For the last couple of days (and nights), I’ve been thinking about sex, gender and transitioning, from a personal point of view and a more global one. For a long time, in my head, I separated the trans rights movement from actual trans people because I, a transitioned female myself, didn’t feel represented by it. I thought it had gone too far, and I had come to believe that there was no such thing as reasonable amount of transitions or a reasonable amount of bending the law for trans people. But, the truth is, that people like me caused the trans movement.
Thank you so much for telling your story, another very unique story of a beautiful young woman who was led astray. It makes me so angry to know that this is what is happening and it's only now beginning to get noticed. Write to every legislator, tell your story - The SAFE ACT in Ohio could use some letters from you - there is a Republican majority there, this bill should have passed months ago, now, we have to wait until November for them to maybe vote on it. It's very sad how hard the activists go after those that want to help, but they are afraid they will lose their precious positions, so they lag and pretend and give excuses as to why they can't protect children from this medical catastrophe and malpractice. Here's the bill! https://ohiohouse.gov/legislation/134/hb454
Thank you for your insight! I have often thought lobotomy and transition therapy were blood relatives...I now know someone else connected the two. It's a blessing that you couldn't afford your HRT which sent you down a path you were meant to walk. Real love is hard to find, but it seems you have found loving friends who enjoy who you are. I would not question yourself on the "why" just keep moving forward with whatever "moves you forward"....don't look back! Be in YOUR moment in time.
Dearest Gerda, I am so grateful that you wrote this amazing article. You have helped so many of us who are emotionally involved and impacted by the transition cult. You have given an inside view of a suffering fellow human being, whose journey from an abused, neglected and abandoned childhood has come to a wonderful sense of self. On your own. You have a world ahead of you, with so very much to give to us all. You are loved and needed. In my life, I feel I had almost a hedge of protection about me since I was told from the time I was a toddler, that I was loved by someone called Jesus. I did not understand anything else, but through the years (I am 80 now), through sexual abuse as a child and teenager, through ups and downs of life including the death of my 5 preborn children, a grandchild, my husband, and many family members, I felt a sense of support. I am now dealing with the alienation of my son, and his 3 transgender children and their children. After the death of my husband, (having him in my life as my rock since I was 17), I lost my way for awhile. It was if I woke up to a world seemingly gone mad. My 2 grandsons now proclaimed they were really female, and my beloved granddaughter who had 2 children decided she was in reality a male. They decided that I was the enemy, I guess, for they have closed me out of their lives. They have abandoned me, but I will pray for them, and all involved for the rest of my life. When my grandchildren were small, I tried to tell them that they were loved, but they had so much telling them the opposite; abuse of all kinds, mental issues, autism, abandonment, seeing pornography. My education continues, in hearing stories from people in the trenches such as yourself, (Thank You!) and I thank God for you! The truth is coming out, with many ignoring or scoffing or fighting tooth and nail for the status quo, but your truth will triumph in the end. Please continue to fight the good fight, you are needed and appreciated. Please do remember, you are loved.
Thank you very much for writing this! And thank you for being so honest and not tip-toeing around the issue. Of course everyone has a different opinion but I get irritated when I see "transition was wrong for me but it's right for others" or "adults can do whatever they want". What a bunch of crap. On a different topic, I was shocked to find from your essay that transition is (more or less) readily accessible in Poland. I know little about Poland but isn't it "very Catholic"? Is there a push back at all from people? Is trans activism becoming widespread like in US?
En situaciones como estas se nesecita acudir a la familia, recibir el apoyo y amor incondicional, sentirte que no estás solo, sentirte amado por tus seres queridos. Busca ese apoyo familiar, no te alejes de quienes te aman. Tomate tiempo a solas para cuestionarte, pregunta te que es lo que realmente quieres. Y deja de está preguntándole a tu cuerpo, quiérete? Abrázate y ámate . Cada ser humano nunca está conforme con algo de su cuerpo sin embargo aprenden a vivir con ello. Entonces hay personas Que ni siquiera les gusta si color de piel y son exitosas porque aprenden a vivir y se enfocan en su futuro en salir adelante y con la cabeza bien en alto😘
Thank you for writing this. It brought me to tears; I consider this a sign of how powerful your story and your telling of it is. Your coming out of depression, rejection, and neglect gives me hope. Thanks for shining your light…
Thanks for the insightful piece. I am sorry for what you have been through. But since you admit you're not expert on the history of the AIDS epidemic and you're too young to remember it, I wish you'd leave what happened during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s before you were born out of it.
AIDS is a physical disease caused by a virus, HIV, a physical organism. So it's not an appropriate or helpful analogy that sheds any light on what's happening today with gender dysphoria and the social contagion of trans anyways. Invoking the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and the slow response of health authorities to it seems like an attempt to give more gravity to the plight of young people caught up in the trans craze today by appropriating the suffering of others in the past with a very different kind of affliction. I know people with gender distress do suffer, but sorry - the suffering of gender dysphoria is of an entirely different kind and on a much different scale compared to the horrible physical torments of AIDS. You really have no idea.
Then there's the problem of the inaccurate way you portray what happened with AIDS. You say "the public at large didn’t really care about the issue, so long as only homosexual people were impacted. Thousands of people had died pointlessly before the money started to flow to find the cure. The pressure started only when “normal” people started to die."
This is very misleading. In the US, the first cases of AIDS amongst presumably heterosexual women who got the disease from blood transfusions (usually related to childbirth) were reported in 1982. By 1984, it was known that many non-homosexual hemophiliacs, including children like Ryan White, had become infected with the virus which had been labelled HIV from infected blood products.
A major turning point in public concern about HIV-AIDS was when the movie star Rock Hudson - one of the most famous people in the world, hardly someone "normal" - announced he had AIDS in mid-1985. Hudson died of AIDS later that year. Hudson's death was not the death of a "normal" person. He was a HUGE celebrity.
You say "the pressure only started" for to fund and find treatments for HIV-AIDS when "normal people began to die" as though it was "the public" and "normal people" who were the movers and shakers that got the ball rolling to find treatments, not the gay community. This is a falsehood, one that erases the work of so many activists who worked tirelessly for years. In the US, the government through the NIH, Wall Street and all the major Big Pharma companies were all pushed to take action by scrappy, creative, in-your-face gay-led activist groups such as ACT UP. Enormous pressure to find and fund treatments was brought to bear by activists within and alongside the gay community.
You say, "Thousands of people had died pointlessly before the money started to flow to find the cure." This implies there is a cure for AIDS. There isn't. There are treatments that make HIV a manageable disease. There are medications that make it much more difficult for HIV to be spread by sex. There are treatments than can reduce suffering when HIV turns into full-blown AIDS. But there is no cure for either HIV or AIDS.
Globally, more than 36 million people have died of HIV-AIDS since the start of the pandemic; some estimates are as high as 48 million. Again, there is still no cure.
Thank you. Your honesty helps all the parents who are trying to stop their children going through this. I'm sorry no-one was able to help you and stop the process in time. I wish you much happiness going forward.
This may be just informative or redundant but it is critical to me. This describes my nearly seven decades of striving with gender dysphoria and my current conclusions. I am so ashamed that it's taken so long to reach these decisions, but this is part of my current identity foundation from which to proceed. Of course, you can assess this as you will.
Eight historical transliterated Hebrew biological sex designations with terse definitions:
Zachar, male.
Nekevah, female.
Androgynos, having both male and female characteristics.
Tumtum, lacking sexual characteristics.
Aylonit hamah, identified female at birth but later naturally developing male characteristics.
Aylonit adam, identified female at birth but later developing male characteristics through human intervention.
Saris hamah, identified male at birth but later naturally developing female characteristics.
Saris adam, identified male at birth and later developing female characteristics through human intervention.
Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God
by Megan K. DeFranza
This book is a wonderful, merciful, rigorous theological discussion of biological sex and a correlative video is listed here:
Please forgive me if this story is considered inappropriate within this context? Whether anyone considers themselves christian or not, may I please include some extra nuance to your conversation? I have no intention of attempting any kind of evangelization in my contribution, I would however like to supply some extra dimension to the discourse. To advance some concepts I would like to present some quotes.
First:
Isa 56:4-5 KJV 4 For thus saith the LORD unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant; 5 Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.
Second:
Mat 19:11-12 KJV 11 But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. 12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
Third:
Act 8:26-40 KJV (The baptism of the eunuch which I consider too long to be quoted here but far from inconsequential.)
I would love to note first that the term eunuch in these quotes seems to be defined by the Lord Jesus himself to include intersex individuals (eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb). Unwilling (some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men) and willing individuals (eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs) appear similarly defined.
May I also note the quote (unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters). I am aware that original Hebrew literally is translated "a hand and a name" greater than of sons and of daughters. I am, however, quite intrigued by the implications that eunuchs are given recognition separate from sons and from daughters.
I consider myself to be trans (eunuch, saris adam, barren (Isa 54:1-17)). I am not exactly a son and not exactly a daughter. I have a woefully masculine face and physique but I am definitely not a son (AMAB MTF post SRS (GRS)). Therefore I do not fit in sons' spaces or daughters' spaces.
I have immersed myself in the historical, philosophical, psychological, political and theological literature and media for a significant portion of seven decades and conclude that I am physically, politically, perceptually and theologically non-binary. Psychologically, I have identified as female since the age of two or three but diligent discipline discouraged any hint or discussion of my feminine identity or behavior. My ideal puberty would have included hormone blockers until a legally acceptable age to begin HRT and GRS (SRS) and then as nearly normal womanhood as attainable.
In actuality, the diligent discipline has induced my voluntary celibacy and perception that I have been insidiously gaslighted and have a subtle incidence of complex traumatic stress disorder by the dismissing, ignoring, denying and suppressing of my gender identity. I am just one of my peers who is the quarry for metaphorical, euphemistic and literal physical erasure. My concern is not just psychological, health or culture. This is the challenge and analysis of my right to true Judeo-Christian observance and Judeo-Christian expression and Judeo-Christian faith.
I hope my comments and the quotes are discovered to be beneficial. I pray that nothing is found to be triggering because my intent was to be somehow loving, compassionate and empathetic to each and everyone. If you have deigned to read this entire comment, thank you much!
Bravo! I so admire your courage to write the truth. I’m sorry for all of the pain and sadness in your past and wish I could change your history. Please know your story might help crack this fallacy wide open and be a beacon of truth for others like you. Your life has great purpose. God bless.
I feel your pain. I’m so sorry. You were failed as a child. You’re not alone. Your story will be shared and more and more people will come out of the woodwork moving forward. In essence, your story will save lives. You deserve to be happy. I pray you find what you are looking for. Until then, never ever ever give up!
Thank you for writing and sharing. I am not minimizing your pain, but I believe there is purpose in it. You are here unique in who you are and your influence. You are helping others in ways that would not have been possible on a different path. There is no way for you to know how your ripples effect others. There is a battle being fought over you that you cannot see. One side wants to use your past to destroy you with pain and disappointment. The other side is the Father to welcome you into the family, to bless your future with purpose and the healing that comes with the true affirmation that only He can give. Jesus is the way to making that a reality for you. I'm praying that you ask Him to show that to you. God bless you.
Thank you for your insight and I wish you nothing but success in your adult life which is difficult to navigate for each and every one of us. When was it ever easy? If we lived in a more primitive society we would have the problem of finding food and keeping warm every day.
My question for you is this - were your parents really so neglectful or just puzzled and confused about how to navigate parenthood like most of us? We are only human beings, imperfect by nature.
I think your AIDS analogy is apt to your story, but not for the reasons you state. AIDS didn’t get focus and funding because heterosexuals started getting the disease - rather, it was the persistent, LOUD, and attention-seeking activism of gays that demanded the public and political attention. (I mean all this in a positive way - I was an activist due to the death of my best friend to the disease.)
Lay people had to stand up and insist their disease be taken seriously by the medical community and funding sources, immediately, as time was of the essence or more people would die. It set personal and institutional memories of a marginalized community that had to take medical matters into their own hands and demand research and treatment, and that such activism and patient-driven demands were life-saving. Of course, AIDS is actually a life-threatening disease and trans is not, but I think the AIDS experience at least partially underlies the political and medical willingness to accept the insistence of trans people for “life-saving” treatments such as HRT and SRS.
This is is a generous assessment, I understand. I personally see much more sinister motives undergirding the medicalization of children. But I do believe there is a percentage of clinicians who consciously or unconsciously recall that acting on the requested treatment of a marginalized community was definitely “on the right side” of medical history, and transfer that presumption to the treatment of trans presenting patients.
Wonderful piece. All good wishes going out to you, along with much thanks for sharing your insight and experience with such clarity and skill.
Thank you so much for telling your story, another very unique story of a beautiful young woman who was led astray. It makes me so angry to know that this is what is happening and it's only now beginning to get noticed. Write to every legislator, tell your story - The SAFE ACT in Ohio could use some letters from you - there is a Republican majority there, this bill should have passed months ago, now, we have to wait until November for them to maybe vote on it. It's very sad how hard the activists go after those that want to help, but they are afraid they will lose their precious positions, so they lag and pretend and give excuses as to why they can't protect children from this medical catastrophe and malpractice. Here's the bill! https://ohiohouse.gov/legislation/134/hb454
Thank you for your insight! I have often thought lobotomy and transition therapy were blood relatives...I now know someone else connected the two. It's a blessing that you couldn't afford your HRT which sent you down a path you were meant to walk. Real love is hard to find, but it seems you have found loving friends who enjoy who you are. I would not question yourself on the "why" just keep moving forward with whatever "moves you forward"....don't look back! Be in YOUR moment in time.
Dearest Gerda, I am so grateful that you wrote this amazing article. You have helped so many of us who are emotionally involved and impacted by the transition cult. You have given an inside view of a suffering fellow human being, whose journey from an abused, neglected and abandoned childhood has come to a wonderful sense of self. On your own. You have a world ahead of you, with so very much to give to us all. You are loved and needed. In my life, I feel I had almost a hedge of protection about me since I was told from the time I was a toddler, that I was loved by someone called Jesus. I did not understand anything else, but through the years (I am 80 now), through sexual abuse as a child and teenager, through ups and downs of life including the death of my 5 preborn children, a grandchild, my husband, and many family members, I felt a sense of support. I am now dealing with the alienation of my son, and his 3 transgender children and their children. After the death of my husband, (having him in my life as my rock since I was 17), I lost my way for awhile. It was if I woke up to a world seemingly gone mad. My 2 grandsons now proclaimed they were really female, and my beloved granddaughter who had 2 children decided she was in reality a male. They decided that I was the enemy, I guess, for they have closed me out of their lives. They have abandoned me, but I will pray for them, and all involved for the rest of my life. When my grandchildren were small, I tried to tell them that they were loved, but they had so much telling them the opposite; abuse of all kinds, mental issues, autism, abandonment, seeing pornography. My education continues, in hearing stories from people in the trenches such as yourself, (Thank You!) and I thank God for you! The truth is coming out, with many ignoring or scoffing or fighting tooth and nail for the status quo, but your truth will triumph in the end. Please continue to fight the good fight, you are needed and appreciated. Please do remember, you are loved.
Thank you very much for writing this! And thank you for being so honest and not tip-toeing around the issue. Of course everyone has a different opinion but I get irritated when I see "transition was wrong for me but it's right for others" or "adults can do whatever they want". What a bunch of crap. On a different topic, I was shocked to find from your essay that transition is (more or less) readily accessible in Poland. I know little about Poland but isn't it "very Catholic"? Is there a push back at all from people? Is trans activism becoming widespread like in US?
En situaciones como estas se nesecita acudir a la familia, recibir el apoyo y amor incondicional, sentirte que no estás solo, sentirte amado por tus seres queridos. Busca ese apoyo familiar, no te alejes de quienes te aman. Tomate tiempo a solas para cuestionarte, pregunta te que es lo que realmente quieres. Y deja de está preguntándole a tu cuerpo, quiérete? Abrázate y ámate . Cada ser humano nunca está conforme con algo de su cuerpo sin embargo aprenden a vivir con ello. Entonces hay personas Que ni siquiera les gusta si color de piel y son exitosas porque aprenden a vivir y se enfocan en su futuro en salir adelante y con la cabeza bien en alto😘
Thank you.
Thank you for writing this. It brought me to tears; I consider this a sign of how powerful your story and your telling of it is. Your coming out of depression, rejection, and neglect gives me hope. Thanks for shining your light…
Thanks for the insightful piece. I am sorry for what you have been through. But since you admit you're not expert on the history of the AIDS epidemic and you're too young to remember it, I wish you'd leave what happened during the AIDS crisis in the 1980s and 1990s before you were born out of it.
AIDS is a physical disease caused by a virus, HIV, a physical organism. So it's not an appropriate or helpful analogy that sheds any light on what's happening today with gender dysphoria and the social contagion of trans anyways. Invoking the AIDS crisis of the 1980s and the slow response of health authorities to it seems like an attempt to give more gravity to the plight of young people caught up in the trans craze today by appropriating the suffering of others in the past with a very different kind of affliction. I know people with gender distress do suffer, but sorry - the suffering of gender dysphoria is of an entirely different kind and on a much different scale compared to the horrible physical torments of AIDS. You really have no idea.
Then there's the problem of the inaccurate way you portray what happened with AIDS. You say "the public at large didn’t really care about the issue, so long as only homosexual people were impacted. Thousands of people had died pointlessly before the money started to flow to find the cure. The pressure started only when “normal” people started to die."
This is very misleading. In the US, the first cases of AIDS amongst presumably heterosexual women who got the disease from blood transfusions (usually related to childbirth) were reported in 1982. By 1984, it was known that many non-homosexual hemophiliacs, including children like Ryan White, had become infected with the virus which had been labelled HIV from infected blood products.
A major turning point in public concern about HIV-AIDS was when the movie star Rock Hudson - one of the most famous people in the world, hardly someone "normal" - announced he had AIDS in mid-1985. Hudson died of AIDS later that year. Hudson's death was not the death of a "normal" person. He was a HUGE celebrity.
You say "the pressure only started" for to fund and find treatments for HIV-AIDS when "normal people began to die" as though it was "the public" and "normal people" who were the movers and shakers that got the ball rolling to find treatments, not the gay community. This is a falsehood, one that erases the work of so many activists who worked tirelessly for years. In the US, the government through the NIH, Wall Street and all the major Big Pharma companies were all pushed to take action by scrappy, creative, in-your-face gay-led activist groups such as ACT UP. Enormous pressure to find and fund treatments was brought to bear by activists within and alongside the gay community.
You say, "Thousands of people had died pointlessly before the money started to flow to find the cure." This implies there is a cure for AIDS. There isn't. There are treatments that make HIV a manageable disease. There are medications that make it much more difficult for HIV to be spread by sex. There are treatments than can reduce suffering when HIV turns into full-blown AIDS. But there is no cure for either HIV or AIDS.
Globally, more than 36 million people have died of HIV-AIDS since the start of the pandemic; some estimates are as high as 48 million. Again, there is still no cure.
Thank you. Your honesty helps all the parents who are trying to stop their children going through this. I'm sorry no-one was able to help you and stop the process in time. I wish you much happiness going forward.
This may be just informative or redundant but it is critical to me. This describes my nearly seven decades of striving with gender dysphoria and my current conclusions. I am so ashamed that it's taken so long to reach these decisions, but this is part of my current identity foundation from which to proceed. Of course, you can assess this as you will.
Eight historical transliterated Hebrew biological sex designations with terse definitions:
Zachar, male.
Nekevah, female.
Androgynos, having both male and female characteristics.
Tumtum, lacking sexual characteristics.
Aylonit hamah, identified female at birth but later naturally developing male characteristics.
Aylonit adam, identified female at birth but later developing male characteristics through human intervention.
Saris hamah, identified male at birth but later naturally developing female characteristics.
Saris adam, identified male at birth and later developing female characteristics through human intervention.
Sex Difference in Christian Theology: Male, Female, and Intersex in the Image of God
by Megan K. DeFranza
This book is a wonderful, merciful, rigorous theological discussion of biological sex and a correlative video is listed here:
https://youtu.be/331smwhg0gM
Please forgive me if this story is considered inappropriate within this context? Whether anyone considers themselves christian or not, may I please include some extra nuance to your conversation? I have no intention of attempting any kind of evangelization in my contribution, I would however like to supply some extra dimension to the discourse. To advance some concepts I would like to present some quotes.
First:
Isa 56:4-5 KJV 4 For thus saith the LORD unto the eunuchs that keep my sabbaths, and choose the things that please me, and take hold of my covenant; 5 Even unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters: I will give them an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off.
Second:
Mat 19:11-12 KJV 11 But he said unto them, All men cannot receive this saying, save they to whom it is given. 12 For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.
Third:
Act 8:26-40 KJV (The baptism of the eunuch which I consider too long to be quoted here but far from inconsequential.)
I would love to note first that the term eunuch in these quotes seems to be defined by the Lord Jesus himself to include intersex individuals (eunuchs, which were so born from their mother's womb). Unwilling (some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men) and willing individuals (eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs) appear similarly defined.
May I also note the quote (unto them will I give in mine house and within my walls a place and a name better than of sons and of daughters). I am aware that original Hebrew literally is translated "a hand and a name" greater than of sons and of daughters. I am, however, quite intrigued by the implications that eunuchs are given recognition separate from sons and from daughters.
I consider myself to be trans (eunuch, saris adam, barren (Isa 54:1-17)). I am not exactly a son and not exactly a daughter. I have a woefully masculine face and physique but I am definitely not a son (AMAB MTF post SRS (GRS)). Therefore I do not fit in sons' spaces or daughters' spaces.
I have immersed myself in the historical, philosophical, psychological, political and theological literature and media for a significant portion of seven decades and conclude that I am physically, politically, perceptually and theologically non-binary. Psychologically, I have identified as female since the age of two or three but diligent discipline discouraged any hint or discussion of my feminine identity or behavior. My ideal puberty would have included hormone blockers until a legally acceptable age to begin HRT and GRS (SRS) and then as nearly normal womanhood as attainable.
In actuality, the diligent discipline has induced my voluntary celibacy and perception that I have been insidiously gaslighted and have a subtle incidence of complex traumatic stress disorder by the dismissing, ignoring, denying and suppressing of my gender identity. I am just one of my peers who is the quarry for metaphorical, euphemistic and literal physical erasure. My concern is not just psychological, health or culture. This is the challenge and analysis of my right to true Judeo-Christian observance and Judeo-Christian expression and Judeo-Christian faith.
I hope my comments and the quotes are discovered to be beneficial. I pray that nothing is found to be triggering because my intent was to be somehow loving, compassionate and empathetic to each and everyone. If you have deigned to read this entire comment, thank you much!
Bravo! I so admire your courage to write the truth. I’m sorry for all of the pain and sadness in your past and wish I could change your history. Please know your story might help crack this fallacy wide open and be a beacon of truth for others like you. Your life has great purpose. God bless.
I feel your pain. I’m so sorry. You were failed as a child. You’re not alone. Your story will be shared and more and more people will come out of the woodwork moving forward. In essence, your story will save lives. You deserve to be happy. I pray you find what you are looking for. Until then, never ever ever give up!
"This is shit." Is absolutely the most plain and honest response to what is happening.
Thank you for writing and sharing. I am not minimizing your pain, but I believe there is purpose in it. You are here unique in who you are and your influence. You are helping others in ways that would not have been possible on a different path. There is no way for you to know how your ripples effect others. There is a battle being fought over you that you cannot see. One side wants to use your past to destroy you with pain and disappointment. The other side is the Father to welcome you into the family, to bless your future with purpose and the healing that comes with the true affirmation that only He can give. Jesus is the way to making that a reality for you. I'm praying that you ask Him to show that to you. God bless you.
Thank you for your insight and I wish you nothing but success in your adult life which is difficult to navigate for each and every one of us. When was it ever easy? If we lived in a more primitive society we would have the problem of finding food and keeping warm every day.
My question for you is this - were your parents really so neglectful or just puzzled and confused about how to navigate parenthood like most of us? We are only human beings, imperfect by nature.
Love to you.
I think your AIDS analogy is apt to your story, but not for the reasons you state. AIDS didn’t get focus and funding because heterosexuals started getting the disease - rather, it was the persistent, LOUD, and attention-seeking activism of gays that demanded the public and political attention. (I mean all this in a positive way - I was an activist due to the death of my best friend to the disease.)
Lay people had to stand up and insist their disease be taken seriously by the medical community and funding sources, immediately, as time was of the essence or more people would die. It set personal and institutional memories of a marginalized community that had to take medical matters into their own hands and demand research and treatment, and that such activism and patient-driven demands were life-saving. Of course, AIDS is actually a life-threatening disease and trans is not, but I think the AIDS experience at least partially underlies the political and medical willingness to accept the insistence of trans people for “life-saving” treatments such as HRT and SRS.
This is is a generous assessment, I understand. I personally see much more sinister motives undergirding the medicalization of children. But I do believe there is a percentage of clinicians who consciously or unconsciously recall that acting on the requested treatment of a marginalized community was definitely “on the right side” of medical history, and transfer that presumption to the treatment of trans presenting patients.
Wonderful piece. All good wishes going out to you, along with much thanks for sharing your insight and experience with such clarity and skill.