So I have figured out a few things vis-à-vis the few (and
they have been few, so far) people who personally attack me, claiming they only
do so because they ”care” about my child. By “attack” I mean character
assassination, not respectful debate.
First, they believe without an iota of doubt that there is
such a thing as a “male” or “female” brain. And one’s male or female brain
absolutely must dictate what sort of body it is attached to. Second, they
believe that even a toddler innately knows which brain they have. When that child
says “I feel like a girl” or “I feel like a boy” that subjective experience is
objective reality, and no one—no one—has the right to question it. Ever. The only viable option is to support their
assertion with all that modern medicine and pharmaceutical products can supply.
Even questioning this orthodoxy amounts
to child abuse.
The people who vomit their bile on me believe a child’s
self-professed gender is as hard-wired and as objectively indisputable as their
left elbow. They fervently believe this even if said child is of the age where
they are also saying they are –or they
wish they were–a dog or a tractor or Spiderman or a princess. They don’t think
gender is a social construction. They don’t believe life experiences might mold
a child’s idea of gender. No, the gender cake was already baked while they were
in the womb. So if a kid is referred to and treated as the opposite gender–by
parents, teachers, doctors, psychologists–from the time they’re 2 years old,
if they’re on puberty blockers, if they are indoctrinated that this means they
are “transgender,” those years of experience won’t have ANY influence on
whether they choose to medically transition later. No pressure at all! Case
closed.
For all their supposed knowledge of neuroscience, they never seem to have read anything from the
decades of research pertaining to pediatric brain development, the years of childhood
make-believe, of confusion of fantasy with reality…the relatively new knowledge
that the frontal lobes of the brain—judgment, decision-making, awareness of
future consequence, impulse control, self monitoring–don’t develop until age
25. None of that has any bearing on the Gender is Set in Stone at Birth dogma.
And their ideology is as impervious as granite. It’s all nature, no
nurture. To these people, 15 years of a girl being told she is actually a “he” couldn’t
possibly influence a biological girl (oops, I mean, “assigned female at birth”)
to move on to medical transition when she’s older, even if, actually, she’s a girl who would
have grown up to be a lesbian (which
is what statistics say usually happens) if she had just been left alone to
figure it out on her own.
The transactivists are not interested in any research that
could cast doubt on their hypothesis . They only want to cherry pick studies
that claim there is a male or female brain. Even though THOSE studies have been
disputed, and generally have a subject base consisting mostly of trans people who’ve already transitioned and been on
hormones for years. And, of course, the conclusion they draw from those flawed studies
is that the brain dictates the body it’s attached to, period. Hell, I even saw
someone crowing about an article touting head
transplants in the future for trans people. Cut off your “male” or “female”
head and attach it to a donated body of the opposite sex! Problem solved.
I’ve mostly engaged in civil dialogue online. I came here in
the first place because there aren’t many people raising the questions I am, from the perspective of a parent who cares enough to dig deeper, and I
want that point of view to be heard. And I want other lefty parents like me to have a
place to go where they aren’t dismissed as ogres and transphobes. Where they aren’t told that–simply by questioning, by expressing doubts–they are personally responsible for the suicides of troubled teenagers.
In my short time here, I’ve learned a ton about what it is
really like to have gender/physical dysphoria, to have the intense desire to transition
to the other sex. I respect that experience. I’ve talked with people who have medically
transitioned, and I’ve adjusted my views based on things they tell me. I’ve
been humbled; I’ve learned, and I’ve opened a few minds myself. I’m doing this
in good faith, and most other people seem to be doing the same. Those of us who
are running “serious” theme blogs have a purpose outside entertainment. We feel
like we have something important to say. Disagreements I’ve had are generally
respectful. I have zero interest in making enemies of people I don’t even know.
I have better things to do with my time.
But, like anywhere else on the Internet, there are a few
haters. Because I am running a blog which dares to question the trans
orthodoxy, I occasionally get drive-by vitriol, usually from kids who are angry
at their own parents. I get told I am a terrible mother, an abuser even, of my daughter (except they
always say “son” based on the sparse personal information I’ve shared here, if
they’ve even read that, which I doubt). Apparently my “son” is exactly the same as all
the other “sons” out there, despite the suddenness of all this, and how it only
arose after a short time of binging on certain Internet
snack bars
.
They claim to “care” about my child, they are “scared” for
her, they are “worried” for her; they automatically assume it’s “him” because
remember—if anyone, anywhere simply says
they might be trans, then that is the
word of god from on high. It is sacrosanct.
I’m not naïve or stupid. I knew venturing onto Tumblr would
be—let’s say, a rough and tumbl ride at times—and I’m not going to let myself
be destroyed or derailed by the words of a hateful or unhinged stranger online. Haters gonna
hate.
But I will say this to those few shit-throwers:
You don’t know me. You don’t know my family. You don’t know
my daughter—hell, call her my son, I don’t care. You don’t have the slightest
idea where we are in this process. You are clueless about what kind of parent I
am. And most importantly: You do not “care” about my child. You don’t “worry”
about her. You’re not “scared” for her. I’m the one who is doing that. Your
feigned “caring” is just a way to lash out at someone who is daring to raise
questions about a dogma you have imbibed, and it bothers you. You don’t want
anyone upsetting your apple cart.
I’m not changing my Ask box policy. If you send me hate, you
go straight to the trash bin. All you’ll get is the chance to briefly spew your
cyber-bile onto a stranger. If that floats your boat, knock yourself out. But
it won’t make me shut up. Most of all, don’t flatter yourself that you “care”
about my child, so you might as well let go of that little self-aggrandizing delusion.
And to the ones who scream “Unfollow me!!!!” (which I
invariably do): Did it ever occur to you that following a blog is sometimes a way to
learn something new? Just something to consider.
