The school year started off as any regular year would, orientation, supply buying, etc. It was not as if my daughter did not know other kids in the school; she did. She had friends from the neighborhood who had spent their lives in public school and many of the kids from her Catholic school had gone to the same school as well. Anyway, as the semester wore on, I started to a change in her. She had always been somewhat quiet and introspective as a child, but also very social, but she had begun to withdraw. She would complain about the sexual tension in school and she did not like it. She did not like how the boys acted semi predatory and she really hated how women were seen as sex objects and how many of the girls went out of their way to make themselves sexual objects . She would tell stories of how girls even her age were pressured into having sex…not necessarily by the boys , but by other girls. They would talk about their sexual exploits out loud. I, at first, dismissed it and tried to tell her that as she got older she was going to hear stuff like that and that coming from a family full of boys that there was a lot of bullsh*t associated with guys making those claims and given the world today probably from the girls as well.
Anyway, as the semester went on I started to notice major behavioral changes in her. She became withdrawn and very short with her siblings. Her mood became dark. She would tell me that she thought maybe she was gay. I told her that we would love her just the same, but I paid no attention to it, mainly because she had a boyfriend in 8th grade. By November of her freshman year I noticed a change in how she presented herself, she started dressing more and more like a bum.
Then she hit me with it. She comes in one evening and says that she believes that she is probably a man inside of a girl’s body. Naturally, as a father and a guy, I was like, “What level of ridiculous is this? You were boy crazy not six months ago. Three months ago I saw you flirting with some boys at a party, where does this come from?” This is crazy and she looked serious. I thought, OK she’s just trying to get one over on me and she’s doing a little rebelling.Then I got a call from her counselor a few days later.
“ You know, **** has been having trouble adjusting here” My wife and I agreed with this, we saw it. Then skipping over all of the other stuff, the counselor says, “ You know your son….. “ I stopped her, “ My son? My son is 7 years old, what does he have to do with this conversation?” “No, said the counselor”” I mean your son here at this school.” I was like, “I have one son and he’s in second grade, I have a daughter in this school.” The counselor leans over and in a very smug, self assured manner, “No **** identifies as a male, she — he says that he has always felt this way, but it is causing him a lot of anxiety.”
Anyway, I told her that I thought she was crazy and that just because my daughter may not be as sexualized as the other girls, it does not mean she is not a woman, it just means me and her mother must have done something right.
The next thing I know, over that weekend , **** takes all of her clothes that looked feminine and started throwing them in garbage bags. That Sunday night, she walks right past her mother and I and announces that she is now a boy and that we should call her _____. Obviously a real mindblower.
So now I am incensed. I told her, “No you are not throwing your clothes out, and no I am not going to call you anything other than your name that your mother and your father gave you and the one that is on your birth certificate.” So of course, now I am the hateful one.
Rod, this battle went on for all of high school and the more I explored it and the more questions I asked, I found that the gender fluidity thing was not all that isolated — itt’s kind of “encouraged”, if you will. I heard from a number of parents that their kids were coming home and telling them that they were transgendered or pan sexual or genderqueer. The kids always seemed to be the ones who were not as self confident, kind of the nerdy outcast who had not yet gained any type of true sexual or self confidence.
The stories all sounded the same too. Freshman year of high school, immense pressure to conform to a highly sexualized environment, then if your self confidence is not where the crowd thinks it should be, the name-calling and rumor-mongering. It was so bad a friend of mine told me that her daughter would come home in tears every day because the girls thought she was lesbian and the boys would too, and worse, make lewd gestures. This girl, the victim, told me that a lot of the girls that were picked on were doing this and identifying as male, she thought, as a self defense mechanism so that the rest would leave them alone.
The problem with this play acting is that everyone has to buy in and if you are the one trying to “transition” you have to do a sell job in all aspects of your life. There are books on it, there are sites on the internet that encourage the exploration of gender roles. They see this and they start to think they are. It was not until recently that my daughter finally decided or gave up the pretense and was a girl again. She has kind of told me that this transgender movement is something that is all the rage right now in the 15-21 year old age group.
It is so prevalent, so ubiquitous, that the schools have just given in. The counselors and psychologists have been instructed not to question the veracity of the claim that the individual is other than what they identify themselves as. The counselors are told that they must comfort and “support” the person going through this and be nurturing. If a kid has a sexual confidence problem, they are probably gender queer according to many counselors or psychologists. I learned that there is a whole network out there actively promoting transitioning and gender fluidity and that many of the psychologists have bought into it so much that they are skipping protocol and advocating for hormone therapy after only 2-3 visits. There are networks out there for these kids to get hormones without a prescription and that these networks are referred to these kids by then psychologists themselves.
It’s crazy.
