A Mother Intent on Protecting Her Daughter Speaks Out
In the face of an angry mob hurling vicious calumnies, backed up by all society's ruling institutions
You are witnessing a portrait in courage. This is a mother telling a very familiar story, one that I’ve heard more than a dozen times from parents who share her predicament. Their daughters have been caught up in a social contagion. Their daughters have been told that because they are gender nonconforming or uncomfortable with their female bodies as they undergo sexual maturation and all the difficulties that entails — the sexualization by a porn saturated society, the bloody monthly cycles and risks of pregnancy, and all the specifically gendered social pressures of adolescence — that they are in fact boys whose wrong bodies can be medically transformed to match the boy they really are on the inside. Their daughters have joined online communities that encourage them in this belief, and encourage them to regard anyone who stands in the way of this promised transformation as an enemy.
These parents are trying to protect their children from the enormous risks that accompany the puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones, and gender surgeries that online influencers and peers, gender clinicians, federal government, and the educational establishment now cheerlead as the panacea for struggling gender-conforming, mentally-ill, and neurodivergent children. This regimen of medical experimentation on children has been rebranded “life-saving gender affirmative care.” We are told by leading politicians that if we do not dose children with an off-label cancer drug once used to chemically castrate sex offenders that we are harming them. We are told by leading politicians, including the President of the United States of America, that treating the underlying comorbidities that virtually always accompany trans identification in young people — depression, anxiety, anorexia, cutting, sexual trauma from abuse — through psychotherapy, rather than immediately affirming them in their new gender identity is a form of “conversion therapy” that must be banned.
The approach is increasingly endorsed by schools. At least 18 state have official states guidelines instructing schools to facilitate the social transition of trans-identified students while keeping this psychological intervention secret from their parents.
The dozen or so protesters who joined Billboard Chris at Boston Children’s hospital were, like the woman speaking above, virtually all lifelong Democrats who until recently shared in all the progressive enthusiasms of the Blue Tribe of which they are a part. None are “anti-trans.” But having looked at the evidence around medical transition of children, and conscious of the stripping out of gatekeeping in gender practices that pioneering gender clinicians have publicly blown the whistle on — they are not persuaded that placing their children in the pipeline to lifelong medicalization is the right choice.
For this choice, based in evidence and consistent with the guidance recently adopted in Social Democratic Sweden and Finland, they have been branded members of the far-right by the mainstream media and their own political leadership, who speak in unison with the hundreds of counter-protesters who shouted at them, calling them Nazis, for hours.
I asked this woman how it felt to be lied about in such monstrous terms, to be buried under vicious and destructive lies by all of society’s ruling institutions. She responded with empathy for those calling her a Nazi, saying she understood that they were operating from a place of fear. But she was firm in insisting that she would protect her daughter against the risky, experimental treatments being pushed on her and that she would take a public stand, whatever the costs. She is one of only a handful of such parents willing to speak publicly in an atmosphere that vilifies anyone who believes, as she does, that children ought to be free to express gender nonconformity “without body modification either surgically or chemically” — and that threatens to use the organs of the state to pressure them into a course of action that the evidence and their own intuition tells them to be wrong. Her eloquent testimonial follows.
Protesters: WHAT DO WE DO? STAND UP! FIGHT BACK!
Speaker 2: You know, if you think about it, we all want the same thing. We want our children to grow up happy and healthy and whole. We want exactly the same thing. We’re hoping to get there without surgeries and medication. That's really what it comes down to.
Wesley Yang: How does it feel to have a hundred people screaming at you saying that you want genocide?
Speaker 2: You know what, they’re coming from a place of fear, they’re scared. And they’re right to be scared, but I also feel that they're not a hundred percent sure what exactly it is that we're saying, because they’re not listening.
Wesley Yang: Then what is it that you're saying exactly?
Speaker 2: We're saying that gender non-conforming children– girls who love the way they look with short hair, boys who love the way they look with long hair and a dress– should be free and respected to live their life in a way that makes sense to them, and makes them comfortable. But, they can do that without body modification either surgically or chemically.
Wesley Yang: So how did you become aware of this?
Speaker 2: So I have a trans-identified child, whom I adore with all of my heart. Nobody loves my child more than I do. Nobody wants to protect my child more than I do. But when she came out, and I started to read both sides of— you know there were people who instantly said congratulations, you have a son. And there were people who said, you know what, you might want to slow this down, put the brakes on a little bit, give her some time to figure out who she is. So that’s basically what we’ve tried to do. But the only place she’s hearing that is at home. At school, with organizations that she’s a member, she’s in girl scouts, everywhere else she’s being told that she’s a trans kid and that she needs to transition to make herself happy.
Wesley Yang: And so she still is identified or?
Speaker 2: Yeah, she’s only 15. So she’s still growing and she's still figuring out who she is as a person, and we absolutely love and support our child. But we’re not going to be one of the voices in her ear telling her that she’s been born in the wrong body and she’s actually a boy.
Wesley Yang: What age was she when she started to–?
Speaker 2: It was during COVID, the same as everyone, so it was 13.
Wesley Yang: So 13, 14? Do you feel like you're under a lot of pressure from everybody to affirm her?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think that we do feel a lot of pressure. As I say, the only people telling her, give your body the chance to grow up, and you may find that you grow into your body and you do find comfort– that’s only happening at home. We don’t see it happening anywhere else. No other adult is telling her, you know, maybe you’re just gay, or maybe this is just puberty and you will outgrow it. To our knowledge, no one else is saying that to her, only us.
Wesley Yang: Is she demanding medical—is she demanding puberty blockers?
Speaker 2: Not —not as much. Way back in the beginning when she came out, I watched a couple of detransitioners with her. And I think she was getting surprised by what the detransitioners were saying, and so she said that she would hold off on that. What the decision will be when she’s old enough to make those medical decisions by herself, we don’t know.
Wesley Yang: Okay, so you don't mind being on the record, having your name, and your image?
Speaker 2: No, I don’t. You know what, I feel that if you—somebody said to me recently, are you going to stop supporting your child just because you’re afraid that somebody’s going to call you a bad name? I was like, no, I’m not. I do think people have to be honest. I do think people have to tell the biological truth.
Gratitude to you, Billboard Chris, and these parents for taking a stand. Will be posting about our groomer kangaroo courts tomorrow. This is a spiritual war between demonic possession and God.
Thanks Wesley, for sharing both the video and this transcript from this brave mother for all of your subscribers! Her stance is clear. Her compassion is rare and beautiful. It's amazing she has room in her heart for understanding that those yelling curses at her are "coming from a place of fear." I do understand the rage parents feel, of course. I understand the depression, the anxiety, and the loneliness. There is so much betrayal by so many, and so little support for parents who don't buy the "affirmation" approach. But the calm and clear voices like hers and Billboard Chris's shine through like rays of sunshine. I know that so many parents cannot risk their livelihood. But every single person who stands up publicly makes a difference.