Transing The Young – Part 1

A “movement” self-identifying as a Cult

Around 4 years ago, my wife and I tried to enter some honest and meaningful discussion with our troubled daughter, then in her late teens. I was sure that like everything else we’d gone through as a family, with love and support we’d always connected with, we’d be able to give her the help she needed.

We were starting to find a reluctance on her part to engage with exploring any of the issues she was raising, and also felt she was refusing to examine difficulties elsewhere in her life, including a recently terminated ambition that shifted her focus completely from a career she had once longed for, but found was no longer possible to achieve. It was very troubling to see her destabilised like this but I felt she was holding back and also somehow brushing off our concerns at a time when we should have been most able to love and support her.

At times, she would ask me (seemingly) honest questions about Gender, but then dismiss my answers, that were obviously not to her liking, or didn’t quite “fit” a framework or template she’d somehow “downloaded” from others online or in real life. Maybe I was just feeling my age, and my daughter was simply asserting her independence and free spirit, which I felt was quite normal and healthy.

I was asked to “educate myself” about what being trans was all about, and what “being LGBTQ” was all about. I embraced this idea because our relationship had become a little strained. Things I said and questions I asked her in relation to gender or sexuality were simply unfathomable to her, didn’t make sense between either of us, or just made her upset. This was an opportunity to show how much love and care we have for her, a step I was more than happy to take.

We had always brought up both our children with the understanding that if they asked us an honest question, they would get an honest answer. Disagreement doesn’t have to lead to conflict. Both our children grew up in a loving and supportive environment of normal, happy, family life, achievements were celebrated, challenges or difficulties addressed and worked through, our children were loved and supported and grew up to be intelligent, aspiring young adults, sensitive to others, and curious about the world around them.

When our daughter reached her 20’s I found that my honesty was being thrown back at me now, as unwanted and inconvenient. I was being embarrassing, like dads often are, like they are when teenage daughters reach a particular age. I was being probed and tested further about what I thought about “gender”. I was being tested although I didn’t know it then. My answers didn’t please her. She was already socially transitioning at that time, although (like questions about gender or using pronouns) we didn’t fully understand this at the time; so stealthy was the creep and the hidden “grooming” behind our backs.

And so I became quite confused and troubled by the growing sense of distance between us, and at the number of times she disappeared into her bedroom for long periods of time. We thought she was writing a diary or spending some time in her reflective writing, or chatting with friends online. I didn’t realise at the time what was going on through long periods of introspection and what I later came to call Rumination.

So between my wife and I, we went in search of other voices, similar voices, alternative voices, different ways of understanding, of critically reasoning with a diverse spectrum of ideas, opinions, values, beliefs and attitudes – who were these “queer theorists” she was so taken with? Who is this Judith Butler? I felt I should have known this already!

What did other LGBTQ people think? What does being trans really mean? Am I actually a bigot but don’t recognise it? Can human beings really change sex? What was I not seeing or understanding? I’d always been politically on the left, but I was starting to notice journalists and young activists linking so-called gender critical beliefs with “Trump supporters” and racism, and painting them as right wing bigots and bullies. Was this really true? I kept up the pace with my self-education in the absence of any critical reasoning from our troubled daughter. Meanwhile, a picture was starting to emerge – that any hate or toxicity was coming from one group only - trans activists.

I really wanted to try and be a better father, understand her better, try and heal the division, find some consensus. We’d always had a fantastic relationship, right up until her early twenties, when something really started to destabilize the relationship we had with our daughter who by now had come out as lesbian. We even shared a secret dad/daughter nonsense language once. No-one else could speak it.

I started to experience an unspoken scorn, like a quiet contempt for anything that smacked of being “maternal”, or female, and a once close and beautiful bond between mother and daughter was also dissolving, fast. I wanted to help mend all that and really take a good hard look at myself as part of the process and try to heal any differences and possibly find out where I’d gone wrong. I tried to “do better”. In doing so, it nearly destroyed me.

Estrangement from mum and me followed fast, once she was away from home again at her new place of study up north. The timing was extraordinary; leaving home with so much unresolved, with our daughter seemingly still positive about a new chapter in her life. We tried to reach out to her many times, to keep in touch, but after one attempt too many, we got a text that was so angry and scornful of our attempts to maintain contact, we were reeling and left speechless be the rage at our attempt to show concern about the huge life choices and beliefs she was starting to take onboard.

After nearly 4 years of continuing estrangement of us by her, after talking to and listening to the voices of trans people, gender non-conforming people, straight people, gay people, LGBTQ supporters, teachers, student unions, parents, academics, teenagers, therapists, philosophers, healthcare professionals, social commentators, journalists, trans influencers, detransitioners, politicians, feminists, incels, social workers, beekeepers, barn builders, and individuals within any other group or profession you could possibly think of, I’ve reached an understanding based on truth and reality. And our experience and knowledge of those that helped shape her rebirth:

Transing young people is a Cult, but few people actually care. Everyone’s too scared.

It’s a real shame that the term Cult has become so much more commonplace in recent years – it loses its potency with over-use. Its use has become quite flippant. The Cult of Trump (as an easy example) has often been used by the media and media consumers to easily and quickly codify for Newspeak, a right wing rabble.

But transitioning young people is a very real cult of today – I’ve spoken to its core members, to its supporters, and believe me, they understand their place within the cult structure, although (true to cult form) many of those also inside a cult at a far lower level simply don’t recognise that they are in a cult. Social and medical transitioning is openly applauded and welcomed in mainstream life while known and evidenced harms are simply ignored. But it’s anything but a civil rights movement or a human rights issue. It’s a cult that has taken our daughter, and thousands of other young people.

It’s most definitely not a cult in the sense that one might expect some unsuspecting troubled youth to be gagged and bound and bundled into the boot of an old Cadillac and driven to a mysterious compound in the middle of Arizona. It’s not that kind of cult, it’s a cult for the new age of internet enlightenment and contagious psychosis. It’s a cult that people are literally terrified of speaking out against – socially & professionally - because that would not be kind or inclusive. You’ll be cancelled, fired, punished as an outcast.

But I have the screenshots, the stats, the conversations logged, the suppressed data, the FOI requests, the quotes. So do thousandsof others. Everything. The evidence is all there. It’s all out there and not even that difficult to find. You just have to take the time to look. I’m fairly sure I would never have looked, had this bomb not hit our family. As it is, I’ve had to take a huge hit on behalf of those who can’t be bothered to look.

I’m still keeping my promise, to educate myself. I started out with an open mind, a total willingness to listen, to take personal emotion away from all evidence, and be honest with myself about what I found, without confirmation bias. But in doing so, I’ve had to look into the eye of pure evil, like finally tracking the movers and shakers of the ideological dark web, men with very dark agendas.

It’s also a little like the Wizard of Oz when you get to challenge those feeble, sick little men behind that massively scary mask, who shout the loudest and demand the most. They’re after more holes to penetrate, more boundaries to break, more access to women’s and children’s bodies - and everyone stands by, waving them through – yes, even women – mainly younger women of the “liberal” feminist or “intersectional” kind, or “queer” types who believe that Sex is some kind of spectrum, or a social construct dreamt up by a white man. There’s an army of allies who facilitate this by their silence and wilful ignorance.

Throughout my 4 year programme of educating myself, I’ve spoken with them all, argued with a few, read a great many, met a few, listened to them all. This is not a conspiracy theory, unlike the unfortunate number of anti-vax, Q Anon, or Brexit-linked nonsense, or molecules of Bill Gates being injected into your arm. This is real, actual, evidenced abuse #ThisIsNotADrill facilitated by a kind of shared psychotic fantasy, or pluralistic ignorance of the worst kind.

How did we reach a stage where we’re OK with sterilising a generation of children? Of leaving them to grow into adulthood without sexual function, with dangerously low bone density, amputated healthy body parts?

Working freelance within the arts, I started to understand it visually as a structural system of belief - I could draw you a diagram of this pyramid-shaped cult right now  - of which more, later. But it’s easy enough to picture it in your head; none of this is hard. The power and influence it distributes and shifts between the horizontal layers of this structure, makes it a little like the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – out-dated and much-criticised. And yet it’s so apt. It’s thin and rich at its very apex, and it’s broad and impoverished and heavily-populated at its base.

In the next post, I’ll attempt to “flesh out” this flesh cult in more detail, how it works together as a system in operation. I have to emphasise that the model I’m proposing – a framework within which we might understand how the system operates - is a personal view, and I’m likely due some flak for it. It’s very much a layman’s take on a complex picture and I’ve never claimed any skill or experience in scientific modelling. I just find that it’s taken shape this way in my personal understanding of the social context of our daughter’s transition.

But I’m way beyond feeling crippled by what others think now - there’s just too much at stake. If people want to take my model and improve it, tweak it, completely change it, if you think I’ve ascribed greater significance to one stakeholder group over another in the tiers I’ll be setting out, then please comment or add to the conversation. I might even agree with you, I might not, but it won’t matter because at least we’ll be talking about it. And I’ll still be educating myself.

In the meantime, I’ll be working up a proper illustration (or a napkin sketch!) as the final post to this short series, before posting shorter, tighter pieces and introducing some artworks – free downloads for all, although paid subscribers (fingers crossed) would be remunerating the time required to create the digital artworks. It might prompt others to share their own visual interpretations if, like me, you’re predominantly a visual learner type, who sometimes struggles with the linguistic or verbal.

My deepest wish about what I might be able to achieve with my substack, is that some of what I write (quite clumsily for much of the time) might be useful in getting some clarity out to other parents, other Dads or male partners, and to other people of either sex who might not publicly want to be seen to be making enquiries or expressing doubt. I understand that - I’ve lost work myself and been excluded from opportunities thanks to speaking out about it. If you know any Wavering Williams or Hesitant Hatties, send them my way with a subscription.

That’s why I hope my voice is different – because my testimony, as a father, who sees his own daughter’s life so abused by other people and is forced into silence by an international movement of BeKinders, can pay dues to Helen Joyce, to Abigail Shrier, to Colin Wright, to Glinner, to James Esses, to Dr Emma Hilton, Billboard Chris, ripx4nutmeg, Dr Jane Clare Jones, to Hacsi Horvath, @STILLTish, Alison Bailey, Watson, Mia, Jo Bartosch, Simon Edge, Kathleen Stock, Sue & Marcus Evans, and all those wonderful people who have helped us to understand and make sense of our daughters trajectory and radicalisation, all of them from their own unique perspective.

Not every parent’s personal story is as awful as ours. I dare say there’s a lot worse, and a lot that come good in the end. But without exception there are far more people affected by a transition than just the young person themselves. Unfortunately the narcissism that slides in – as a necessary force to fuel the identity-building, the constant need for validation and 100% compliance – means that empathy must be ejected. And so it becomes All About Them. All The Time. Other people, including family gender heretics are ditched for showing concern, for their evil “Conversion Therapy”, or for holding a belief in reality and biology that is incongruent with their own.

I’d also like to be wheeled out for a private beer in the House of Commons bar for an hour, with any MP, of either sex, of ANY party, willing to listen. We’d have a nice chat and I’d simply explain how this cult has destroyed our daughter – I’ve learnt how/when to detach as a necessary recovery from my own mental health and wellbeing. I’d fill in the gaps, join the dots up, in the way that parliamentary researchers or lobby groups could never do. So I’d be perfectly civil and friendly, but I’d just explain the facts and the bits that their parliamentary minions and focus groups could never furnish them with. Everyone’s too scared – politicians more than anyone – but I can help, compassionately, honestly, our experience trumps their limited “knowledge”.

I’m not aligned with any organisation, or any political party, I’m politically homeless, I’m just a father who’s devastated that his daughter has been kidnapped by a cult and I want to warn others of the dangers and harms, and stop it happening to others. That’s it. That’s my manifesto.