From the parents of Our Duty Canada in support of Detransitioners Awareness Day.
Is Detransition in My Daughter’s Future?
As a Mother of a teenage girl wrapped in the illusory embrace of “gender” ideology, I tumbled down a seemingly bottomless rabbit hole searching for answers, like many a concerned parent before me. Picking up pieces of shocking information along the way and putting them together to form a picture of social, political, and medical scandal aimed squarely at our children, I made a commitment to protect and properly support my child.
So far, my daughter is what we might consider one of the lucky ones. Hers is a story of hope for many “non-affirming” parents, those of us who fight with all we’ve got to keep our children from taking the proverbial bite from the poison apple they hold in their vulnerable hands, and medicalizing. Her developing brain and endocrine system have not been exposed to synthetic sex hormones and her body remains intact, free from the trendy “top” surgery so many of our daughters imprudently pine after.
Near the bottom of the rabbit hole that many of us find ourselves plummeting down, are the stories of adolescents and young adults who followed the protocol, took the drugs and had the surgeries hoping that these damaging “treatments” would somehow fix all of their problems. Despite the pushers of the transgender agenda dissuading these stories from find their way to the surface, they are emerging, in abundance and with a vengeance.
With a great deal of compassion and an ever-thickening armour of information, I hope to reach my daughter before she discovers through lasting trial and irreversible error that her fears and anxieties, her discomforts and heartaches cannot be cured this way either.
In the early days of my daughter’s indoctrination, a snowball of scandal swelling in my mind, I believed that talking to my daughter openly, showing her the truth on screen and in print, and calling out the elements of the “trans-script” that fell so easily out of her mouth would certainly deter her from dreaming of drugs and surgeries. Her trust in my sincerity as a Mother would surely inspire the critical thinking that is flushed from the minds of young people by an activist saturated culture to make room for the nefarious narrative that tells them to be themselves by completely changing themselves. I have tried to be the little voice of reason in the back of her mind, but only time will reveal the efficacy of my efforts.
The pert passing of days, weeks and months refused a respite, as did my child’s assertion that she is a he. My efforts to expose the gender industry as social, political, medical and financial malpractice to her have shifted through all gears. Prioritizing the goal of inspiring her to avoid signing a feigned name to a ticket for lifelong medicalization, I had to find space in my Mothering to prepare for the possibility that she will do just that. And within that space, lie pockets of accommodation for a future detransitioning daughter.
While I refuse to step foot on the fraudulent path my teenager has attached her exploitable feet to, I walk alongside, prepared to help gather the shrapnel of a shattered “identity” should she step off. She follows her instincts and searches for her tribe, and I remain a disregarded rock, a solid and stationary source of the love she needs, the support she currently vilifies and the boundaries she subconsciously craves.
As I build into my parenting a space to potentially fail, but not be a failure, my compassion for detranstioners, their parents and their families only grows. My parenting has widened to include this and other attributes unique to those of us navigating this fallacious ideology with our kids and in our homes, but my overarching objective to pull my daughter from the “gender cult” remains untouched.
My daughter, like many of the children and adolescents trapped in a loop of gender ideation, is unwilling to release the dated idea that only a tiny number of “trans kids” will one day detransition. With her knowledge of a detrans sub-reddit with over 40,000 members, countless mentions of detransitioners in documentaries and on social media, and a high-profile lawsuit recently launched by a Canadian survivor of the gender industry, she steadies herself in cognitive dissonance.
A myriad of detransition stories are ever so slowly making their way to the mainstream, amplified by supportive individuals and organizations in honour of Detransitioners Awareness Day on March 12th. These firsthand accounts of young people being drawn in, chewed up and spit out, all with equal potency, by a malignant movement offer parents both a sense of urgency and one of hope for abolition of the barbaric practices being bolstered. Many of these same parents offer to detransitioners immense gratitude for their bravery and a unique understanding of the manipulative mechanisms that led them to where they are now.
With our children and adolescents positioned in the crosshairs, it is Our Duty to support detransitioners as they fly into the eye of this storm determined to effect drastic and lasting change. And it is with the utmost appreciation that we, the parents of Our Duty Canada, thank all of the vocal detransitioners for their brave crusade on behalf of all of our confused and coerced children and adolescents.
It is our job to see around the corners that our children cannot.
SAMPLE LETTER IN SUPPORT OF DETRANSITIONERS
Please take what you like from our sample letter and reach out to your government representatives on this Detransitioners Awareness Day and beyond.
<Date>
Dear Madam/Sir,
March 12, 2023 is Detransition Awareness Day. This is a to recognize those individuals who have gone through the “transgender affirmation therapy”, to recognize the failure of our system and the negative impact it has on all of us. It is a day to understand the impact of our government and medical approved approach to treating gender dysphoria. Over the past 15 years, our society has seen a rapid increase in gender dysphoria diagnosis, especially with teen age girls. In 2007 there were two Pediatric Gender Clinics in the USA and in 2022 there are hundreds in Canada and the USA. This has risen with the classroom teaching of gender (i.e. SOGI), social media trans sites and influencers and use of affirmation therapy.
To help you understand affirmation therapy, it is like a girl who comes in that is clearly underweight and says to her therapist, I am fat. And the therapist affirms and sends her to a weight loss clinic. This is what happens with children and vulnerable adults, they go into a therapist declare that they feel like the opposite sex or something in between, the therapist affirms and down the path of transition the child or adult is taken.
For children it means changing pronouns, clothing changes, etc. Once they start puberty, “puberty blockers” are recommended. Binders for girls which as they grow cause long term problems with their ribs and back (like the old practice of foot binding). Eventually the child is offered hormone therapy that will sterilize them if there is continued treatment and results permanent physical changes. There are also added issues with medical practitioners treating children without involvement, approval from their parents, and schools that promote gender affirmation without engagement of the parents. This places the child at great risk of harm in situations that the parents are not aware of and cannot support and guide the child.
For adults, pronouns, appearance changes, and depending on their self-identification medical intervention is applied, which ultimately could lead to sterilization and life altering permanent medical intervention, to the point of mutilation.
The side effects for females, there is hair growth on the upper lip, face, chest, nipples, and lower abdomen, thinning of scalp hair acne/oily skin, shrinking breast size or irregular clitoris, anger, aggression, or hostility, which may lead to depression and hoarseness or deepening of voice. For males there is infertility, sexual dysfunction, reduced growth, breast enlargement, shrinking muscle mass, trouble staying focused, hot flashes, done density loss, reduced testicular and penis growth, hair loss, exhaustion, decreased sperm concentration, and poor sex drive.
Is this really the first response we want to have for people who suffer with gender dysphoria?
Most people with gender dysphoria have underlying mental health issues including anxiety, eating disorders, depression and autism or some history of sexual assault. Affirmation therapy is treating the symptom and dysphoric patients still struggle with mental health issues, to the point that during transition suicides are more likely than if the “wait and see” approach was applied.
Detransitioners Awareness Day is about sharing the impacts of this new and very invasive practice. As the gender diagnosis’ increase so do the number of detransitioners. Some of which are in pain, sterile and permanently physically mutilated from their former state. When the individuals determine that they are not trans, they are shunned by the very community that encouraged the medically invasive surgeries and they are left on their own. Support systems are growing but, in the end, the medical interventions are with them forever. Despite what one gender clinic nurse said to me when I asked what happens if my child changes her mind, she said, “we will just put it back.” You can’t put back functioning healthy penis’, uterus’ and breasts. And if there were more invasive surgeries for genitals, those are as permanent as can be.
I encourage you to review this article, Detransition: a Real and Growing Phenomenon | SEGM, that provides information and other links. There is also Beyond Trans – Support and advice to people who feel distressed or ambivalent about their transition. We need to relook, rethink and reassess Affirmation therapy, as school curriculums that include programs like SOGI (Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity). Gender dysphoria should be a medical condition and treated first and foremost as a psychological condition with last resort medical intervention and should never be promoted to children as a life choice.
The impacts can be very far from our personal experience, and it might be easy not to understand the gravity of the situation. I am going to share part of a statement made by a young woman (detransitioner) who transitioned in her early teens.
“Im a 17 year old girl with a flat chest, a deep voice, a visible Adam’s apple and some facial hair. … I destroyed my life and I feel like all hope I have is stupid for me to have. I don’t think any person will ever wanna date me. Before all this people were into me but I destroyed that. I was just a kid and I would have needed someone to help me accept myself but my therapist didn’t question my transness. I cant stop thinking about the life I could have had… Im 17 why do I have to think about ending my life. Its too much for me to handle. There’s no joy in my life anymore.”
This story, as sad and horrible as it is, is not unusual. I beg you to become more informed on these issues, the impact it is having on children and vulnerable adults, families and society overall. I also encourage you to speak out on March 12 to support this important issue.
Sincerely,
[Name]
[City, Prov/Terr]
If not now then when, if not you then who?
The Strength of Detransitioners
March 12th is Detransitioners Awareness Day. Again, I read the stories of those who once found temporary comfort with their transitions, and the feelings are often the same- anger, rage, grief and profound sadness. I now experience, first and foremost, compassionate understanding.
As parents, our anger and rage at the medical and mental health providers that have allowed this to happen to vulnerable youths is understandable and understated. There has been unbelievable profit made at the psychological and physical expense of more than 30% of those who were convinced that medical transition was the only solution to the intense feelings of distress around their bodies and for their gender dysphoria. There are similarities in what gave rise to this distress – neurodiversity, same sex attraction, trauma for example. However, detransitioners’ experiences are as unique as they are as individuals, so it’s important to remember that no one lumped in a group can or did have the exact same problems, but they did share a common desire, one that led to some desperate solutions.
Attachment is a basic human need. We need to feel attached to our caregivers and parents for survival and for our development. As Gordon Neufeld writes, and says, this used to be easy for parents when we lived in a time of hunters and gathers. We looked to our group of caregivers for our basic emotional and survival needs in order to fuel a successful human developmental process. Over time this was lost to a large degree, with socioeconomic and cultural changes taking many parents out of the home for work and rendering them less available to their kids.
In my late teens, early 20’s I was adamant that I didn’t want kids, and no one could convince me otherwise. “Stop telling me you know more than me, you don’t know anything, it was different then, you have no idea how the world is now, and the last thing I want is to be like you”. I wasn’t having it in a time when acid rain was killing forests, fluorides threatened to destroy the great lakes, and the AIDS crisis was tragically in full swing.
I was expected to go to university as the first in my family to be able to. Conform to what’s expected. There were times I hated my parents. I dated a gender-nonconforming man and was asked in hushed tones if I was sure he wasn’t gay, because he wore nail polish, eyeliner, and was into fashion and creative personal expression. I got tattoos, dropped out of university, and travelled alone for over a year. “Fuck your conformity, you losers can stay in your boxes”.
My angst was fueled by music, volunteering for anti-OPEC groups at non-profits that supported addicts and runaways in Vancouver’s downtown east side. People who I felt represented my parents’ generation would say they just needed to get a job and stop looking for handouts. As a middle-class kid, I felt by understanding their backstories – kids kicked out of home for being gay, smoking pot, forced to become addicts and live on the street– that I was more informed (more woke) about how and why the ended up leaving home and finding a connection with their “tribe”.
These teens and young adults told painful stories about what they’ve been up against, and from some came a deep learning and understanding of the sources of their pain, and in turn their tremendous personal growth. In these cases, pain was invited to take a backseat, but it never left. It was relegated to the background where it informed their lives and played an important part of their story but was no longer the lead narrative. I developed a compassionate understanding for what it took for these kids accomplish this.
Whatever the reason, be it misdirection, socioeconomic circumstances or lack of attachment, the ability to take small steps toward creating meaning connects us all. Even on a minute level, we share the capacity to make meaning when faced with the tragic outcomes of our mistakes, or the wrongs done to us.
As children when our attachment consciousness is threatened, we learn to shift the goal posts in order to feel safe. “How do I have to behave or act to be welcomed and accepted as I am with my parents, caregivers or chosen group?”. This process leads to confusion and anxiety. When I find a group and the rules are laid out and I just have to follow them, my anxiety and confusion are reduced. The less I’m required to think about what I have to DO to be part of the group, the more feelings of safety, belonging and self-esteem grow.
The sacrifices made by youths are either not yet visible or are ignored because attachment and safety are more important for survival than paying attention to doubt or giving in to internal questions– the minds ability to shine the dimmest of light on cognitive dissonance.
Today many trans-identified youths seem to share a sense of belonging within mantras like “Fuck heteronormativity, patriarchy, and capitalism”. World war 3, the climate crisis and pandemics are here or coming, so do what you want.
White boys are the root of all problems, lesbians are the least cool of the queers, show me how trans you are. There is more oppression now than ever—rumours of unmarked graves, at least two “genocides”, high cost of living, massive debt, a mental health & suicide crisis. FUCK. There is no future anyway, it’s hopeless, futile to strive for anything– “live hard, die young” is what I was told by a 16-year-old recently.
In fact, there are no solutions, not to the so-called climate crisis, the next pandemic or the cult-like ideologies that promote disconnection and offer synthetic attachments over natural ones.
How does all of this connect to Detransitioners Awareness Day?
Now that I’m a parent I can see the value in their illumination of the innate ability to face what they’ve been up against, which is in many cases includes immense pain and suffering.
Detransitioners reflect our capacity as humans to observe and appreciate how we can overcome what seems insurmountable. Through the painful stories about what they’ve been up against, they have cultivated a deep learning and understanding of the sources of their pain, and in turn shown tremendous personal growth.
We all succumb to external influences, consciously or unconsciously, to feel safe, to be connected and to belong. We’ve all been sold a bill of goods at some point, that wasn’t real or true. Shouldn’t the two parents I have love me unconditionally? Doesn’t life owe me equitable and fair treatment? When I don’t get that, don’t “they” have the answers, and should I listen to them? “They” will create and ensure that rules, laws and standards are in place so life will be fair for everyone, right? That the lie. Life has never been, nor will it ever be fair.
Detransitioners, not unlike those who have overcome other extreme adversity, have dared to look inward, have reflected and fanned their innate human need for authentic, not synthetic, human connection. Their vulnerably and humility deserve grace. It illuminates how delicate, vital, and human our basic need for attachment is and shows that when it’s missing, we can feel lost and victimized, and desperate for even the lowest hanging solutions.
We’re often told the answers lie outside of ourselves. We’re victims after all, and therefore can’t even trust ourselves. Feelings of exclusion, oppression, fear, and hope do not, however, belong to just one group. People within a given group are individuals with their own temperament, unique experiences, and emotional variance.
There are many writers and researchers who have traced how we got here and how captured our institutions are, especially here in Canada. Promoting and taking advantage of struggling youths and adults, and the lack of evidence supporting the proposed medical solutions are a scandal of epic proportion.
There is HOPE.
The growing numbers of detransitioners, their stories and perspectives, are beacons of hope in the shit storm we’re in. The support, grace and humility they’ve show to each other, to gender questioning youths and to their parents have come at an incredible personal cost.
Where is the diversity, equity, and equality director for detransitioners? What government agencies and interest groups are funding the medical research they need for their life-saving treatment and support?
I don’t have the answers but what I do know is there are parents, siblings and concerned Canadians who recognize that it’s Our Duty to support and fight for this amazing group of humans.
By nature, adolescents seek out their tribe, their subculture. This particular subculture of drugs and surgeries will lead a plethora of young people to detransition.
It is Our Duty to protect children & adolescents from the irreversible harms of “gender medicine”
