Saturday 30 April 2016

Keeping secrets, being hated, hoping and waiting.


Good parents love their children. They want the best for them. They want them to grow into independent, happy adults. They enjoy being with them. They feel proud of their achievements and support them in their challenges, They are there for them in their setbacks and drop everything to be there in their despair.

Good parents accept that their children have to choose their own way. They have to make their own decisions and learn from their own mistakes. As the children grow nearer to adulthood, they may offer guidance but never give orders.

Monday 25 April 2016

Being a Minority of One.

“Being in a minority, even in a minority of one, did not make you mad. There was truth and there was untruth, and if you clung to the truth even against the whole world, you were not mad.”  - 1984

First I should make clear that I am catching up with my story, events in this post and the previous all happened a while ago. I'm in a calmer state now, still scary but not paralyzingly so. Also thanks to my editor, you know who you are, and all the wonderful people who are helping me to become a writer of sorts.

My daughter has decided to become a man, wants a mastectomy and testosterone, the group that she'd been going to, it turns out to be a cult, teachers I trusted had been enabling her delusion to boost their self righteous liberalism and pompous patronizing tolerance . I'm supposed to come to terms with this and support her on this brave journey, but just I could not buy it.

Friday 22 April 2016

Hitting Peak Trans and Becoming a Minority of One

The difficult first post, how I got here.


I have a beautiful, witty, smart wonderful daughter. She's always been quite quiet, shy but determined when she sets her sights on something. Late to puberty, lost her last milk tooth only a few weeks ago age 16.

A couple of years ago, she told us she was lesbian, our reaction was that we wondered when she was going to tell us, as far as I can tell we were totally relaxed about that, then after a while she was bisexual, fair enough its all a bit academic in my view until you start fooling about with other people.

She asked permission to cut her hair, we'd never said she had to have long hair, I thought it was a fine idea, she could never be arsed to look after it, and had the bone structure and long neck to carry it off. She got it cut and looked fantastic, you could see her smile so much more and her lovely eyes.

She got into wearing men clothes more and more, and  wearing sports bras, then a binder, but hey I dressed like a fright at her age.

She dropped hints about trans stuff, nothing specific,  just a bit of Social Justice Warrior rubbish that kids say.

In her small group of school friends, people seemed to be changing sexual orientation, then gender identity became the latest trendy thing, we decided to just ignore it, wait for the next thing to come by. She started going to a gendered intelligence support group, which I imagined to be a bit like a feminist consciousness raising group.