At Our Duty we work primarily with parents, however we know that they are not the only ones who care.
Siblings, aunts, cousins, uncles, grandparents, and friends can all be torn by their love for a person who suddenly gets the idea they have a gender identity at odds with their sex.
This is an open letter written by a concerned friend.
Beloved friend,
I loved you before and I love you still.
But please try to understand, real love does not always affirm. Real love should never affirm harmful or destructive thoughts or behaviors. Instead, real love should care deeply for other’s welfare – now, later, and forever. Real love is not casual or reckless. Real love protects. Real love guides. Real love gives sound counsel.
If you were blinded and walking toward the edge of a high cliff, I would try to stop you. Even if you were furious at me, and cursed me, and even spat on me, I would do my best to protect you. Wouldn’t you want to love people in the same way?
Beloved friend, you are very young. In the coming years, you will change your mind about many
things. You will make good and bad decisions. I know because I did, and we all do. Please be careful. Some of your bad decisions might be forever. It is for this reason that I am concerned for you. I do not want to judge you. I do, however, feel compelled to speak truth to you, in love. Please forgive me, but I must warn you, because you seem to be starting down a path that I believe may result in tragic consequences. Will you please consider my concerns?
My voice is small, and many other voices in your life are very loud. Your friends and the adults at your school appear to be recklessly affirming anything and everything. They claim that their affirmation is the true love – but is it? Will they still be there for you ten years from now? Are those people appropriately warning you of the potential dangers of transition? Is it possible they are actually steering you away from what you really need to discover – that special thing which might actually bring you contentment? Those people seem to be pushing you toward irreversible harm. Is that real love?
Some of those people say that if you don’t transition, you will be miserable. This is simply not true. You may now be unhappy for many reasons. But transitioning cannot fix your life; it will make your life more broken. Kids who are unhappy with their bodies, kids with depression, kids with anxiety, these kids need people in their life who will love and support them. But remember, love and affirmation are two different things. Real love requires truth, and the truth is that many kids who transition (socially, hormonally, or surgically) do not end up feeling better in the long run. Changing your apparent gender will not fix the various problems you are now dealing with.
Please understand that in the past, many children have briefly wished or even insisted that they were a different gender. But almost all such children naturally grew out of that episode in their life, and for the rest of their life they have lived normal, happy, and healthy lives. How sad for the children who are now in that phase, but are being urged to transition, which will likely lead to life-long regret. I must now urge you, please do not add physical harms and regret to your current worries.
Dear friend, please understand that you are free to choose how you proceed, but your choice will profoundly affect the rest of your life.
It is important to understand history. It may seem strange to hear, but throughout history, up until our current generation, essentially everyone has clearly understood that “binary” is a fundamental reality: that human beings are inherently either male or female. Did you know that even just a few decades ago, all the ideas and vocabularies you are now being taught did not exist? At that time, there were just a few extremely unhappy people who desperately wanted to become the other sex (yes, even then they still believed there were only two possibilities – either male or female). Such people were extremely rare (one per 30,000 for males and one per 100,000 for females). They had a very serious mental illness. They were prone to suicide before transitioning, and they were prone to suicide after transitioning. They were in mental anguish, and rightly deserved compassion and counsel.
But what is happening now is quite different. A surprisingly large number of young people are classifying themselves as non-binary. People are now boldly claiming that gender is just a state of mind. They say gender is entirely fluid, so that we can all choose any gender we feel best suits us, and we can switch our gender at any time. It appears people are being carried away by a type of sexual fad which is being militantly driven by the new anything-goes ideology that has clearly lost touch with reality. If gender is just a fluid state of mind, and if people can change their mind in any way or at any time, then gender is absolutely nothing – it is really just a mental game of pretend. However, you must know that when kids undergo hormones and surgical treatments, their bodies are irrevocably altered. So transitioning is not just pretend, or a game, or a state of mind. Hormones and surgery mean that you can never go back to the way you were before. Therefore, this “gender game” is much more than pretend or fantasy. The victims of the game are typically left broken and full of regret. They realize that they have bought into a lie and want to return to their original gender and the original body that they were born with. Sadly, their former bodies are forever changed. They cannot just mentally wish themselves back to normal. Gender fluidity is a vicious lie.
The idea that some young people might sometimes fantasize that they are the opposite sex is not surprising. This topic is now extremely popular, and sexual fantasies are common in children and young adults. Such young people can, if they choose, quickly re-connect with reality at any time. This could be you. Maybe what you are dealing with is painful. But you were certainly NOT born into the wrong body and you CAN feel better with time.
Some people are telling you that “trans” is perfectly natural – but it is clearly NOT natural at all. It is not natural for teachers to indoctrinate children so that the children are totally confused about their gender and identity. This is not real love. It is not natural to inject children with drugs that delay their body’s natural process of puberty. It is not natural to later add synthetic hormones that interrupt and corrupt normal sexual development. Until this generation, these radical hormone treatments have never been employed. The use of these hormones is not only unnatural, but also unsafe. They create very serious side-effects which can seriously harm a child’s current and future health. Throughout history, doctors have always sworn to “do no harm” to their patients. But now doctors are administering unnatural, expensive, and unsafe treatments to millions of unsuspecting kids, all under the name of affirmation. Many of these kids will have to take hormone treatments for the rest of their lives.
But there is more. Unethical surgeons are surgically mutilating and manipulating children’s body parts. They are cutting off girls’ breasts and sometimes even cutting out girls’ internal reproductive organs. They are cutting off boys’ testicles and penises. These same surgeons are contriving to replace natural organs with cosmetic fake organs. Fake breasts, fake vaginas, and fake boys’ organs. These surgeons are getting rich by mutilating or corrupting children’s bodies. These radical surgeries are generally non-reversible. These children most often become anatomically ambiguous, impotent, and sterile.
Have you really considered sterility? Often these drugs, hormones, and surgeries will leave you completely unable to conceive a child. Sometimes young people say they never want to have their own biological children – but children very often change their minds about this as they grow up. I fear that one day you will desire to have biological children. Infertility is emotionally painful, and I do not want a self-serving doctor to close that door in your life.
I abashedly need to mention to you your future sex life. For kids who have taken cross-sex hormones or had extreme surgery – what type of sex-life can they hope for? The sexual organs that give pleasure are either removed or severely altered to the point where sexual pleasure is destroyed. I hope to one day see you be married, and sexual satisfaction adds enjoyment to your physical union and can increase the quality of your relationship. Don’t give that up now.
All of these un-natural things – puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and surgeries – reflect child abuse on the highest level. This is not love! It grieves me that you seem to be taking this path.
Most trans-children are not warned of all these very serious dangers. Sometimes parents try to warn their kids, but the schools or the kids shut them out. I just want to remind you that almost all parents love their children deeply. In most cases, your parents are your best protectors. They may have made mistakes that have hurt you, but most parents brought you forth into this world with joy and celebration. Most parents, in love, consistently sacrificed their own pleasures and comforts to meet your needs. They warn you, not because they are transphobic, but because they care. They may not always have the right words, or the right way of showing it, but they care about you, your body, and your future. They care about your emotions and mental well-being. They rightfully worry because they rightfully care. They worry you are making decisions that are primarily based in hurt or pain. They want to save you from the harms I have described.
Beloved friend, have your friends, teachers and online communities appropriately warned you about all of these dangers? If they have NOT warned you, then certainly they do NOT really love you. Remember, sometimes affirmation feels like love, but I can assure you it is not when it is missing the truth.
I hope you will see that my attempt to warn you was meant only to protect, never to harm.
I want you to know that if you openly use your trans-name and trans-pronouns, I will still love you. But my love is not based on the name you call yourself. My love is based upon the real you.
All my love,
Your Friend
