The purpose of this Substack is to offer support for families who are navigating the dangers of adolescence with their TransIDed children. I think it’s important to remember that this has always been a precarious phase in life. Puberty and the accompanying tendency toward reckless behavior presents a biological rite of passage that, when you really think about it, is quite miraculous to survive, let alone
I really enjoyed this piece. Letting go is one of the hardest parts of parenting, and arguably where this generation of parents has been less successful. We (many of us) don't let our kids fail, mess up, be mediocre, etc, and are often propping them up. I see the results of this in my college students, who are mostly fragile and lack resilience, despite their brilliance.
So maybe we're just not used to letting go. Practicing it is keenly important, however, especially as our teens begin to individuate. By letting go, we also shift the power dynamics -- it's hard for a kid to use a trans identity to individuate (or rebel against our values) if we aren't as upset by these conversations. Not all kids assume a trans identity for this reason, but it's part of why mine is stuck in the space.
I try to pretend I'm a therapist when I have conversations with my daughter lately - listening and reflecting back, rather than probing or arguing. It usually produces better results. And I feel better, which I think does matter in the end. #1 goal for me is a preserved and supportive relationship.
letting go is a central theme of mine too. i get so caught up in trying to control the outcome for my demiboy daughter. i've been rereading the Tao to that end. i know the tighter i cling to the mission of changing her mind, the further away i will push her. it's good to know this is a path I am not walking alone. thanks for this piece!
Another excellent essay, lots of depth, intriguing hints and implications from the clownfish theme. 👍🙂
But a bit more seriously and relative to your "capitulate to demands that you know are unhealthy", a cartoon on "progressive parenting" that you and your other "faithful readers" might enjoy:
The first of four panels shows a young boy saying to his mother, "Mom, I want to jump off the roof with a cape" to which she, quite reasonably, simply says, "No". But the fourth panel has the boy saying, "I want to cut off my genitals" to which she, quite unreasonably, says, "Whatever you say, honey. It's your choice."
That is maybe one of the worst aspects of the "transgender craze" – too many "parents" apparently abandoning any and all parental responsibility. As tough a row to hoe as that obviously is – although my hat is off to those who step up to that plate and take an honest swing at it.
But I was wondering – partly in response to a comment of yours about denying or repudiating one's "birthright" to a reproductive potential – whether doing so is really all that much of a "crime of the century", whether one can have a "satisfying and meaningful" life even if one insists on being, or choses to be, neither male nor female, to possess neither type of that potential, to be sexless.
No doubt framing it in those terms makes the choice rather more stark than many might wish, but it seems that many kids embark on that "adventure" without having the slightest clue what it entails, what possibilities exist on the "road not taken". As Samuel Johnson once put it, “Depend on it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
No doubt adults can, more or less, take that responsibilty for themselves, but it seems that parents of such kids have something of an obligation to ensure that their kids “concentrate” their own minds, however briefly, on those potential consequences. As difficult as that may be. 🙂
Which leads into your quite topical “irony of talking about clownfish here”, and into another rather odious aspect of that “transgender craze” – that being the egregious, fraudulent, and politically-motivated tendency to “bait-and-switch” by using “male” and “female” as both sexes and genders. Which leads to the seriously consequential misperception, if not “risible absurdity”, that people can actually change sex, or that “biological sex in humans is immutable”.
But for instance, Wikipedia’s article on “female” gives the standard biological definition for the category – i.e., “the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ova (egg cells)” – but snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by blathering on about how, “In humans, the word female can also be used to refer to gender”:
And their articles on transwomen Laurel Hubbard and Jan Morris talk about how they had “transitioned to female”, and “had gender reassignment surgery after transitioning from male to female”, respectively.
Absolutely bloody criminal – outright Lysenkoism, the “deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable”. As I have argued in my Medium article on Wikipedia’s Lysenkoism ... 🙂
But that, in turn, opens up a rather large can of worms as to why, as British MP Rosie Duffield insisted, quite reasonably, "a clear biological definition of the sexes is important", if not essential. And that in response to the mealy-mouthed inability of many of her colleagues to answer the questions, “how do you define a woman?” and “does a woman have a penis?”
However, part of the problem is that there are generally two sets of definitions for the sexes on the table, one being the biological definition that the Wikipedia article on “female” starts off with, and the other being the “patchwork definition used in the social sciences [which] is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale”:
And the latter leads to any number of quite serious contradictions, confusions and ambiguities in the biological literature which are part and parcel of that Lysenkoism. They can’t both be right; they don’t both have the same “explanatory power”, the same scientific breadth, depth, and utility.
You no doubt know that clownfish, along with several other species, are called “sequential hermaphrodites” simply because they start off being of neither sex, yet can become males and subsequently change their sex to female over the course of their lives. But they do so because they change the type of gamete they produce from none to sperm to ova; those are the essential traits and functions that qualify any organism, of any sexually-reproducing species, as members of the male and female sex categories:
Similarly, if people could also change their gonads from functional ovaries to functional testes then they would, ipso facto, have changed their sex from female to male; might be nice if we could do so – actually walk in the shoes of a person of the other sex – but, of course, we can’t:
In any case, to close this maybe overly long response for which I sort of apologize, and relative to your welcome link to “Psychology Today”, you might enjoy another rather brilliant article there by Robert King. It’s titled, “Terf Wars: What is Biological Sex?”, and it speaks rather directly and in some depth to those functional definitions of biology:
“No one has the essence of maleness or femaleness, for one simple reason: Since the 17th century, what science has been showing, in every single field, is that the folk notion of an ‘essence’ is not reflected in reality. There are no essences in nature. For the last three hundred years or so, the advance of science has been in lockstep with the insight that is what really exists are processes [functions], not essences.”
There’s no “essence” to “male” and “female” – the terms denote only often transitory biological states, capabilities, functions, and processes which constitute the "necessary and sufficient conditions" for category membership. But those states and processes are only ones which we may or may not decide to accept or develop to their fullest extent – while still laying claim to being an integrated personality with a satisfying and meaningful life. 🙂
I really enjoyed this piece. Letting go is one of the hardest parts of parenting, and arguably where this generation of parents has been less successful. We (many of us) don't let our kids fail, mess up, be mediocre, etc, and are often propping them up. I see the results of this in my college students, who are mostly fragile and lack resilience, despite their brilliance.
So maybe we're just not used to letting go. Practicing it is keenly important, however, especially as our teens begin to individuate. By letting go, we also shift the power dynamics -- it's hard for a kid to use a trans identity to individuate (or rebel against our values) if we aren't as upset by these conversations. Not all kids assume a trans identity for this reason, but it's part of why mine is stuck in the space.
I try to pretend I'm a therapist when I have conversations with my daughter lately - listening and reflecting back, rather than probing or arguing. It usually produces better results. And I feel better, which I think does matter in the end. #1 goal for me is a preserved and supportive relationship.
letting go is a central theme of mine too. i get so caught up in trying to control the outcome for my demiboy daughter. i've been rereading the Tao to that end. i know the tighter i cling to the mission of changing her mind, the further away i will push her. it's good to know this is a path I am not walking alone. thanks for this piece!
Another excellent essay, lots of depth, intriguing hints and implications from the clownfish theme. 👍🙂
But a bit more seriously and relative to your "capitulate to demands that you know are unhealthy", a cartoon on "progressive parenting" that you and your other "faithful readers" might enjoy:
https://patcrosscartoons.com/2019/10/08/progressive-parenting/
The first of four panels shows a young boy saying to his mother, "Mom, I want to jump off the roof with a cape" to which she, quite reasonably, simply says, "No". But the fourth panel has the boy saying, "I want to cut off my genitals" to which she, quite unreasonably, says, "Whatever you say, honey. It's your choice."
That is maybe one of the worst aspects of the "transgender craze" – too many "parents" apparently abandoning any and all parental responsibility. As tough a row to hoe as that obviously is – although my hat is off to those who step up to that plate and take an honest swing at it.
But I was wondering – partly in response to a comment of yours about denying or repudiating one's "birthright" to a reproductive potential – whether doing so is really all that much of a "crime of the century", whether one can have a "satisfying and meaningful" life even if one insists on being, or choses to be, neither male nor female, to possess neither type of that potential, to be sexless.
No doubt framing it in those terms makes the choice rather more stark than many might wish, but it seems that many kids embark on that "adventure" without having the slightest clue what it entails, what possibilities exist on the "road not taken". As Samuel Johnson once put it, “Depend on it, sir, when a man knows he is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully.”
No doubt adults can, more or less, take that responsibilty for themselves, but it seems that parents of such kids have something of an obligation to ensure that their kids “concentrate” their own minds, however briefly, on those potential consequences. As difficult as that may be. 🙂
Which leads into your quite topical “irony of talking about clownfish here”, and into another rather odious aspect of that “transgender craze” – that being the egregious, fraudulent, and politically-motivated tendency to “bait-and-switch” by using “male” and “female” as both sexes and genders. Which leads to the seriously consequential misperception, if not “risible absurdity”, that people can actually change sex, or that “biological sex in humans is immutable”.
But for instance, Wikipedia’s article on “female” gives the standard biological definition for the category – i.e., “the sex of an organism that produces the large non-motile ova (egg cells)” – but snatches defeat from the jaws of victory by blathering on about how, “In humans, the word female can also be used to refer to gender”:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Female
And their articles on transwomen Laurel Hubbard and Jan Morris talk about how they had “transitioned to female”, and “had gender reassignment surgery after transitioning from male to female”, respectively.
Absolutely bloody criminal – outright Lysenkoism, the “deliberate distortion of scientific facts or theories for purposes that are deemed politically, religiously or socially desirable”. As I have argued in my Medium article on Wikipedia’s Lysenkoism ... 🙂
https://medium.com/@steersmann/wikipedias-lysenkoism-410901a22da2
But that, in turn, opens up a rather large can of worms as to why, as British MP Rosie Duffield insisted, quite reasonably, "a clear biological definition of the sexes is important", if not essential. And that in response to the mealy-mouthed inability of many of her colleagues to answer the questions, “how do you define a woman?” and “does a woman have a penis?”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10678117/Labour-MP-Rosie-Duffield-backs-campaign-protect-sex-based-rights-local-election.html
However, part of the problem is that there are generally two sets of definitions for the sexes on the table, one being the biological definition that the Wikipedia article on “female” starts off with, and the other being the “patchwork definition used in the social sciences [which] is purely descriptive and lacks a functional rationale”:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/346447193_Ideological_Bias_in_the_Psychology_of_Sex_and_Gender
And the latter leads to any number of quite serious contradictions, confusions and ambiguities in the biological literature which are part and parcel of that Lysenkoism. They can’t both be right; they don’t both have the same “explanatory power”, the same scientific breadth, depth, and utility.
You no doubt know that clownfish, along with several other species, are called “sequential hermaphrodites” simply because they start off being of neither sex, yet can become males and subsequently change their sex to female over the course of their lives. But they do so because they change the type of gamete they produce from none to sperm to ova; those are the essential traits and functions that qualify any organism, of any sexually-reproducing species, as members of the male and female sex categories:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequential_hermaphroditism
Similarly, if people could also change their gonads from functional ovaries to functional testes then they would, ipso facto, have changed their sex from female to male; might be nice if we could do so – actually walk in the shoes of a person of the other sex – but, of course, we can’t:
https://twitter.com/SwipeWright/status/1240781010800979968
In any case, to close this maybe overly long response for which I sort of apologize, and relative to your welcome link to “Psychology Today”, you might enjoy another rather brilliant article there by Robert King. It’s titled, “Terf Wars: What is Biological Sex?”, and it speaks rather directly and in some depth to those functional definitions of biology:
“No one has the essence of maleness or femaleness, for one simple reason: Since the 17th century, what science has been showing, in every single field, is that the folk notion of an ‘essence’ is not reflected in reality. There are no essences in nature. For the last three hundred years or so, the advance of science has been in lockstep with the insight that is what really exists are processes [functions], not essences.”
https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/hive-mind/202003/terf-wars-what-is-biological-sex
There’s no “essence” to “male” and “female” – the terms denote only often transitory biological states, capabilities, functions, and processes which constitute the "necessary and sufficient conditions" for category membership. But those states and processes are only ones which we may or may not decide to accept or develop to their fullest extent – while still laying claim to being an integrated personality with a satisfying and meaningful life. 🙂