TRIGGERnometry - "I Transitioned My Child - I Regret It"

Episode Date: February 6, 2023

In this episode, we speak to Rose, the mother of two boys, who has asked to remain anonymous. Read Rose's story here: https://pitt.substack.com/p/true-believer  *Update* Rose has written a follow-up piece where she shares some further reflections from the interview. Read it here: https://pitt.substack.com/p/a-return-to-reality For more resources, click here: https://pitt.substack.com/  https://genspect.org/  https://linktr.ee/genspect Join our exclusive TRIGGERnometry community on Locals! https://triggernometry.locals.com/ OR Support TRIGGERnometry Here: https://www.subscribestar.com/triggernometry https://www.patreon.com/triggerpod Bitcoin: bc1qm6vvhduc6s3rvy8u76sllmrfpynfv94qw8p8d5 Music by: Xentric | [e-mail] | https://www.xentricapc.com/ | Channel ID: UCo_8zzSxKeL3arKWVuP8wdQ Buy Merch Here: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/shop/ Advertise on TRIGGERnometry: [e-mail] Join the Mailing List: https://www.triggerpod.co.uk/sign-up/ Find TRIGGERnometry on Social Media:  https://twitter.com/triggerpod https://www.facebook.com/triggerpod/ https://www.instagram.com/triggerpod/ About TRIGGERnometry:  Stand-up comedians Konstantin Kisin (@konstantinkisin) and Francis Foster (@francisjfoster) make sense of politics, economics, free speech, AI, drug policy and WW3 with the help of presidential advisors, renowned economists, award-winning journalists, controversial writers, leading scientists and notorious comedians. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

IP Vanish protects every device you own, your phone, your laptop, your smart TV. If it connects to the internet, it should be protected. IP vanish encrypts your connection and masks your IP address, helping keep your browsing private at home and on public Wi-Fi. And with no device limits, one account covers everything. Stream with added privacy. Brow securely. Connect with confidence.

Right now, save 83% off the two-year plan. Get started today at IPVanish.com slash audio and take control of your privacy with IPVANFish. And so after a period of years, we came to this, neither of our sons is innately transgender. I want to say this clearly. When we came to that decision, I still didn't see it as a belief system. I was still in it. I was still in it.

But I had come painstakingly, both of us had, to the conclusion that our sons weren't actually trans, that it was something else for both of them. And we were clear in that. This belief system, the heart of it, says that children should lead. And it's contradictory because once children say they are the opposite sex, then adults lead them to gender affirmation, okay, to cross-sex concretizing that cross-sex identity and medicalizing it. But what I realized in those two plus years of anguish was that I had led my child into it.

And therefore, I must lead him out of it. It is my responsibility. And like a second later, I'm on my phone. I'm texting a friend. I'm like, we've realized that our older son is not actually transgender. We're going to be rolling back the social transition. And I feel like I am leaving a cult. Because that's what it felt like to me.

He said to me, Mama, this is your fault. You changed my name. So imagine how. had we not, you know, had we not realized our mistake and you go 10, 20 years into the future. Imagine that mama, this was your fault then. Hello and welcome to Trigonometry. I'm Francis Foster. I'm Constantine Kissen.

And this is a show for you, if you want honest conversations with fascinating people. Well, I don't know how to convey to you how fascinating the guest we have for you today. She's a mother which will become relevant very quickly. Rose, welcome to Trigonometry. Thank you so much for having me. Now, I'll explain for our audience that we've had to anonymize your face and voice because of the nature of the conversation we're going to be having. Before we get into all of that, just tell everybody a little bit about who are you,

what is your background. You don't have to give specifics, obviously, but just a big picture of what has been your journey through life that leads you to be talking to us. Yeah, so like you said, my name is Rose. I live in the United States, and I would say the big, picture of my life is that, you know, I like everybody else, just trying to figure out how to live a good life and my own path that kind of really led me into being very involved with social justice as a young person and then coming into motherhood and how those beliefs and those views kind of shaped some of the approaches that I took to raising my sons.

And that's what I wrote my piece about in the context of this phenomenon that we call gender ideology. And that's what I'm here to talk about today. Yeah, well, you wrote a piece on Substack, which we'll put in the link for people to read. I remember reading it last year, and it had a very profound impact on me, I must say, because this is kind of where ideology meets reality, in the words of our recent guests, Helen Joyce, who also quote. And you are this progressive person who's involved in the movement, who's very active. you get together with your partner, you have a child, then you have another child, and then what happens?

Well, you know, maybe backing up just a little bit. You know, I'm a progressive person and, you know, what happens when I have a child is that I'm coming into it with a belief system, right? And that belief system is something that your guess and that I would refer to as gender ideology. Where this belief system came from, I think when I think back to it, is really, as a young person, you know, being very idealistic, being involved with a lot of social justice activism, but also struggling to understand like how the world works and how I can make a positive impact in it. And along comes in my early 20s an answer, a really simple, you know, Francis, I watched your Joe Rogan interview. You know, you talk about be cautious of simple solutions to complex problems. Well, wow, does that resonate with me because I was offered a very simple thing. And that was a formula for understanding the root of our problems and social ills that could really be boiled down to these,

of white supremacy, of capitalism, of patriarchy. That's what I was given. You know, since a couple decades ago, there were other ones that were added sense, but that's where it was then. And that simple formula for understanding them and analyzing our world could be broken down to these categories of oppressed and oppressor.

And what needed to happen to make the world a better place was to really uproot all of this. So we could, like you all have spoken to, you know, create somewhat of a utopia. I didn't call it then a few years ago. I didn't use that word, but now I can see it as that was really what I was striving to be a part of. And I'm going to come back to this later in the story, but I think that was really the formula and the belief system that for me led me to believe as a mother and as a parent that my child or my children could have an innate transgender identity. So when you have that formula of, you know, people of color,

white people, men, women, you know, as the years went by and I was very involved in the social justice movement, you know, transgender, cisgender, you know, it's slotted right into that formula. And so I don't, I know after I wrote the piece, a lot of people like, where does this come from? you know, where does this come from? And that, I think, played a significant role in where it came from for me that I didn't do a lot of questioning of it. It just kind of slotted right in to that bigger ideology. And so my partner and I, from the best intentions imaginable, thought, you know, if we're having children, we want to acknowledge and we want to be very proactive that they could possibly be born male, but have this gender identity that was dead.

different, that was a girl. And no matter what, we wanted to make sure that our parenting was going to support that. So I think this is a key point that I want to speak to throughout the interview is that when you are in this belief system, you truly believe in this existence of an innate transgender identity. You believe in that, or many of us do. And so that's going to make the difference in these debates and these conversations around what you do with children who have gender dysphoria. So for us, it was almost like if we can be gender neutral, if we can be more open and flexible, we could maybe avoid a transgender child ever having gender dysphoria. I don't know if that makes sense or not. It might sound kind of crazy, but that's kind of where

we were coming from and I was coming from, was really wanting to not do harm to my child. is kind of the opposite of what many of us now see as something that does do harm. So the thing that I've always found very interesting about your story, Rose, I mean, the story is fascinating as a whole, but you say that 20 years ago you got into this ideology, 20 years ago, because to me, this is something fairly new. I first came across these ways of thinking in 2016. So how did you encounter it 20 years ago?

I was just speaking to what I did already. You know, I was in college. You know, I was idealistic. I was an activist. And it was really, it was within that world that what you all would call woke ideology was starting to take root. So anti-globalization protests, Iraq war protests, all of those things. This whole, it was really through anti-racism. And that framework coming in, what some people refer to,

as neo-Marxism right now, right? That sort of really came in and took hold of progressive movements and organizations, activism. And of course, now we see that, you know, across all of our institutions. But I was kind of, I would say, at the fledgling, some fledgling beginnings of that. And, Rose, what was it about this way of looking at the world that particularly appealed to you and you found so compelling? You know, similar to what I already said,

It made things quite simple. And it also gave a solution, which was, you know, you see injustice, you know, a war is happening. Why is that war happening? How can we make it stop? You know, I had been involved with some very large protests and mobilizations. And as a young person, you're like, we are going to change the world, right? But the next day you wake up and like, nothing has changed. So there's a sense of despair and confusion.

and you're looking for an answer. And so I think that this gave me that answer and kind of gave me a meaning and purpose for my life. And when did the gender ideology part come into it? Because that to me is something very, very, very new. So I would say once I got into that, the anti-racism world and, you know, it's kind of like what I talk about when I think about it

me, it's almost like I was evangelized. I became an evangelist, right? And so a lot of my work was working with progressive organizations to bring this framework in and help orient them towards it. And so in that work, you know, I started to meet people, it would meet people who either knew transgender people and or who, you know, we were building in that intersectional lens. So we had to address the gender binary. We had to, you know, introduce people to the concept of pronouns. And this was really within that greater framework of we're going to bring this collective sense of justice, right, to the world. And all that formula, all of these identities need to be part of creating more justice. And so it was introduced to me through that, for sure. But also as a person who was coming out,

you know, as same-sex attracted, as a lesbian, my first girlfriend was younger than me. And And she, when I said, you know, I'm interested in dating women, she said, I'm, well, I'm not a woman. So when you're like falling in love and you want, you get, you're going to get on board. And you're going to do what you need to do to support that person's expression of who they are. And so for me, the gender ideology, it came out of social justice, but it also was really coming up within, let's say, the female, what would be called now the queer community, but, you know, within those networks as well, just socially and the dating scene. This episode sponsored by Forkfull. Most meal delivery services promise healthy food, but look closer, and you'll often find cheap industrial seed oils hiding

in the ingredients. Forkful does things differently. Forkful delivers chef-prepared meals made with premium ingredients you'd expect at a great restaurant from Center. Féé mignon to wildcaught lobster mac and cheese, and every meal is 100% seed oil-free. Instead of canola or soybean oil, forkful chefs cook with extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, and grass-fed butter, because better fats make better food. Meals arrive fresh, never frozen, with clear nutrition and ingredient transparency, so you always know exactly what you're eating. Restaurant quality meals. Real ingredients. No. seed oils. Discover Forkful

today at Forkfulmeals.com. And so coming back to the story of your family, Rose, the, I mean, the short version, the Cliff Notes version is you had two kids, two boys. The first one was quite

gender non-conforming, you might say. He was probably on the autistic spectrum, a bit different. And you raised him in this gender neutral way because you believe this is in his best interests and everything was going fine and at some point he says he's a girl and you know you have some reservations but everyone around you's delighted for you of how brilliant you are you're these brilliant progressive parents uh everyone's supporting you with this and then your second boy who is not gender non-conforming in any way who's just a normal boy

he says he is a girl and at this point delight by book goes off Right. Tell us the story. Yeah. So a couple things here. So things were going well. But we were never 100% like this was the right thing to do. And I think you try to be succinct writing a piece. I try to be succinct in this interview. But I want people to know at no juncture were we not questioning.

Was this right or not? Part of what the ideology did for me that I came out of was when you have questions, and doubts, you tell yourself that that's transphobia. Okay? So there's a self-reinforcing kind of circle loop of keeping you in something even and maybe especially when you're uncomfortable with it. And so that was a piece of it for me throughout. But, you know, what we had seen in our older son was difference, right?

We didn't know. And we still have not, I just want to be very clear because I did get some comments on this from the written piece. We see autistic traits in him. we've not pursued a diagnosis, but what we saw was difference. And the lens that we saw that difference through was informed by gender ideology. It was informed by, could my child be trans? And so when some of those differences, we couldn't put our finger on them.

But at the same time, he was kind of more, had this affinity to females and female things. So because of the lens we saw that difference through, that's what led us to question whether he was trans. So yes, we went with the program when he finally said, you know, I'm a girl. Yes, you can be a girl. But we were never totally comfortable with it. So you're right. Something started to happen. Well, I just want to say my partner would come to me and say things like, what the

fuck is gender? Like literally, because she had, you know, she's a masculine female and she had experienced, you know, different desires to be a boy in her childhood. But she never transitioned. It was very grateful for that. So she started bringing this to me. Like, what are we talking about? What was it really mean?

And then I was at the same time really learning more about attachment and childhood development. And that was starting to give me some of the answers as to why my older son was a little bit different. And it was also starting to raise questions of, is this actually potentially doing something harmful to him? because I could see some of these things more clearly, this identification. And so that's when our younger son, you know, at three years of age, start saying, I'm a girl. And, you know, when you're an affirming parent, because that's what I would say we were in, that's why some of our, this story is so unique is that we were what you would call

affirming parents, what parents are being told to do in this gender affirming approach. You know, we had started to go to these support groups. for, you know, parents of transgender children. And, you know, we were in other kind of networks where our kids were being asked their pronouns. And so our younger son starts to say, she, her. And we're just like, hold on a second. No. So a few different things happened, you know, at that juncture.

First and foremost, it caused us to question everything. So those questions that we had already had, we started to listen to them much more. We started to allow them. and for my partner, you know, I was still like, but no, we know our older son is because of all of these things. And she was like, no, you know, we know our younger son isn't. Our older son is likely not either. But we took this to the group. We took this to the group.

We took it to the gender therapist. And I think that's one of the most shocking parts of the story when I look back is the fact that we walked into that therapy appointment said our, you know, our four, I can't remember if he was three or four by the time we went to the therapist. And, you know, we started saying he's a girl too, but we think it's because he wants to be close to his older sibling. And she said, well, she, you know, immediately she switched to saying she for our younger son. Just within literally seconds. You know, you hear these stories of my child wasn't assessed. Assessment doesn't exist when you believe that someone is innately trans.

assessment is actually in violation of that. So when you're three... Assessment is transphobia. Correct. So because you're doubting that person and you're saying there's something wrong with that. innate identity, right? That innate self.

And so, bam, she, her, you need to change, you need to change her pronouns at home. and miraculously enough, when we doubted this, we questioned it, we're like, okay, we'll give it a try. When I did that and I tried to connect with my younger son that night, oh, you know, you're my girl. I love you so much. He said, no, mama, don't call me that. And so it was just one of those things that another thing where I was like, this isn't right. You know, something's not right here.

And so we did a very deep dive, you know, in deeper into these questions of attachment and where we actually saw those differences then from my older son as both being, you know, what might have given him that affinity. So when you talk about kids who are on the spectrum, for example, you know, they have difficulties with personal attachment. And so whereas my younger son wanted to be the same as his older brother. by saying he was a girl. What we came to see from my older son, in part, was that he had that same drive for sameness, but it was towards things, because it was too vulnerable for him to attach to people.

And so that feminine, you know, I like the barrettes or I like the flowers, you know, that we saw through that lens of he could, that could mean he's trans. Was that a function of that psychologically? And we also saw that those special interests changed over time. So we started to see like this is actually not about this gender essence. It's really about him in a deeper emotional process. And so after a period of years, we came to this,

neither of our sons is innately transgender. I want to say this clearly. When we came to that decision, I still didn't see it as a belief system. I was still in it. I was still in it. But I had come painstakingly both of us had to the conclusion that our sons weren't actually trans, that it was something else for both of them, and we were clear in that. One last thing of this is really important

that I want to say, is that this belief system, the heart of it, says that children should lead. I just want people to hear this. This is so critical. And it's contradictory because once children say they are the opposite sex, then adults lead them to gender affirmation,

okay, to cross-sex concretizing that cross-sex identity and medicalizing it, okay? But if you're going to call it a religion, if you're going to call it a belief system, whatever you call it, the sacred core is children must lead. but what I realized in those two plus years of anguish was that I had led my child into it. And therefore, I must lead him out of it. It is my responsibility. I am the one who's taking him off. I saw it as a highway.

I drove him on the on ramp. I'm driving him off. And what you have to understand is that in that process for us to actually say that to some people who are in this belief system, That is so deeply wrong. It is absolutely counter to the core of what people are relying on, that your children is the one who must lead you, even though they're then going to be led. So we did that. We came to the decision that this was in his best interest, that this was in his best interest. And so just to tell that story a little bit, you know, we're trying to figure out like, how do we get him out?

Because this is not rational, it's emotional. How do we get him out? And so one of his special interests at that time was chickens. He loved chickens. And this is funny in the sense that we go back to the Matt Walsh film, you know, that scene. So chickens played a role here too. but um but you know what we decided to say to him in a way he could understand emotionally was um you're a rooster you know honey you're a rooster and so i came up with some bullet points you know for

this conversation i sat him down and um i said you know i'm so sorry that i told you something different now i know more i was wrong and you are a rooster i know that means that males cannot be female. It also means that a male can't be a girl because he always knew he was male, but we had this, like kids are going to understand the difference between gender and sex. But anyways, you cannot be female. That means you cannot be a girl. And I know you, it feels like you can't live without it. Because once it was in, it was locked, real tight. Okay. And this is part of that psychology that we don't get to when the ideology is keeping us on the surface. We don't get to that deeper peace. I know that you can't live, you feel like you can't live without it, but you can

and you're actually going to be much happier because I did truly, at that point, I saw the ways that it was impacting him psychologically that were not in his best interest. And so, you know, he was mad. I knew he would be mad. And he said to me, Mama, this is your fault. You changed my name. So imagine had we not, you know, had we not realized our mistake and you go 10, 20 years into the future, imagine that mama, this was your fault then. So I said, yeah, you're right.

You're right. And this is another part of the story that just, you know, I want to share. I knew he was going to be mad. I knew what I was trying to get to the sad. I was trying to get to the sad because that was going to tell me that he had understood what Dr. Gordon Newfeld, who I just want to plug here, the book, his book, hold on to your kids, this concept of futility, which is an essential part of us adapting to life, maturing in life. It's when we come against something, we cannot change.

And our heart is soft enough to feel that vulnerability and cry about it. and so I knew my son had to some point get to those tears where he was accepting something that he couldn't change. And so, but the mad came first and I decided we're going to go on a bike ride. You know, we're going to go, I'm going to let him lead. I'm going to put him in the front because I knew these dynamics were at play. And as we're walking out the door, getting on the bikes, he turns around to me. And he had this a lot with a lot of these highly sensitive kids and autistic, you know,

spectrum kids, it's like there's, this maturate, you know, they're less mature in some way. So he lives in this imaginary world. He, you know, had this farm he was going to create in his future called Wildwood Farm. And he turns to me and he just gives me these dagger eyes and he says, Mama, you are not invited to Wildwood Farm. And it just hit me again, this incredible validation for this decision that we were making to lead him off that highway. This is a child. this is a child he is uninviting me from an imaginary farm he has no ability to understand

the consequences of changing his sex so in the days after that you know he did get to those tears he did get to those tears and what I write about in the piece and what I want to share with you is that I imagined that he would be mad at me for a very long time and I was expecting it was going to be hard. I was not expecting that the very next day, what I would experience in my son was a great sense of relief,

a great sense of rest. And literally, when we talk about being in the lead and how this put him into the lead, that's deeply unsettling for a child. They might express it through being bossy or being, you know, in all these ways we might interpret as, willfulness or confidence or tightly holding onto something, but ultimately they need to rest

knowing that we've got them, you know, that we're taking care of them. And so when I took that back, he was able to set this adult burden down. And he literally spent the next 24 hours leaning into me. And even his whole, you know, just, you could just feel palpably that he was laying the burden down. The thing that I've noticed, Rose, with, you know, when people talk about this, and obviously, you know, I was a teacher, and I was very lucky in my teaching career, I taught everything from the age of four, kindergarten, right the way through to 18. And you listen to people's stories, and if you were told our grandparents' generation or our

mother's generation, what we were doing, they would be saying, but that's against every. that we know to be true. That is against every type of instinct a mother has. How have we reached this point where we're so willing to subvert our instincts for an ideology? It's such a good question. It's such a good question. I wish I had the answer.

I wish I had the answer. But I do think that it's a subversion of instincts, but it's also an inversion of reality. Like I keep on coming back to that because parents who are in this are absolutely believing they're doing the right thing for their child. So all of those instincts to protect at all costs are there, but it's based on something that is not real. And I think that's the power. That's the power of the belief system. No, that's, I mean, and so I don't know how to answer that question because I think that is the power of having this law. in belief system.

Yeah, it's a power of ideology. And this is, I mean, one of the things I wanted to say is the internet is a mean place and people will, you know, have their own views about your story and what your family went through. But I think it's really important that you wrote the piece that you wrote and that you are here speaking with us now because I think it's important that, as you say, people recognize that, you know, it's easy to think, or, you know, a bunch of stupid, evil people over there are doing this thing, whereas actually, you know, you're clearly very intelligent.

You're clearly extremely well-intentioned for your kids. But this is why Francis and I have spent so much time talking about this issue, because ideology is incredibly powerful. And if you find people who are looking for meaning and purpose and want to feel good about themselves and want to quote-unquote change the world, then you give them a system of beliefs that praise on those desires and often, offers them these oversimplified solutions, you can get a lot of harm done without anybody ever wanting to do anything bad. Yeah. Yeah. And so let me, yeah, let me speak to that a little bit.

And maybe I don't know if this will get to your question, Francis or not, but, but I'm going to go back again, putting the child in the lead. So this core of this ideology. So I want to explain how that then plays out for parents. Okay. When you put your child in the lead, you know, you say you're, I know you're, I know you're a girl, then you're a girl, you know, or asking a lot of parents in this, in this belief system, young parents, you know, progressive, like they're asking their kids what their gender is, right?

So they're kind of subverting that natural hierarchical relationship and putting kids here, right, leading this. So you have that going on. But then when, and that really impacts the entire relationship and as well as the kids' emotional stability. Then you have an ideology that says if your child then expresses that they're the opposite sex, they are transgender. And that's now, that's a sacred category.

I'm going to use those words. That is a sacred category. And it's one, when you plug it into the formula, oppressor oppressed, oppressed, privileged. If you're a cisgender or you don't identify as trans, you can't know your child. I mean, that's what this belief system does to parents. You no longer know this core part of your child because you are privileged. You're not in that sacred category. So you have the severing of the, you know, you have the inverting of the relationship with putting the child in the lead. And then you have the severing of that intuitive knowledge, that instinct, because you now can't know this part of your child.

Okay. And they're sacred. Okay. Who can you go to then to be the arbiter of your relationship? Well, you have to trust experts. You have to trust experts And you have to Ask other trans adults If you are not trans And Sorry, Rose, carry on

Yeah, no, so I wanted to share that piece You know, and then you, if you're in that belief system, you then are saying, if I am uncomfortable, I have to stuff it down. They actually have like some of that doctor in the Matt Welsh film when I was in the midst of my anguish and trying to reach out, like, where can I find more information? I do Google searches, and the only things I would find were the people who don't want to transition their kids are bad conservatives.

And if you're good, you are going to do the gender affirming route. So I actually found a slideshow where that same doctor said, this has said all the time to parents, you have to grieve. You have to go through a grieving process. You have to grieve the son and you have to accept. the daughter. And so when parents have these emotion come up, there's already the talking points from both experts and peers to say, of course, you're going to have a hard time with us. Of course you're going to have a hard time with us. But this is what's best for your child. And Rose, that is a really shocking thing for me. It's the experts, the people who have been

trained, the people who are experts, the people who should know how to support children. and diagnose them and put in structures and treatments in place that help children who are having some kind of mental suffering, whatever it may be. They just seem to have abandoned their responsibility in science in favor of an ideology. Yeah, I mean, I think, I mean, to speak at least to, like, the gender therapist that we saw. I mean, my perspective is that she was in therapy because she was an activist. Right. You know, I think a lot of people at this point, are entering these professions as activists. Yeah.

And this is one of the things that I found incredibly worrying about what you wrote. Because based on what you're saying, it's like the moment you, you know, your child says, you know, I'm the opposite to the sex that I was born. And you go to all of these different people. it wasn't just therapists, it was also the entire community, right? It was people clapping along the transition. Right. Now, keep it, you know, it wasn't everyone in our community, but, but certainly most, you know, the general tone was, you know, you're doing the right thing.

So yes, definitely. We went to a couple, you know, a few different support groups. And one of them, we were just like, told our story, we were like, did we do the right thing? Did we do the right thing? And they're like, you guys are amazing. You know, you guys are amazing. your child just told you one day and you changed his entire life. That's just incredible.

And... Her entire life, surely. And did it have initially positive things at the start? Did you initially start to see with the older child? Initially that he actually had some more positive moments. Maybe he became happier. Did that sort of assuage your fears at that point? point. He was never unhappy. But he, but he had some, he had some challenges. He was different in these ways. But, but, but he certainly was happy, um, with this idea of being a girl. Um, so, so, so yeah, so there were some things that were like that said, yes, this, this, this, this was right, you know. Um, but a lot of them went along with what people would speak to as sex,

based stereotypes wearing a dress growing his hair long um you know being into elsa you know um so things that boys can absolutely do while being boys so so yeah there was definitely enough there and and what we did see is that it did lock in right so when we started to question and and and kind of bring it up to him he didn't want to talk about it you know he didn't want to talk about it so you know, part of what, like, for people listening, you know, gender, wider lens is an amazing podcast. And I want to speak to my story of how I found that a little bit as well. But what I will say is that what I read when I first found that podcast was that they were in this exploratory approach. Like, is this a defense? Is this some sort of a defense? And I would say that's similar to what I found over time with, oh, my son actually had these different special interests and that they changed, that it wasn't about gender.

at its core, that the locking in of his holding onto this identity was some sort of defense. I think he needed it to exist as a boy without a skin, like a highly sensitive boy in this world, whose parents hadn't told him that he was a boy. But he needed to know what he was, you know? And so when he locked in, there were some defenses around that. And that took us time too, you know, to understand that, again, it wasn't about being innately trans, but rather a defense. And he had that defensive reaction to other things in his life as well. So that was part of us really putting the, you know, whether you call it like unraveling it or putting the pieces together, it helped our insight to really see what was going on at a deeper level.

And that's what the ideology stops you from doing. You just say, this is this period. there's no understanding of what's underneath. So I want to speak to the idea. Like I think an interesting part of my story is like how I'm here today talking to you about this. Because when I made that decision where my partner and I said, we're going to hold our son in this futility that he can't be a girl. You know, we came to that from the process that I'm describing to you,

you know, really looking at these different layers of attachment development, maturation, what pieces of it were about being highly sensitive. How we had led him on was a core of that for me, like I've spoken to and taken responsibility for that. We came to that decision without, for me, without seeing outside the belief system. I still believe that kids could be innately trans. And it was just that my kids weren't. We made the decision to have that conversation with him. And literally that night after the kids went to bed, I was up and I did another internet search.

And for years, I had done internet searches and I had not found anything that, you know, that that was coming from like a liberal or progressive kind of aspect, which at that time I needed. I'll be honest with you. I don't need that anymore. But at that time, I did need that. And somehow I found this blog, Fourth Wave Now, which is out of the United States. And on that blog, they were saying, you know, we support lesbian. being and gay people, but we do not support the medicalization of children around gender identity. And they were also questioning social transition.

So it's literally that night that I was like, and then they said, we're progressive, you know. And I just, up until that point, I didn't even know people like this existed, you know, and I needed that to bring me to a point of being like, it's okay for me to question this stuff. and that led me to finding the gender a wider lens podcast and I listened to the first episode which was really about really outlining this whole thing

as, you know, there's generally two camps. There's people who believe in this thing called gender identity and they broke down what goes into that belief and how that looks. And they said then there's people who believe that gender dysphoria exists and what goes into that perspective and how that looks. And for whatever reason,

it was like for the first, time, it helped me see outside of my own belief. I was just in it. And you hear D-transitioner speaking to these moments, too, where they're in it. They can't see outside of it until something happens that, like, breaks through. And for whatever reason, that did this for me. And so the next morning, I was just sitting in the kitchen. I can visualize the wall of my kitchen where I was standing. and I'm thinking about this belief. And literally I feel this is going to sound nuts, but I feel like a pin comes out of my head

and the whole thing just crashes. And like a second later, I'm on my phone. I'm texting a friend. I'm like, you know, this big thing is happening. We've realized that our older son is not actually transgender and we're going to be rolling back the social transition. And I feel like I am leaving a cult. Because that's what it felt like to me.

It's just, you know, We don't have to say whether it is or isn't. Like, that's just what I experienced with that. Bing, and realizing that I had had a belief system. I didn't know I had a belief system until that moment. And then a second later, I hit send, and then I'm freeze. And I think, what if she's, like, she's in the cult. Like, she's still in that belief.

And here I have just shared this thing and what, you know, what is her response going to be? And so, and ultimately she believed us and trusted us and supported us. So that's a, that was great. But, but there was this moment for me. And this is going to be different for everybody. But for me, you know, it's like that was the feeling that I had. What was the reaction from other people when you, you made this decision? I can't imagine the gender therapist was happy.

Oh, well, we had fired her long before. That makes sense. We were like, see you later. I think we had two sessions with her. And when I came back from the first one, having had that experience with my younger son, and we had found some other support that was coming more from this, you know, the attachment-based perspective, we had reached out to some other people who were more working with parents rather than children. And, you know, I had kind of, you know, she threatened me in the second one.

So this was big. I have to laugh at this. So when I was like, no, he said he didn't want to, you know, no, I'm not going to do this. She was like, well, if you don't, he's going to develop an attachment disorder. And I was like, you don't know anything about attachment. Like, that's clear. I know so much more than you do. And if my son is going to have these issues, I know how to see them.

You know, there was just, it was just such. utter bullshit at that point that I that I you know could walk away pretty easily and so I would say that for parents who are very enmeshed with the experts and in peer groups this is going to be hard you know we were so fortunate we I had the strength and we had the confidence in us that we had we had left the experts long before and we had never going full in with them and so that helped a lot. But I would say, you know, what we had in terms of like taking that off ramp, what I, what I told some people in my life, like some of my brothers, I said, it's much easier to get on than off. And so getting off was hard. And we had some conversations with different individuals

in our lives that were difficult. And we had to really pick and choose who we could trust with the full information of how we came to this decision and what we did with it and who we had to really give just the basics. And we had to kind of navigate through that. And we did have one person in our life, a couple of different people who were like, you know, trying to get us to go to counselors. We had, we're like, no, we're clear, we're good, you know. And we did have, you know, a, kind of a teacher of our children's past who we had shared some of this with and who really, you know, is deeply in that belief system enough that she, you know, was like, I can't believe you're not letting your kids choose their pronouns, you know, really unsettled by that aspect of it.

And so we just had to navigate it. There was nothing else to do. And I think that anchoring for me in, I led my child into this, it was my responsibility. to take him off was just what held me solid through all of that. And that's what those instincts that I had shut down and those feelings and those emotions, because what I had experiencing, that thing I taught you about, that severing of that relationship, that inversion, I felt that just physically, I felt that emotionally. And so when it came back in to place for me, that's when I realized how much it had been severed. And so nothing. was going to stop me from defending it at that point.

And Rose, what are your, how are your sons now? I think they're both doing great. Yeah, yeah. You know, there was a time period where it was much harder. I will say for my younger son, as soon as his older brother was his older brother, he was like, great. You know, I'm good. He had more distress.

He was very distressed. And I want to tell this story really quickly. We did never social transition to our younger son like I spoke to. But he showed so much distress over it. You know, it was so ironic that our older son had no distress. We transitioned him. Our younger son had a ton of distress. And we had to at that point hold our ground and not do it because we understood what was underneath.

And but there were. Rose, I'm sorry to interrupt. What was the distress caused by? Well, this drive to be the same as his older sibling. Yeah. Conflicting with the fact that he also knew that he was a boy. No, the fact that we wouldn't let him use she-her pronouns. So even after that moment in the, you know, in the, you know, hey, you're my girl and, you know, I love you.

And he said, don't call me that. Right. He continued to want to be she-her. In all ways, keep in mind, this was. always and practically only in the context of when they would go out and his older brother was she her in like a camp setting or a you know the after school program whatever it was um that's when it was most distressing to him he was away from us and he needed to be close to his brother and he needed that closeness through being the same and we weren't letting him do it and um so

just as an example of that um they went to camp he was four, his older brother was six, and his older brother was with the girls. He was with the boys. He came home so upset, just so distraught. And I kept on going back to, you know, we're not changing this, you know. He looked at me, he's four years old. And he said, Mama, when I hear he, it means shit. And this is another thing. We could do a whole other, like five podcasts on what we are doing to these little boys. Yeah. Rose, there are a lot of people, unfortunately,

who are in a very similar situation to you all around the world. They might well be listening to this, and I hope they are watching it. What advice would you give to those parents who are going through a similar situation to you? The biggest piece of advice that I would give is that it is not transphobic to question. it is not transphobic to question whether or not essentially telling your child that they can change sex is in their best interest.

It's not transphobic to not feel good about this, what you know, what you're doing or what you're being told to do to feel uncomfortable with it. And it's a place where I just really encourage people if you have doubts to listen to them. And what was important to me to hold my ground through this whole thing and what we had to navigate with other people who wanted us to keep our child in that sacred status, some people did not want to hear that it wasn't working and that it was going to change. you have to picture your child at 20 years old, 30 years old, 40 year old, 50 year old, what is their life going to look like then? And those experts, those friends, those neighbors, whoever they are who are like,

you know, telling you what to do are not going to be there for your child. You are. And I think some people have, I've talked about this. seeing it as a highway. Some people have talked about this as a train. You know, if you are affirming your child currently, you have put your child on that train. Your child is on a train. And it has one destination. Okay. And what you, you know, I just say, I did it. You can do it. You need to have the courage to grab your child's hand and jump off.

And there may be distress, there may be anger, there may be tears. at the impact, but just be patient, stay calm, and over time, healing, healing will come. And Rose, what are your thoughts on, as a consequence of your experiences, on the idea and the ideology itself? Like, obviously, I think you've probably shifted somewhat in your opinions, but how, you know, how far did you go the other way, I guess, is what I'm asking. Do you think no one's trans? do you think some people are? Like, what are your overall thoughts on that whole thing?

I would say, you know, I am, it's an ongoing process of reflection for me. I absolutely, I have people who are identified trans in my life, you know, and who I love, who are adults. And I think, I think just like I'm speaking to for my own process, that that there's going to be a complex set of factors. that go into that identification for adults. I no longer believe that this is something that is innate that is born in people. And so that whole piece, you know, was important for me to come to. But I do believe that for many people, this identification feels like a core part of themselves. and I do think that a lot of that is likely coming from this belief system, you know,

and it's not that, you know, that there, you know, there are adults in my life who feel good with having taken on, gone the medical route, or who feel good about being in the nine-vinary, you know, space. but what I no longer believe is that this is something that should be evangelized and institutional and pushed on children, this concept of gender identity. I no longer believe in that as something, and I do find it to be quite dangerous in so many ways. Does it worry you that particularly in the States, this is being used more and more in schools, particularly in primary schools? For sure.

Yes, yes, absolutely. Yeah, I have two, you know, another story here. You know, my younger son is in second grade and in their small school. They have two non-binary staff assistants, and one of them is in my son's second grade class. And his teacher, again, best intention, she wants to make sure that this adult is included and respected by the children. and because of that she started off the school year saying if you change your name, the rule for this class is that you have to respect the new name. And so some kids the first day changed their names.

It wasn't a long gender. It was just kind of random. But there is this, yes, I am, I'll say I'm deeply concerned that the children are being told that it's a matter of respect to do these. things. I think the core point as well out of everything you've said today is the fundamental idea that children should lead is the most insane thing that anyone has ever come up with in relation to parenting. Is it not? I mean, they literally, I, you know, I had a, my son is eight months old and, you know, I think I see him growing. He's getting smarter. He's not going to

know what gender or sex is or what identity is at three years old. He's not qualified to make that decision. He's just, I've got no idea about his lived experience. Yeah, well, I don't. But we'll find out what his lived experience. His lived experience is mainly pooing in his pants and drinking milk. That's all he does, right?

My point is, you know, the very notion that children should lead is insane. It's insane. And how we've got to this place that, so many people believe it. It is terrifying, which is why I'm so grateful for your time, Rose, I'm so grateful you wrote the piece that you wrote and you came on the show to talk about it because I say again, I think your voice is very necessary. People need to hear this.

People need to understand that there are consequences to ideology and their consequences to idealism of the types that you, thank God your kids in the long run avoided. I'm so pleased to hear that they're doing well now. Yeah. And can I circle back just really? quickly to the question you asked me, Francis, around what do I believe now? I feel like I'm kind of like, what? I got a little lost there. I want to just say my core belief at this point when you say how I change, it just really rests on the fact that it is impossible to change sex.

That if I could just sum up, you know, what do I believe about this now? It is impossible to change sex. Based on that, should, why are we telling children that they can? Yeah. That's what I could sum up. up. Thank you so much for coming on the show. We're going to do a couple of questions from our local supporters that only they will get to see. But before we wrap up, as always, we have one final question for you, which is, what's the one thing we're not talking about as a society that you think we really should be? This is, I was thinking about this ahead of time. I'm like, I don't know how to answer that. But what I really came to, I guess, you know, and maybe this is more

for like let's just put it out there to the parents putting it out there to the parents so um there is so much when you are aware of these issues like gender ideology in the schools capture of institutions all of these things you know and and maybe parents out there whose children are in this deep um and it is so scary it's just so deeply alarming um and i think what i keep i worry for my son's future you know and i worry for their kids and And what I keep on coming back to is this core concept of attachment. And so, number one, we should be talking more about attachment. People should all go out and read, hold on to your kids, Dr. Gordon-Newfeld's book.

But what we really need to come back to is understanding that the power that we have, we can't maybe change the whole dynamic at the big picture. But as parents, what we do have the power over is how we can show love and delight and warmth towards our children and that that cultivation of that relationship is what is going to be their greatest shield in navigating society and these different perils that they're going to have to go through. So the question that I have that I want to put out there to everybody is, when is the last time that your child entered the room and you showed delight at their presence? It's a really, really powerful note to end on. And something for all of us to think about.

Rose, it's been an absolute joy. If people want to find you on Substack, what is the best way to do that? So you can go to the parents with inconvenient truths around trans substack. I hope to have my own substack someday. I don't yet. But also please support and find out more about Genspect. GenSpect is an amazing organization that supports the PIT, the parents with inconvenient truth around trans substack and efforts.

They're doing work at the... international level to just really ground us in reality and exploration around these issues of gender. Rose, thank you so much for coming on the show. We'll go to our locals in the second. But for now, thank you for being here. And thank you guys for watching and listening. We will see you very soon with another brilliant episode like this one or Raw Show. All of them go out at 7pm UK time. And for those of you who like your trigonometry on the go, it's also available as a podcast. Take care and see you soon, guys.

Is there anything that a healthcare professional could have said to you that would have stopped you trying to socially transition your child? This episode sponsored by Forkful. Most meal delivery services promise healthy food, but look closer, and you'll often find cheap industrial seed oils hiding in the ingredients. Forkful does things differently. Forkful delivers chef-prepared meals made with premium ingredients you'd expect at a great restaurant, from center-cut filet mignon to wild-caught lobster mac and cheese, and every meal is 100% seed oil-free. Instead of canola or soybean oil, forkful chefs cook with extra virgin olive oil,

avocado oil, and grass-fed butter, because better fats make better food. Meals arrive fresh, never frozen, with clear nutrition and ingredient transparency, so you always know exactly what you're eating. Restaurant-quality meals. real ingredients, no seed oils. Discover Forkful today at Forkful Meals.com.