This is one of the best things I have ever read about the gender woo cult and how it captures new members.
My particular area of interest is birth and breastfeeding, which you I'm sure you will be unsurprised to learn must now include "everyone" including those born with a penis who will never be pregnant, give birth or gain the capacity to breastfeed. This would be academic said the quiet part out loud: “Even in studies intending to be trans-inclusive (Gerodetti and Mottier, 2009), male and female categories persist (Sariego, 2025b), reinforcing the view that pregnancy is exclusive to female bodies.” https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/transfeminist-pregnancy-reproductive
Women are chastised and excluded from birth and breastfeeding support groups if they are not fully accepting of men who push their way in to get praise that reinforces their womanly performance: https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/inducing-magical-thinking
And it has been proposed that babies should be used as real life props in the fostering of "gender affirming care" protocols for men. Never mind that they are already being used for men with sexual fetishes: https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/men-breastfeeding-again
It’s excellent and really good too. Some wonderful lines. Wanting it to have absolute impact would suggest creating a shorter version which stops around the time of the realisation of how this thing works. The further examples are good but not as good as what precedes them
I liked the article. I think it needs an edit to improve it. I say that as reader and make no other claim. Viviane inferred my statement was negative and sexist. It was neither.
John, your attitude throughout this exchange shows us how resistant you are to a challenge to your sense of male entitlement. I do hope that somehow, some time in the future, your mind will creak open. Enough from me. I’m not into hounding people.
I can tell from this exchange that you have a rich and happy life, full of friends and laughter. Time to get back to that rather than being a bore on the internet
I knew plenty of transvestites in the 90s when I hung out at gay nightclubs with my gay guy friends. Most of them were pretty cool. None of them claimed that dressing in feminine clothing made them women. I was fine with that. I was a big proponent of the idea that there is no one right way to be a man or a woman. Today's gender identity says that if someone doesn't conform to a long laundry list of outdated sex stereotypes, they were born in the wrong body. What a load of garbage. It's the same old homophobic rhetoric, but now covered in rainbows and glitter.
First transvestite I encountered was Wayne/Jayne County. He was very polite, very (imo) much like the small town Americans portrayed on TV. Oh, and a local, hard-as-nails local drag Queen club owner, Foofoo Lamar, who most definitely did not believe he was a woman. Not sure whether either encounter - in my early teens - informed my disdain for genderbollox. But..there you go.
same for me, all these guys would dress up as women for fun but in no way did they think they were women, they were proud men who like to put on a dress. then came the cult of trans activism and all the fun went away
So true. Once upon a time I believed what I’d been told - some people know from the time they are very young that they are “mentally” the opposite sex, and that never changes. And then they are mocked, discriminated against, and even attacked, for something outside their control. Of course we should be kind to such poor souls and help them feel more comfortable with this medical condition they have! Of course we should identify people with this condition and get them treatment as early in life as possible so they feel better!
Then my own very feminine, dress-wearing doll-loving daughter started high school and fell down the rabbit hole. My previously happy, if kind of quirky, little girl was now depressed, friendless, cutting herself, failing her classes, and obsessed with the internet. It all happened so fast we didn’t know what hit us.
It became so obvious that the narrative that I’d believed was not true. She was claiming she’d always been this way (did she not remember that I was there!?!?). It was so clearly a coping mechanism, an escape from criticism/jealousy for being white, middle-class, and pretty, a manifestation of self-hatred very much akin to an eating disorder. It was a confusing time as I realized that what I’d believed was nothing but propaganda. I cannot support my child’s attempt at obliterating herself.
If this had not happened, I might still be going along with the crowd. If she hadn’t been so obviously worse off and miserable, I might have believed I had to support it. It definitely could have gone a different way. But there’s nothing like being personally impacted to force you to clarify your beliefs.
We also have dear friends who we’ve lost. Our kids grew up together. Their daughter identifies as non-binary. They’ve completely drunk the progressive kool aid. I can be friends with people who disagree with me, but I can’t trust them not to encourage my daughter down this path. Their ideology would require them to let her know that she’s “seen” and “supported” behind my back.
"It became so obvious that the narrative that I’d believed was not true. She was claiming she’d always been this way (did she not remember that I was there!?!?). It was so clearly a coping mechanism, an escape from criticism/jealousy for being white, middle-class, and pretty, a manifestation of self-hatred very much akin to an eating disorder. It was a confusing time as I realized that what I’d believed was nothing but propaganda. I cannot support my child’s attempt at obliterating herself." Exactly!
And kids (especially the girls) are getting clear self-hate messages from school, in the form of critical social justice theory (aka woke) which promotes a lot of social division and self-hatred, especially for kids who are white and therefore declared to be "privileged" and "racist".
The bizarre, developmentally inappropriate sexualization of children is another significantly destructive piece of what kids are being inundated with now in the classroom. Why would elementary-aged children need to learn about adult sexuality and adult sexual practices?! Third graders don't need to be wondering if they are "non-binary" - this is nuts!
They are pawns of fetishistic men. If men want the “right” to force women to undress in front of them, pretend that they are women, and have sex with them, they need to convince everyone that they are not in fact fetishistic men but are poor marginalized people who are “born this way”. Cue the brainwashing of teenage girls and young children, who must exist as trans people to support that narrative. These kids and young women are being psychologically manipulated, used and destroyed by men for sexual gratification.
I agree. The poor brain-washed kids are being exploited by middle-aged perverted men, AGPs etc, who want to hide their real motives. And it also helps them if unhappy young girls, and shy harmless-looking boys, appear so less threatening than a six-foot-six big aggressive guy in a dress with psycho-clown make-up. Not to mention that they could also get paid work, to go and act creepily round youngsters at 'drag queen story time' ...
I don't know a single "trans" child who is "happy." None of them. I'm at a 100%. All of them have parents indulging in their neuroses, they all have affirming therapists, they even have peers who don't care two twits about their "identity." Yet even with all of this acceptance, they are completely miserable and dysfunctional at best, suicidal at worst. It's really heart-breaking to watch their suffering.
I agree, and in fact this also applies to “trans” adults. I have never seen one who acts like a happy, healthy person.
It’s funny how we know if a person hates their hair, or body shape, or skin color, we all recognize that they need to be encouraged to love and accept themselves - obsessing over perceived flaws or wishing you looked like someone else isn’t mentally healthy. But if someone hates their body in this one very specific way much of society suddenly decides it’s because they were “born in the wrong body” and tells them that yes, they SHOULD obsess over trying to change themselves. These kids are being victimized.
BTW, many parents are NOT affirming and are heartbroken over how their teen and young adult children have been brainwashed.
I feel sad for the transgender young people you know but I can assure you that their transness isn't the reason for their sadness. I know many happy, healthy, functional transgender people of all ages many who have high power jobs, spouses and families.
I love the wit of your writings about this, Róisín, and I have been using the term "non-binary niece disorder" ever since I first read it on your Substack. Most recently, I have been thinking about it with regard to my sister, whose daughter's boyfriend thinks he's a woman. They all live in Europe, while I'm in the US, so I haven't met him, nor did I know about this relationship before I revealed my TERFy thoughts to my sister over the phone earlier this year (if I had known, I might have kept my mouth shut). She was shocked, but in an email later professed to want to learn more, so I sent her Joyce and Stock's books. Then I didn't hear anything for months.
Until she called earlier this week, and at the end of a friendly conversation I made the mistake to ask if she had received the books. She had, she informed me, but she had no time or interest in reading them. I would have liked to move on at that point, but she launched into an angry interrogation of me, why I care about this issue that "doesn't affect me", why I'm so "political" about it, why I can't just USE THE PRONOUNS, and why do I think this young man FEELS LIKE A WOMAN?
Honestly, I wish I had declined to answer any of these questions, given that, as my dad said later with regard to her and such topics, it's like talking to a Jehova's Witness. But of course I can't keep my mouth shut. And since I'm not very quick on my feet when someone comes at me angrily, I said all the wrong things. Worst of all, after I mumbled something about "social contagion" in regards to the etiology question, which she countered with the idea that "trans people have existed for thousands of years", I brought up Blanchard's research on what historically motivated male transsexuals. First I just wanted to mention the HSTS side, because I always think talking about homophobia in the context of transgenderism is going to get these people to understand. But naturally, she swiftly pointed out that her daughter's boyfriend is not gay. At that point I should have just returned to the social contagion hypothesis, and talked about smart, sensitive, maybe autistic men escaping "toxic masculinity", but instead my brain allowed my mouth to mention the third rail, AGP. "What is that???" she angrily inquired. I explained. Gasps ensued. The phone call soon ended.
For the record, I do NOT think that this young man is definitely AGP. I have not met him. In pictures, his face looks like that of a pretty young woman, and the illusion is just broken by his Adam's apple and flat chest. He doesn't dress in fishnets. He wears the baggy pants and sneakers of the enby girls. So I'm not making a diagnosis, although like you back in the aughts, I would love to know what his story is. I frankly hope I don't get a chance to ask, that my niece soon goes back to having a regular boyfriend as she did before, because until then, I'm afraid I'm the JK Rowling of my European family. God help me if they get married.
Great comment. I have carefully avoided talking to a sister because I, like you, don’t do great under attack and am confident I will trip up on any number of red lines. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I could say that might turn the tide, but that is really the wrong frame. It’s not on me to convince her, when she is in such a radical defensive posture. I don’t want the relationship damaged.
Thank you. Yes, I wish I had avoided it, too. When she said she needed to educate herself, I naively thought it would be ok to send her some books. That was also before I knew that this relationship was serious enough that they traveled to introduce him to the grandparents.
In the days after that phone call, I spent hours writing a letter to my sister, to say all the things I wish I had said, and explain why I said the things I did say. It was helpful for me to put it all in writing, so I would stop replaying the conversation in my head.
But I didn't send it. I know she won't read it with an open mind. And I also don't want to fret about awaiting her response, which I'm sure would not be positive unless I apologized for my heretic views. Getting yelled at again would just stress me out more. And ultimately, I stand by everything I said, even the possibility that AGP may play a role, which I think she needs to know about.
I'm also angry that she feels entitled to condemn my views, which are based on many hours of research, while refusing to educate herself on the topic. But that's very typical for her, and there is a reason that even before this, we talked only a few times a year. Maybe now there will be radio silence for longer, but short of groveling for forgiveness, I'm not sure what I can do about it.
I don't think you did a single thing wrong. You told the truth in a non-confrontative way, and your sister completely freaked out. That's on her.
There is nothing you can do about it. Your sister has chosen this relationship with you, and you can't stop her. You don't control her. When and if she ever comes back to you, she's going to have to do it in her own way, under her own motivation.
The Dance of Anger, by Harriet Lerner, was the book that taught me to let go of pointless arguments. In it, she says that there's no point reacting sincerely to someone who simply refuses to work things out with you. That person is not reacting sincerely to you. They are trying to control you.
The most common form of control is guilting people into submission. It's passive-aggression. They're not doing anything TO you. They're just not getting along WITH you.
The clue is that the controlling people will up the ante on trying to guilt you, for as long as you resist being controlled by them. If you can hold out long enough, eventually their claims will become so ridiculous that you can see for yourself it was never anything but manipulation:
"You're making me upset."
I'm sorry! But still. . .
"You're making me angry."
I'm SO sorry! But still. . .
"You're giving me a headache."
Oh, no! But still. . .
"You're giving me a stomach ache."
I feel bad! But still. . .
"You're giving me insomnia."
I feel terrible! But still. . .
"You're giving me cancer."
Wait, hang on a minute. . .
I happen to have two sisters who are both control freaks, under varying levels of control by our very controlling parents. I tried desperately to have a relationship with them for decades, but for some reason, they always wound up ganging up against me. What was I doing wrong? How could I reach them? When would they treat me as a friend and not an enemy, like they treated each other? I spent UNTOLD hours struggling with these problems. For decades.
Eventually, I read Lerner and tried her techniques on them: no blame, no shame, just simple straightforward sincere communication. Didn't work. But it sure bugged them that they could no longer push my buttons and make me cry. So I walked away. What else could I do? I couldn't spend the rest of my life crying.
They chose that relationship with me, and I couldn't stop them. I don't control them.
It's been decades now since I've heard from either of them. My life has been happy, adventurous, and full of love. They've missed it all. I would hate to be them.
I get to live in a world in which people who love each other don't try to manipulate or control each other.
Thank you, Eleganta. You are absolutely right that my sister is trying to control my stance on this. She is a very controlling, judgmental, arrogant, and often rude person.She projects an excessive amount of self-confidence. On the other hand, she is not someone to swim against the tide of her peer group, and has a lot of friends. She certainly sees my heterodox opinions as unnecessary contrarianism, believing that I'm just looking to position myself as the "enlightened one" and her as the dupe. She just doesn't understand why I think this issue is important.
Thanks for the book suggestion, I will check it out.
Yes, exactly, she doesn't make waves. And she doesn't understand why I feel the need to make waves about this. I'm sure she thinks I'm being aggressive by expressing my objections. She thinks this is a matter of live-and-let-live, and is completely oblivious to the coercive nature of this ideology.
But I wouldn't call her weird. She is pretty mainstream and normal in every respect. So are her kids and her friends. I'm definitely the weird one, the one probably somewhat on the spectrum, the one who always pursued ivory tower type academic studies. It's funny that it's now her, the pragmatic one, who gets sucked into this ideology the underlying philosophy of which emerged from the academic ivory tower. Well, maybe it's not surprising. I learned about Judith Butler way back in 1994, and thought her ideas were nuts (I was never a fan of postmodernism). She doesn't even know who Judith Butler is, she has never studied history, which is why she can fall for claims like "there have been trans people for thousands of years!". She is unable and uninterested in looking at this cultural moment in a larger historical and philosophical context, because she just goes with the flow of her peer group.
I do wonder how different things would be though if her daughter wasn't so deeply sucked into this. She might actually be able to see the folly.
KateP & Eleganta, just wanted to thank you 🙏 for sharing this whole thread. Your conversation and book recommendation are really helpful.
I too have a sister who is highly social, inclined to bullying, and gender-woo captured. We don’t (yet) have a nonbinary niece, but we might as well. Recently, I have found it helpful to think about her as a Gender-woo Jehovah Witness (with apologies to those folks).
About 2 years ago I promised myself never to mention anything having to do with gender (or race or politics) to her ever again — and never to take her up on it. I just fain politeness-acquiescence without adding any comments, as if I have no opinion, nothing to say, and am happy to go along with hers. We live in different states most of the time, so I can keep this up over occasional phone calls and visits.
I have really struggled with this. It is dishonest. It deeply saddens me. It means we are closer on the surface and farther apart beneath it. I am muffled and angry at her for so aggressively rejecting any right I might have to express a considered good-faith view on the topic, no matter how gently stated, when I have spent so much time researching and reading about it — while she frequently and forcefully repeats what she hears from Trans, Inc media: NPR, the ACLU, and M. Gessen in the NYT, and slams the Overton window shut behind her.
She tries to reinforce the views she wants to see in me by praising me if I’m friendly to the teenage trans-identified barista at the Starbucks in our parent’s neighborhood (why wouldn’t I be? I worry for that kid), she tells her friends I seem to have “popped out of it” — meaning my TERFy views of 2 years ago. Meanwhile, those views are much stronger and better developed than ever.
It is helping me tremendously to know that other gender critical (sex realist!) women have the sister problem. I’m not proud of my self-silencing deception, but it is the price of managing my stress, having a relationship with my sister that can be supportive on other fronts at least conversationally, and of enabling us to work together to assist our aging parents.
So thank you again for helping me think through this and stay sane 🙏
Sister relationships are extremely complex. I suffered a lot for many years over losing mine. But then I realized that my life was passing, and nothing I could ever do would change anything about that. So I stopped wasting energy and heartache on it.
I would gently warn you that holding in your emotional reaction to your sister's behavior might eventually affect your health. Being muffled and angry is not good for you.
You have the right to your own personal boundaries. You can't make her think differently. But you can politely ask her to stop trying to make YOU think differently.
"I love you, but you know I don't agree with you on this. So let's talk about something we both like," is a simple response when she brings any of this up.
It would probably take reiteration several times before she realized you were serious and would not listen to her on this subject anymore. But that's okay.
There's nothing wrong with repeating yourself word for word. It's worked for me innumerable times. Even if she got mad and tried to bully you into a conversation, you could always stay calm and keep simply repeating yourself, until she gave up.
Saying the same words over and over in the same loving tone never hurt anyone. It might eventually even make you laugh at the silliness of it all, which could lead to a hug ("oh, come here, you make me crazy") and a change of subject without anyone admitting defeat.
I actually once went through the exact same exchange over a dozen times with Kate Strangio's aunt:
"He's a man."
"But she's female!" (Surprised tone.)
Over and over again, until she began changing her words, then finally gave up altogether.
She tried to out-wait me. She failed.
It's good to be honest. It's easier on your health, it's easier on your self-esteem, and it's easier, in the long run, on your relationship.
Remember how many times in your lives you've vehemently disagreed with each other. Little girls fight with their sisters all the time. You coped.
Eleganta, I have been meaning to thank you for your thoughtful and very practical advice. If you can effectively use this approach with Chase Strangio’s aunt (Saints alive! I am dying to know how you wound up in that particular Lion’s den) — I can certainly give it a try with my sister. I especially appreciate your wise nod to resilient practice and maintaining calm alongside honesty. And yes, I think you are right about the health impacts of muffling. So this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for your words.
— In sex based rights and having-a-complex-sister-relationship solidarity, Pansy (and here’s a toast to developing boundaries and emotional maturity along the way, who knew?)
Sisters, eh? Can't live with 'em, can't lock 'em out of the house until they move in with the neighbors.
I was raised in a very large, very opinionated extended family with a lot of hot-headed bickering and sudden shouts of good-natured laughter. I had to learn young how to keep my cool and not let anyone drag me into conflict against my will. I did it largely with sudden shouts of good-natured laughter. It's very hard to pick a fight with someone who keeps laughing.
And, yes, about a year ago I discovered I'd accidentally made friends with Kate Strangio's aunt. It was a heck of an experience. I described it when it happened in the comments on Kara Dansky's substack:
Unfortunately you've identified yourself as the enemy. All their bonding and intimacy is founded on hating you. Then you had the utter gall to be a real person that she actually knew and liked, what a headfuck for her, she was expecting Donald Trump like the internet told her.
She is head in sand. I don't think anyone could read those books and not think more clearly. So she can't face them/the truth. If she did she worries she might lose her daughter and has chosen to buy the untruths rather than potentially face that. Understandable, but not sustainable.
My daughter is the classic ASD sensative socially awkward young woman. My wife and I never "affirmed" her as anything other than our beautiful daughter. So she entirely cut us off. Savage. Into the devouring arms of the delusional transcommunity. Thanks for your work Roisin. Yes, "what harm?" indeed. This is terrible, destructive harm, iron-reiforced by the seemingly 'nice' pronoun lie and the absolute refusal to even contemplate whether the lie is true or not. There is a profound occult power at work making these lies invulnerable to any assault by truth, reason, and actual love.
Thanks for writting that up Eleganta. Oh shit.... So I'm sixty this year, and my parents went through the "healing of the memories" fad in penticostal churches in the 1980s. As a result of blowing ordinary human insecurities into mountain sized sexual abuse fantasies, where there is always some evil villan and they are always an innocent victum, went through a horrible divorce just after I was married in the early 1990s. And here we are again. But now it is my daughter doing it to me and my wife. I am a theologian. So at least this time it is not the church who is the authority structure backing the fabricated victum narrative; it is the progressive state, the secular therapists, and the university righteous radicals foisting gender affirming care onto my daughter, and cult-like, turning her from her family and people who really know and love her. Like your peice shows, it is only a commitment to objective truth, to factual reality, that can prevent the tragic slide into dysfunctional madness to which the human condition is so easily drawn. Many thanks for your peice.
Oops, clarification. My parents got divorced in the 1990s, not me and my wife, who have been married these past 32 years, and we have been blessed to grow in love and admiration for eachother over the passage of some seriously difficult shared life experiences. Two of our six children died of spinal musclar atrophy when they were 6 months old, and other stuff. And this is another thing that shits me seriously about fabricated truama. It belittles real trauma, and the only way to survive and overcome real trauma is by some sort of ballance, some sort of coming to terms with reality, some sort of refusing to become a victum. But it is like the entire therapuetic industry and the entire educational and legislative authorities, are determined to make my beautiful and gifted daughter into a delusional, mutilated, and physically and mentally ill basket-case. It makes me un-consolably furious, which doesn't do my blood pressure any favours. And the idea that an autognyophical man is some sort of tragic and outcase righteous victum is obscene. Such men have a problem that they need to master, they do not need to have their problem validated and affirmed to the risk of the women who they use to feed their illness.
I'm so sorry to hear about your two lost babies. That is terribly tragic.
I absolutely agree with you about the obscenity of AGP men pretending to be victims. Believe me, that makes all of us women in this fight see red.
I also absolutely agree with what you're saying about fabricated trauma belittling real trauma. In fact, this seems to me something that would interest the managers of PITT.
You might want to contact them and offer to write something about your experiences with your lost babies and your daughter groomed into the Trans panic. I don't know what kind of backlog they might have of pieces waiting to be posted, but they post every day, so their waiting list probably moves pretty quickly.
Certainly, they're always posting pieces by parents of these young people, telling their unique stories in ways that speak to other parents who are also surviving your dreadful shared experience.
You're very welcome, Paul. I hope the knowledge that the Satanic panic ended, so I believe the Trans panic will too, can offer you some comfort. Although my parents didn't see my brother for six years, he has been a part of their regular lives for thirty years since then.
At the time I wrote my piece--three years ago--most parents were still deep in grief and despair that they might never see their children again. I wanted to offer them hope through my story. Moral panics do end.
Thanks Eleganta. Well, the dynamic where your brother cut you off is integral with the entire 'subjective narrative affirmation' dynamic, and integral with the DARVO dynamic you so helpfully outlined. Where there is a falsehood that requires affirmation for any sort of ongoing relationship (relationships are held at randsom by lies), the cost of being truthful (which is precisely what the person suffering from a delusional really need) is being cut off. This happened to my brother and I when my mother and sisters decided that my father was a horrible sex monster (which we all knew he was not). Because my brother and I would not affirm the fabricated 'memmories' that were being continuouslyre-crafted, embellished, and taken to prepiosterously unreal extremes, that my brother and I knew were false (we also grew up in our family) my mother and sisters cut us off. I never saw my mother or sisters again after my parents divorced. Nobody in my extended family even told me where she was or when she died. The bible wonders 'can a mother forget the child that suckled at her breast?' and the answer is, she can. Sisters too (and, as you have found, brothers). And we were a close and genuinely warm and safe family when I grew up. Lies one is relationally blackmailed into affirming are just so destructive, both if you submit to the balckmail, and if you refuse to be blackmailed.
I live in hope that my daughter will re-connect with my wife and I when she reconnects with the truth of who she really is. There is a lot of effort involved in keeping a lie going particulalrly if it involves policing everyone around you to performatively comply with what they know is a lie. And your body won't be lied to; cross sex hormones are going to cause you serious medical trouble. So whilst there is life there is hope. Many tyhanks again for your piece Eleganta.
I do totally agree that everything dependes on what kind of first contact you have with the whole "trans" issue. That's why they are using children as a shield. Because decades ago everybody knew about the fishnet-men, and of course no one supported it; and many of these teenage girls would have ended up being rabid feminists that don't shave, and many of them lesbians too. But now, as you explain here, what we have are teenagers just having a phase via queer ideology. This creates a whole different scenario in peoples minds and a more permissive attitude.
I spent 2012-2019 in the cult, thinking I was "trans" myself, and then 2019-present TERFing it up... and inevitably losing the friendship of all the women with quirk chungus TIF friends/family members. They don't understand why I won't shut up about this and it's 100% a class dynamic; I guarantee you they're thinking "but Elizabeth's parents are liberals and she went to college, how can she be such a bigot now?" The social circle I was brought up in is 100% on board the trans train and it's been profoundly alienating.
All this is to say that you absolutely NAILED what it's like. Great piece!
This was a great post. What I still can't get over, besides the utterly bizarre belief that anyone is "born in the wrong body" are the number of long time friendships that are ended if you don't buy into the troon insanity. Of all things , how did this become the line of demarcation and if you're on the wrong side of the border you are in the enemy camp? As a nonbeliever you are a heretic to be avoided. This is more disturbing to me than the gender identity nonsense itself. There are going to be years of fallout from this fiasco.
Yes! It's so insane to me that there's this "if you're not with us, capitulating feverishly and obsequiously at any given moment, then you must be an evil nazi murderer' mentality that goes with the cult mindset. It's deeply upsetting and I've lost a friend of 20 years who now reckons she's "not female." (She does everything she can to escape herself given any opportunity. This is more of the same pattern, this time with "psychoanalysis" from a trans person 3 times a week. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu... She knows I know this, and she ended the friendship because I can see her for who she is. Despite loving her anyway. So sad.)
To choose a cultural ideology over a decades long friendship and banishing that “friend” from your life is stunning to me. It’s what you see in some religious sects where nonbelievers are shunned. Especially in cases where they do not have a son or daughter who has fallen prey to this evil. I have a brother who forcefully told me he’d hang up on me if I ever mention any of this again , and as far as I know, we have no extended family who are troons. He offered no explanation, just the threat. This kind of behavior itself is incomprehensible and a derangement brought on by this plague, some of the ongoing collateral damage. .
"I have a brother who forcefully told me he’d hang up on me if I ever mention any of this again."
Have a friend who said "You may NOT say that!" when I suggested that it might be a bad thing for kids to take puberty blockers, go on "cross-sex" hormones, and then become surgically altered before the age of 17-18.
"They know who they are and it's better for them if these things are done early."
A medical professional, mind you.
But as a teacher of almost 40 years, I also have a professional opinion, and it's that social contagion is a real thing in 12-year-olds. In the 1980s, it was anorexia. The girls had it, or they were afraid they had it, they were afraid they'd get it, and they all went into the bathroom to cry. One every couple of years really did have anorexia. Other, more benign, years it was pink Converse sneakers, roller pens, and what have you.
I just don't get out much with old friends anymore. It's work having to skirt certain topics.
They are good-hearted liberals, and they've fallen for a lot of hooey.
In the 90s, all the pre-teen girls thought they were witches, and all the adults gave them an eye roll and said "no, you're not a witch." How I miss those days.
Brilliant article - and I'm definitely stealing some of those pithy phrases (Insta Trout Pout 😂)
There are so many facets to this whole bizarre transfabulation 'movement' it is hard to know where to begin, but I think you've outlined perhaps one of the most powerful, and quietly insidious, factors. "What in the name of Shakespeare's sweaty codpiece are you talking about?" has been replaced with terms like stunning and brave and being your authentic self.
The sad thing is that many are not being "who they are", they're running away from who they are.
I often cast my mind back maybe 15 years to the hypothetical scenario of my boss waltzing up to my desk and telling me I had to include "my pronouns" in my email signature. I'd have looked at him like he'd had surgery to replace his ears with testicles.
Even if I hadn't been able to say the words "WTF are you talking about, you blithering idiot?" they would have been written all over my face.
But now I'm supposed to spaff rainbows and go all gooey-eyed at the majestic magnificence that is the whole trans thing?
Where's the harm? Well, thankfully my daughters grew up before this transinsanity took hold, but my 18 month old granddaughter might end up being told by school and 'society' that she's some human version of a clownfish. Several decalitres of testosterone later and the installation of some appalling Frankenschlong carved out of her forearm, ask me again about harm.
And that's just one example of the harm at the more extreme end - there are a litany of harms before that stage. I'll move heaven and earth to protect her from all of this grotesque shite.
However, as your article makes painfully aware, it's the whole context of a life that's important - and if you're being brought up in a milieu where 'being kind' is seen as a superior virtue to being truthful it's going to be a struggle to escape from that mindset. If your whole life is built around being seen to do the 'right thing' rather than actually *doing* the right thing you're going to more easily capitulate to the pronoun psychosis and all it implies.
As one child psychologist put it - a childhood is not reversible
Let's try not to sacrifice our kids on the altar of inclusivity shall we?
Quote: "If your whole life is built around being seen to do the 'right thing' rather than actually *doing* the right thing you're going to more easily capitulate to the pronoun psychosis and all it implies."
The welfare of the Enby in question doesn't seem to be a concern for the friend/neighbor - just "Getting along with her". Like that makes you kind. The girl hates her female body's weaknesses and liabilities and feeling female in her culture, SO badly that she can't conceive of ALL THE TRAITS INSIDE HERSELF SHE DOES LIKE being attributed to a girl AT ALL?! That's some serious internalized misogyny here. Something we should help her be free of, not lock her in that belief of her own inferiority forever!?
Tbh I was never taken in by the non binary nieces. I find those young women what we used to call wet. Nerdy and immature. In the harsher corners of the internet people talk about people who weren’t bullied enough at school. Sounds harsh but sometimes weepy adolescent girls need to be treated in a brusque manner and the jibes from their more resilient cohort, provided it’s not too brutal might provide cues about steps to maturity. We used to tease kids who hung onto their soft toys for example. All the enbies I know of have had weak, indulgent and hesitant parenting around matters where resilience and interpersonal flexibility was needed. And flowing from this I’d add, apart from their personal styling these young women are not usually, masc” in any way, which just adds to the annoying sheltered, pandered to impression.
I see your general point as being that these non-binary nieces lead soft lives. They generally don't go through any of the sort of hardships that build strong character. They also don't experience the kind of social embeddedness that fosters solidarity and unshakable moral or religious convictions and so are easily swept along by every passing craze.
I lived for 7 years in one of the poorer provinces of China. The peasant population led hard lives. Among them, the number of boys who thought they were girls or girls who thought they were boys was zero. Strange that.
I don’t think that anyone needs to be bullied more, but I see your point. What I DO think needs to happen is that moms need to remember the fuck what it was like being in junior high and remind their poor kids that puberty sucks for pretty much everyone, even the pretty and popular girls. Kids need to be told to buckle up, because leaving behind your childhood and entering womanhood is a wrestling match—sometimes it leaves you feeling battered and bruised, and sometimes you feel like a badass waving a championship belt over your head—and all those feelings are NORMAL. Being a woman is a gift, but it’s not for sissies!
An acquaintance recounted to me a conversation they’d had, with the mother of a trans identified young woman who was about to have “top surgery”. The mother earnestly explained by way of rationale that her daughter had hated getting her period at 11 and getting breast development. Where did the idea come from that this isn’t a normal reaction?
Typically (often undiagnosed) teenaged ASD girls have chronic anxiety and are already bullied for the “otherness” they give off (partly hence the anxiety). Some are self-harming. Piling on yet more bullying is far more likely to result in a worse outcome than a better one.
"All the enbies I know of have had weak, indulgent and hesitant parenting around matters where resilience and interpersonal flexibility was needed."
To me, this is definitely one of the needed changes: Less indulgent parenting and coddling. An upbringing where kids are taught to "deal with it".... Peer bullying isn't really helpful, but I don't think that's what you were actually saying.
I am one of the late boomers, and I was raised with chores and responsibilities from a very young age. In the rural upper Midwest where I spent my childhood that was the norm. I got my first payroll job at 14, and learned to budget and save, and I bought my own clothes and albums (dating myself!) None of us were coddled or indulged.
Adolescence and puberty were treated very matter-of-factly, and seen as things everybody went through and dealt with, and it would turn out okay. So that's how we saw it too. Also, my parents were parents, and didn't try and be my best friend. No matter how much we bitched to the contrary, we knew we could rely on them to be the ADULTS.
(And in all my years of school, not one person I ever knew or heard of believed that they had been "born in the wrong body." Not one).
My upbringing was similar and I also had after school and holiday jobs to pay for clothes and records, there wasn’t the money for my parents to do so. I still grew up to be a bit of a neurotic drip but I had a lot of life experience and basic skills, having to figure things out for myself, and broad social circles. I saw my peers doing brave things and being confident and capable, and I wanted to push on through and do it too. I’m glad I wasn’t handed any excuses or diagnosis that I might have turned into an excuse - I suffered from a lot of anxiety, self doubt and emotionality but my longing for adventure overcame any urges to wallow or give up on myself.
I disagree. I'm as terfy as they come, and I lost friends in 2015 due to said terfyness. That said, many "enby nieces" are subjected to the most brutal, ritualistic forms of dehumanizing bullying as small children, including physical & sexual abuse. They are tortured at school, at home, and now, online. They think "I'm subhuman, worthless, and hideous as a woman. I have failed at being human as a woman. Therefore, I must be something, anything else. Then the abuse will stop, because I won't deserve it anymore." Further bullying and dehumanization will not help this. At least in my country, enbyism has fallen out of fashion with the upper crust and is now a marker of the lower class (and, IMHO, a eugenics program to sterilize autistic & butch girls on Medicaid )
Great article thanks. This describes so well an old friend of mine who's best friend has an Amie turned Mac. My friend was a feminist who wouldn't even read books by men and now she thinks it's OK for them to be in women's change rooms! We barely talk any longer.
This is too, too true except that the non-binary girls usually progress quite quickly to full on ‘I’ve been born in the wrong body and I’m actually your son’ bullshit.
The check list is spot on - ‘is she autistic? Seems like it. Is she quirky, does she have a hard time making friends? Yup. Is she from a posh family? Hoooo-yeah’.
Also the bit about not showering because of hating body so much.
It’s utterly heartbreaking and I’m speaking from personal experience as mother of autistic, quirky, posh, trans identifying daughter. One of my friends sent a congratulation card when she ‘came out’ as ‘non-binary’, for fucks sake. Another insisted on a celebration for the deed poll name change. Sadly, I didn’t know then what I know now.
Thank you for writing this and telling it like it is.
This is one of the best things I have ever read about the gender woo cult and how it captures new members.
My particular area of interest is birth and breastfeeding, which you I'm sure you will be unsurprised to learn must now include "everyone" including those born with a penis who will never be pregnant, give birth or gain the capacity to breastfeed. This would be academic said the quiet part out loud: “Even in studies intending to be trans-inclusive (Gerodetti and Mottier, 2009), male and female categories persist (Sariego, 2025b), reinforcing the view that pregnancy is exclusive to female bodies.” https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/transfeminist-pregnancy-reproductive
Women are chastised and excluded from birth and breastfeeding support groups if they are not fully accepting of men who push their way in to get praise that reinforces their womanly performance: https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/inducing-magical-thinking
And it has been proposed that babies should be used as real life props in the fostering of "gender affirming care" protocols for men. Never mind that they are already being used for men with sexual fetishes: https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/men-breastfeeding-again
When a bastion of breastfeeding support like La Leche League succumbed to gender ideology, I knew the world was in real trouble: https://lucyleader.substack.com/p/is-la-leche-league-international
Thank you so much for your clear and unambiguous prose.
"Reinforcing the view that pregnancy is exclusive to female bodies"...holy moly.
Ok, Viv
It’s excellent and really good too. Some wonderful lines. Wanting it to have absolute impact would suggest creating a shorter version which stops around the time of the realisation of how this thing works. The further examples are good but not as good as what precedes them
I found the last line of the article particularly powerful. The young woman's devastating levels of self hatred. It's heartbreaking
Had to laugh to read this man magnanimously giving praise as a prelude to telling Roisin how she could improve her writing! :-D
Right?
"Oh, please, John, enlighten this poor female further. We hang on your every word."
🤣
I liked the article. I think it needs an edit to improve it. I say that as reader and make no other claim. Viviane inferred my statement was negative and sexist. It was neither.
So write your own.
Then we'll come tell YOU how you should improve it.
You and your weird patriarchal fantasies.
You're the only one who's mentioned patriarchy.
You and your weird patriarchal fantasies.
Tedious. Let’s move on.
Tedious. You move on if you want to. Only a man thinks he can tell complete strangers on the Internet what to do.
John, your attitude throughout this exchange shows us how resistant you are to a challenge to your sense of male entitlement. I do hope that somehow, some time in the future, your mind will creak open. Enough from me. I’m not into hounding people.
I can tell from this exchange that you have a rich and happy life, full of friends and laughter. Time to get back to that rather than being a bore on the internet
I knew plenty of transvestites in the 90s when I hung out at gay nightclubs with my gay guy friends. Most of them were pretty cool. None of them claimed that dressing in feminine clothing made them women. I was fine with that. I was a big proponent of the idea that there is no one right way to be a man or a woman. Today's gender identity says that if someone doesn't conform to a long laundry list of outdated sex stereotypes, they were born in the wrong body. What a load of garbage. It's the same old homophobic rhetoric, but now covered in rainbows and glitter.
First transvestite I encountered was Wayne/Jayne County. He was very polite, very (imo) much like the small town Americans portrayed on TV. Oh, and a local, hard-as-nails local drag Queen club owner, Foofoo Lamar, who most definitely did not believe he was a woman. Not sure whether either encounter - in my early teens - informed my disdain for genderbollox. But..there you go.
Wayne / Jayne's autobiography is a hoot, especially if you listen to it told in a southern drawl. Highly recommended.
And light years more fun than these tedious neo-"trans" narcissists.
Foo-Foo! I completely forgot about Foo-Foo!!
That's because they were probably gay, not AGP. The AGP's fantasy depends entirely on the affirmation of his idea that he is actually a real woman.
same for me, all these guys would dress up as women for fun but in no way did they think they were women, they were proud men who like to put on a dress. then came the cult of trans activism and all the fun went away
Nice one !
So true. Once upon a time I believed what I’d been told - some people know from the time they are very young that they are “mentally” the opposite sex, and that never changes. And then they are mocked, discriminated against, and even attacked, for something outside their control. Of course we should be kind to such poor souls and help them feel more comfortable with this medical condition they have! Of course we should identify people with this condition and get them treatment as early in life as possible so they feel better!
Then my own very feminine, dress-wearing doll-loving daughter started high school and fell down the rabbit hole. My previously happy, if kind of quirky, little girl was now depressed, friendless, cutting herself, failing her classes, and obsessed with the internet. It all happened so fast we didn’t know what hit us.
It became so obvious that the narrative that I’d believed was not true. She was claiming she’d always been this way (did she not remember that I was there!?!?). It was so clearly a coping mechanism, an escape from criticism/jealousy for being white, middle-class, and pretty, a manifestation of self-hatred very much akin to an eating disorder. It was a confusing time as I realized that what I’d believed was nothing but propaganda. I cannot support my child’s attempt at obliterating herself.
If this had not happened, I might still be going along with the crowd. If she hadn’t been so obviously worse off and miserable, I might have believed I had to support it. It definitely could have gone a different way. But there’s nothing like being personally impacted to force you to clarify your beliefs.
We also have dear friends who we’ve lost. Our kids grew up together. Their daughter identifies as non-binary. They’ve completely drunk the progressive kool aid. I can be friends with people who disagree with me, but I can’t trust them not to encourage my daughter down this path. Their ideology would require them to let her know that she’s “seen” and “supported” behind my back.
Your account is so insightful and spot-on.
"It became so obvious that the narrative that I’d believed was not true. She was claiming she’d always been this way (did she not remember that I was there!?!?). It was so clearly a coping mechanism, an escape from criticism/jealousy for being white, middle-class, and pretty, a manifestation of self-hatred very much akin to an eating disorder. It was a confusing time as I realized that what I’d believed was nothing but propaganda. I cannot support my child’s attempt at obliterating herself." Exactly!
And kids (especially the girls) are getting clear self-hate messages from school, in the form of critical social justice theory (aka woke) which promotes a lot of social division and self-hatred, especially for kids who are white and therefore declared to be "privileged" and "racist".
The bizarre, developmentally inappropriate sexualization of children is another significantly destructive piece of what kids are being inundated with now in the classroom. Why would elementary-aged children need to learn about adult sexuality and adult sexual practices?! Third graders don't need to be wondering if they are "non-binary" - this is nuts!
They are pawns of fetishistic men. If men want the “right” to force women to undress in front of them, pretend that they are women, and have sex with them, they need to convince everyone that they are not in fact fetishistic men but are poor marginalized people who are “born this way”. Cue the brainwashing of teenage girls and young children, who must exist as trans people to support that narrative. These kids and young women are being psychologically manipulated, used and destroyed by men for sexual gratification.
Really good point about how saying they are born this way, and transing children props the entire ideology up.
I agree. The poor brain-washed kids are being exploited by middle-aged perverted men, AGPs etc, who want to hide their real motives. And it also helps them if unhappy young girls, and shy harmless-looking boys, appear so less threatening than a six-foot-six big aggressive guy in a dress with psycho-clown make-up. Not to mention that they could also get paid work, to go and act creepily round youngsters at 'drag queen story time' ...
I don't know a single "trans" child who is "happy." None of them. I'm at a 100%. All of them have parents indulging in their neuroses, they all have affirming therapists, they even have peers who don't care two twits about their "identity." Yet even with all of this acceptance, they are completely miserable and dysfunctional at best, suicidal at worst. It's really heart-breaking to watch their suffering.
I agree, and in fact this also applies to “trans” adults. I have never seen one who acts like a happy, healthy person.
It’s funny how we know if a person hates their hair, or body shape, or skin color, we all recognize that they need to be encouraged to love and accept themselves - obsessing over perceived flaws or wishing you looked like someone else isn’t mentally healthy. But if someone hates their body in this one very specific way much of society suddenly decides it’s because they were “born in the wrong body” and tells them that yes, they SHOULD obsess over trying to change themselves. These kids are being victimized.
BTW, many parents are NOT affirming and are heartbroken over how their teen and young adult children have been brainwashed.
I feel sad for the transgender young people you know but I can assure you that their transness isn't the reason for their sadness. I know many happy, healthy, functional transgender people of all ages many who have high power jobs, spouses and families.
Incredibly well written and conceived
Especially “The guys who talk would-be jihadi bombers out of their promised virgins will struggle with these women.”
I love the wit of your writings about this, Róisín, and I have been using the term "non-binary niece disorder" ever since I first read it on your Substack. Most recently, I have been thinking about it with regard to my sister, whose daughter's boyfriend thinks he's a woman. They all live in Europe, while I'm in the US, so I haven't met him, nor did I know about this relationship before I revealed my TERFy thoughts to my sister over the phone earlier this year (if I had known, I might have kept my mouth shut). She was shocked, but in an email later professed to want to learn more, so I sent her Joyce and Stock's books. Then I didn't hear anything for months.
Until she called earlier this week, and at the end of a friendly conversation I made the mistake to ask if she had received the books. She had, she informed me, but she had no time or interest in reading them. I would have liked to move on at that point, but she launched into an angry interrogation of me, why I care about this issue that "doesn't affect me", why I'm so "political" about it, why I can't just USE THE PRONOUNS, and why do I think this young man FEELS LIKE A WOMAN?
Honestly, I wish I had declined to answer any of these questions, given that, as my dad said later with regard to her and such topics, it's like talking to a Jehova's Witness. But of course I can't keep my mouth shut. And since I'm not very quick on my feet when someone comes at me angrily, I said all the wrong things. Worst of all, after I mumbled something about "social contagion" in regards to the etiology question, which she countered with the idea that "trans people have existed for thousands of years", I brought up Blanchard's research on what historically motivated male transsexuals. First I just wanted to mention the HSTS side, because I always think talking about homophobia in the context of transgenderism is going to get these people to understand. But naturally, she swiftly pointed out that her daughter's boyfriend is not gay. At that point I should have just returned to the social contagion hypothesis, and talked about smart, sensitive, maybe autistic men escaping "toxic masculinity", but instead my brain allowed my mouth to mention the third rail, AGP. "What is that???" she angrily inquired. I explained. Gasps ensued. The phone call soon ended.
For the record, I do NOT think that this young man is definitely AGP. I have not met him. In pictures, his face looks like that of a pretty young woman, and the illusion is just broken by his Adam's apple and flat chest. He doesn't dress in fishnets. He wears the baggy pants and sneakers of the enby girls. So I'm not making a diagnosis, although like you back in the aughts, I would love to know what his story is. I frankly hope I don't get a chance to ask, that my niece soon goes back to having a regular boyfriend as she did before, because until then, I'm afraid I'm the JK Rowling of my European family. God help me if they get married.
Great comment. I have carefully avoided talking to a sister because I, like you, don’t do great under attack and am confident I will trip up on any number of red lines. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I could say that might turn the tide, but that is really the wrong frame. It’s not on me to convince her, when she is in such a radical defensive posture. I don’t want the relationship damaged.
Thank you. Yes, I wish I had avoided it, too. When she said she needed to educate herself, I naively thought it would be ok to send her some books. That was also before I knew that this relationship was serious enough that they traveled to introduce him to the grandparents.
In the days after that phone call, I spent hours writing a letter to my sister, to say all the things I wish I had said, and explain why I said the things I did say. It was helpful for me to put it all in writing, so I would stop replaying the conversation in my head.
But I didn't send it. I know she won't read it with an open mind. And I also don't want to fret about awaiting her response, which I'm sure would not be positive unless I apologized for my heretic views. Getting yelled at again would just stress me out more. And ultimately, I stand by everything I said, even the possibility that AGP may play a role, which I think she needs to know about.
I'm also angry that she feels entitled to condemn my views, which are based on many hours of research, while refusing to educate herself on the topic. But that's very typical for her, and there is a reason that even before this, we talked only a few times a year. Maybe now there will be radio silence for longer, but short of groveling for forgiveness, I'm not sure what I can do about it.
I don't think you did a single thing wrong. You told the truth in a non-confrontative way, and your sister completely freaked out. That's on her.
There is nothing you can do about it. Your sister has chosen this relationship with you, and you can't stop her. You don't control her. When and if she ever comes back to you, she's going to have to do it in her own way, under her own motivation.
The Dance of Anger, by Harriet Lerner, was the book that taught me to let go of pointless arguments. In it, she says that there's no point reacting sincerely to someone who simply refuses to work things out with you. That person is not reacting sincerely to you. They are trying to control you.
The most common form of control is guilting people into submission. It's passive-aggression. They're not doing anything TO you. They're just not getting along WITH you.
The clue is that the controlling people will up the ante on trying to guilt you, for as long as you resist being controlled by them. If you can hold out long enough, eventually their claims will become so ridiculous that you can see for yourself it was never anything but manipulation:
"You're making me upset."
I'm sorry! But still. . .
"You're making me angry."
I'm SO sorry! But still. . .
"You're giving me a headache."
Oh, no! But still. . .
"You're giving me a stomach ache."
I feel bad! But still. . .
"You're giving me insomnia."
I feel terrible! But still. . .
"You're giving me cancer."
Wait, hang on a minute. . .
I happen to have two sisters who are both control freaks, under varying levels of control by our very controlling parents. I tried desperately to have a relationship with them for decades, but for some reason, they always wound up ganging up against me. What was I doing wrong? How could I reach them? When would they treat me as a friend and not an enemy, like they treated each other? I spent UNTOLD hours struggling with these problems. For decades.
Eventually, I read Lerner and tried her techniques on them: no blame, no shame, just simple straightforward sincere communication. Didn't work. But it sure bugged them that they could no longer push my buttons and make me cry. So I walked away. What else could I do? I couldn't spend the rest of my life crying.
They chose that relationship with me, and I couldn't stop them. I don't control them.
It's been decades now since I've heard from either of them. My life has been happy, adventurous, and full of love. They've missed it all. I would hate to be them.
I get to live in a world in which people who love each other don't try to manipulate or control each other.
Thank you, Eleganta. You are absolutely right that my sister is trying to control my stance on this. She is a very controlling, judgmental, arrogant, and often rude person.She projects an excessive amount of self-confidence. On the other hand, she is not someone to swim against the tide of her peer group, and has a lot of friends. She certainly sees my heterodox opinions as unnecessary contrarianism, believing that I'm just looking to position myself as the "enlightened one" and her as the dupe. She just doesn't understand why I think this issue is important.
Thanks for the book suggestion, I will check it out.
My sisters also have a lot of friends. Because they don't make waves. And their friends are as weird as they are.
As Dylan says, to live outside the law you must be honest.
Yes, exactly, she doesn't make waves. And she doesn't understand why I feel the need to make waves about this. I'm sure she thinks I'm being aggressive by expressing my objections. She thinks this is a matter of live-and-let-live, and is completely oblivious to the coercive nature of this ideology.
But I wouldn't call her weird. She is pretty mainstream and normal in every respect. So are her kids and her friends. I'm definitely the weird one, the one probably somewhat on the spectrum, the one who always pursued ivory tower type academic studies. It's funny that it's now her, the pragmatic one, who gets sucked into this ideology the underlying philosophy of which emerged from the academic ivory tower. Well, maybe it's not surprising. I learned about Judith Butler way back in 1994, and thought her ideas were nuts (I was never a fan of postmodernism). She doesn't even know who Judith Butler is, she has never studied history, which is why she can fall for claims like "there have been trans people for thousands of years!". She is unable and uninterested in looking at this cultural moment in a larger historical and philosophical context, because she just goes with the flow of her peer group.
I do wonder how different things would be though if her daughter wasn't so deeply sucked into this. She might actually be able to see the folly.
KateP & Eleganta, just wanted to thank you 🙏 for sharing this whole thread. Your conversation and book recommendation are really helpful.
I too have a sister who is highly social, inclined to bullying, and gender-woo captured. We don’t (yet) have a nonbinary niece, but we might as well. Recently, I have found it helpful to think about her as a Gender-woo Jehovah Witness (with apologies to those folks).
About 2 years ago I promised myself never to mention anything having to do with gender (or race or politics) to her ever again — and never to take her up on it. I just fain politeness-acquiescence without adding any comments, as if I have no opinion, nothing to say, and am happy to go along with hers. We live in different states most of the time, so I can keep this up over occasional phone calls and visits.
I have really struggled with this. It is dishonest. It deeply saddens me. It means we are closer on the surface and farther apart beneath it. I am muffled and angry at her for so aggressively rejecting any right I might have to express a considered good-faith view on the topic, no matter how gently stated, when I have spent so much time researching and reading about it — while she frequently and forcefully repeats what she hears from Trans, Inc media: NPR, the ACLU, and M. Gessen in the NYT, and slams the Overton window shut behind her.
She tries to reinforce the views she wants to see in me by praising me if I’m friendly to the teenage trans-identified barista at the Starbucks in our parent’s neighborhood (why wouldn’t I be? I worry for that kid), she tells her friends I seem to have “popped out of it” — meaning my TERFy views of 2 years ago. Meanwhile, those views are much stronger and better developed than ever.
It is helping me tremendously to know that other gender critical (sex realist!) women have the sister problem. I’m not proud of my self-silencing deception, but it is the price of managing my stress, having a relationship with my sister that can be supportive on other fronts at least conversationally, and of enabling us to work together to assist our aging parents.
So thank you again for helping me think through this and stay sane 🙏
You're very welcome, Pansy.
Sister relationships are extremely complex. I suffered a lot for many years over losing mine. But then I realized that my life was passing, and nothing I could ever do would change anything about that. So I stopped wasting energy and heartache on it.
I would gently warn you that holding in your emotional reaction to your sister's behavior might eventually affect your health. Being muffled and angry is not good for you.
You have the right to your own personal boundaries. You can't make her think differently. But you can politely ask her to stop trying to make YOU think differently.
"I love you, but you know I don't agree with you on this. So let's talk about something we both like," is a simple response when she brings any of this up.
It would probably take reiteration several times before she realized you were serious and would not listen to her on this subject anymore. But that's okay.
There's nothing wrong with repeating yourself word for word. It's worked for me innumerable times. Even if she got mad and tried to bully you into a conversation, you could always stay calm and keep simply repeating yourself, until she gave up.
Saying the same words over and over in the same loving tone never hurt anyone. It might eventually even make you laugh at the silliness of it all, which could lead to a hug ("oh, come here, you make me crazy") and a change of subject without anyone admitting defeat.
I actually once went through the exact same exchange over a dozen times with Kate Strangio's aunt:
"He's a man."
"But she's female!" (Surprised tone.)
Over and over again, until she began changing her words, then finally gave up altogether.
She tried to out-wait me. She failed.
It's good to be honest. It's easier on your health, it's easier on your self-esteem, and it's easier, in the long run, on your relationship.
Remember how many times in your lives you've vehemently disagreed with each other. Little girls fight with their sisters all the time. You coped.
She's a big girl now. She'll be able to cope.
Eleganta, I have been meaning to thank you for your thoughtful and very practical advice. If you can effectively use this approach with Chase Strangio’s aunt (Saints alive! I am dying to know how you wound up in that particular Lion’s den) — I can certainly give it a try with my sister. I especially appreciate your wise nod to resilient practice and maintaining calm alongside honesty. And yes, I think you are right about the health impacts of muffling. So this Thanksgiving, I am thankful for your words.
— In sex based rights and having-a-complex-sister-relationship solidarity, Pansy (and here’s a toast to developing boundaries and emotional maturity along the way, who knew?)
I'm so glad it was helpful! ❤️
Sisters, eh? Can't live with 'em, can't lock 'em out of the house until they move in with the neighbors.
I was raised in a very large, very opinionated extended family with a lot of hot-headed bickering and sudden shouts of good-natured laughter. I had to learn young how to keep my cool and not let anyone drag me into conflict against my will. I did it largely with sudden shouts of good-natured laughter. It's very hard to pick a fight with someone who keeps laughing.
And, yes, about a year ago I discovered I'd accidentally made friends with Kate Strangio's aunt. It was a heck of an experience. I described it when it happened in the comments on Kara Dansky's substack:
https://karadansky.substack.com/p/listen-to-womans-hour-the-terf-report-dec
Unfortunately you've identified yourself as the enemy. All their bonding and intimacy is founded on hating you. Then you had the utter gall to be a real person that she actually knew and liked, what a headfuck for her, she was expecting Donald Trump like the internet told her.
She is head in sand. I don't think anyone could read those books and not think more clearly. So she can't face them/the truth. If she did she worries she might lose her daughter and has chosen to buy the untruths rather than potentially face that. Understandable, but not sustainable.
My daughter is the classic ASD sensative socially awkward young woman. My wife and I never "affirmed" her as anything other than our beautiful daughter. So she entirely cut us off. Savage. Into the devouring arms of the delusional transcommunity. Thanks for your work Roisin. Yes, "what harm?" indeed. This is terrible, destructive harm, iron-reiforced by the seemingly 'nice' pronoun lie and the absolute refusal to even contemplate whether the lie is true or not. There is a profound occult power at work making these lies invulnerable to any assault by truth, reason, and actual love.
You know about Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT), don't you?
They're a community of parents supporting each other over the loss of their children to this cult.
Thanks for this heads-up Eleganta, I did not know about PITT. I shall look them up with interest. Much appreciated.
Paul
Oh, absolutely, Paul. This is a horribly tragic situation for any parents to survive. You need support.
I was invited to write about my own brother's involvement in the Satanic panic:
https://www.pittparents.com/p/moral-panics-of-our-time-the-satanic
Thanks for writting that up Eleganta. Oh shit.... So I'm sixty this year, and my parents went through the "healing of the memories" fad in penticostal churches in the 1980s. As a result of blowing ordinary human insecurities into mountain sized sexual abuse fantasies, where there is always some evil villan and they are always an innocent victum, went through a horrible divorce just after I was married in the early 1990s. And here we are again. But now it is my daughter doing it to me and my wife. I am a theologian. So at least this time it is not the church who is the authority structure backing the fabricated victum narrative; it is the progressive state, the secular therapists, and the university righteous radicals foisting gender affirming care onto my daughter, and cult-like, turning her from her family and people who really know and love her. Like your peice shows, it is only a commitment to objective truth, to factual reality, that can prevent the tragic slide into dysfunctional madness to which the human condition is so easily drawn. Many thanks for your peice.
Oops, clarification. My parents got divorced in the 1990s, not me and my wife, who have been married these past 32 years, and we have been blessed to grow in love and admiration for eachother over the passage of some seriously difficult shared life experiences. Two of our six children died of spinal musclar atrophy when they were 6 months old, and other stuff. And this is another thing that shits me seriously about fabricated truama. It belittles real trauma, and the only way to survive and overcome real trauma is by some sort of ballance, some sort of coming to terms with reality, some sort of refusing to become a victum. But it is like the entire therapuetic industry and the entire educational and legislative authorities, are determined to make my beautiful and gifted daughter into a delusional, mutilated, and physically and mentally ill basket-case. It makes me un-consolably furious, which doesn't do my blood pressure any favours. And the idea that an autognyophical man is some sort of tragic and outcase righteous victum is obscene. Such men have a problem that they need to master, they do not need to have their problem validated and affirmed to the risk of the women who they use to feed their illness.
I'm so sorry to hear about your two lost babies. That is terribly tragic.
I absolutely agree with you about the obscenity of AGP men pretending to be victims. Believe me, that makes all of us women in this fight see red.
I also absolutely agree with what you're saying about fabricated trauma belittling real trauma. In fact, this seems to me something that would interest the managers of PITT.
You might want to contact them and offer to write something about your experiences with your lost babies and your daughter groomed into the Trans panic. I don't know what kind of backlog they might have of pieces waiting to be posted, but they post every day, so their waiting list probably moves pretty quickly.
Certainly, they're always posting pieces by parents of these young people, telling their unique stories in ways that speak to other parents who are also surviving your dreadful shared experience.
You're very welcome, Paul. I hope the knowledge that the Satanic panic ended, so I believe the Trans panic will too, can offer you some comfort. Although my parents didn't see my brother for six years, he has been a part of their regular lives for thirty years since then.
At the time I wrote my piece--three years ago--most parents were still deep in grief and despair that they might never see their children again. I wanted to offer them hope through my story. Moral panics do end.
Thanks Eleganta. Well, the dynamic where your brother cut you off is integral with the entire 'subjective narrative affirmation' dynamic, and integral with the DARVO dynamic you so helpfully outlined. Where there is a falsehood that requires affirmation for any sort of ongoing relationship (relationships are held at randsom by lies), the cost of being truthful (which is precisely what the person suffering from a delusional really need) is being cut off. This happened to my brother and I when my mother and sisters decided that my father was a horrible sex monster (which we all knew he was not). Because my brother and I would not affirm the fabricated 'memmories' that were being continuouslyre-crafted, embellished, and taken to prepiosterously unreal extremes, that my brother and I knew were false (we also grew up in our family) my mother and sisters cut us off. I never saw my mother or sisters again after my parents divorced. Nobody in my extended family even told me where she was or when she died. The bible wonders 'can a mother forget the child that suckled at her breast?' and the answer is, she can. Sisters too (and, as you have found, brothers). And we were a close and genuinely warm and safe family when I grew up. Lies one is relationally blackmailed into affirming are just so destructive, both if you submit to the balckmail, and if you refuse to be blackmailed.
I live in hope that my daughter will re-connect with my wife and I when she reconnects with the truth of who she really is. There is a lot of effort involved in keeping a lie going particulalrly if it involves policing everyone around you to performatively comply with what they know is a lie. And your body won't be lied to; cross sex hormones are going to cause you serious medical trouble. So whilst there is life there is hope. Many tyhanks again for your piece Eleganta.
I do totally agree that everything dependes on what kind of first contact you have with the whole "trans" issue. That's why they are using children as a shield. Because decades ago everybody knew about the fishnet-men, and of course no one supported it; and many of these teenage girls would have ended up being rabid feminists that don't shave, and many of them lesbians too. But now, as you explain here, what we have are teenagers just having a phase via queer ideology. This creates a whole different scenario in peoples minds and a more permissive attitude.
Well put!
I spent 2012-2019 in the cult, thinking I was "trans" myself, and then 2019-present TERFing it up... and inevitably losing the friendship of all the women with quirk chungus TIF friends/family members. They don't understand why I won't shut up about this and it's 100% a class dynamic; I guarantee you they're thinking "but Elizabeth's parents are liberals and she went to college, how can she be such a bigot now?" The social circle I was brought up in is 100% on board the trans train and it's been profoundly alienating.
All this is to say that you absolutely NAILED what it's like. Great piece!
This was a great post. What I still can't get over, besides the utterly bizarre belief that anyone is "born in the wrong body" are the number of long time friendships that are ended if you don't buy into the troon insanity. Of all things , how did this become the line of demarcation and if you're on the wrong side of the border you are in the enemy camp? As a nonbeliever you are a heretic to be avoided. This is more disturbing to me than the gender identity nonsense itself. There are going to be years of fallout from this fiasco.
Yes! It's so insane to me that there's this "if you're not with us, capitulating feverishly and obsequiously at any given moment, then you must be an evil nazi murderer' mentality that goes with the cult mindset. It's deeply upsetting and I've lost a friend of 20 years who now reckons she's "not female." (She does everything she can to escape herself given any opportunity. This is more of the same pattern, this time with "psychoanalysis" from a trans person 3 times a week. Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu... She knows I know this, and she ended the friendship because I can see her for who she is. Despite loving her anyway. So sad.)
To choose a cultural ideology over a decades long friendship and banishing that “friend” from your life is stunning to me. It’s what you see in some religious sects where nonbelievers are shunned. Especially in cases where they do not have a son or daughter who has fallen prey to this evil. I have a brother who forcefully told me he’d hang up on me if I ever mention any of this again , and as far as I know, we have no extended family who are troons. He offered no explanation, just the threat. This kind of behavior itself is incomprehensible and a derangement brought on by this plague, some of the ongoing collateral damage. .
"I have a brother who forcefully told me he’d hang up on me if I ever mention any of this again."
Have a friend who said "You may NOT say that!" when I suggested that it might be a bad thing for kids to take puberty blockers, go on "cross-sex" hormones, and then become surgically altered before the age of 17-18.
"They know who they are and it's better for them if these things are done early."
A medical professional, mind you.
But as a teacher of almost 40 years, I also have a professional opinion, and it's that social contagion is a real thing in 12-year-olds. In the 1980s, it was anorexia. The girls had it, or they were afraid they had it, they were afraid they'd get it, and they all went into the bathroom to cry. One every couple of years really did have anorexia. Other, more benign, years it was pink Converse sneakers, roller pens, and what have you.
I just don't get out much with old friends anymore. It's work having to skirt certain topics.
They are good-hearted liberals, and they've fallen for a lot of hooey.
In the 90s, all the pre-teen girls thought they were witches, and all the adults gave them an eye roll and said "no, you're not a witch." How I miss those days.
This is good enough for the New Yorker except for the message of course.
Brilliant article - and I'm definitely stealing some of those pithy phrases (Insta Trout Pout 😂)
There are so many facets to this whole bizarre transfabulation 'movement' it is hard to know where to begin, but I think you've outlined perhaps one of the most powerful, and quietly insidious, factors. "What in the name of Shakespeare's sweaty codpiece are you talking about?" has been replaced with terms like stunning and brave and being your authentic self.
The sad thing is that many are not being "who they are", they're running away from who they are.
I often cast my mind back maybe 15 years to the hypothetical scenario of my boss waltzing up to my desk and telling me I had to include "my pronouns" in my email signature. I'd have looked at him like he'd had surgery to replace his ears with testicles.
Even if I hadn't been able to say the words "WTF are you talking about, you blithering idiot?" they would have been written all over my face.
But now I'm supposed to spaff rainbows and go all gooey-eyed at the majestic magnificence that is the whole trans thing?
Where's the harm? Well, thankfully my daughters grew up before this transinsanity took hold, but my 18 month old granddaughter might end up being told by school and 'society' that she's some human version of a clownfish. Several decalitres of testosterone later and the installation of some appalling Frankenschlong carved out of her forearm, ask me again about harm.
And that's just one example of the harm at the more extreme end - there are a litany of harms before that stage. I'll move heaven and earth to protect her from all of this grotesque shite.
However, as your article makes painfully aware, it's the whole context of a life that's important - and if you're being brought up in a milieu where 'being kind' is seen as a superior virtue to being truthful it's going to be a struggle to escape from that mindset. If your whole life is built around being seen to do the 'right thing' rather than actually *doing* the right thing you're going to more easily capitulate to the pronoun psychosis and all it implies.
As one child psychologist put it - a childhood is not reversible
Let's try not to sacrifice our kids on the altar of inclusivity shall we?
Quote: "If your whole life is built around being seen to do the 'right thing' rather than actually *doing* the right thing you're going to more easily capitulate to the pronoun psychosis and all it implies."
Exactly.
It's the new Moloch.
"Be Kind" or "Be nice"?
The welfare of the Enby in question doesn't seem to be a concern for the friend/neighbor - just "Getting along with her". Like that makes you kind. The girl hates her female body's weaknesses and liabilities and feeling female in her culture, SO badly that she can't conceive of ALL THE TRAITS INSIDE HERSELF SHE DOES LIKE being attributed to a girl AT ALL?! That's some serious internalized misogyny here. Something we should help her be free of, not lock her in that belief of her own inferiority forever!?
Tbh I was never taken in by the non binary nieces. I find those young women what we used to call wet. Nerdy and immature. In the harsher corners of the internet people talk about people who weren’t bullied enough at school. Sounds harsh but sometimes weepy adolescent girls need to be treated in a brusque manner and the jibes from their more resilient cohort, provided it’s not too brutal might provide cues about steps to maturity. We used to tease kids who hung onto their soft toys for example. All the enbies I know of have had weak, indulgent and hesitant parenting around matters where resilience and interpersonal flexibility was needed. And flowing from this I’d add, apart from their personal styling these young women are not usually, masc” in any way, which just adds to the annoying sheltered, pandered to impression.
I see your general point as being that these non-binary nieces lead soft lives. They generally don't go through any of the sort of hardships that build strong character. They also don't experience the kind of social embeddedness that fosters solidarity and unshakable moral or religious convictions and so are easily swept along by every passing craze.
I lived for 7 years in one of the poorer provinces of China. The peasant population led hard lives. Among them, the number of boys who thought they were girls or girls who thought they were boys was zero. Strange that.
I don’t think that anyone needs to be bullied more, but I see your point. What I DO think needs to happen is that moms need to remember the fuck what it was like being in junior high and remind their poor kids that puberty sucks for pretty much everyone, even the pretty and popular girls. Kids need to be told to buckle up, because leaving behind your childhood and entering womanhood is a wrestling match—sometimes it leaves you feeling battered and bruised, and sometimes you feel like a badass waving a championship belt over your head—and all those feelings are NORMAL. Being a woman is a gift, but it’s not for sissies!
An acquaintance recounted to me a conversation they’d had, with the mother of a trans identified young woman who was about to have “top surgery”. The mother earnestly explained by way of rationale that her daughter had hated getting her period at 11 and getting breast development. Where did the idea come from that this isn’t a normal reaction?
😢
Typically (often undiagnosed) teenaged ASD girls have chronic anxiety and are already bullied for the “otherness” they give off (partly hence the anxiety). Some are self-harming. Piling on yet more bullying is far more likely to result in a worse outcome than a better one.
Exactly.
You made some very astute points.
"All the enbies I know of have had weak, indulgent and hesitant parenting around matters where resilience and interpersonal flexibility was needed."
To me, this is definitely one of the needed changes: Less indulgent parenting and coddling. An upbringing where kids are taught to "deal with it".... Peer bullying isn't really helpful, but I don't think that's what you were actually saying.
I am one of the late boomers, and I was raised with chores and responsibilities from a very young age. In the rural upper Midwest where I spent my childhood that was the norm. I got my first payroll job at 14, and learned to budget and save, and I bought my own clothes and albums (dating myself!) None of us were coddled or indulged.
Adolescence and puberty were treated very matter-of-factly, and seen as things everybody went through and dealt with, and it would turn out okay. So that's how we saw it too. Also, my parents were parents, and didn't try and be my best friend. No matter how much we bitched to the contrary, we knew we could rely on them to be the ADULTS.
(And in all my years of school, not one person I ever knew or heard of believed that they had been "born in the wrong body." Not one).
My upbringing was similar and I also had after school and holiday jobs to pay for clothes and records, there wasn’t the money for my parents to do so. I still grew up to be a bit of a neurotic drip but I had a lot of life experience and basic skills, having to figure things out for myself, and broad social circles. I saw my peers doing brave things and being confident and capable, and I wanted to push on through and do it too. I’m glad I wasn’t handed any excuses or diagnosis that I might have turned into an excuse - I suffered from a lot of anxiety, self doubt and emotionality but my longing for adventure overcame any urges to wallow or give up on myself.
I disagree. I'm as terfy as they come, and I lost friends in 2015 due to said terfyness. That said, many "enby nieces" are subjected to the most brutal, ritualistic forms of dehumanizing bullying as small children, including physical & sexual abuse. They are tortured at school, at home, and now, online. They think "I'm subhuman, worthless, and hideous as a woman. I have failed at being human as a woman. Therefore, I must be something, anything else. Then the abuse will stop, because I won't deserve it anymore." Further bullying and dehumanization will not help this. At least in my country, enbyism has fallen out of fashion with the upper crust and is now a marker of the lower class (and, IMHO, a eugenics program to sterilize autistic & butch girls on Medicaid )
Great article thanks. This describes so well an old friend of mine who's best friend has an Amie turned Mac. My friend was a feminist who wouldn't even read books by men and now she thinks it's OK for them to be in women's change rooms! We barely talk any longer.
This is too, too true except that the non-binary girls usually progress quite quickly to full on ‘I’ve been born in the wrong body and I’m actually your son’ bullshit.
The check list is spot on - ‘is she autistic? Seems like it. Is she quirky, does she have a hard time making friends? Yup. Is she from a posh family? Hoooo-yeah’.
Also the bit about not showering because of hating body so much.
It’s utterly heartbreaking and I’m speaking from personal experience as mother of autistic, quirky, posh, trans identifying daughter. One of my friends sent a congratulation card when she ‘came out’ as ‘non-binary’, for fucks sake. Another insisted on a celebration for the deed poll name change. Sadly, I didn’t know then what I know now.
Thank you for writing this and telling it like it is.
I enjoyed that. Write more!
Also, ‘trans’ children of divorced mums, I’ve seen that. Revenge?