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My dear, sweet, son, I’ve got to break it to you: you’re not trans, you’re just weird.
This seems like a cruel thing to point out right now. Clearly, you are struggling and feeling pretty awful about things. I can see that you are in a rough patch, and one of the first rules of parenting is to not pile on. The world is pretty heavy on your shoulders. You’re fifteen. There’s a pandemic going on. But here I come anyway. I’m about to throw more on you.
When you were two – a happy, chubby, little tyke in pull-ups, you watched the world with wary eyes behind the thumb in your mouth. You leapt with joy in the rhythm of the toddle music classes. You chattered and shared stories about your stuffed animals. You loved your little sister. Enjoyed cookies and finger painting. That was all pretty normal.
But you also started to count to one thousand on our walks. And you started to call out the store names as we drove around. And you preferred reading books rather than playing with the other two-year-olds at preschool. And you hated sitting in the circle when instructed. And you hated the feel of blue jeans. And you threw big tantrums when you lost any kind of game. In other words, you started to show signs that you were… weird.
The grandparents were the first to notice. They said gentle things like “You oughta keep an eye on that one,” and sent us links to Wall Street Journal articles about child prodigies. And then the other parents in the play groups started to comment; “He’s pretty intense, huh?” And the teachers were on to it pretty quickly. They started to use fancy terms like “asynchronous development.”
By third grade, we realized you were different, but we still didn’t realize you were weird. Truthfully, we’re used to people like you. Our family is full of engineers, artists, musicians, computer programmers, and a lot of “free-thinkers.” Family gatherings always have chess, political debates, and quartets around the piano. That’s just us.
And besides, you had a small but solid group of friends. There was Pokémon, then Minecraft, then Magic, then Dungeons and Dragons, then Catan. You were never in the center of things, but you weren’t alone.
But then, in middle school, things started to change. By 7th grade, school finally started to require some effort, and it turned out you were pretty disorganized. People kept calling you smart, but the teachers were annoyed at your humor, and frustrated that you wouldn’t or couldn’t follow the guidelines for assignments. Classmates didn’t appreciate your frank (if accurate) descriptions of their efforts. I’ll admit, we got pretty frustrated with you, too.
And then puberty arrived, with its triple curse of acne, braces, and bizarre growth. The girls appeared to have it all together (I know they don’t, but they do appear that way). And the popular boys seemed to know exactly what to do. They can talk sports to each other, they brag about their romantic exploits. They never get in trouble for stupid reasons like forgetting an assignment three times in a row. Your anxiety started to kick in, and it seemed like you got smaller. And some of your guy friends moved on.
So you drifted over to the weird-o crowd. Well — I’m not sure what you call yourselves, but that’s what we would have called you back when I was in school. At different schools these are the geeks, or the theater kids, the math team kids, or the artsy-fartsy kids. This used to be where the gay kids ended up, but I think they’re more dispersed now. You get some kids whose parents are going through some rough times. Some girls with anorexia. A few boys who are edgy and angry. Kids with a great sense of humor and big hearts.
And some of these kids are really passionate. Just full of righteous anger about the injustices of the world. And some of them are dramatic. And truthfully, that looks pretty attractive to you. Because you share some of that confusion and anger about the world. And though you may not be sure what you think or what you feel, you are certain you don’t want to be on the bad side. You certainly aren’t like those popular boys with their suave charm and dominating manners. You’re not like them at all.
You’re actually more like those vibrant girls who can speak for hours about their ideas. Well, you would be if you could find the words to speak. And there is something so fascinating about those girls, but you can’t quite put your finger on it. You’d never think about talking to those girls anyway, because that’d be weird. Because you are weird. You’ve never been good at chit-chat, or eye contact. Or girls. And besides, you wouldn’t want them to get the wrong impression. You understand that your peers are starting to date, but you really don’t see the point. Sex is still gross and weird to you. It’s better to just call yourself “asexual” or “pansexual.” It’s like a get-out-of-jail-free card that helps you avoid the whole mess. And your group of friends tell you that you are super cool and brave for being able to say that about yourself.
But you’ve fallen into a funk. Anyone can see that. But computer games help. And there’s always trying to beat the speed record for that one game you’re kinda good at. And that one guy on reddit always has good tricks. And the people on that message board seem to get your humor.
So when one of them posts a meme about trans rights, it makes sense that you’d check it out. You’re curious! You’re a free thinker! You’re not like the normies. And the web quiz hits home. You do feel discomfort with your body. You don’t like sports. You do wonder what it would be like to be a girl. You’ve always felt like something was different about you.
You’re right. There is something different about you.
But you’re not trans, you’re just weird.
So we’re right here for you. We’ll always be here for you. But those online folks who urge you to “crack your trans egg” and rush to hormones and surgeries don’t know you at all. They don’t know that gifted kids and ADHD kids and Autism kids and Asperger’s kids are slower to develop emotionally and sexually. They don’t know that sexuality takes time and experience to figure out, and that the majority of trans teens seeking medical treatment haven’t even masturbated or kissed someone yet. They don’t know that 80% of trans children end up becoming comfortable with their birth sex if you just give them time. They don’t know that there are increasing numbers of desisting and de-transitioning people in their twenties. They don’t realize that hormones permanently stunt your growth, decrease your IQ, and can cause sterility. They don’t know that these hormones are prescribed off-label and there’s no research on the long-term outcomes. They don’t even know that the most recent research shows that short-term outcomes are clearly worse.
They don’t realize that you’re weird. But I do. You’re weird, kiddo. You’ll figure that out in a year or two. But that’s okay. We are all weird. And I love you anyway. You’re going to be just fine.
Editors note: This article was first published at the online forum Medium, where it survived for mere hours before trans rights crusaders branded it ‘hate speech’ and had it impaled on the cancel spike. It is reproduced here for two reasons: one, it makes good, old-fashioned sense and, two, the correct response to the censoring of free speech is to defy it.
Congratulations to QoL for cancelling the Cancellers.
The English used to call it ‘eccentric’, not weird.
In my own case I was always an outsider because I did not want to smoke, play soccer and endlessly talk crap under a streetlight. Instead I cycled hundreds of miles from home (at 13), played Badminton & Chess well enough to win championships, studied palaeontology, astronomy and geology for fun. Read a 12 volume encyclopaedia by the age of 14 and was able to hold my own by beating the crap out of those who said I was weird.
These days I would have been known as an Alpha Male with an attitude problem …
Sounds like good parenting to me!
Remember, the poison of self-righteousness can bring evil in its train, and the self-righteousness of woke NPCs is out of control.
Brilliant! Maybe there should be a separate segment of QoL where cancelled pieces of quality are reproduced. Imagine when we thought banning Lady’s Chatterley’s Lover was the product of a censorial age. As nothing compared with now.
I’m continually astonished that people who are too young to: have sex, get married, sign contracts, drive motor vehicles, drink alcohol, or avoid going to school, are old enough to proclaim they are not of the sex they are but a different one and have the indisputable right to drugs and surgery to effect a cosmetic change in order to look like another sex ( even at risk to their lives and in the knowledge that they will still look as they did before because they really haven changed). Is it not time to criminalise adults who tout this perversion of children’s rights?
I emailed it to my GP (we regularly send each other relevant articles).
.
His response: WONDERFULLY PUT!!
I hope Donna and her son aren’t residents of Victoria as, since the enactment of the Change and Suppression (Conversion) Practices Prohibition Act, such sentiments as expressed above may draw the attention of the deeply corrupt Victorian legal system. If the sponsors of Lawyer X can handcuff and arrest pregnant Zoe-Lee Buhler for a Facebook post Chairman Dan didn’t like, I hate to think what might happen to anyone challenging Trans Wokedom.
The Victorian Government’s Factsheet about the new legislation makes interesting reading, if you enjoy Leftwing propaganda. You certainly won’t find information such as “They don’t know that 80% of trans children end up becoming comfortable with their birth sex if you just give them time. They don’t know that there are increasing numbers of desisting and de-transitioning people in their twenties. They don’t realize that hormones permanently stunt your growth, decrease your IQ, and can cause sterility. They don’t know that these hormones are prescribed off-label and there’s no research on the long-term outcomes.” I wonder why those facts aren’t mentioned.
I am very thankful that I have no family in Victoria and I sympathise deeply with those who have young children in the Victorian education system. I would recommend that anyone who has the resources join the many that have decided to relocate, not to escape the new legislation as that will soon be illegal, but rather to escape the Cultural Leninism that Dan and his cronies are progressively implementing.
This brilliant article is why I spend some of my hard earned money on Quadrant.
One of the worrying things about the current craze of ‘sexual identity’ (I know its called ‘gender’ but that word is inapplicable to humans, pace John Money) is that it does not permit young people to be who they are, without forcing them into a label that is at best a tendentious socio-political ploy and at worst damagingly wrong. I had a friend in primary school who loved to make cakes (he was a boy). That was what mothers did, but no one commented adversely or tried to tell him he was the wrong sex. No, we just enjoyed his cakes. He later manufactured professional amplifiers for pop bands and ran a security company!
The thing is, the cool crowd wants to put kids into a box of their grown-up fantasizing without letting young people find themselves or their course in life. They cram them into someone else’s course and thereby both abuse them and deny their humanity. It’s got to stop.
Congratulations to Roger Franklin for publishing this brilliant article which could only be written by a mother with first hand information. Alfred North Whitehead considered the ‘secondhandedness’ of their information as being the reason for ‘the mediocrity of the learned world’.
good stuff
Yes, my gratitude and respect to QoL/Roger Franklin for publishing this.
Question:
Who knows how to halt the gender-switch idiocy?
And:
Who knows how to save us from the Left’s control of information, concepts, history, and our future?
Seems to me there are a few things going on here in that there is what people say – their espoused values via virtue signalling etc. – as against the ‘secret court’ of each individual’s heart, which is either at peace or in a state of enmity with God. The broad brush attack on a group – eg. ‘the Left’ – is one thing. But Jesus treats everyone as an individual made in God’s image (Gen. 1:27). It’s always going to be at the level of the individual where what really matters in life – rejection or love of God – really counts, no matter how much we seem to need to belong to a group or a club or a movement. Whatever else is true on this side of Heaven, no matter how loud or obnoxious a few individuals may get, no matter how fanciful allegations get, no matter how fake the “news” gets, no matter how narrow-minded and powerful the big tech internet moguls get, no matter how ‘empowered’ people think they are, when they are just frightened, and yearning for some – any – kind of meaning, God will have the last word. The real question is whether all who oppose God, and call God a liar, when He says that He made all humankind gendered (Gen. 1:27), are prepared to stake all eternity on how they live out “their truth” in this life now. These are hard truths perhaps. But if we doubt what our manufacturer has said about us, we join in a chorus asking the same question as the serpent: “Did God really say…? (Gen. 3:1). Those who reject God’s word now are, of course, free to do so. There will be many. But, as with so many freedoms, the ‘enjoyment’ of that particular one comes with damnation thrown in!
Autism, Aspberger’s and related aspects of the autism spectrum, including Attention Deficit Disorder, can cause havoc in a family. Thank goodness to see this woman’s sensible response to her son to help him understand himself. And thank goodness to she is able to point how how susceptible those who have this form of difference to the normal may be drawn into the hideous web of transgenderism in their search for their explanations of self. In Victoria, of course, this mother would be at risk of having her son removed from her care for failing to assist him his to realise physically his fantasies about ‘regendering’ himself.