My daughter informed me that any of my memories that contained her, including the ones from before she was forming memories, were entirely hers and not mine because they were part of her life, not mine.
Maybe that was when I knew deep down that we had lost forever even though I keep fighting for our relationship for another three years before she left us saying she would never speak to us again (after we took her out for dinner and to a show thank you very much) and we were not allowed to ask questions and there would be no discussion.
Parents are NPCs in this terminally online group of kids. We have no lives of our own. No feelings and no rights to feelings. Imagine if I told her that no memory of hers involving me was hers because it was part of my life?
Do you think she would call me an immature narcissist?
I am so sorry. Do your memories of pregnancy and giving birth, of hundreds of diaper changes, the nights of no sleep, the worry the first time she ran a fever, and every time she was sick after that, memories of the visceral pain you felt every time you knew she was in pain, of cleaning out the car seat after a diaper blow out or puking, of remembering to be the Tooth Fairy before going to sleep, belong to her too? What she said goes beyond immature narcissism. The social conditioning TRAs do to young people creates a level of what I can only describe as psychopathy, that a trans identifying person has the right and the power to control the minds and memories of their families and everyone else, rewriting history, silencing or eliminating anyone who won't go along with the revisions.
I'm going to turn into a Star Wars geek, but throughout the series Andor, the speeches and manifestos against the Empire resonated with me more and more as statements against TRAs and the compelled acceptance of gender ideology.
These lines from Nemik's manifesto from the first season have stayed with me, and I hear them in my mind every time I see TRAs silence and attack women and parents who reject gender ideology: "The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear."
The need for TRAs to control everything, from "no debate" to forced acceptance of the revision of their personal history and of historical figures like Louisa Mae Alcott and Joan of Arc, the intentional, calculated destruction of anyone who will not capitulate and go along, professionally, socially, personally, it is so desperate because what they want is so unnatural. It requires constant effort because people know what we're told we must accept about gender identity is not true and only fear can keep us from saying it.
When Mon Mothma gave her speech in the Senate against the Empire, all I could think about was the tyranny of the TRAs: "I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said today and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest."
We are being forced to say and accept things like TWAW despite knowing it is not true. We are being forced to deny the objective reality of sex. Parents are being forced to deny the life their family had, its very existence, before a child transitioned. We have become vulnerable to the monsters that scream the loudest about being entitled to access to places where women are most at risk, to lock women up with male sex offenders, to allow women to be hurt by men in the boxing ring and rugby pitch, to allow our daughters to go into locker rooms to change with naked men, to bully lesbians and gay men into accepting trans sex partners or be labled "genital racists." No legitimate movement, civil rights or otherwise, has ever needed to silence or destroy opposing voices like the trans rights movement because no other movement has been based on ideas that defy reality.
To Lisa's point yesterday, the behavior of TRAs is not the behavior of civil rights activists. It is the behavior of religious groups who must execute or exile the heretics and blasphemers because there can be no questioning the religion's truth, lest people stop believing in it.
Well said. And unlike traditional religions, the practice of this one depends entirely on the conversion and participation of the entire society. A Christian can still practice their religion without their neighbor converting to the same faith. A trans person cannot live their transness without everyone around them affirming their belief. That's why the promotion of this belief is so aggressive and desperate, even on the part of "allies" who just want to protect a loved one's belief and lifestyle.
THANK YOU!! I’ve always said it was our story too. Our hearts have been broken. Trust has been betrayed by family, friends and medical professionals. Families have been fractured. To say that it’s not our story to tell is to deny that any of this happened. It essentially erases our experience and renders it meaningless. I’m not going to stop sharing my story because it IS my story.
I am still one of those parents who feel hushed and somewhat shunned in my NYT- as-bible community. This issue with my child has affected my life and well being more than almost any other thing I’ve ever experienced. How could it not be my story? Why do my feelings matter less than my child’s? I have even put this question to my trans identifying kid.
I meant to respond to a post (last week?) where you said you were losing subscribers because of your nuanced stance. But it is that stance and the continued compassion and striving to understand all the sides that make you so incredible. I am so very appreciative, still. You are the best voice on this, and have been for way too long. THANK YOU as always for your amazing brain and writing, and your perseverance. I remain one of your biggest fans, looking forward to your new book!
The line, “not my story to tell,” is just a tactic to shut down speech. Like standpoint epistemology (only those with certain identities can know), it is about the suppression of ideas.
This suppression of speech and ideas reveals the foundation of illiberalism undergirding this belief system. Why, if it is so good and true, must others not be allowed to speak of it?
Possibly the most devastating contributor to my extreme isolation was my husband's insistence that he and I should keep our child's belief in the insane notion that she is "really a guy" and therefore needed drugs to masculinize her body's appearance a secret from our family and friends because we had no right to "out" her as trans to anybody.
I complied, and I despised myself for giving in and the self-preservation I suspect was at the root of it. And I grew to deeply resent (and still do) my husband and best friend for the decision, even as I suspect it is why my daughter stopped shunning me. But as a result I just pulled away from everything social in my real life. I cannot compartmentalize like my husband can. I'm a cryer and a ruminator and can only for so long stoically endure that lonely feeling while witnessing displays of insane idiocy during conversations with people I know and love. I couldn't stomach interacting with people who knew me at book club, at the pottery studio, at dinner dates, at family gatherings, where I would be required to lie (either by omission or misdirection) about the state of my relationship with the two individuals closest to me in this world, one of whom began life inside my womb.
The rift between me and my husband over that, as far as I am concerned, has not fully been addressed yet. Whether I am justifying my cowardice in the face of risking eventual divorce should I attempt to lay all my cards on the table, or exercising pragmatism in order to keep a marriage and a home intact so that when/if the "iatrogenic harm chickens" caused by the "Gender Affirming Care" my child has been subjected to for several years now "come home to roost," I am more likely to still have the means to offer her refuge and some financial help and support. Ah, motherly self-sacrifice for the sake of her children! Some species of spider which stick around so their newly-hatched babies can eat them as a first meal are the ultimate moms! How that virtuous ideal has been used by the "gender identity" acolytes to so viciously bring mothers to heel. I've only ever mothered one child and was geographically too distant from extended family for an easy source of the happily noisy, crowded and communal environment I was raised in for my little girl. So I spent a lot of time during the years raising her, joining homeschooling groups, arranging playdates, and doing all that networking with other moms, mainly just to access some other little persons to help "socialize" and entertain my girl. As a result, there were countless occasions for me to be surrounded by ostentatious "Earth Mother" status-seeking performances (and to participate in them myself, I admit.). Not great for one's self-respect.
As my attempt to be "healthy" by finding something NOT related to gender to focus on, I thought I'd finally get around to reading some Joan Didion. But, like practically anything else I pay attention to, it all ends up somehow becoming more grist for my obsessive focus on this "transgender perfect storm" that has derailed my life and worldview so completely:
Here is a passage from one of her essays I read yesterday, which filled me with such a "kindred souls" feeling, my eyes got damp:
"To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gift for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan: no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us."
-- Joan Didion "On Self-Respect" Slouching Toward Bethlehem
And while parents of trans-identified kids are being told that the stories of the children they raised are not theirs to tell, those who take an interest in this issue (and have an unpopular position) without being directly personally involved are being told: "Why do you care, it doesn't affect you!". That is another way to shut down discussion. And it is also a lie, because this affects all of us, from the way women's rights are being undermined to the way our kids are being compelled to affirm their classmates and write their pronouns on every worksheet. Not to mention that anyone should care when kids are being harmed, whether it is their own or other people's.
Thank you as always, Lisa. I’m curious if you’re still in the NYT-as-Bible crowd given what you know about their misreporting on this issue. I saw years ago how they misrepresented pretty much every subject I was familiar with while my husband would point out those areas of his expertise that they got very wrong. It made me not entirely dismissive but at least skeptical of their coverage generally. Why would you imagine they are divinely endowed with the truth?
Yes, this exactly! The more I know about a subject, the more I see how it is misrepresented by the media. And indeed, if they are getting those things I know about wrong, why would I think they are getting other things right?
Okay. This could have been written precisely for me and my story (and I was at the Unspeakeasy, as you know).
I tried as long as I could to stop my daughter from taking steps to make her body less healthy, and I tried as long and as hard as I could to persuade her that she could be whoever she wants to be without pretending to be male, and without chemicals or surgeries to make her appear male. I tried to explain that a truly liberal society would not be telling young people that, if they are uncomfortable in their bodies and are unhappy with their sex, they should reject their bodies and attempt (in futility) to change their sex, lying to themselves and others (and in some cases having others lie back to them).
It is my story to tell because my daughter doesn't understand what is being done to her. She has no idea the lies that have fueled her choices, that have colored her perspective, and that have made her reject a perfectly fine body and start to limit her choices in life in significant ways with toxic chemicals (and likely plans for surgery to come).
If parents don't speak out for these children (and a 19-year-old who has been lied to since she was 12.5 and saw her future male self on the internet is, indeed a child), nobody will. I shouldn't say that because people like you, like so many of the speakers at the Genspect conference and others, are speaking on our behalf and I can assure you that we parents all appreciate it. You are a rock star to me, and I felt privileged to have met you.
I don't want to have to be aligned with people who think gay marriage is wrong or that women should get out of the workforce and back in the kitchen for good. However, there is currently little choice if we want to end this nightmare for my vulnerable daughter and so many others like her. We need to get more and more people to realize what is happening, so that we can protect our children from medical harm and gaslighting without having to compromise on rights already won. I am still not sure how we do that, but I so appreciate all of your efforts on that front. Organizations like DIAG are very important, but I think we need more. We need to be heard on a mass scale because, if we can actually tell our stories, people will learn and things will change.
Lastly, while some things have changed, mostly as a result of laws and court decisions at this point, many have not. The clinic my daughter goes to is still passing out synthetic hormones to teenagers (18 and up) like candy. Schools like those in NYC are still telling kids they might be born in the wrong body, and inviting boys to play on girls' sports teams and undress in girls' locker rooms. Most "liberals" (a misnomer at this point) still think chemical castration surgical mutilation, and lying to children and teens is kind and wonderful. Hearts and minds have NOT changed - not yet.
Thank you for what you have written here, Hippiesq, and for your ongoing candor, courage, and decency. This point you make can’t be repeated often enough: “We need to be heard on a mass scale because, if we can actually tell our stories, people will learn and things will change.” And for those of us who don’t have personal stories to tell, we can and must amplify the stories of those who do. Thank you, above all, for your friendship, which I treasure.❤️
Another great piece from you. And regarding yesterday‘s excellent piece, I agree, why is the religion of ideology being taught in schools? It is so wrong and so confusing for children.
Therapists contribute to this "not your story to tell" nonsense, by telling parents "if your kid's transness upsets you and you cannot affirm them, you need to do your own work. Get a therapist. You need to protect your kid from your emotions and discomfort." This is one of the many facets of this mess that I struggle with as a therapist, because I actually think the kid needs to witness at least some of the destructiveness their behavior has on those who most love them. When a kid is hearing from their therapist, "Your parent needs to work through her/his stuff with their own therapist," and their IRL and discord "friends" are telling them "your parent is your enemy," how can the child not become convinced that this is their story, their heroic journey, they are the main protagonist of a story of victimization? And then the parents like the one in this essay, who state "this is not my story to tell" - I suspect are experiencing deep shame; so this line is how they build up a protective wall.
Thank you for this. A Substack Leftie friend who has become heterodox wrote of you just yesterday that you “seem quite sensible and compassionate.” This essay today exemplifies those qualities so well.
Wow. I gave up on the New York Times as Bible 25 years ago. I used to enjoy their arts reviews back when I was pursuing a career as a professional modern dancer. I saw the dance field become "un-sexed" and unprofessional. I realized I was better off watching paint dry. I don't think I'll live so long as to find information in the Times worth my time. What will this mother do if the transitioned child realizes at the typical 7-10 year mark that he's exhausted and his "authentic self" is what he can no longer have? (I'm using male pronouns randomly here. Perhaps female language is more appropriate.) I don't have time to parse these verses. If the NYT had a significant gardening section, I'd be torn, perhaps. But they don't. Back to the daffodils for the rest of my daylight.
My daughter informed me that any of my memories that contained her, including the ones from before she was forming memories, were entirely hers and not mine because they were part of her life, not mine.
Maybe that was when I knew deep down that we had lost forever even though I keep fighting for our relationship for another three years before she left us saying she would never speak to us again (after we took her out for dinner and to a show thank you very much) and we were not allowed to ask questions and there would be no discussion.
Parents are NPCs in this terminally online group of kids. We have no lives of our own. No feelings and no rights to feelings. Imagine if I told her that no memory of hers involving me was hers because it was part of my life?
Do you think she would call me an immature narcissist?
I am so sorry. Do your memories of pregnancy and giving birth, of hundreds of diaper changes, the nights of no sleep, the worry the first time she ran a fever, and every time she was sick after that, memories of the visceral pain you felt every time you knew she was in pain, of cleaning out the car seat after a diaper blow out or puking, of remembering to be the Tooth Fairy before going to sleep, belong to her too? What she said goes beyond immature narcissism. The social conditioning TRAs do to young people creates a level of what I can only describe as psychopathy, that a trans identifying person has the right and the power to control the minds and memories of their families and everyone else, rewriting history, silencing or eliminating anyone who won't go along with the revisions.
I'm going to turn into a Star Wars geek, but throughout the series Andor, the speeches and manifestos against the Empire resonated with me more and more as statements against TRAs and the compelled acceptance of gender ideology.
These lines from Nemik's manifesto from the first season have stayed with me, and I hear them in my mind every time I see TRAs silence and attack women and parents who reject gender ideology: "The Imperial need for control is so desperate because it is so unnatural. Tyranny requires constant effort. It breaks, it leaks. Authority is brittle. Oppression is the mask of fear."
The need for TRAs to control everything, from "no debate" to forced acceptance of the revision of their personal history and of historical figures like Louisa Mae Alcott and Joan of Arc, the intentional, calculated destruction of anyone who will not capitulate and go along, professionally, socially, personally, it is so desperate because what they want is so unnatural. It requires constant effort because people know what we're told we must accept about gender identity is not true and only fear can keep us from saying it.
When Mon Mothma gave her speech in the Senate against the Empire, all I could think about was the tyranny of the TRAs: "I believe we are in crisis. The distance between what is said today and what is known to be true has become an abyss. Of all the things at risk, the loss of an objective reality is perhaps the most dangerous. The death of truth is the ultimate victory of evil. When truth leaves us, when we let it slip away, when it is ripped from our hands, we become vulnerable to the appetite of whatever monster screams the loudest."
We are being forced to say and accept things like TWAW despite knowing it is not true. We are being forced to deny the objective reality of sex. Parents are being forced to deny the life their family had, its very existence, before a child transitioned. We have become vulnerable to the monsters that scream the loudest about being entitled to access to places where women are most at risk, to lock women up with male sex offenders, to allow women to be hurt by men in the boxing ring and rugby pitch, to allow our daughters to go into locker rooms to change with naked men, to bully lesbians and gay men into accepting trans sex partners or be labled "genital racists." No legitimate movement, civil rights or otherwise, has ever needed to silence or destroy opposing voices like the trans rights movement because no other movement has been based on ideas that defy reality.
To Lisa's point yesterday, the behavior of TRAs is not the behavior of civil rights activists. It is the behavior of religious groups who must execute or exile the heretics and blasphemers because there can be no questioning the religion's truth, lest people stop believing in it.
Well said. And unlike traditional religions, the practice of this one depends entirely on the conversion and participation of the entire society. A Christian can still practice their religion without their neighbor converting to the same faith. A trans person cannot live their transness without everyone around them affirming their belief. That's why the promotion of this belief is so aggressive and desperate, even on the part of "allies" who just want to protect a loved one's belief and lifestyle.
THANK YOU!! I’ve always said it was our story too. Our hearts have been broken. Trust has been betrayed by family, friends and medical professionals. Families have been fractured. To say that it’s not our story to tell is to deny that any of this happened. It essentially erases our experience and renders it meaningless. I’m not going to stop sharing my story because it IS my story.
I am still one of those parents who feel hushed and somewhat shunned in my NYT- as-bible community. This issue with my child has affected my life and well being more than almost any other thing I’ve ever experienced. How could it not be my story? Why do my feelings matter less than my child’s? I have even put this question to my trans identifying kid.
I meant to respond to a post (last week?) where you said you were losing subscribers because of your nuanced stance. But it is that stance and the continued compassion and striving to understand all the sides that make you so incredible. I am so very appreciative, still. You are the best voice on this, and have been for way too long. THANK YOU as always for your amazing brain and writing, and your perseverance. I remain one of your biggest fans, looking forward to your new book!
The line, “not my story to tell,” is just a tactic to shut down speech. Like standpoint epistemology (only those with certain identities can know), it is about the suppression of ideas.
This suppression of speech and ideas reveals the foundation of illiberalism undergirding this belief system. Why, if it is so good and true, must others not be allowed to speak of it?
Thank you for your emphasis on parents and families. I'm always surprised to hear people downplay the impact on us.
Excellent point, Lisa, and I so appreciate it!
Possibly the most devastating contributor to my extreme isolation was my husband's insistence that he and I should keep our child's belief in the insane notion that she is "really a guy" and therefore needed drugs to masculinize her body's appearance a secret from our family and friends because we had no right to "out" her as trans to anybody.
I complied, and I despised myself for giving in and the self-preservation I suspect was at the root of it. And I grew to deeply resent (and still do) my husband and best friend for the decision, even as I suspect it is why my daughter stopped shunning me. But as a result I just pulled away from everything social in my real life. I cannot compartmentalize like my husband can. I'm a cryer and a ruminator and can only for so long stoically endure that lonely feeling while witnessing displays of insane idiocy during conversations with people I know and love. I couldn't stomach interacting with people who knew me at book club, at the pottery studio, at dinner dates, at family gatherings, where I would be required to lie (either by omission or misdirection) about the state of my relationship with the two individuals closest to me in this world, one of whom began life inside my womb.
The rift between me and my husband over that, as far as I am concerned, has not fully been addressed yet. Whether I am justifying my cowardice in the face of risking eventual divorce should I attempt to lay all my cards on the table, or exercising pragmatism in order to keep a marriage and a home intact so that when/if the "iatrogenic harm chickens" caused by the "Gender Affirming Care" my child has been subjected to for several years now "come home to roost," I am more likely to still have the means to offer her refuge and some financial help and support. Ah, motherly self-sacrifice for the sake of her children! Some species of spider which stick around so their newly-hatched babies can eat them as a first meal are the ultimate moms! How that virtuous ideal has been used by the "gender identity" acolytes to so viciously bring mothers to heel. I've only ever mothered one child and was geographically too distant from extended family for an easy source of the happily noisy, crowded and communal environment I was raised in for my little girl. So I spent a lot of time during the years raising her, joining homeschooling groups, arranging playdates, and doing all that networking with other moms, mainly just to access some other little persons to help "socialize" and entertain my girl. As a result, there were countless occasions for me to be surrounded by ostentatious "Earth Mother" status-seeking performances (and to participate in them myself, I admit.). Not great for one's self-respect.
As my attempt to be "healthy" by finding something NOT related to gender to focus on, I thought I'd finally get around to reading some Joan Didion. But, like practically anything else I pay attention to, it all ends up somehow becoming more grist for my obsessive focus on this "transgender perfect storm" that has derailed my life and worldview so completely:
Here is a passage from one of her essays I read yesterday, which filled me with such a "kindred souls" feeling, my eyes got damp:
"To have that sense of one’s intrinsic worth which constitutes self-respect is potentially to have everything: the ability to discriminate, to love and to remain indifferent. To lack it is to be locked within oneself, paradoxically incapable of either love or indifference. If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out—since our self-image is untenable—their false notions of us. We flatter ourselves by thinking this compulsion to please others an attractive trait: a gift for imaginative empathy, evidence of our willingness to give. Of course I will play Francesca to your Paolo, Helen Keller to anyone’s Annie Sullivan: no expectation is too misplaced, no role too ludicrous. At the mercy of those we cannot but hold in contempt, we play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us."
-- Joan Didion "On Self-Respect" Slouching Toward Bethlehem
Thank you for this. What a generous gift of a comment.
And while parents of trans-identified kids are being told that the stories of the children they raised are not theirs to tell, those who take an interest in this issue (and have an unpopular position) without being directly personally involved are being told: "Why do you care, it doesn't affect you!". That is another way to shut down discussion. And it is also a lie, because this affects all of us, from the way women's rights are being undermined to the way our kids are being compelled to affirm their classmates and write their pronouns on every worksheet. Not to mention that anyone should care when kids are being harmed, whether it is their own or other people's.
Thank you as always, Lisa. I’m curious if you’re still in the NYT-as-Bible crowd given what you know about their misreporting on this issue. I saw years ago how they misrepresented pretty much every subject I was familiar with while my husband would point out those areas of his expertise that they got very wrong. It made me not entirely dismissive but at least skeptical of their coverage generally. Why would you imagine they are divinely endowed with the truth?
Yes, this exactly! The more I know about a subject, the more I see how it is misrepresented by the media. And indeed, if they are getting those things I know about wrong, why would I think they are getting other things right?
Okay. This could have been written precisely for me and my story (and I was at the Unspeakeasy, as you know).
I tried as long as I could to stop my daughter from taking steps to make her body less healthy, and I tried as long and as hard as I could to persuade her that she could be whoever she wants to be without pretending to be male, and without chemicals or surgeries to make her appear male. I tried to explain that a truly liberal society would not be telling young people that, if they are uncomfortable in their bodies and are unhappy with their sex, they should reject their bodies and attempt (in futility) to change their sex, lying to themselves and others (and in some cases having others lie back to them).
It is my story to tell because my daughter doesn't understand what is being done to her. She has no idea the lies that have fueled her choices, that have colored her perspective, and that have made her reject a perfectly fine body and start to limit her choices in life in significant ways with toxic chemicals (and likely plans for surgery to come).
If parents don't speak out for these children (and a 19-year-old who has been lied to since she was 12.5 and saw her future male self on the internet is, indeed a child), nobody will. I shouldn't say that because people like you, like so many of the speakers at the Genspect conference and others, are speaking on our behalf and I can assure you that we parents all appreciate it. You are a rock star to me, and I felt privileged to have met you.
I don't want to have to be aligned with people who think gay marriage is wrong or that women should get out of the workforce and back in the kitchen for good. However, there is currently little choice if we want to end this nightmare for my vulnerable daughter and so many others like her. We need to get more and more people to realize what is happening, so that we can protect our children from medical harm and gaslighting without having to compromise on rights already won. I am still not sure how we do that, but I so appreciate all of your efforts on that front. Organizations like DIAG are very important, but I think we need more. We need to be heard on a mass scale because, if we can actually tell our stories, people will learn and things will change.
Lastly, while some things have changed, mostly as a result of laws and court decisions at this point, many have not. The clinic my daughter goes to is still passing out synthetic hormones to teenagers (18 and up) like candy. Schools like those in NYC are still telling kids they might be born in the wrong body, and inviting boys to play on girls' sports teams and undress in girls' locker rooms. Most "liberals" (a misnomer at this point) still think chemical castration surgical mutilation, and lying to children and teens is kind and wonderful. Hearts and minds have NOT changed - not yet.
Thank you for what you have written here, Hippiesq, and for your ongoing candor, courage, and decency. This point you make can’t be repeated often enough: “We need to be heard on a mass scale because, if we can actually tell our stories, people will learn and things will change.” And for those of us who don’t have personal stories to tell, we can and must amplify the stories of those who do. Thank you, above all, for your friendship, which I treasure.❤️
Likewise, Susan!
Another great piece from you. And regarding yesterday‘s excellent piece, I agree, why is the religion of ideology being taught in schools? It is so wrong and so confusing for children.
We need to get it out of the schools.
Therapists contribute to this "not your story to tell" nonsense, by telling parents "if your kid's transness upsets you and you cannot affirm them, you need to do your own work. Get a therapist. You need to protect your kid from your emotions and discomfort." This is one of the many facets of this mess that I struggle with as a therapist, because I actually think the kid needs to witness at least some of the destructiveness their behavior has on those who most love them. When a kid is hearing from their therapist, "Your parent needs to work through her/his stuff with their own therapist," and their IRL and discord "friends" are telling them "your parent is your enemy," how can the child not become convinced that this is their story, their heroic journey, they are the main protagonist of a story of victimization? And then the parents like the one in this essay, who state "this is not my story to tell" - I suspect are experiencing deep shame; so this line is how they build up a protective wall.
Thank you, Lisa.
As I have told my daughter, you are an adult, you get to create your own story.
Family history proves inconvenient?
Too bad. She doesn't get to change my history.
Thanks, Lisa. You've anticipated some of how I was feeling when I read - and tried to understand - yesterday's plea for "wiggle room".
Thank you for this. A Substack Leftie friend who has become heterodox wrote of you just yesterday that you “seem quite sensible and compassionate.” This essay today exemplifies those qualities so well.
Lisa, all I can say is you are on a roll. This is another amazing piece of writing.
Wow. I gave up on the New York Times as Bible 25 years ago. I used to enjoy their arts reviews back when I was pursuing a career as a professional modern dancer. I saw the dance field become "un-sexed" and unprofessional. I realized I was better off watching paint dry. I don't think I'll live so long as to find information in the Times worth my time. What will this mother do if the transitioned child realizes at the typical 7-10 year mark that he's exhausted and his "authentic self" is what he can no longer have? (I'm using male pronouns randomly here. Perhaps female language is more appropriate.) I don't have time to parse these verses. If the NYT had a significant gardening section, I'd be torn, perhaps. But they don't. Back to the daffodils for the rest of my daylight.