They Got It All Wrong

Helen

I am a parent of a child who was never gender dysphoric; a child who was traumatized by a splittingly acrimonious divorce and who at the age of 4 was nonetheless socially transitioned to live his next 5 years as a trangender girl. 

My name is Helen and you may have heard my story in the recently released and then quickly deplatformed documentary, Deadname https://www.deadnamedocumentary.com/

You may have viewed the trailer in which my 5 year old hauntingly proclaims that “if you want girl parts and you don't have them, you can do special surgeries, where they turn your penis inside out and there is a vagina inside.”

This all started in 2014. I was completely blindsided by gender ideology. I am aware that if you give any argument 10 minutes, someone will bring up the Nazis (Godwin’s Law). But I do have street cred on this one. My father was a Holocaust Survivor. He told me that even though he was only a child in Poland, he remembers a wagon that stopped at the small inn run by his grandparents. The two young men driving the wagon told my father’s family about what was happening to the Jews. They said that they had two strong horses and could help my father’s family escape as well. My father’s family declined the offer. They thought that they would survive this as they had other persecutions before. They also could not quite believe what they were hearing.  I am sure that there is a psychological descriptor that would explain what the mind does when the information it receives destroys the world as the mind can understand it. Whistleblower Jamie Reed told of her experiences at a gender clinic in Missouri. She has been attacked and her character questioned. I understand where this is coming from. Well intentioned people cannot quite believe what she is saying because believing this would destroy the world as their minds understand it. 

Back to 2014. Without going into all the nasty details, my ex-wife, after our divorce, grabbed onto everything Trans. When we were still talking, I remember asking her why this was so appealing to her and she honestly told me, “I need community.” 

My son at that time was attending a progressive day care. The director and head teacher had a young trans-identified daughter (biological male). I knew all of this. At that time, it was fine with me. I had no idea that my live and let live attitude would not be reciprocated. I later learned that gender was a daily topic of discussion with the 4 year old’s.

Only one short month after my ex and I dissolved our marriage, the daycare teacher called me at work to let me know that “J says that he is a girl.” Again, I responded as many liberal-minded people would and I shrugged it off. 

My son continued to live with me half of the time as we fought over the details of the divorce. My ex would tell me that our son preferred female pronouns and that our ‘daughter’ was being damaged by my non-acceptance. I would repeatedly tell her in email after email (by this time our divide was too great to have any conversation) that J was not displaying any of these tendencies or preferences while with me. Those comments were met with the accusation that I was transphobic and that I was failing to support our ‘daughter.’ In fact, I was accepting. When my ex informed me via text message that our child, her ‘daughter’, had a new female name, I even tried to use it. I tried avoiding pronouns. I offered all sorts of female clothing options. My son wanted none of it. I was not unaccepting, but I was confused and distraught.

Photo by Renaud Confavreux on Unsplash

Throughout, my son remained the same child to me. The most ridiculous thing about all this is that our son started out and has remained to this day, to be a textbook, clear cut, stereotypical male in his mannerisms, preferences and expressions. That simple observation became a point of contention. My ex repeatedly accused me of being regressive and bigoted with my stereotyping and she made sure that doctors and school staff all knew that I was the so-called problem parent. It became all about name and pronoun. His mannerisms did not matter. His all-male friend group did not matter. The fact that he had never presented with any actual dysphoria meant nothing. His alleged preference to be a girl with my ex was not seen as an attempt to get back her attention and love or a response to his obvious trauma or even a response to the gender lessons fed to him by the preschool and his other mother. No, in the murky and ever-changing world of gender ideology, my 5 year old son was assumed to have the linguistic and cognitive capabilities of a tiny adult. If he said he was a girl to even a single soul, then facts be damned, he was a girl.

It was a time of darkness and despair for me. My ex and I were still joint custodians of our son. Over the ensuing years, I never stopped trying to convince her to slow down and to not box him in and most of all, to come to some common ground. I could not understand why she did not want to strive for these goals. I did not know what I know now. What I did know was that having my son lead two completely different lives as two different kids with each parent shook him to his very core. Every day I woke up with this situation and I went to sleep with it. Though I barely slept and I also barely ate.

I constantly tried to get professional help for us and for our son. We went to child therapists together. I told them my story and she told them hers. I always tried to be reasonable. I was more reasonable then than I am today. I knew so little back then. All I knew was the truth; that I was not transphobic and that my son in particular was not transgender. 

I became increasingly desperate to have my ex understand my point of view. In the world as I knew it, if a child had a condition that was beyond the scope of the local care providers, the parents would seek the advice of a specialist. It seemed an obvious choice to seek outside help. I called a good friend who practiced pediatric medicine in Boston and she recommended the Boston Children's Hospital Gender Management Services (GeMS). Of note the clinic’s name has changed to Gender Multispecialty Service.  It is no longer something to ‘manage.’ It seemed logical to seek their help.  I called and made the first appointment to see them in 2016. This was the first gender clinic for children in the US, co-founded by Norman Spack and Laura Edwards-Leeper. I fully believed the ‘experts’ would assess the situation and finally someone would help my ex and I to come to some common understanding and my son’s nightmare would be on the road to ending. 

My ex and I went to GeMS with my son once a year for 3 years, from 2016 to 2019. The first visit was together with my ex and our child, and the next two were separate visits due to our inability to be in the same room together.  For the initial appointment, I spent many hours compiling my contemporaneous notes and filling out the pre-visit questionnaire. I longed to have an objective and professional clinician help us understand what was happening. 

I have the three written reports from the clinic visits and it is understandably very triggering for me to read them today. The clinician, a psychologist who I will call Dr. T, wrote and noted the facts of the situation, but her bias was very clear.  I was completely on the defensive and had to justify my concerns again and again. Although 50% of the time, our child was a boy and easily used and referred to himself using male pronouns with me, the report was written using only his girl’s name and female pronouns. The doctor chose sides early on and stated, “currently in many settings, R identifies as a girl and uses 'she/her/hers’ pronouns and is referred to with these pronouns in the current report.” There was no hesitation to affirm this new identity, even though both my ex and I described the divorce as difficult and traumatic, and even though my ex self-reported a history of mental illness, and even though my ex “denied observing any sign of gender dysphoria currently.’ None of this held any weight.  

I was being managed as the unaccepting parent. Dr. T did not diagnose or assess our situation as I had hoped. One might wonder why I continued.  During our court process, we were ordered to continue with the yearly visits to GeMS.  

I am a veterinarian and I have been practicing for over 30 years. While I do not presume to compare cats and dogs to people, there are some core values of medicine that all medical professions share. I approach every case with an open mind. The next logical step is to collect data, which consists of a detailed history and a thorough examination, and if needed, diagnostic tests. I then arrive at a tentative diagnosis and subsequent treatment plan. It is really basic. I try to not make assumptions and have preconceived notions. It’s just bad medicine. You will be right most of the time. But you will also be very wrong some of the time.  Gender medicine does not follow this basic diagnostic model and is therefore wrong some of the time (many would argue most of the time) and the consequences are horrific.

As I reread the reports, it is very clear that my son was increasingly shut down. During the second visit, Dr. T  brought my son into the room with me so that she could support him as he requested that I use his girl’s name and female pronouns. I am not clear that coercing a parent to acquiesce to the wishes of a 7 year old is professionally ethical. But this is gender medicine today.

By the third visit, our son had figured out that the very best thing to do was to remain silent and not take sides. Dr. T interpreted his reluctance as a sign that J was non-binary. She was not certain and stated “It is unclear in this brief meeting whether ‘R’ is avoiding aligning with either parent by stating a gender that is something other than male or female, or whether this expresses her current internal sense of gender.”  However, she did not hesitate to advise that we start to consider the use of puberty blockers. 

At my custody trial, these reports were evidence. Dr. T was an expert with an expert opinion. She had met my son for a total of about 1 hour over three yearly visits. Her biased and incomplete opinion held inordinate weight.

Lastly, it is also good medicine to review the outcome to see if the diagnosis and subsequent treatment path were correct. Today my son is a basketball-obsessed 12 year old boy who is not at all confused about his gender but still refuses to share anything emotionally laden. The gender clinic’s diagnosis and proposed treatment plan would have had this healthy boy with his healthy body living an inauthentic and medicalized life. The gender clinic failed my son and his parents. 

The gender clinic got it all wrong.

Helen is a lesbian parent from the east coast.

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