Great post. My parents always said: “life’s not fair!” I like to say regarding this sick movement: “everyone has a sex. None of us got to choose. We all have to live with it.”
So much of what’s truly beautiful & valuable about life comes from our sexed realities: love, pair bonding, children, family. We might as well get angry that mammals also have to breathe oxygen too. It’s all so stupid! Embrace the reality principle.
I’ve read there are people born with a greater ability to feel love and a greater instinct for fairness. Yes, fairness is often breached, but it still exists. Marthe “moved on” in part by fighting the evil, and you’re doing the same. Respect to both of you.
I’m a lawyer. In the movie “Philadelphia,” the Tom Hanks character is on the stand, and he’s asked what he loves about the law. I was shocked to hear his response, because it’s exactly how I feel. He said that not often, but every once in a while, you get to be a part of justice being done, which is a great feeling. True.
I have a number of people close to me whose kids have gone down the transgender medicalization path, and so the fairness issue is very near to my heart. In trying to rectify the "unfairness" of being born a sex the kid doesn't want to be, or the unfairness of the lack of acceptance of gender nonconformity, the trans movement promises a solution: change your body and assert your chosen identity and the world will accept this chosen identity. But here it becomes the height of unfairness to promise something it is not in your power to deliver. And to do that to someone too naive to understand the empty promise is the true injustice here.
These poor kids will learn the real need to move past unfairness when the reckoning of poor health outcomes and assertion of sex reality hit. So tragic.
A truly great essay for which i thank you. It is both refreshing and sad to see that people so lucid like you exist. Refreshing, because there is hope, but sad to see that they need to hide their identity for fear of consequences.
Very moving account. Respect to you for sharing. Although my circumstances and relationship with my daughter is different, a different order, she is in the transgenderist community (?), and I find myself avoiding the subject, where once we could be open when our thinking was compatible, and not being (allowed to be?), curious about her and my they/them grandchild (their future…when/if their sex will be out, what will they be told about the nature of sex and gender etc, and ever watchful of observing the prescribed pronouns. It feels exhausting, amd scary at times.
The essay presents a choice between two extremes: a therapeutic culture that supposedly teaches young people that emotional pain, dissatisfaction, and unfairness should be solved through validation, therapy, or medical intervention, and an older ethic of endurance summarized by "You move on. You keep going."
Most people do not live at either extreme.
Few people believe that every disappointment requires intervention, but neither do most people believe that suffering should simply be borne in silence. Contemporary culture has undoubtedly expanded the range of problems that people feel able to discuss and seek help for. In many cases that is a good thing. Depression, bullying, abuse, grief, and social isolation are not problems that are necessarily improved by stoicism alone.
At the same time, life does contain losses, disappointments, and limitations that cannot be fixed. Learning to distinguish between what can be changed and what must be endured is part of maturity. The Serenity Prayer captures this more accurately than either side of the dichotomy: some things can be changed, some cannot, and wisdom lies in knowing the difference.
The essay's broader cultural claims seem stronger as personal interpretation than as demonstrated fact. The author's experience with her daughter is real and painful, but the conclusion that an entire generation has been taught to regard ordinary discomfort as intolerable is asserted rather than established. Anecdotes can illuminate a problem, but they cannot by themselves explain a generation.
In the end, most people navigate life somewhere between the two poles presented here. They seek help when it is useful, accept what cannot be changed, try to improve what can be improved, and endure what remains.
Fairness is a child's pursuit and has nothing to do with anything.
Confronting a mass psychosis formation like 'transing' with a timid, quiet submission is an act of cowardice that bears no resemblance to the courage shown by Marthe who risked her life for freedom, not affirmation implied by silence.
(PS. This essay would benefit greatly from a red pen as the story should be told, and told well.)
Except for parents who are pushing their kids into a trans identity for their own status-seeking, I think it's wrong to judge the approach of parents with children caught up in this ideology. Some will affirm, believing this is the best way to maintain their relationship and help their kid; others will push back, hoping to protect their child from further harm and pull the kid back; others will try to tread a middle ground. All are trying to navigate a situation that is terrifying and insane in the best way they know how. Most of us parents would do anything to rescue our children, and they have been put in an untenable situation. So do not judge the author.
I do not judge out of meanness but out of necessity.
Are parents put in an absolutely awful position? Of course they are and they have my utmost sympathy. IT IS NOT EASY to do the hard thing but falling silent while children are harmed in order to 'keep the relationship' reminds me of the 1968 My Lai Massacre justification: "We had to destroy the village to save it".
I wish everyone sucked into this maelstrom the best ending possible.
I'm at one layer removed from the parent role. Many parents and "allies" are thoroughly captured, and talking to them is like talking to a cult member - hopeless. I agree that for those of us who can, acting to push back on institutions and educating those who just don't want to think about it is a duty.
For too long a huge amount of damage was done in stealth -- if most people had any idea of what was in store for us by "being kind" and treating this as a civil/human rights matter (which it absolutely is not), we would have shut it down at the start. It is a virus designed by perverts, propagated in the lab of university humanities departments, and then let loose in spiritually weakened Western democracies.
Thanks. Most of my writing has been comments. I don't have enough of a following to enable many people to see my posts, so I find more people see my writing in comments. Oh well.
Every word of this resonated with me - you are not alone in this uncharted survival trek. I think the problem we’re dealing with is not so much “therapy-creep” or the pathologization of normal human suffering, as it is the unfortunate convergence of the self-awareness or self-help movement (itself a reaction to ‘50s parenting) with a polarized internet and social media.
But why go undercover in enemy territory if you aren't trying to push life further towards fairness? Ideals are necessary. A person's reach should exceed their grasp, or what's a heaven for? (Apologies to Robert Browning)
I suspect you make a strong distinction between the fairness you can bring about, and the fairness that is beyond your grasp. Cohn couldn't bring her sister back from the dead, but she *could* strike a blow, in a small but meaningful way, against the Nazis. That's something.
I also think that Marthe may not have wanted to tell strangers in public how the worst things in her life made her feel. Not everything is everybody's business.
Great post. My parents always said: “life’s not fair!” I like to say regarding this sick movement: “everyone has a sex. None of us got to choose. We all have to live with it.”
So much of what’s truly beautiful & valuable about life comes from our sexed realities: love, pair bonding, children, family. We might as well get angry that mammals also have to breathe oxygen too. It’s all so stupid! Embrace the reality principle.
I’ve read there are people born with a greater ability to feel love and a greater instinct for fairness. Yes, fairness is often breached, but it still exists. Marthe “moved on” in part by fighting the evil, and you’re doing the same. Respect to both of you.
I’m a lawyer. In the movie “Philadelphia,” the Tom Hanks character is on the stand, and he’s asked what he loves about the law. I was shocked to hear his response, because it’s exactly how I feel. He said that not often, but every once in a while, you get to be a part of justice being done, which is a great feeling. True.
I have a number of people close to me whose kids have gone down the transgender medicalization path, and so the fairness issue is very near to my heart. In trying to rectify the "unfairness" of being born a sex the kid doesn't want to be, or the unfairness of the lack of acceptance of gender nonconformity, the trans movement promises a solution: change your body and assert your chosen identity and the world will accept this chosen identity. But here it becomes the height of unfairness to promise something it is not in your power to deliver. And to do that to someone too naive to understand the empty promise is the true injustice here.
These poor kids will learn the real need to move past unfairness when the reckoning of poor health outcomes and assertion of sex reality hit. So tragic.
Lying is wrong and indeed it is a great disservice to make a promise you cannot deliver. But to lie to a child id downright cruel.
A truly great essay for which i thank you. It is both refreshing and sad to see that people so lucid like you exist. Refreshing, because there is hope, but sad to see that they need to hide their identity for fear of consequences.
Very moving account. Respect to you for sharing. Although my circumstances and relationship with my daughter is different, a different order, she is in the transgenderist community (?), and I find myself avoiding the subject, where once we could be open when our thinking was compatible, and not being (allowed to be?), curious about her and my they/them grandchild (their future…when/if their sex will be out, what will they be told about the nature of sex and gender etc, and ever watchful of observing the prescribed pronouns. It feels exhausting, amd scary at times.
Terrific! Thank you.
The essay presents a choice between two extremes: a therapeutic culture that supposedly teaches young people that emotional pain, dissatisfaction, and unfairness should be solved through validation, therapy, or medical intervention, and an older ethic of endurance summarized by "You move on. You keep going."
Most people do not live at either extreme.
Few people believe that every disappointment requires intervention, but neither do most people believe that suffering should simply be borne in silence. Contemporary culture has undoubtedly expanded the range of problems that people feel able to discuss and seek help for. In many cases that is a good thing. Depression, bullying, abuse, grief, and social isolation are not problems that are necessarily improved by stoicism alone.
At the same time, life does contain losses, disappointments, and limitations that cannot be fixed. Learning to distinguish between what can be changed and what must be endured is part of maturity. The Serenity Prayer captures this more accurately than either side of the dichotomy: some things can be changed, some cannot, and wisdom lies in knowing the difference.
The essay's broader cultural claims seem stronger as personal interpretation than as demonstrated fact. The author's experience with her daughter is real and painful, but the conclusion that an entire generation has been taught to regard ordinary discomfort as intolerable is asserted rather than established. Anecdotes can illuminate a problem, but they cannot by themselves explain a generation.
In the end, most people navigate life somewhere between the two poles presented here. They seek help when it is useful, accept what cannot be changed, try to improve what can be improved, and endure what remains.
Fairness is a child's pursuit and has nothing to do with anything.
Confronting a mass psychosis formation like 'transing' with a timid, quiet submission is an act of cowardice that bears no resemblance to the courage shown by Marthe who risked her life for freedom, not affirmation implied by silence.
(PS. This essay would benefit greatly from a red pen as the story should be told, and told well.)
Except for parents who are pushing their kids into a trans identity for their own status-seeking, I think it's wrong to judge the approach of parents with children caught up in this ideology. Some will affirm, believing this is the best way to maintain their relationship and help their kid; others will push back, hoping to protect their child from further harm and pull the kid back; others will try to tread a middle ground. All are trying to navigate a situation that is terrifying and insane in the best way they know how. Most of us parents would do anything to rescue our children, and they have been put in an untenable situation. So do not judge the author.
I do not judge out of meanness but out of necessity.
Are parents put in an absolutely awful position? Of course they are and they have my utmost sympathy. IT IS NOT EASY to do the hard thing but falling silent while children are harmed in order to 'keep the relationship' reminds me of the 1968 My Lai Massacre justification: "We had to destroy the village to save it".
I wish everyone sucked into this maelstrom the best ending possible.
I'm at one layer removed from the parent role. Many parents and "allies" are thoroughly captured, and talking to them is like talking to a cult member - hopeless. I agree that for those of us who can, acting to push back on institutions and educating those who just don't want to think about it is a duty.
For too long a huge amount of damage was done in stealth -- if most people had any idea of what was in store for us by "being kind" and treating this as a civil/human rights matter (which it absolutely is not), we would have shut it down at the start. It is a virus designed by perverts, propagated in the lab of university humanities departments, and then let loose in spiritually weakened Western democracies.
All very true... especially the 'stealth' part.
You have a flair for language. Do you write?
Thanks. Most of my writing has been comments. I don't have enough of a following to enable many people to see my posts, so I find more people see my writing in comments. Oh well.
Beautifully expressed. And heartbreaking. I wish you well.
Every word of this resonated with me - you are not alone in this uncharted survival trek. I think the problem we’re dealing with is not so much “therapy-creep” or the pathologization of normal human suffering, as it is the unfortunate convergence of the self-awareness or self-help movement (itself a reaction to ‘50s parenting) with a polarized internet and social media.
I recently read in a different thread that someone else's Mama always said, "Fair is where they judge pigs and cows." That spoke to me.
After reading your piece, I'm wondering how you will approach this with your daughter in another 5 years if she continues to identify as trans?
But why go undercover in enemy territory if you aren't trying to push life further towards fairness? Ideals are necessary. A person's reach should exceed their grasp, or what's a heaven for? (Apologies to Robert Browning)
I suspect you make a strong distinction between the fairness you can bring about, and the fairness that is beyond your grasp. Cohn couldn't bring her sister back from the dead, but she *could* strike a blow, in a small but meaningful way, against the Nazis. That's something.
I also think that Marthe may not have wanted to tell strangers in public how the worst things in her life made her feel. Not everything is everybody's business.
The serenity prayer leaps to mind here.