How it started, how gender ideology has ruined our right to a family life

Gender ideology has completely derailed our family's teenage years. 

I grieve for the actual teenage years my kids could have had. 

I grieve for the years taken up having to learn EXACTLY what it means for my children and our family and how we as their parents should parent.  

I think along with their dead name, their deadteeenage years would have been way more interesting in a fun way and we would have parented them, as we always had, in an attachment parenting way, with gentle supportive guidance. 

We didn't know then what was happening. 

We couldn't see it, for being loving and supportive parents that we were just always being. Don't get me wrong, it started off fun and interesting. Pride marches, badges, posters, music and flags. So many flags. Some turned out to be L'Manberg but by the time that one arrived and I'd done a bit of research, I was actually too scared to ask. Took me a while to find a casual non committal way of asking what it meant without an argument or a lecture or an eyeroll or whatever. 

Talk of sexuality & gender at the dinner table for months. ALL 96 of them. There were LOTS. We cycled through so many my head was spinning. I was also becoming suspicious. 

Then lockdown happened. I started hugely researching and I, a lifelong radical alternative woman and also a feminist did not like what I was learning. No one would listen or even understand why I was suddenly becoming such an utter raving obsessed person on this issue. I soon learned I was about to #Peak and was a TERF, something at the time I thought was a bit much, as I had still not fully comprehended at the time the true and insidious danger.

I didn't want to exclude anyone. Now I think I've outgrown the term TERF and it's delicious 'rabblerousingness' and understand it to mean so much more than 'excluding' a tiny minority of 'unfortunate' folk. 

I am not denying anyone's existence, we are still loving supportive parents but I regret not realising what was going on sooner and perhaps my vulnerable impressionable children would have had the normal amount of cranky teenage years full of fun, confusion, mayhem, trauma and excitement instead of the self loathing, harming, anger and hatred. 

I could write so much more about how we dealt with name changes, pronoun changes, mood changes, all the changes. What we've lost and what we've gained. So, when after all the support and information and discussions it became clear things were not improving, we compromised, under massive amounts of pressure about the innocuousness of it all, to allow them to use their new names in school. It was pitched to us as an 'also known as' type clause. Tbh I don't think it helped. It made them a target and created more bullying. 

Meanwhile, we were trying to find support for our self harming, depressed, confused, suicidal children. Over the years they have had mental health assessments and one had an anxiety workshop and counselling all with CAMHS. The other has been awaiting an ASD diagnosis which could take 4yrs. We started family therapy with the view to creating a space for us all to be able to communicate and live with our differing opinions within the family home, but again, little did we know. Ideology has truly taken a stronghold at CAMHS and before we knew it we were slammed into a social services wall. We were expecting support and wisdom, instead we got personal unprofessionalism after being lured into a trusting therapeutic bond.

https://www.scottishdailyexpress.co.uk/news/politics/scottish-parents-live-fear-losing-28179151

 

We haven't heard from them however, we are sort of in a quiet place. We all have our own counsellor. We barely talk about anything gender, sex or trans in the house. There's a gender hefalump festering in the corner that noone wants to touch anymore. We are tired. We are done in. I think we are all just trying to learn to love each other again, opinions and all. My hope is we will eventually come out the other side of this somewhat in tact. 

They still won't talk to me about any of it. I used try to talk to them about it, tell them we loved them no matter what, but that this ideology wasn't right, it wasn't helpful and they were not born in the wrong body. I send occasional articles about the dangers of binders but I still get total silence from my 14yr old, who I feel has been traumatised by this whole situation and calls of terf from my 16yr old. I thank G-d every day her ambition for being 16 was to buy those monster energy drinks!! It's my 14yr old that worries me most, that the most harm has come to just for being gender non conforming to societal stereotypes. One that told her she was all wrong inside herself and being a teenage girl she took it straight to her heart like a poisoned arrow. An arrow that splintered into all our hearts 😢

Written January 2020

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