Dear Groomers
A disjointed and badly-edited rant, originally in the form of a draft letter but expanded to include various add-ons during episodes of poor mental health and trying to work it all out.
Originally addressed to the publishers of a book about LGBTQ+ and training in educational settings, a university-appointed counsellor, our daughters non-binary queer partner/enabler and family, & all the others who have abused our daughter. This is for you xx
“~” is used in place of real name to protect privacy and anonymity, and extracts have been redacted
Dear Groomers
The carefully-constructed narrative of this oppression story is untruthful and completely dishonest. By publishing this chapter you’ve played an active but unknowing role in our erasure – her parents. Not ~’s. Several of ~’s recent tweets in support of the book launch also inform readers that ~ no longer has parents, and a photograph that I took of ~ (one image out of many thousands throughout ~’s childhood and teen years) has been used by ~ decontextualized, but carefully selected in order to support the idea of ~’s miserable and unhappy childhood. This is completely false.
Scratch the surface and you can see so clearly how the shaming and silencing works - on us as ~’s parents. This chapter shows you how this often-touted DARVO concept actually works in real life, for someone with something to protect or hide ie truth. ~’s identity must be elevated and celebrated, while ours is shamed and erased. Watching the construction of ~’s new identity; the delusion and dissociation becoming cemented, ~’s mental health and wellbeing has affected our own lives greatly, and the lack of judgement over whether publication of this chapter story is appropriate - or even proportionate, confirms my view of this disastrous literary overreach. This continuing estrangement of us (initiated by ~) has almost broken us; the despair and heartache we have to live with is indescribable. But I doubt you’ve really given much thought to that – so long as your message gets out there, the chapter supports your agenda, and ~’s identity is securely upheld and affirmed and validated – & that therefore validates you. Nothing - not even truth - must challenge that.
So, like the generals in the bunker, you send out your brave little soldier over the trenches and into the world to do ideological battle. Backed up by ~’s fairy tale of oppression, you’ll want to see how much ground you can get, how much gender non-conformity you can identify and snaffle. Let’s see how far we can push forward, how much traction this gets. Lets keep queering the classrooms of our schools with gender ideology, Yeah you bet ~’s up for that. Watch out for those pesky parents though!
~ left our family home still a young woman, still keeping much of her mental health hidden from us - off she went looking for her tribe. Except that same person became ~ and ended up inside a cult. Mentoring it seems, soon morphed into ~ being monitored by a “Minder” – the nominated person through which, we were told we would be “allowed” contact – coming as it did on the back of ~’s angry testosterone-fuelled text to us as her transition continued apace, and rejecting us became the essential next step.
This mentor/minder is from this point on, cast by ~ in the role of safe, affirming parent figure, required for ~’s on-going transition, now that real parents are replaced for being too questioning and challenging and worried about apparently inconsequential things like drugs, breast amputation, and lifelong medical dependency. You’re complicit in her indoctrination, negligent and uncaring of her mental health, and fundamental to ~’s estrangement of us.
All we did, right from the start, was ask ~ to keep an enquiring, open mind, to slow down and think carefully, weigh up all options, think rationally. We expressed concern for her health and future wellbeing while ~ became secretive and withdrawn, exactly as ~ describes in her chapter – except ~ was taking to long bouts of internet bingeing behind a permanently closed bedroom door, while we thought ~ was just writing reflectively or contacting old friends. But you won’t have seen any of that. All you’ll have heard about is our relentless transphobia – that tired old slap-down for anyone who dares challenge gender ideology and sex denialism. Interesting to note also, that neither “sex” nor “sexual orientation” are referred to in ~’s chapter – “sexuality” for some reason makes the cut – maybe that’s just acceptably queer enough.
4 years ago, I actually went looking for ways to help our (then) daughter, to try and help support her better. I really wanted to be a better father to her. Why did using pronouns bother me so much? It really upset me that ~ found talking about it so difficult. Before leaving home she became strangely “absent” during what we realised later was a kind of rumination period early on in her transition. She stopped sharing anything with us, in the way she used to - silence and secrecy took its place instead.
4 years ago - in the absence of any real discussion with us, or any further exploration of feelings or willingness to engage, we both tried to find out more about the “movement” ~ felt so aligned with - from other parents, from LGBTQ groups, clinicians, therapists, teachers, trans people, gender critical, both trans allies, and trans-rational - a wide and diverse range of sources. I’m just an ordinary father, of average intelligence. I’m a left-leaning liberal and very curious about what I was starting to find out. I didn’t go into this search for understanding with any confirmation bias ready to pounce on what I discovered to back-up some cis-normative bias - I just went in with an open mind. So yes, I would gladly educate myself, if that’s what she wanted.
I wore a Pride wristband for her for weeks, as a gesture to acknowledge that, although we were having difficulties understanding some of the many crazy things ~ said, at least it showed ~ that we were trying.
Over the last 4 years we’ve uncovered so much trans regret, so many detransitioners and fractured families, found so many skewed statistics disproved, so much TRA online bullying, sexism, misogyny, abuse, shaming, dishonesty, denial, and so much evidence, anecdote, and fact about the dark forces driving this movement - all screened-off for most people – even, I believe, from those consider themselves “inside” the movement. ALL of it linked to gender ideology – and so many people concerned about the abusive “transing” of gender non-conforming children.
We’ve met with many people who could also see through the propaganda and weren’t prepared to go along with the pluralistic ignorance required, but were also literally too afraid to challenge the gender dogma at all for fear of being thought to be homophobic, discriminatory, unkind.
Sure we also found parents who did affirm their children’s “identities”, but this seemed to be parents of younger children still at home; their children still ambiguous or uncertain about their intentions, or the parents themselves still had some influence, and some that were actually genuinely homophobic – preferring a trans son/daughter to a gay son/daughter at any cost. Others had been bludgeoned and cowed by the terror of suicide, as falsely pedalled by Mermaids and Stonewall, amongst others. Many parents of younger teens are desperate to keep their children close, and so will “go along with it” for their child’s sake, playing the longer game.
But we started to join the dots and found out how ideological capture works, and how the silencing of dissent works too. How incredibly powerful and successful the “Be Kind” mantra is, in limiting the capacity for people to think critically and independently for themselves. So here I was, educating myself, just as I promised I would do.
As far as we know, most of ~’s transition has taken place away from the family home. How on earth can we possibly get to know this new “authentic” person if this person estranges us? I’ve no doubt at all that ~ presents extremely professionally - full of charm, and kindness and sensitivity. But everyone is capable of compartmentalising. You won’t have seen the other bits that we’ve been on the receiving end of – like the rage, when challenged, or our efforts to reach out to her that have been met with a sustained and punishing silence. It’s seemed to us recently that the more we try to reach out, the more cemented and determined ~ is to resist any contact with us, so we’ve taken a step back for the moment, genuinely afraid that our efforts to reach out to ~ simply reinforce ~’s withdrawal further.
The outrage at being challenged, surfaces from an inner force required to uphold and protect an identity or ego at all costs- because the truth is unacceptable. So a huge fight breaks out inside (my body is me v my body is all wrong) caused by this distress, and this leaks out – it’s far too much to contain. This externalising results in so much completely destructive behaviour towards others – it’s what’s going on inside, being acted out. Projective Identification.
Different parts of the whole self, have to surface at different times in order to shore up defences or deflect perceived attacks, meet different purposes and needs. It’s why so many parents of young trans describe seeing their child’s empathy (amongst family around them) literally wither and die - only to be replaced by a kind of self-serving despotic tyranny that repels real love and reframes it instead - because truth must not find its way in. Throw in the online grooming and the likely psychoactive effects of testosterone and you throw a huge spanner into that system to create a kind of chaotic synergy of poor cognitive reasoning and mental chaos.
The story of ~’s background for this chapter is actually nothing but a fairy tale of poor ~ and ~’s emotionally neglectful parents – it’s a lie. We don’t deserve this hatchet job. The chapter reads like the origin story a 15-yr old gamer would invent for a character in a conflict zone, an avatar.
There’s so much that ~’s chapter doesn’t mention:
(redacted)…. readers are likely to infer from the text that ~ comes from …. with old-fashioned, conservative views perhaps, or from a religious background with rigid, inflexible thinking. Many could point to ~’s real background and see white, middle-class, privilege.
(redacted) …parents can also be traced through ~’s surname. …And ~’s tweet also suggests could be a poor little orphan. Again, how useful. Identity building nicely, oppression narrative ramping up. Deny Parents. Deny Sex. Comply with Gender.
~ had a really happy and loving childhood, was given every opportunity to do and express exactly as ~ wanted. ~’s childhood was filled with all sorts of exciting stuff – outings and trips, dance, dolls, Sylvanians, fairy dresses, sacha dolls, outdoor games, gymnastics, reading endlessly…..and a thousand other things that are just things for any kid to enjoy– age-old sexist stereotyping applied to any of these activities is now reframed as Gender Oppression for this new Gender Generation.
~ was NEVER gender-questioning, nor gender non-conforming. ~ just did the things that ~ enjoyed. Not once did ~ ever express discomfort about being a girl. And ~ told Mum everything!! They were SO close. Our daughter knew she was loved and cared for, until ~’s world fell apart when training finished tragically early, her career dreams were shattered, and her body had let her down - meaning ~ had to find a way to create a new world and with it a new way to be. As ~’s father, I know ~ has an incredible amount of determination, way more than most. ~ was in a vacuum with the end of training and dreams smashed, and saw an opportunity to uncritically embrace what ~ saw as a solution, and something ~ knew ~ could focus all determination on AND still receive adulation (found previously in performing for public and peers), still be special and gifted and validated.
~ was still fully supported and loved when ~ came out as a lesbian. ~’s “journey” from being lesbian, to trans non-binary identity is such a well-documented path of homosexual erasure experienced by so many young lesbians. I don’t see this discussed in the chapter - that’s part of ~’s past that should remain hidden.
Well I’m old enough to have taken part in marches opposing Section 28, with my straight friends in support of our gay and lesbian friends. I find it quite sickening that gender ideologists appropriate that struggle, along with the language, and compare it to their own battle against their chief enemies – TERFS, bigots, & the reality of biological sex and same-sex-attraction. How clever to conflate one’s sexual orientation with gender identities - “SOGI’s” – takes full advantage of naïve youth, in the hope that no-one points out the obvious truth that they’re not the same thing. If teenagers and many adults don’t fully “get it”, what chance do young children have? Too busy learning the names of 100 other genders no doubt.
~’s own family (real family, not glitter family, or ~’s partner’s family) have to tiptoe around ~, like someone walking around on eggshells in front of their abuser, constantly worrying if saying the wrong thing will deepen division, provoke rage, or create a terminal cut-off. Wider family are deeply upset at ~’s behaviour, while we have to constantly explain that these awful behaviours are largely driven by the psychic process of transitioning tied to the constant craving for validation.
We’ve both been literally made ill by it, this psychic violence. This authoritarian edict - for the world to comply with others’ self-serving delusions, 100% or nothing at all, #nodebate, “Acceptance Without Exception” (ie “Don’t Think About It”) will burn itself out. ~ told us once “Don’t worry, I’ll still be the same person”. Like so many of these well-worn scripts young trans people use, this turned into another vacuous meme. As was ~’s assurance “Of course I was always trans, I just didn’t have the words for it then.”
It’s clear that you know absolutely nothing about the reality of ~’s past – except what ~ will have told you. The entire chapter only discusses ~’s identity and oppression, and how badly ~ has been treated, and how schools should revolve round ~’s identity, and how important that has to be, to everyone. There’s nothing in that chapter by way of insight or anecdote … nothing of any substance (redacted). It’s more like queer activism…. No wonder ~ was stopped from explaining this.This isn’t “discrimination”, this is ideological indoctrination, this is flat earth sex denialism, this is also responsible safeguarding.
~ self-describes being very accepting of people that don’t have to feel the same way as ~ so long as there is respect on both sides. This obviously doesn’t apply to parents – the opposite is true. Inclusion of parents in many young people’s trans life doesn’t extend very far because of course the parents literally embody the truth. Are we literally dead to ~? Or have we just been queered out of existence, taken out for punishment by the thought police? How long will it be before I get arrested and prosecuted for saying “I do not have a gender identity”? Before I’m reported for Conversion Therapy?
Imagine yourselves bringing a child into the world, enjoying so many happy years with them, watching them grow up, the tears, the laughter, the support and love for them, and 20 years later having their fragile mental health exploited by others, by you fuckers, and turned that around against you. That’s the issue here. It’s all a massive projection, an externalising of difficult internal conflict, and trans becomes the convenient box to dump it all in because gender dysphoria is so poorly defined and researched, and largely self-diagnosed in any case, without any proper examination of comorbidities or past histories.
No-one is born in the wrong body. It’s a money-making racket. Is it even necessary to “have” GD anymore? I’ve seen the scripts, the online coaching, what to say to GPs who are too overworked to care and too afraid to look deeper. Looking at it all is too much to deal with. Just prove you’ve been consistent and insistent, that’ll work the doctor. Well you don’t need to be an art therapist to be able to see the pain and the dissociation in ~’s art - you just have to look at her art pages on social media.
How else could ~ possibly justify the on-going estrangement of us, and the lack of any intent on ~’s part to try and sort out and work through differences of belief, or even keep us alive in ~’s heart? Seeing ~ spiralling down the gender rabbit hole, denying real family ties and the misery it causes our family members, is like witnessing on a daily basis the deathless suicide of our own child. ~ has frozen and buried her, but simultaneously knows how powerful and destructive this impulse is. And so this sense of shame that ~’s art and writing expose, is reconfigured as arising from others who’s behaviour has to change, when it can only be internally resolved. I mourn this inner child ~ has frozen and buried, gone for good I suspect, along with her beautiful singing voice, her empathy, freewill, personal freedom, fertility, future health. All just handed over, sacrificed uncritically, to a cult of denial and dissociation.
Pretty much everything about ~’s struggles manifests in directing everything outwards to protect the internal processes involved in this kind of psychic re-birth. I don’t believe it’s humanly sustainable. Happiness and contentment come from within, not demanding the exterior world change at your feet. It’s so damaging to carry all this internal conflict and expect everyone else to carry the crap that ~ can’t bear to look at. I’m actually crying as I write this, just immersed yet again in the recognition of how far and how deep ~’s real pain is. How dare you make me feel like I have to expose it like this? How could any father respond differently to seeing this madness? There’s no road map for this, as a parent - just isolation, anger and grief. And silence - from the rest of the world looking the other way - carrying on being kind.
I’ve come to understand recently just how easy it is to “invest” supportively in affirming teen trans people when all it comes down to is a few demanded pronouns, a name change, and maybe a binder or change of hair colour or clothes. That’s not hard for anyone to do – especially if you’ve only just met this person on campus, in their new identity. It costs so little.
When you’ve seen your own child’s birth, known that they’re female, experienced and loved and fiercely valued their femaleness for every second of those following 20 years, only to find them turning round and saying “I’m not a girl” and fully intending to take drugs and have breasts amputated? Compliance or support is impossible- not “difficult” to do, not “challenging” - simply impossible.
Young people yet to have their own children and families will never understand this, until it happens to them. I’m so sick of the way her vulnerability has been exploited because others can so easily affirm, without it costing them anything- except their own limited short-term denial of course, which soon passes. It’s the itch they must never scratch - “I know that person’s not really female/male, you know that person’s not really female/male, we ALL know that person’s not really female/male” and yet we’ll all go along with it because that’s what we’re supposed to do, that’s how we’ve been conditioned, and that’s what being kind means. Running away from our bodies, dissociation, pluralistic ignorance. “Going along with it” is what makes groomers like you succeed by suggesting it costs us nothing.
Maybe your other chapter authors in this book just glance the other way - ride it out and keep quiet? Have they joined the dots themselves, or do they just keep their heads down, staying quiet? There’s no mention of the infertility caused by testosterone, the harms of puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones on bone density, the increased risk of certain cancers, increased risk of heart disease and stroke, limited sexual function, of atrophy leading to higher risk of pelvic and uterine problems, of early hysterectomy. Have you all just decided to ignore the trouble at the Tavistock, and what that represents? Most children grow out and through their difficult puberties and identity enquiries (with most becoming gay and lesbian adults). For pity’s sake, give those kids that really get stuck far better mental health support and talking therapies. And love, listening, kindness, and support. And let’s please put a stop to the constant trans recycling of false suicide figures and suicidal ideation.
~’s “children” will be adopted because testosterone destroys egg production and the uterus. Shouldn’t a good role model also pass on to children, parents and other teachers, information about longer-term consequences of transition? Too “unpalatable” I suppose. Or how about the Keira Bell case? About men identifying into women’s changing rooms, prisons, hospital wards, rape shelters, shortlists, awards, sports? About lesbian erasure and abuse? About the continuing misrepresentation of the Equality Act by omitting Sex as a protected characteristic from classroom knowledge boards and school corridor posters? About how homosexuality is (and will always be), same-sex attraction - not same-gender attraction? There’s that big old elephant in the room that LGBTQ+ won’t talk about again. Did you see Dr David Bell talking about Conversion Therapy and the damage done to children on Channel 4? Didn’t see any of that discussed in the chapter.
Exactly the same kind of denial and absence of truth is found in ~’s miserably manufactured back story…. Children’s minds, on the other hand, are just so much more malleable, much more accepting, more suggestible once the grown-ups look the other way. Are the young people ~ want to help just bit part players used to validate a trans identity? Yeah, I know, start with pronouns and work your way up.
All those treasured family memories we made and shared - ~’s delusion means erasing all that limitless love and laughter we shared as a family, the undying love and support we gave ~ and the strong family bonds we enjoyed, the way we arranged entire Summer holidays around ~ and what ~ was doing, the times we celebrated ~’s incredible achievements, and the times we picked ~ up and set ~ off again – all for HER. ~’s real story is one of amazing entitlement. ~ was surrounded by opportunity, support, family, good will, and Love in abundance.
So, despite this miserable hatchet job you’ve cursed us with, I’ll continue to fight for ~’s happiness and personal freedom, and for ~’s mental health and wellbeing, and for the life ahead of ~ – whether or not ~ recognises the shape and form that this takes. That’s how a parent’s unconditional love works. I know ~’s not capable of recognising how deep and real this love is, for reasons I’ve outlined – ~ only needs the love-bombing and affirmation of the bubble for ~ to feel validated and stay in denial, safe from the real world and all its true diversity.
I don’t know how to end this, but all I can really say is that THIS proud and loving father has had to watch his own daughter - who was born female into a sunny delivery room (not assigned anything, NEVER in the wrong body) – take testosterone, destroy their fertility, bind their chest, have their breasts amputated, AND believe that they exist outside the sex binary, and demand everyone falls into line with their delusion. My memory of her beautiful entry into this world, and of all the happy years we shared, of all the love we were all surrounded and supported by as a family, is now just junk - false memories, from a fake universe that didn’t even exist. The chapter in that stupid book says so.
And this broad sweep of time – 20 years - from her sunny and love-filled birth into the world, to the defilement of her life, body and mind, at the hands of sex-denialists and abusers like you, takes me in one enormous arc - from the most life-affirming, happiest moment of my entire life, to the most devastating recognition that our own lives and histories have been annihilated at the hands of our daughter believing she can escape her own biological reality.
To have our lives so expertly trashed inside this book is the deepest hurt and the most cruel betrayal. This entire estrangement, initiated by ~, is a slow and sustained psychic attack on us, with ~’s life a perfect example of how ideological indoctrination and grooming can operate so openly and so successfully on young people with vulnerabilities encouraged to suspend their critical thinking.
I’ll fight to expose this cult, this eugenics experiment, the men and the money behind it, in order that ~’s adopted children will have their rights and freedoms returned to them in a genuinely kind and inclusive climate that accepts gender non-conformity in people of any age, simply as a creative personal exploration of the self WITHIN those born male and those born female.
Our lives as ~’s parents, have become the uncomfortable and problematic reminder of ~’s own biological origins, of the unarguable, indestructible reality of Sex. That’s where the problem lies, if only you could see it.
And because our lives come into conflict with ~’s delusions and personal beliefs around gender and queerness, and an indoctrinated denial of the sex binary - the very origin of ~’s entire existence, WE have to be gone with it too. As ~’s parents, we embody the truth because that links us all into the old self of ~’s pre-transition life. ~ must jettison us, along with the “old self” because ~’s building a “new self” and ~ can only do that with that old package out of the way.
That’s what ~’s doing, and I hear similar from so many others I’m in touch with. I’m grateful that the world is starting to see it. ~’s been queered and indoctrinated and radicalised by a collective ideological “movement”. ~’s chapter in that book is the living proof of that.
Please stop the smearing of our lives in your publications, for your own collective advancements. And please put an end to the promotion of gender ideology < as fact > in our schools. Our daughter might never make any kind of meaningful connection with us as her mother and father ever again - because she would be having to face the inevitable living truth of her origins, her nature, her humanity. And her constructed identity would crumble to dust. I don’t want her to crumble with it, I want to love and protect her, and always be there for her. That’s why I protect her identity, and mine, in the hope that she may eventually have as soft a landing as she deserves. ~ I Love You
She knows and recognises the biological bond between us, but tries so hard not to see it because of what it would cost her. She’s suffering greatly and our love for her is reframed as bigotry by dangerous gender-soaked simpletons like you who only care that you have another skin suit to validate your beliefs. It’s cost you nothing, I don’t see you taking T, having your breasts amputated, tearing up family ties - but you’re happy to cheer it on and promote others up the greasy cult ladder. I hope you can sleep at night you heartless cowards. Actually, I hope this haunts you for the rest of your natural life.
___________
“The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction and the distinction between true and false no longer exist.”
― Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951)
___________