So Your Kid Wants to Live as the Opposite Sex…
Disclaimer
What follows is not medical advice. It is a series of ideas to contemplate as thought experiments that could spark other insights.
In any and all of my public work around the gender crisis, I hope it’s evident that none of it constitutes medical advice, nor am I under any illusion that any course of action for any family will necessarily lead to their desired outcome. You know your own family and situation best, and there are numerous risks and considerations to weigh at every turn.
See further disclaimers, FAQ and resources.
So your kid wants to live as the opposite sex.
As parents, one aspect of your job is to help your kids prepare for the real world before having to face all of its consequences. When they take the blows of poor decisions, you are there to catch their fall. Hopefully they learn from these experiences adequately enough to prepare them to make wiser decisions once they leave your care. For example, the consequences they face when they mess up in school will hopefully help them avoid similar mistakes in the workplace, where the standards and stakes will be higher. Any parent reading this no doubt has countless stories about this.
We often talk about how living as the opposite sex is unprecedented and dissimilar from the desires and experiences of any previous generation of youth. But today, I want to examine the similarities. What experiences while growing up help youth prepare for adult life? How might these be modified into rites of passage that simulate the trans experience before taking the plunge? What follows is, again, a series of thought experiments to explore these ideas and spark the creative mind in ways that might, for someone, somewhere, illuminate something that could be helpful.
Simulations of living permanently with the consequences of your actions & experiments to cultivate alternate perspectives
1: A hairstyle commitment
Have your child create a Pinterest board of all their favorite hairstyles. The crazier the better. For example…
Not every kid wants a rainbow Mohawk mullet. But some do. Some think it’s really cool and it would be amazing to have one.
Next, pick the wildest, most outlandish hairstyle your child has chosen, and offer to take them to get that style done professionally. There’s only one caveat: you must live with this style until you turn 18. And if the stylist makes a mistake, you must live with that mistake, and have it replicated each time your hair gets styled.
Perhaps the most straightforward ideal outcome would be that the kid would get the point and desist right away.
They might also carry forward with this idea and enjoy it for a while, but how long would that enjoyment last before it turned to embarrassment, frustration, resentment, regret, or feeling trapped?
Might the child eventually get the point and desist?
2: Acupuncture
Once again let me stress: this is not medical advice, but a thought experiment.
Of course it would be illegal, unethical, and problematic on so many levels to inject your child with a medicine they do not need, or to instruct them to do so. It’s an impossible simulation to create.
And this experiment, if any family were to undertake it, could backfire. It could help your kids become more comfortable with needles and therefore more attracted to the idea of intravenous injections. Again, this is a thought experiment only, meant to spark your own creative ideas & insights.
That being said, how could you simulate the experience of having to inject yourself with hormones? The only idea that comes to mind is acupuncture. This has the side benefit of being a treatment that could potentially affect other health outcomes for the better.
Imagine taking your child to an acupuncturist with the goal of treating any imbalance in physical or mental health. If your child is in good health, the acupuncturist can still provide treatments that could improve their mood or anxiety.
If your child doesn’t want to deal with the needles, then… they don’t want to deal with needles. Maybe that’s something to reflect on.
If they’re open to acupuncture, then they can see how they like having needles put in them. This is something they are going to have to become very comfortable with if they want to pursue cross-sex hormones.
Meanwhile, your child’s care team can assess whether they might have any hormone imbalance. We do now know that for many young females, there is a link between gender dysphoria and hormonal imbalances such as PCOS and other conditions with higher androgen levels. Many young females who experience body dysphoria/dysmorphia also hate their periods; some may have very painful periods. Acupuncture can be used to treat these conditions. It is possible that the impact of appropriate acupuncture treatments on the child’s mood, anxiety, and hormone problems could aid in desistence. Or, that the child’s hatred of needles could also help spark desistence.
3: Henna scars (temporary tattoos)
If your child wants a mastectomy, then they want to live with scars on their chest for the rest of their lives.
In this thought experiment, the mother obtains henna and paints “scars” on the daughter’s chest. As with the hairstyle, the henna must be done repeatedly so that the daughter has to live with the “scars” until she turns 18 or desists. For her privacy, the henna may be done by herself or another appropriate person of her choosing but she must demonstrate to her mother that she is maintaining the tattoos by showing side cleavage.
She is not allowed to use a binder, as that is an unsafe practice, but she can continue to wear a flattening style of sports bra, or just an undershirt.
4: Managing daily medication
Similar to the last experiment, in this one, if the child is not already taking a daily medication such as an antidepressant, they must take something else daily. The family could use a placebo, such as a homeopathic medicine, which is basically inert, and insist that the child learn to self-manage taking medication daily.
Or they could, more sensibly, insist that the child take a healthy supplement, such as a multivitamin, or another supplement recommended by a doctor. The child should have routine bloodwork anyway, and be assessed for any nutrient deficiencies; iron, B vitamins, and vitamin D are commonly low in people with mental health problems anyway. It could therefore be beneficial on multiple levels for the child to have to self-manage taking pills daily.
An alternative is to take your child to an endocrinologist to rule out the possibility of any hormonal disorders, especially since her dysphoria could possibly be related to low levels of female hormones, and request that the child first treat the endocrine condition by taking birth control, for instance, if that is what the doctor recommends. While this could be the last thing she wants, the idea could be made more attractive if she is offered a type of birth control that stops her from having periods, or mitigates the painfulness of her periods. Reducing the distress associated with menstruation could help with desistence, as could correcting any hormonal imbalance.
5: Using cross-sex bathrooms and locker rooms
This is something many trans identifying youth already want. The experiment runs itself. Some detransitioners & desisters have shared that the reality of this lived experience did help turn them off to the idea of permanently living as the opposite sex.
Alternately, the family could simulate this experiment at home by designating certain bathrooms in the house as men’s and women’s. Then, the men’s bathroom is used by all male members of the household and by the daughter, while she is prohibited from using the ladies’ room. The men’s room is intentionally kept gross and rarely cleaned, and the men leave the toilet seat up. Let’s face it, this is the reality of what she would be dealing with in men’s public restrooms. They’re usually more disgusting than women’s.
To really emphasize the male bathroom experiment, the family could keep a picture of a man using a urinal within view of the toilet. His genitals would, of course, be obscured from view, but anyone using the toilet would have to see this picture.
She’s not allowed to keep pads or tampons in the men’s room. She must keep them in her room and remember to bring them to the bathroom every time she needs them. This is to simulate the reality that when a woman forgets her supplies, many public ladies rooms offer feminine hygiene products in vending machines or for free, or a woman can ask her fellow bathroom-users if they have a spare, but she will have no such luxuries if she uses men’s rooms.
6: Joining an opposite sex sports team
Again, this experiment is already running itself in many families. But unfortunately many young people are physically inactive and we know that trans identification is especially common in youth who spend a majority of their time on social media, not in the physical world. In this experiment, the parents insist that the child take up physical activity — which is, again, good for their health — but that they compete against members of the opposite sex.
Trans-identified females may get tired of competing against males who clearly have a physical advantage over them, while trans-identified males, in a best case scenario, might realize that they have an unfair advantage, and could potentially feel guilty about that. Alternately, trans-identified females may realize they have to work much harder in order to be competitive. For instance, they might need to take up weightlifting and running outside of their soccer team in order to obtain the same level of ability that males on their team have from playing soccer alone. This might strike a sense of unfairness.
7: Sex education
First, the parent ascertains the sexual orientation of the child, to the best of their ability. Eg., if going by birth sex, is your daughter a lesbian, or your son bisexual?
The, the child is asked to write two detailed reports. In one, they write a detailed description of how a sexual encounter might proceed between two consenting adults of their preferred sex (eg. a lesbian would write about a lesbian encounter). The aim here is not to create erotica, but to develop an articulable and accurate understanding of how sex actually works.
In the other report, they articulate how a sexual encounter would unfold if one or both partners had the body modifications this child seeks.
The parent and child then review this report together. The parent gently asks questions and provides factual feedback as to the accuracy of these descriptions. Does the child know, for instance, the role that nipples play in sexual pleasure for many women, and how this pleasure helps some women orgasm? (Mastectomies take away this pleasure.) Do they understand the effect of testosterone on such factors as clitoral size and vaginal lubrication? Do they understand that artificial phalluses cannot become fully erect, and do they understand the importance of erection for successful penetration? Do they understand the difficulties with orgasm that cross-sex medicalization can create? The aim here isn’t to criticize or interrogate, but to gently and lovingly help your child make sure they understand what they might encounter in the future.
8: UTIs, yeast infections, & cramps
Of course, it would be abuse to inflict any of these conditions on your daughter, or fail to treat them. However, whenever these conditions naturally occur, while you are in the process of helping your daughter treat them with appropriate medical interventions, and she is still suffering the consequences, at an appropriate time and in a gentle way, she should be presented with the statistics that inform her of the increased likelihood of experiencing similar pains and discomforts as a result of taking testosterone that results in vaginal atrophy.
9: Understanding diseases
In this experiment, first the parent quietly familiarizes themselves with the data on how cross-sex hormones increase the risk of diseases such as osteoporosis, diabetes, heart disease, and Alzheimer’s. Next, the child is asked to join the parent in watching a documentary with testimonials about the lived experience of each relevant condition, and/or, together, the parent and child interview a relative or family friend who lives with each condition. They also familiarize themselves with how those around the diseased person must accommodate their condition. This is presented at first as simply a life lesson, or it is perhaps interwoven into a class assignment. Then, at an appropriate time, the parent introduces the statistics to the child about the degree to which the child’s desired hormones affect their likelihood of living with these diseases.
10: Befriend an older trans person
It’s tempting to suggest that the child should interview a detransitioned person, or otherwise hear their accounts through a podcast, video, or testimonial. In many cases, that could be appropriate. However, many children might resist the idea and end up more entrenched in polarization with their parents. In such instances, an alternative that could be far less polarizing is to have the child talk with an older trans person that is approved by the parent. Here’s why.
In the absence of an older trans person approved by the parent, the child is likely being groomed by online predators who are older trans people of ill intent and character, such as pedophilic autogynephiles. And the child is likely to believe their parents hate all trans people. By seeking out a trans person of good character, the parent helps provide a better influence and depolarizes the child, counteracting the child’s entrenchment into the belief that their parents are transphobic. While they are a relative minority, there are older trans people in their 30’s and beyond who have lived with the consequences of cross-sex hormones and surgeries for many years, have reasonable perspectives and share parents’ concerns for what is happening with youth. A parent could vet and forge a connection with these trans people online, then set up a meet and greet for the whole family. They could say to the child something like, “I know it’s been upsetting for you to think that I hate or don’t understand trans people. I have been making an effort to get to know trans people, and I found one I think we would all get along with. I would like to have some trans family friends together. They are happy to talk with all of us, share their story, and answer any questions you might have about what it’s like to be trans as an adult.” The parent should pay the trans person a consulting fee out of respect for their time, but the child does not need to know that any money was exchanged.
The vetted trans adult should seek first to build a connection with the child and family, getting to know one another in a friendly and positive way. They should proceed with caution about sharing the downsides of being trans, or their concerns for the younger generation, or giving advice. That should ideally happen over time, once rapport is established.
Parents, these people do exist. If you don’t know where to find them, I might be able to help you.
Children who are less polarized against their parents and more open-minded may be open to meeting with detransitioners and hearing their stories. This would ideally proceed in a similar manner.
11: Befriend a gay or lesbian adult
Many young people who identify as trans are same-sex attracted but lack connections with other gay people outside of their trans bubble. Some detransitioned lesbians have said that they lacked butch role models, and that if they’d had them, they might not have felt the need to transition. If you do not have same-sex attracted adults amongst your family or friends, consider vetting and befriending or hiring a level-headed, perhaps happily married, gay adult of the same sex as your child.
12: Learn together about cults and historical mass hysteria social contagions
The parent does not immediately draw the connections with trans. They simply invite their child to share in something they want to learn about. Wikipedia has a list of cults, and a list of mass hysteria cases throughout history. From there, you could find relevant documentaries to watch.
13: Learn together about abusive relationships and narcissistic emotional abuse
Again, here the parent does not tackle the issue head-on or draw the analogy immediately. The parent helps the child learn, in an age appropriate way, about emotional abuse, grooming, and manipulation tactics. The child may in their own time be able to connect the dots.
There are, of course, other interventions parents have found helpful in leading their child toward desistance. Among them, some that have been successful in some cases include removing social media, spending more time in nature, doing physical activities, hobbies, changing schools or even moving or traveling, family therapy with a vetted clinician, addressing comorbidities, and strengthening relationships through games and other forms of quality time. And, no interventions can be guaranteed to work. This is why I stress repeatedly throughout this article that these are thought experiments, not medical advice.
Today I thought I would take a different approach, beginning with brainstorming experiences that could simulate some of what the child might encounter were they to get the medical interventions they seek and truly live as the opposite sex, and expanding into other ideas for alternate approaches. I hope these ideas are useful in sparking your own creativity for how you might best serve your family.
