Above all - I love my daughter. And, to me, there is no cause worth her life. Jordan Petersen speaks about young people creating wars when none exist. Some kids join the circus, the merchant navy, or Médecins Sans Frontières, or a touring rock band. They might marry young and badly, join a priesthood, become a Scientologist, join a commune. Or, as in my daughter’s case, embrace gender ideology. Gender is our children’s generation’s war, it seems. In this sense, our pain and sadness is perhaps similar to mothers of previous generations, whose children have gone off to fight in a distant war.
This is so beautifully written. Such wisdom. Yes, this younger generation is indeed fighting a war on gender and there will be many casualties, many wounded, and many will not return home. I married young at 21 only to get divorced less than 2 years later. I dropped LSD, ate psychedelic mushrooms, smoked pot, smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol, did not wear a bra for years, had multiple sex partners - I was a wanna-be-hippy and could care less about the government, hated cops, and supported “sex-drugs-and rock n roll” In high school when the Viet Nam war ended I went to a “No More War” party on a school night with my parents permission and we smoked pot and drank beer. Now I am in my mid-sixties and looking back at what MY younger generation believed in and fought for seems minuscule compared to this younger generation’s war on gender identity - what they do not realize is that this war is a physical, mental and emotional war on their own bodies. How will this younger generation survive this war without our help? I am educating myself every day, spreading the word and praying. I cried myself to sleep last night so worried about a young relative who is caught up in the crossfires of this gender war. I worry about my 2 year old granddaughter’s future. This gender war must become ALL of our fight as these children cannot do this alone, they cannot possibly understand how their decisions now will follow them the rest of their lives. Heartbreaking.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this pointless war our daughters fight. They seem to be at war with themselves. We suffer too and as in previous generations mothers support each other in grief.
I love this. I think this war speaks to the sense of hopelessness and lack of meaning in our children's lives--the lengths they'll go to create their war. I have a lot of faith that I'll be one of the lucky ones; hopefully with minimal scarring.
A war waged against oneself I suppose, forcing others to pretend they are something they can never be. I too miss my daughter greatly. This war is waged against God for "being", it will not end well.
regarding "the surviving families of people who "disappeared" during South America’s “dirty wars” of the 70s and 80s".
"Thousands of lives have been destroyed by gender ideology. Thousands of families are in a type of mourning. Listen to the words of the victims themselves, they will tell you: These children have disappeared. The children themselves will tell you, I have disappeared. They won’t even let you use their birth names – dead names. Little Olivia is gone; in her place there is only Oliver. Poor, mutilated Oliver. The children themselves will eagerly tell you, using the movement’s own language, that a death has occurred. “Don’t dead-name me.” “The person I was is dead.” Okay. Believe them. Believe the movement. Act accordingly. "
and
"What defines disappearance is official compliance with the twisted ideology."
I think that we got to this point by being accommodating to bullies and to the wishes of the mentally ill. Now, too many profit from Gender Ideology either politically or financially. All of our institutions are complicit. Maybe some kids will get out of the cult but more will keep going off to "war". This will not stop until we meet the problem head on. Perhaps if a few high profile surgeons and drug company executives go to jail the young will see that GI is not just about endless "euphoria" and "acceptance" but see it for the cult scam it is. Then, maybe we can get it out of the schools. Then, maybe the cowardly politicians, scientists, and administrators will have to reverse course - or retire in shame. -LM
The sentiment is exactly on point. You love and want to protect your child from dangers that can be avoided, and I 100% agree. Your analogy to war is interesting, but I do see some distinctions that bear discussion. I don't think each generation has a war to deal with. Rather, I think what each generation usually faces is its own way of differentiating itself. Some generations get stuck fighting a war that is not of their own making, and some generations end up defined by their response to that war - particularly those who fought in WWII. However, I think you are really talking more about the ways young people seek to declare their independence from the prior generations - and the whole "Rebel without a Cause" thing when there is no clear war to fight against.
Sometimes, the fight for the next generation is clear. During the 60's, the younger generation fought for women's rights, fought against an unjust war in Vietnam, fought for Civil Rights, and fought for freedom of expression - like men having long hair (which prompted a whole play and a movie, and which made clear how silly and rigid society can be - which is happening again with Gender Ideology). In my generation, it was more about cultural differences, like Punk, heavy metal music, and Rap, and really just more disregard for old stereotypes and limitations. So people my age knew women could excel at math or be lawyers and doctors, and -- of course aided by those who came before us and fought for all those rights -- we made it so that law schools and medical schools (just as examples) became 50% or more female. We were the generation that normalized being gay, which ultimately led to gay marriage.
We had our negative things too, like Anorexia and Bulimia, and then there was Crack Cocaine. Of course, established society at first laughed at, but ultimately embraced the cultural changes (how mainstream is Rap? It was in the Super Bowl!), and society fought to rid itself of the eating disorders and drugs - with only mild success.
But I think what our children are embarking on with Gender Ideology is not analogous to the usual rebellion nor to conventional war. Instead, this is a weird combination of the two, and different than both. Surely, this generation wants to say "we don't believe in your boring designations of "man" and "woman." We're beyond all that." In that way, Gender Ideology is just the next wave of cultural freedom. However, it somehow got mangled and distorted, because it's not about dropping all stereotypes. (ie. screw you, older generation, boys will wear dresses and make-up if we want to, and girls will have buzz cuts and we won't shave our armpits if we don't want to; there will be no differentiating us based on your old boring distinctions!) To me that would have been progressive. and great.
Instead, it's like society itself got bored without enough wars - I guess Russia attacked Ukraine too late - so established society decided to move in another direction altogether and wage a war on our own bodies. It's not a statement of "we won't be boxed in by gender norms!" Instead, it's a statement of "we won't be constrained by our bodies at all, and we will attempt to use medical science to alter them to appear any way we damned well please, even if it kills us!" The crazy part here is that the rebellion, if we want to call it that, is not being formed by the younger generation. It's being pushed by mainstream society. I just watched John Olliver, and he is pushing Gender Ideology - without realizing it. Medical authorities, government (our President), mainstream media, schools and large corporations are all pushing this. Thus, it's not this generation's rebellion, whether for good or for bad. It's being pushed on the younger generation in the same way young people are ushered off to war - which is where your analogy holds true.
But at least in war, we recognize that it is ugly, and we try and justify it as being a necessary evil to get to a greater end. (In WWII, for instance, we were stopping Hitler and fascism from destroying humanity.) Gender Ideology has no greater end. It's just medical experimentation on young healthy bodies in order to see if we can make convincing men from women and women from men. What is the benefit in that? We're not making the blind see, or helping paraplegics to walk. We're sterilizing, poisoning and mutilating people in the false name of "authenticity!" It's very warped and will be seen by future generations as a ghastly era. It won't be seen as this generation's triumphant move toward progress, nor as this generation's piercings or mohawks. It will be seen as society's failure, as an unjust war, as arrogance, etc.
It is analogous to the Opioid crisis, and Lobotomies, and hypnotized false memories of child abuse. However, those were limited to a small part of society - some doctors and corporations, not the whole of society. This will be seen as a time when society went a bit mad.
So your daughter has been pushed into a war of sorts by a society that thinks it can override nature, a society that believes some people shouldn't be men or shouldn't be women, a society that can't recognize religion, a society that wants to appear kind and benevolent while it slowly destroys a generation of young people - particularly those who don't "fit in." Your daughter thinks she is rebelling against something, but she is only rebelling against reality. Society is all for it.
I'm sure your love for your daughter (my love for mine, and the love of all of the parents concerned about what is happening for their children) is unwavering and will be there when society wakes up to what it has done.
I was in Scientology for about a year when I was 18. My parents were against it. I didn't see it as a rebellion. Instead it was an exploration. In reality, I believed their bullshit. None of it was true, but they talked a good game.
I lost my daughter to this war too... In Portugal, nobody , I mean the media, talks about this phenomenon. I tried and I'm still trying to share our stories for the past 14 months but the LGBT lobby is to powerful in the 3 or 4 media groups we have in Portugal it's really desperate because the kids and the parents have no information about the subject... Also the 'therapists' have the same instantaneous afirmative approach that you all talked about it so many times... So we can't just cry for professional help, we can't share our grief publicly to alert other parents, we can't do much besides of loving, informing and hoping everything will be fine one day... Despites the internal and external scars...
Kids may join the circus or a rock band on their own…it’s the eternal, youthful striving for self-discovery, freedom and adventure. It’s more or less normal.
Trans, on the other hand, IS a war. Its generals are the billionaires who fund the transmedical establishment; the venal, self-serving politicians and media moguls who promote this fantasy ideology as though it were the only true thing in the world; and the cowardly, virtue-signaling doctors, scientists, university administrators, and educators who have sacrificed their training, common sense and integrity to the cause of gender. These institutions are the Masters of War. Our children are their foot soldiers. Sometimes, if they’re lucky, and if they’ve encountered the right kind of influences along the way to help them recover, they will go AWOL and find their way home, maimed but still breathing.
This despicable project will go down in history as one of the greatest evils our supposedly modern society has invented. My heart breaks for you, and for your daughter. But there is always hope, because you are speaking out and changing the world by telling the truth.
I've seen war, and you're not far off. This one doesn't have the same violence of the one my peers and I served in, but it has the potential to ruin people just as badly.
"Above all - I love my daughter." We, the parents, love our kids more than they could ever understand, until they experience it for themselves. And, we are helpless against their choices, cast as the villain of the piece for loving them. I love this analogy. As parents, we do need to make a sort of peace that the war is fought inside themselves, and we are just bystanders.
This is why we need to pay attention to the groomers in the government schools. They are largely responsible for spreading the ideology taught to them in university.
The pain of all this for a parent must be unthinkable. Your take on it is brilliant though, and rings very true. Better chances in this war than the fighting kind, and she will surely be back, sooner or later, in one guise or another. Wars end. This one will too. Heartfelt best wishes, jh
Your article is poignant. My son in college has joined this unjust war, too. Us parents are akin to POWs -- - our hearts are prisoners of this absurd and cruel war.
My war with this was lost in 2020. The first I learned about this war was when she called me (May - Mothers Day weekend - during CoVid shutdown) to tell me she was now going to be Sam. 3 weeks later she took her life. I had very limited knowledge of this movement. I know much now. Too late for my sweet girl. Knowledge is powerful. There is nothing that would make me support or believe there is good in this destructive ideology. My girl doesn’t come back from this war. Thank you for writing this.
This is so beautifully written. Such wisdom. Yes, this younger generation is indeed fighting a war on gender and there will be many casualties, many wounded, and many will not return home. I married young at 21 only to get divorced less than 2 years later. I dropped LSD, ate psychedelic mushrooms, smoked pot, smoked cigarettes, drank alcohol, did not wear a bra for years, had multiple sex partners - I was a wanna-be-hippy and could care less about the government, hated cops, and supported “sex-drugs-and rock n roll” In high school when the Viet Nam war ended I went to a “No More War” party on a school night with my parents permission and we smoked pot and drank beer. Now I am in my mid-sixties and looking back at what MY younger generation believed in and fought for seems minuscule compared to this younger generation’s war on gender identity - what they do not realize is that this war is a physical, mental and emotional war on their own bodies. How will this younger generation survive this war without our help? I am educating myself every day, spreading the word and praying. I cried myself to sleep last night so worried about a young relative who is caught up in the crossfires of this gender war. I worry about my 2 year old granddaughter’s future. This gender war must become ALL of our fight as these children cannot do this alone, they cannot possibly understand how their decisions now will follow them the rest of their lives. Heartbreaking.
Thank you for sharing your thoughts on this pointless war our daughters fight. They seem to be at war with themselves. We suffer too and as in previous generations mothers support each other in grief.
I love this. I think this war speaks to the sense of hopelessness and lack of meaning in our children's lives--the lengths they'll go to create their war. I have a lot of faith that I'll be one of the lucky ones; hopefully with minimal scarring.
A war waged against oneself I suppose, forcing others to pretend they are something they can never be. I too miss my daughter greatly. This war is waged against God for "being", it will not end well.
Spot on - above all we love our daughters and our sons.
I think war is a good way to describe this and it reminds me of words in a previous PITT, https://pitt.substack.com/p/international-right-to-truth-day?s=r
regarding "the surviving families of people who "disappeared" during South America’s “dirty wars” of the 70s and 80s".
"Thousands of lives have been destroyed by gender ideology. Thousands of families are in a type of mourning. Listen to the words of the victims themselves, they will tell you: These children have disappeared. The children themselves will tell you, I have disappeared. They won’t even let you use their birth names – dead names. Little Olivia is gone; in her place there is only Oliver. Poor, mutilated Oliver. The children themselves will eagerly tell you, using the movement’s own language, that a death has occurred. “Don’t dead-name me.” “The person I was is dead.” Okay. Believe them. Believe the movement. Act accordingly. "
and
"What defines disappearance is official compliance with the twisted ideology."
I think that we got to this point by being accommodating to bullies and to the wishes of the mentally ill. Now, too many profit from Gender Ideology either politically or financially. All of our institutions are complicit. Maybe some kids will get out of the cult but more will keep going off to "war". This will not stop until we meet the problem head on. Perhaps if a few high profile surgeons and drug company executives go to jail the young will see that GI is not just about endless "euphoria" and "acceptance" but see it for the cult scam it is. Then, maybe we can get it out of the schools. Then, maybe the cowardly politicians, scientists, and administrators will have to reverse course - or retire in shame. -LM
I got chills reading this. I hope she comes back to your family soon.
The sentiment is exactly on point. You love and want to protect your child from dangers that can be avoided, and I 100% agree. Your analogy to war is interesting, but I do see some distinctions that bear discussion. I don't think each generation has a war to deal with. Rather, I think what each generation usually faces is its own way of differentiating itself. Some generations get stuck fighting a war that is not of their own making, and some generations end up defined by their response to that war - particularly those who fought in WWII. However, I think you are really talking more about the ways young people seek to declare their independence from the prior generations - and the whole "Rebel without a Cause" thing when there is no clear war to fight against.
Sometimes, the fight for the next generation is clear. During the 60's, the younger generation fought for women's rights, fought against an unjust war in Vietnam, fought for Civil Rights, and fought for freedom of expression - like men having long hair (which prompted a whole play and a movie, and which made clear how silly and rigid society can be - which is happening again with Gender Ideology). In my generation, it was more about cultural differences, like Punk, heavy metal music, and Rap, and really just more disregard for old stereotypes and limitations. So people my age knew women could excel at math or be lawyers and doctors, and -- of course aided by those who came before us and fought for all those rights -- we made it so that law schools and medical schools (just as examples) became 50% or more female. We were the generation that normalized being gay, which ultimately led to gay marriage.
We had our negative things too, like Anorexia and Bulimia, and then there was Crack Cocaine. Of course, established society at first laughed at, but ultimately embraced the cultural changes (how mainstream is Rap? It was in the Super Bowl!), and society fought to rid itself of the eating disorders and drugs - with only mild success.
But I think what our children are embarking on with Gender Ideology is not analogous to the usual rebellion nor to conventional war. Instead, this is a weird combination of the two, and different than both. Surely, this generation wants to say "we don't believe in your boring designations of "man" and "woman." We're beyond all that." In that way, Gender Ideology is just the next wave of cultural freedom. However, it somehow got mangled and distorted, because it's not about dropping all stereotypes. (ie. screw you, older generation, boys will wear dresses and make-up if we want to, and girls will have buzz cuts and we won't shave our armpits if we don't want to; there will be no differentiating us based on your old boring distinctions!) To me that would have been progressive. and great.
Instead, it's like society itself got bored without enough wars - I guess Russia attacked Ukraine too late - so established society decided to move in another direction altogether and wage a war on our own bodies. It's not a statement of "we won't be boxed in by gender norms!" Instead, it's a statement of "we won't be constrained by our bodies at all, and we will attempt to use medical science to alter them to appear any way we damned well please, even if it kills us!" The crazy part here is that the rebellion, if we want to call it that, is not being formed by the younger generation. It's being pushed by mainstream society. I just watched John Olliver, and he is pushing Gender Ideology - without realizing it. Medical authorities, government (our President), mainstream media, schools and large corporations are all pushing this. Thus, it's not this generation's rebellion, whether for good or for bad. It's being pushed on the younger generation in the same way young people are ushered off to war - which is where your analogy holds true.
But at least in war, we recognize that it is ugly, and we try and justify it as being a necessary evil to get to a greater end. (In WWII, for instance, we were stopping Hitler and fascism from destroying humanity.) Gender Ideology has no greater end. It's just medical experimentation on young healthy bodies in order to see if we can make convincing men from women and women from men. What is the benefit in that? We're not making the blind see, or helping paraplegics to walk. We're sterilizing, poisoning and mutilating people in the false name of "authenticity!" It's very warped and will be seen by future generations as a ghastly era. It won't be seen as this generation's triumphant move toward progress, nor as this generation's piercings or mohawks. It will be seen as society's failure, as an unjust war, as arrogance, etc.
It is analogous to the Opioid crisis, and Lobotomies, and hypnotized false memories of child abuse. However, those were limited to a small part of society - some doctors and corporations, not the whole of society. This will be seen as a time when society went a bit mad.
So your daughter has been pushed into a war of sorts by a society that thinks it can override nature, a society that believes some people shouldn't be men or shouldn't be women, a society that can't recognize religion, a society that wants to appear kind and benevolent while it slowly destroys a generation of young people - particularly those who don't "fit in." Your daughter thinks she is rebelling against something, but she is only rebelling against reality. Society is all for it.
I'm sure your love for your daughter (my love for mine, and the love of all of the parents concerned about what is happening for their children) is unwavering and will be there when society wakes up to what it has done.
I was in Scientology for about a year when I was 18. My parents were against it. I didn't see it as a rebellion. Instead it was an exploration. In reality, I believed their bullshit. None of it was true, but they talked a good game.
I lost my daughter to this war too... In Portugal, nobody , I mean the media, talks about this phenomenon. I tried and I'm still trying to share our stories for the past 14 months but the LGBT lobby is to powerful in the 3 or 4 media groups we have in Portugal it's really desperate because the kids and the parents have no information about the subject... Also the 'therapists' have the same instantaneous afirmative approach that you all talked about it so many times... So we can't just cry for professional help, we can't share our grief publicly to alert other parents, we can't do much besides of loving, informing and hoping everything will be fine one day... Despites the internal and external scars...
Kids may join the circus or a rock band on their own…it’s the eternal, youthful striving for self-discovery, freedom and adventure. It’s more or less normal.
Trans, on the other hand, IS a war. Its generals are the billionaires who fund the transmedical establishment; the venal, self-serving politicians and media moguls who promote this fantasy ideology as though it were the only true thing in the world; and the cowardly, virtue-signaling doctors, scientists, university administrators, and educators who have sacrificed their training, common sense and integrity to the cause of gender. These institutions are the Masters of War. Our children are their foot soldiers. Sometimes, if they’re lucky, and if they’ve encountered the right kind of influences along the way to help them recover, they will go AWOL and find their way home, maimed but still breathing.
This despicable project will go down in history as one of the greatest evils our supposedly modern society has invented. My heart breaks for you, and for your daughter. But there is always hope, because you are speaking out and changing the world by telling the truth.
I've seen war, and you're not far off. This one doesn't have the same violence of the one my peers and I served in, but it has the potential to ruin people just as badly.
"Above all - I love my daughter." We, the parents, love our kids more than they could ever understand, until they experience it for themselves. And, we are helpless against their choices, cast as the villain of the piece for loving them. I love this analogy. As parents, we do need to make a sort of peace that the war is fought inside themselves, and we are just bystanders.
This is why we need to pay attention to the groomers in the government schools. They are largely responsible for spreading the ideology taught to them in university.
The pain of all this for a parent must be unthinkable. Your take on it is brilliant though, and rings very true. Better chances in this war than the fighting kind, and she will surely be back, sooner or later, in one guise or another. Wars end. This one will too. Heartfelt best wishes, jh
Your article is poignant. My son in college has joined this unjust war, too. Us parents are akin to POWs -- - our hearts are prisoners of this absurd and cruel war.
My war with this was lost in 2020. The first I learned about this war was when she called me (May - Mothers Day weekend - during CoVid shutdown) to tell me she was now going to be Sam. 3 weeks later she took her life. I had very limited knowledge of this movement. I know much now. Too late for my sweet girl. Knowledge is powerful. There is nothing that would make me support or believe there is good in this destructive ideology. My girl doesn’t come back from this war. Thank you for writing this.