormones, because he believed that they would be fatal for Sean. Bill and his son then met with a psychiatrist, with Bill expecting to explain that Sean had had many traumatic events in his life, both the medical crises and the loss of his mother, and that had to be a major factor in Sean wanting hormones. But the psychiatrist told Bill that he was a “unsupportive and abusive father.”  Bill said at that point felt like he was “on an island,” unable to help his son when he desperately needed help. He said that he believes that “the professionals’ hands are being tied” by the current “affirmative model.”

Bill wondered how the “affirmative model” ever got accepted. (The answer of course is that an ideology was imposed in the name of enlightenment and compassion). Bill met with his congresswoman, who told him that transgenderism was no different than her own child getting a tattoo. His local state legislators also didn’t care. His relatives have refused to have anything to do with him in the last year and a half. Sean continued to push for hormones, and “really believed he was going to be a girl.” Bill remained convinced that the endocrinologist Sean originally saw was correct that female hormones would be fatal for Sean, and his relatives were pushing an extremely harmful remedy for Sean’s distress.

During the time of his son’s campaign to get cross-sex hormones, the police came to Bill’s home and notified him that Sean had died. Bill said that there was nothing in Sean’s most recent medical report to indicate that death was imminent, and that the coroner’s report said that death resulted from cancer. But it also said that he had experienced a weight gain of about eight pounds, whereas a cancer patient should experience a weight loss. Bill believes that cross-sex hormones caused the weight gain and at least contributed to his son’s death. The “feminine look on his face” Bill noticed when viewing his body seemed to confirm this.

Social media comments to a videorecording of Sean’s funeral complained about the use of Sean’s “dead name” (i.e., Sean). This was held to be deeply offensive and cruel. Bill at the time did not know what a “dead name” was. It is, of course, the ideology of self-determination which is cruel and aggressive. The cruelty at the end of Sean’s life was giving him opposite-sex hormones (if in fact that truly happened) which the endocrinologist had determined might be fatal, and in the support given to his delusion that he was something that he was not and never could be (a girl). Additionally, Bill’s siblings no longer speak to him.

Informed Opinion

Credentialed and informed voices do speak against the gender transitioning of minors, but they face a powerful counternarrative that dominates much of the American establishment. Stephen Levine, a psychiatrist critical of the gender transitioning of minors spoke after the three parents to say that the anguish of parents is “not just a onetime anguish that is settled by kind words from the doctor. It’s an ongoing continuing anguish. Many of the parents … have gone into therapy … have become depressed and anxious, can’t sleep, and so forth. And they don’t know what to do …  For every parent who gets involved wisely with other parents they’re probably more parents who just deal with this by themselves, in shame and in horror and in sadness.”

Brandon Showalter of the Christian Post, who has reported widely on the depredations of transgenderism, then appeared to say that “what I would see consistently is that this ideology ruined everything it touches. And that the heartbreak and the devastation of parents and families was just staggering. And the desperation as this really escalated in culture just skyrocketed … Their children – they love them so much – and to see them, to be forced to watch the slow motion dissociation and disintegration – chemical disintegration sometimes – of their own children was just like living in a horror movie, and that has only increased through the years. That has just gotten worse.”

To the testimonies in the documentary, it’s worth adding the perspective of a health professional who was very much involved in transitioning minors, and very much outside the social conservative world. Her voice has recently gained attention. Jamie Reed, a case manager for four years at the Washington University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital wrote for the Free Press a lengthy article on her experiences there, and the uncritical acceptance of the affirming model of dealing with gender dysphoria despite negative outcomes. Her initial assumption that the expertise of the doctors and therapists there guaranteed that the affirming model they believed in was evidence-based and superior was undermined by her experiences there. She left in November 2022 “because I could no longer participate in what was happening.”

Reed, herself a leftist and “queer woman,” related the “working assumption” of the center that a child’s or adolescent’s testimony of transgenderism meant that early intervention to stop sexual development and redirect it as far as possible to the opposite sex would prevent “anguish … later on.” She noted the obvious problem that this has “life-altering consequences – including sterility.” Her observations at the center indicated to her that adolescents do not understand the seriousness of these life consequences, even when they are told.

Read recounted that until about 2015 (when, it should be noted, public attention after the Obergefell decision shifted from homosexuality to transgenderism) the few patients seen were often young boys believing that they were really girls. Then the case load exploded with adolescent girls wanting to “transition” and become a male. She noted that this included “sometimes clusters of girls from the same high school.” Noted as well were the many co-mobilities: “depression, anxiety, ADHD, eating disorders, obesity … autism, or had autism-like symptoms.” But against her expressed opinion that the explosion of minors at the center manifested “social contagion,” doctors there insisted that “gender identity reflected something innate.”  

Since the center was committed to “transitioning” young people on their own testimonies, the only restraint was near the beginning of the process, when consent of a psychotherapist was necessary to obtain cross-sex hormones. This was easily obtained from therapists recommended by the center, which also gave the therapists “a template” from which to write their letters of consent.

Reed disputed the claim that transitioning a child or adolescent claiming opposite sex identity relieves psychological distress, citing cases where she observed very negative outcomes, and a current New England Journal of Medicine article denying the benefit of cross-sex hormones. Such physical horrors as vaginal bleeding (due to tearing thinning vaginal walls resulting from testosterone followed by sexual intercourse) to liver toxicity on taking a puberty blocker, to discomfort from genital deformation as transitioning proceeded were reported.

Finally, the heartbreaking case of a girl who “de-transitioned” after a double mastectomy was reported. The girl wanted her breasts back, and later became pregnant, but as Reed observed, she will never be able to breastfeed her child. Despite Reed’s progressivism, she has written a letter of complaint to the Republican Attorney General of Missouri, requesting an investigation.

Conclusion

The documentary concluded with short clips from a variety of parents whose children have engaged in “gender transitioning.” One noted that for any other crisis (such as involvement with drugs or prostitution) professional help and social support is available. With transgenderism, professional counselors are likely to only aid and abet the problem. The parents interviewed seemed to live in a liberal/left milieu and could not get support or even suffered alienation from family and friends. Although there are parental support groups who do not favor transgenderism, many parents whose children claim a transgender identity are alone.

Another parent said that she knows her child better than anyone else, including professional counselors. Why is their knowledge better than that of a parent, who knows and loves that particular child intimately? The answer, of course, is that professionals claim scientific knowledge, when in fact they only possess background in a new and drastic experiment on human beings. But this shows what gender transitioning is, a way of the state taking control of children from parents, and moving against religious education that activists who influence the state don’t like.

The passion of the 1960s “I’m entitled to what I want, regardless of traditional religious and social authorities” has truly triumphed in gender transitioning. Like the larger phenomenon of transgenderism, gender transitioning is an act of making reality conform to sheer will. It is thus inherently violent, claiming victimhood while actually destroying bodies, personal futures, and social relations.

What is clear from these stories is the subversion of medical establishment by gender ideology. It advances on the claim that the delusion of belonging to the opposite sex is an oppressed status, and that the trauma of believing oneself to be a member of the opposite sex is injustice. This leads naturally to the “affirming” model of transgender therapy, with the destruction of one’s sex now a form of “health care” (“gender affirming health care”), just as abortion is held to be a necessary part of “reproductive health,” or “reproductive justice.” This perversion of language, advanced by hitherto professional and respected bodies (such as the Associated Press reporting on gender ideology and abortion) makes rational opposition from science and common sense, or more value charged opposition from religious belief and family ties very difficult, since these reasons stand in the way of liberation. Gender ideology also advances through intimidation, by casting as an oppressor anybody who insists on biology and common sense, which everyone must finally live by (and ought to accept).

It is our duty as Christians to declare the whole counsel of God, exhorting to obedience, indicating how the world we live in agrees with obedience to him, helping those who have been hurt by sin and the insanity it leads to, and praying that God’s will would be done on earth. In today’s environment, we will be accused of being “culture warriors,” but of course the culture war is being waged by the cultural revolutionaries of the Left, who are at war with reality. In all our efforts, we must finally trust God, knowing that he will prevail in the end.

No comments yet

The work of IRD is made possible by your generous contributions.

Receive expert analysis in your inbox.