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.
Yes!! You totally get this. I too try to "pretend I'm a therapist" though I have to admit, not always. But even when I'm arguing a different position it's not with the intent of persuasion but to normalize that people will have different opinions and that maybe there's no one right answer. The emotional detachment is key, methinks. Not only does it feel better for us, keeping the energy productive, but I think it communicates faith in them and their ability to make healthy choices for themselves, which I think is equally important--and likely a factor in the productive energy. Thanks for commenting!
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!
I'm having to reread much of my own work to remind me! It's my daughter's 18th birthday and I'm grappling with what my responsibility is now that she's officially, or legally at least, an adult--and with letting go. Maybe I should bust out the Tao. ;) Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!
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. 🙂
Haha! That cartoon cracked me up. With that said, I totally let my kids play with matches when they were little--I just equipped them with the knowledge and tools to do it safely. I also started driving lessons with both of them before they were of age and legally "permit"ted to do. Both my children now also have jobs. My youngest is 14--he was February's Employee of the Month! <3
Yep, this is another long one, friend! I may come back and try to respond to some more of it, but I'm starting to think that I'm encouraging your screen addiction. ;)
Glad you enjoyed the cartoon – it's been one I had been tweeting thither and yon, at least until I was banned there for falling afoul of the Tranish Inquisition. 🙂
But, to kill the proverbial two birds with one stone/comment, and relative to your "reframing" comment in another thread, you might like this "cartoon"/meme about "three sides to every story":
A different perspective or point of view won't always or necessarily give us the "truth", and "nothing but the truth" – "so help us gawd". But it can often provide some welcome illumination.
As for your "encouraging your screen addiction", "Warp factor 7, Mr. Sulu" 😉 Certainly can be overly time-consuming, and somewhat addictive.
However, I also think my comments here – and my recent subscription 🙂 – are something akin to "making common cause", though I apologize for my maybe overly long comments. But there seems to be some incredibly important issues – if not including "the fate of western civilization itself!" 😉 – that are hanging in the balance, that transgenderism is more a tip of the iceberg, merely a small freighter tossed about on the seas by a perfect storm, less a disease than a symptom – to mix metaphors. 🙂
Haven't read enough of all of your posts yet to be sure – speaking of "screen addiction"😉, but kind of get the impression so far that you are, probably with a great deal of justification, somewhat less interested in or focused on those wider issues than with "saving your kid" and those of other parents in the same "tempest-tossed" boat. However, as with my earlier comments to you in another thread about "The Popular Delusions and Madness of Crowds", those other issues may well be something akin to "mene, mene, tekel, upharsin", the writing on the walls in more ways than one.
I sure don't have a really good handle on all of those other issues, or how to fix them. However, feminist philosopher Kathleen Stock has a fairly decent post here arguing that feminism and transgenderism, among other factors, have more or less conspired together to produce a great deal of social and institutional corruption, that "perfect storm":
"The rise of the stupid story [transgenderism?] isn’t just a red flag for feminism though. I’m also interested in how our public institutions have failed to combat it, when its faults should be instantly visible. How did Universities – not to mention the judiciary, media organisations, and political parties – get so weak that they capitulated, even where their prior principles and processes would suggest they should have rejected the stupid story out of hand? How did formerly solid academic methodologies fail? How did supposedly neutral public bodies become so nakedly biased? How did media reporting standards lapse?"
However, as I've argued over there in case you're interested ... 😉, I think she has a number of biases herself that may well preclude any intellectually honest answers to those questions, at least from her:
I think you'll find that most the parents who are engaged in the conversation on Substack are pretty plugged into all aspects of the madness. I have lots of thoughts about how we got to this place in our culture and the implications of a movement that by all accounts seems to involve, and thank you for introducing me to this word: Lysenkoism. I'm grateful others are driven to do the work of affecting legislation, changing standards of care, protesting ideological curricula, writing about what it might mean for a world who would so easily accept the stupid story, etc. We all find the way we can affect the most change and not get burned out, right?
I've decided to focus my efforts on the work I'm doing here on StoicMom: helping parents of these kids heal themselves and their families. I'm offering what I had desperately wished was available to me in the early days of learning my daughter had joined the cult. This is where I feel I can make the most impact and it utilizes my skills, knowledge, and interests; it's incredibly satisfying and meaningful--nourishing me and giving me hope rather than keeping me up at night, fearful and worried.
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.
Yes!! You totally get this. I too try to "pretend I'm a therapist" though I have to admit, not always. But even when I'm arguing a different position it's not with the intent of persuasion but to normalize that people will have different opinions and that maybe there's no one right answer. The emotional detachment is key, methinks. Not only does it feel better for us, keeping the energy productive, but I think it communicates faith in them and their ability to make healthy choices for themselves, which I think is equally important--and likely a factor in the productive energy. Thanks for commenting!
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!
I'm having to reread much of my own work to remind me! It's my daughter's 18th birthday and I'm grappling with what my responsibility is now that she's officially, or legally at least, an adult--and with letting go. Maybe I should bust out the Tao. ;) Thanks for reading and taking the time to comment!
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. 🙂
Haha! That cartoon cracked me up. With that said, I totally let my kids play with matches when they were little--I just equipped them with the knowledge and tools to do it safely. I also started driving lessons with both of them before they were of age and legally "permit"ted to do. Both my children now also have jobs. My youngest is 14--he was February's Employee of the Month! <3
Yep, this is another long one, friend! I may come back and try to respond to some more of it, but I'm starting to think that I'm encouraging your screen addiction. ;)
Glad you enjoyed the cartoon – it's been one I had been tweeting thither and yon, at least until I was banned there for falling afoul of the Tranish Inquisition. 🙂
But, to kill the proverbial two birds with one stone/comment, and relative to your "reframing" comment in another thread, you might like this "cartoon"/meme about "three sides to every story":
https://imgur.com/gallery/7eF4H/
A different perspective or point of view won't always or necessarily give us the "truth", and "nothing but the truth" – "so help us gawd". But it can often provide some welcome illumination.
As for your "encouraging your screen addiction", "Warp factor 7, Mr. Sulu" 😉 Certainly can be overly time-consuming, and somewhat addictive.
However, I also think my comments here – and my recent subscription 🙂 – are something akin to "making common cause", though I apologize for my maybe overly long comments. But there seems to be some incredibly important issues – if not including "the fate of western civilization itself!" 😉 – that are hanging in the balance, that transgenderism is more a tip of the iceberg, merely a small freighter tossed about on the seas by a perfect storm, less a disease than a symptom – to mix metaphors. 🙂
Haven't read enough of all of your posts yet to be sure – speaking of "screen addiction"😉, but kind of get the impression so far that you are, probably with a great deal of justification, somewhat less interested in or focused on those wider issues than with "saving your kid" and those of other parents in the same "tempest-tossed" boat. However, as with my earlier comments to you in another thread about "The Popular Delusions and Madness of Crowds", those other issues may well be something akin to "mene, mene, tekel, upharsin", the writing on the walls in more ways than one.
I sure don't have a really good handle on all of those other issues, or how to fix them. However, feminist philosopher Kathleen Stock has a fairly decent post here arguing that feminism and transgenderism, among other factors, have more or less conspired together to produce a great deal of social and institutional corruption, that "perfect storm":
"The rise of the stupid story [transgenderism?] isn’t just a red flag for feminism though. I’m also interested in how our public institutions have failed to combat it, when its faults should be instantly visible. How did Universities – not to mention the judiciary, media organisations, and political parties – get so weak that they capitulated, even where their prior principles and processes would suggest they should have rejected the stupid story out of hand? How did formerly solid academic methodologies fail? How did supposedly neutral public bodies become so nakedly biased? How did media reporting standards lapse?"
However, as I've argued over there in case you're interested ... 😉, I think she has a number of biases herself that may well preclude any intellectually honest answers to those questions, at least from her:
https://kathleenstock.substack.com/p/feminist-reboot-camp/comment/5859393?s=r
I think you'll find that most the parents who are engaged in the conversation on Substack are pretty plugged into all aspects of the madness. I have lots of thoughts about how we got to this place in our culture and the implications of a movement that by all accounts seems to involve, and thank you for introducing me to this word: Lysenkoism. I'm grateful others are driven to do the work of affecting legislation, changing standards of care, protesting ideological curricula, writing about what it might mean for a world who would so easily accept the stupid story, etc. We all find the way we can affect the most change and not get burned out, right?
I've decided to focus my efforts on the work I'm doing here on StoicMom: helping parents of these kids heal themselves and their families. I'm offering what I had desperately wished was available to me in the early days of learning my daughter had joined the cult. This is where I feel I can make the most impact and it utilizes my skills, knowledge, and interests; it's incredibly satisfying and meaningful--nourishing me and giving me hope rather than keeping me up at night, fearful and worried.