31 Comments

I know this is a few months old but I find it fascinating that the author, like so many young men, mostly blames his mother for his lack of confidence, self-esteem, assertiveness, etc. Not his father, who was absent and abusive by turns, but his beaten and abused mother. There are paragraphs devoted to blaming her but seemingly no awareness of the father’s impact.

We see this a lot with young men that identify as incels as well. Everything is their mother’s fault while they conveniently gloss over their father’s role. Ultimately it is fathers or other male role models that build boys up and give them much of their confidence. Women can only do so much, and the inverse is true for girls.

I would never have dreamed of blaming my father for my lack of confidence as a woman because he could no more have taught me how to be a woman than he could have taught a fish to fly. My father is wonderful, but everything he taught me was filtered through his experiences as a man and therefore not always able to be translated into my reality as a woman. For that I needed my mother, and her disinterest/refusal to engage was what ultimately crippled my confidence and self-esteem for so long.

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May 25, 2022·edited May 25, 2022

Every family has its dysfunctional side. Part of growing up includes forgiving your parents for their imperfect, and perhaps even terrible, parenting and taking responsibility for your own actions. Embracing victimhood results in a long unhappy adolescence. Congratulations to you for becoming an adult!

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Your story is powerful, heartbreaking and hold a mirror to us in some ways. I'm truly sorry you had to go through this and couldn't find & experience safety in your own family where it should've been.

Only one comment, you mentioned that you'd loved that your parents would've fought for you. I just feel totally helpless and clueless as my daughter absolutely doesn't let us fight for her. Does not listen. determined on her own way down on the track of the trans train. I fight for her, but as she is over 20 I have no device or power in my hands to stop her. She doesn't even willing to listen our opinion or facts based evidence. My only hope is in God He'll find a way into her heart. But I don't know how to fight for her in this moment. I'm terrified she would move out in anger and goes even more deep into this pit.

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As a mama, this makes me want to just hug you! Thank you for sharing your story. You are clearly a strong, caring, and thoughtful person.

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This is so hard - mental trauma is so hard to detect in children. I am so sorry to hear this and as a parent going through this, it can be hard to know what to say if you go against it, they call us unsupportive

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What do you think of parents like this one? https://twitter.com/libsoftiktok/status/1526614394964037632

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I am wondering affection deprivation might have been a factor for you. My own daughter is dysphoric and I am currently doing some work on our family's dynamics, and my older child told me that the way I and my husband have parented was by providing material comfort but not so much emotional comfort and that she (the older daughter, not dysphoric) had suffered from it, not being able to find support. My husband and I had also been fighting a lot over the past years and sharing too much with our children. The younger one has suffered more (being younger) and also looked for support online.

Anyway, just. Thought.

Thank you so much for sharing your story, every insight is so helpful for us, parents. I truly hope you heal fully and find your path to happiness.

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I’m so sorry. I hope you find peace and fulfilment in the rest of your life.

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It seems like you glossed over a pretty important part. You start of by saying you had some typical, bad childhood experiences then one day, apropos of nothing you announce your transition to you puzzled dad.

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Thanks for sharing what has clearly been a really difficult journey for you. Even without transitioning and then detransitioning, the level of trauma in your life would warrant therapy. And therapy is hard work. You and you alone did that hard work-- no one can take that away from you.

I am really curious about what led you to de-transition? Can you pinpoint a particular event or realization, or was it a culmination of factors? My son identifies as gender-fluid but really appears to be more transgender. I struggle to understand what has led him to this point. Our family is in therapy, both individual and as a family. Definitely hard work just to get to the point of discussing his feelings. I still feel that he is thoroughly convinced that he has found 'THE Way' to happiness. I fear for him.

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Thank you so much for sharing your story, your pain, and your growth. Your voice and your insights are so incredibly valuable.

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Thank you for sharing. I’m so glad you have found help and I am glad to hear how much wiser you’ve become. I’m sorry about your relationship with your father. I’m sorry that your parents didn’t fight for you. I appreciated all the insight and empathy you have for them. They probably didn’t realize how what they were doing to each other, and the lack of attention you got from them, would affect you. Also, they were probably very unaware of the dangers the internet (social media, smartphones) posed. This has been unknown territory for many of us parents with trans-identifying children. I wish I could go back and change things regarding my parenting; it was far from perfect. Please write a followup if you have advice on how to parent and fight for our children who are caught up in this transgender craze. How can we get them back to reality?

Thank you again for trying to help others. ❤️

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You have so much to give and not just in the detransitioning community. Your life experiences has helped bring out empathy and understanding that so many of us never acquire. However, don't let that empathy overwhelm you in taking on other people's problems. Be you, be entirely you, warts and all. Save some of yourself for you, okay?

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This is so sad. I'm glad this person has a good understanding of the parents' shortcomings and why they weren't the parents they should be -- "it is what it is" -- but I know that doesn't take away the yearning for what a mother and father should be and do. Each generation has the chance to do a better job for the next, and often (maybe most of the time) that does happen. But not always.

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This is so profound. I think many of us are more mentally healthy in our thirties because we get to the age we remember our parents being and realize they were just people.

What you said about wishing your parents fought for you also rings true. Kids always wish their parents could let them do whatever they want, not realizing how empty that feeling is. That you have to grow up too fast and be your own parent, making your own boundaries without anyone telling you how.

I hope someday my child sees it as fighting for her. I'm trying so hard and I know I say and do it wrong sometimes.

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Thank you for sharing your story. I understand your feelings regarding your parents (at least, I think I understand them.) But, as a parent of an adult daughter who half a year ago decided to "come out" as gender non-binary and demanded us to 'affirm' her 'true identity, I urge you to consider parents' feelings.

We live through a lose-lose situation: we know that we are losing our daughter by refusing to 'affirm' her imaginary 'identity,' and we know that we will lose her if we affirm this identity. My daughter is a 29 years-old woman, an English teacher who lives in a different country and works for a company that employs foreigners to teach English in schools. She "came out" via email a few months after her best friend left back to the US and married another woman and when gender non-binary teachers became the coolest trend on LGBTQAA+ supportive media. She is currently in a state of mind where all her life ambitions came down to changing her name, cutting off her breasts, doing whatever other medical procedures she hadn't decided on yet, and accusing everyone who opposes trans-hype of being transphobic bigots. In her bubble, which she refuses to leave, her father, brothers, and I are transphobic bigots and her enemies.

We know that our daughter is not a transgender but a victim of a cult that uses her and other easily influenced single teachers as recruiters to convert children. We know with 100% certainty that she is ruining her life and will regret her decision, if not right away, then in a few years. But, the trans cult is too strong and has too many powerful lobbyists to take over science, ideology, politics, and morality. We can do nothing to stop our daughter from mutilating herself and irreversibly damaging her body.

Parents of adult 'trans' at least don't have to deal with gender therapists and social workers coercing them to 'affirm' kids' identities by asking, "Do you prefer to have a dead daughter or a living son?" Parents of young kids and teens have to go through this when their children sit next to them, and a 'helping' professional makes a diagnosis based purely on symptoms that kids picked up from TikTok videos and 'cool' gender non-binary teachers.

If you want to use your story to help parents to protect their kids from becoming the next victims of this mass psychosis, you need to expose psychiatrists, gender therapists, and, which is probably most important, sex-reassessment doctors who mutilate children and young adults like you for profit and bribe politicians to censor scientists for daring to fight against the cult.

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