I have several responses to this short comment.

1. Trust me: Making her parents happy is not even on my daughter’s to-do list.

2. I know, because people have taught me, that dysphoria is a real experience and can be very painful. I’m willing to accept that for a very small group of women, extreme medical intervention may be a solution. I also know that there are many girls and women who have found other ways to deal with their dysphoria, even coming back around to celebrating their femaleness. Many of them have written very eloquent blog posts talking about just that, and I believe those are the voices our daughters should be listening to.

3. After blogging and communicating online for a while, I now can say with confidence that I am part of a growing group of parents with the exact same story: their children were happy all through childhood and adolescence in the bodies they were born in until they binged for a few weeks or months on transition stories and videos on YouTube and Tumblr. It’s an epidemic, and in many cases, has nothing to do with dysphoria. Even trans activists are pushing the line that medical transition shouldn’t be limited to people with dysphoria, but should be readily available via “informed consent” to anyone, anywhere who wakes up one morning and decides they identify as the opposite sex. If a grown woman wants to do that, that’s her prerogative. Certainly there are plenty of therapists and doctors eager to “help” her. But to the extent this narrative of “transition or suicide” is being pushed on our children, I’m going to keep speaking up about it.