Why I'm No Longer Gender Critical

a reflection on identity, grief, and the limits of ideology

Labels can be really helpful when we’re destabilized, crucial even to make sense of our experience and find others who can see and relate to us. They often present a roadmap that can help us experience much needed stability. I must confess that I’ve always tended to resist labels, but in the dark days, ‘gender critical’ became a lifeline. It captured and validated my beliefs and values for quite awhile there; yet along the way I began to notice how identifying with this label was sabotaging what I wanted for my life and my relationships.

If you’re reading this, you probably already know that I am the parent of a young adult daughter who says she’s transgender. Like so many of your families, I believe she got this idea from spending lots of time online in her early adolescence and then had plenty of reinforcement at the charter school that prided itself on its “weird.”

I won’t retell the whole story, (you can find more detail in Coming Home and Pivotal Moments) but as I sought to understand what was going on for her and in the world, I did all the things. I ravenously pursued information, and the more I learned, the more gripped by fear I became.

In responding to my daughter, I was unpredictable. Desperate to keep my family together, I focused lots of energy on how to do this and felt successful any time we pulled off what felt like quality time, enjoying each others’ company. I also found myself regularly writhing in self-doubt, pity, fear, rage, and other painful emotions. I analyzed even minute parenting choices, ruminating about what now seemed like obvious mistakes and pining for the impossible do-over. My children were witness to my confusion, my desperate pursuit of their approval, and even anger and cruelty that hadn’t previously been part of their experience of me. We all saw new sides of Mom throughout my daughter’s adolescence. It was painful for each of us in our own way.

While I never had any curiosity about my daughter’s actual sex, I found myself needing to understand what it meant to be transgender. Through what would now be called by most either gender critical or anti-trans (depending on your position on the matter) resources, I learned much about the history of the phenomenon and quickly came to the conclusion that no one is born in the wrong body and we were dealing with a belief system that functioned much like a religion. I know many among the gender critical have landed at this same conclusion.

Since I felt deeply the terror, disorientation, and outrage that is so common when mothers witness one of our children disappear into something beyond our reach, I understand much of what families continue to experience. I work in small community and 1:1 with many mothers whose children have stepped into medicalization and I have sat with them in their pain and grief. The immense loss leaves a mama feeling more than a little lost herself. It’s difficult for me to imagine a more destabilizing experience; or what could cause a more deep and enduring sadness than to witness your beloved child physically transforming, sacrificing the wholeness of their body that you lovingly birthed into this world and then fiercely protected for as long as you could.

I’ve grappled intensely with how best to support these moms; regularly returning to the complex and sticky stew of the situation to grapple some more. Each time I do, I find myself returning to the same principles of Stoic and Jungian thought that got me through. I know my work exists primarily in the gender critical world, and I move through it doing my best to meet each mama where she is, while gently encouraging a reorientation toward her inner work, knowing that her own wholeness is her best bet to reclaim her life–and that soft hearts know best how to create the conditions for connection and reunion.

And this brings me to why I now reject the gender critical label for myself. I suspect the things I say next might feel threatening to many of my readers, but I’m StoicMom and I think it’s important that they get said.

I think ‘gender critical’ has become its own ideology. And it’s not innocent in today’s rampant destruction of families. I think it’s become it’s own kind of shield, defending the broken hearts that litter the landscape but also preventing the sunlight needed to sooth and heal them.

I think when we are identifying as gender critical, we’re confident we’re the good guys and certain we know who and what the enemy is. We’ve lost curiosity and think our responsibility is to crush an ideology, help others to see the world as we do because if they’d just look, they’d certainly see all the harm that must be stopped. If they’d just listen, they’d understand and come to share our beliefs.

At least this was my experience of being gender critical.

As a Jungian coach it’s my job to help my clients see their blindspots. Moms who seek my coaching or join the SMP tend to fall into two camps: either they hear something very different in my messaging that resonates as true and offers some hope, or they feel like they’ve tried everything and nothing’s working to better their experience, and they’re sinking fast, their life raft full of holes. What they pretty much all share in common is that they identify as gender critical.

While there are some variations, I recognize certain patterns among the many moms I’ve engaged with that reflect my own experience. Here is just a sampling of the painful experiences that I now see entangled with my former gender critical identity:

• I operated primarily out of fear and shame. Every time I heard a desistance story, I felt envy mixed with desperation to know what factored into the desistance. Each day that passed with my child still identified as transgender increased the shame and desperation I felt at not facilitating her trajectory out.

• I felt foolish and embarrassed that my daughter would fall for something that seemed so insane. She became my rescue project. My ego depended on it. If I failed at this task, I was a failure as a mom.

• I became unsafe for my child to bring her adolescent angst to. I was her enemy, and she was onto me. I’d blow months of goodwill each time I tried to gently nudge her to see her own flawed logic, and the distance between us would grow.

• My view of my child was distorted, flattened. My gender critical lens put a chasm between us, and we both missed out on the experience of the loving guidance I’d hoped to offer through her adolescence; her neutral therapist filling this role she no longer trusted me with.

• I took drastic measures and made choices intended to protect her that contributed to the shrinking of her world. She did what teenagers do and rebelled against them, digging deeper into her identity and clinging desperately to it like the life raft it so clearly was for her. In the end, as soon as she was able, she fled back to a community that shared her beliefs and where she felt she belonged.

The truth of the matter is that I did damage–all with the best intentions, mind you. I was trying to protect my daughter and to save her from a life of pain and regret. But if I’m brutally honest here, I can recognize the role my own identity played in the creation of the distance between us.

I want to be clear that this isn’t about blame. I frankly don’t see much point in that other than as a way to discharge our pain. It is about personal responsibility, because unless I can find some, I’ve given up any power to stay in relationship with my kid. I might as well throw in the towel and hit the scene as the raging, hysterical TERF that others tried to convince her that I am. Because it doesn’t matter what demeanor I assume in that identity, I’ve chosen a side and pledged my allegiance to those she believes want her dead.

I suppose it could be quite possible to have a completely different experience as a gender critical-identified parent of a persistently trans-identified kid, but this isn’t something I’ve witnessed in my years of supporting moms—at least not without some serious inner work on the parent’s part and even then, an emotional divide often remains. From what I’ve witnessed, the more rigidly identified the parent is, the harder it seems to recover and maintain connection.

I know for many, this price is willingly paid. These parents consider themselves warriors in the fight against evil, and I get this too. I tried this on for size myself, and quite quickly discovered that mine was to be a different role; that I was far more interested in keeping families together. If you don’t yet fully understand the potential costs of your identity and your war, I think someone needs to be honest with you and let you know. I think even if it feels like you’ve already lost everything and there’s nothing left to lose, I’d encourage you to consider that this isn’t true. Human hearts have a miraculous capacity to heal, and it’s never too late to create something beautiful.

While initially bringing on its own destabilization, as any major identity shift will evoke, I knew the best thing I could do for the health of my family was to distance myself from this label that had consumed so much of my vitality, and distorted my perception of my own child. I’m so grateful for the ancient wisdom of Stoicism, for Jungian thought, for Eastern mysticism and Christian grace. Each in their own way have helped me to grow out of a rigid, self-protective mindset and tune more intently to my own inner compass.

I still find body modification an ironic, and yes, tragically misguided approach to authenticity. I’d be thrilled (but am not holding my breath) to see the standards of care in many areas of medicine reflect a more holistic understanding of wellness. This is something I’ve wished for a very long time; I’ve been making controversial choices for my family’s health and wellbeing since before my first child–my TI daughter–was born. And not just in the medical arena. I suspect my line for medical interventions is very different than for most of my readers, and I wouldn’t want others to think they know better than I do which care is best for my family. I certainly don’t know what’s best for yours.

The initial shock and horror I felt when I learned of affirmative care has been replaced by compassion for the human condition. I’m no longer surprised we find ourselves here and still feel heartbroken when I think of those who will come to regret what’s been done to their bodies. I fervently hope they’ll find the necessary grace to heal their souls along with the necessary courage to author stories of redemption and meaning.

I’m beyond grateful that things have stabilized in my family. And I know that all things being equal, that if my family were estranged, there’s a good chance that I’d still be pushing back hard against culpable cultural forces.

Who knows what little shift along the way would have resulted in my daughter’s altered body and threats to her physical health? I know that would leave a gaping hole in me; a much larger hole than the ones I inflicted on myself through the years of confusion, hatred, loss, and rage that cost me the closeness I desperately wanted with my daughter but didn’t then grasp how to nurture.

I also have curiosity about the conditions that might have led me to follow the affirmative model of care. I’ll admit this one is harder for me to imagine. Yet, I know families—caring, lovely families—where this was the path taken and for whom the experiences of non-affirming families are so completely foreign and tragic. I’m pretty sure that from their perspective, the gender critical brought these tragic outcomes on themselves. They, too, are certain they’re the good guys. In fact, many see ‘gender critical’ as signaling membership in a cult that captures minds and creates evil in the world. Imagine that.

When I look around, what I see is suffering people muddling through this confusing time and place we inhabit as best they can. I see systems that have had their day and are crumbling. I see humans certain that they see reality, at each others’ throats because they can’t tolerate perspectives that are radically different from their own. I see archetypal cycles of destruction presenting opportunities for new beginnings. I see so many humans in pain, desperate to feel better, clinging to ideas that they think will save them, not able, not willing maybe? or likely just not ready to grasp that the answers aren’t out there, outside of our selves.

It’s very human to externalize our pain. Our most influential, revered spiritual and philosophical figures throughout history knew this.

If we’re not approaching change from a wholeness within ourselves, with intent to understand and relieve the pain that got us all here, we distract from what will actually restore wholeness and sanity. Once we identify ourselves on the right side of history, from what I can tell, we move away from curiosity and into judgment. We look for the ugly and we find it. We weave stories of devastation that I fear will make redemption all the more difficult. We unconsciously behave in ways that add to separation, fracture, and deepen our sense of helplessness and injustice.

Our children are externalizing their pain and angst with their identities. I don’t know if we can create any enduring change at any level until we get real about how we’re doing the same.

I wish I could do more to relieve the agony families are experiencing. I suspect (and have seen and experienced much evidence to support) that the way we do this is to accept that this is where we are and that humans have been heading here for so long, to fully grieve our painful losses and let our tears burst through the levies we’ve built, to embrace our human messiness and allow our hearts to be broken wide open–so we can finally tap into the compassion necessary to transcend the identities that divide us.

Photo by Jonny Auh on Unsplash

Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing,
there is a field. I’ll meet you there.
When the soul lies down in that grass,
the world is too full to talk about.

-Rumi