A Mother in the Southern United States describes the external influences on her son through social media sites, including exposure to extensive pornography.
Originally an essay on PITT, contains some explicit descriptions.
Transcript
I am a parent living in the southern part of the United States.
12 months ago in my inbox, waiting for me, was a Google Doc from my 14 year old son. It began, Mom, I’ve got something really important to tell you, but it’s probably not what you’re thinking. I’m not gay. Well, kind of.
My son went on to tell me that he was transgender and that for the last three years, I actually had a daughter who was a lesbian. In the time leading up to his pronouncement, our typically quirky and outgoing son had begun sleeping a lot, become brooding and was short-tempered. But we felt this was just the first signs of puberty kicking in. We were wrong.
When asked how long he felt this way, he said things like, I came across information about being trans on the internet, it looked interesting and just fit. Being trans explains why have always felt different and never fit in. When asked why he believed what he believed he would shrug and say, I just know.
After weeks of worsening mental and physical health, I grabbed the school-issued laptop to make sure it was charged. On it, I found the pornographic side of Deviant Art, Tiktok and Reddit. Late at night, unknown to us, while we slept our son had been on these sites. It started out innocently enough. He initially asked simple questions like, Why am I different from other guys? Am I gay? What can I do about hating my body? There were some thoughtful responses but I was shocked to read things like, you’re trans or, maybe you’re a girl.
There were some users that interacted with my child more than others. One friend, a self-identified transwoman, offered to coach my son. They sent hypnosis tracks that included mantras about him imagining himself as a woman, and others that describe being penetrated by a man while visualising himself as a woman. I panicked and rather than taking screenshots and reporting this information, I deleted the account and wiped the history.
After finding this online content, our son had an incident at school where, after getting a problem wrong in a math class, someone thought it would be funny to have notes follow him to every class, describing his idiocy. After school, my child chose to strangle himself. It was impulsive and poorly planned, and luckily he passed out and hit his head instead of ending his life.
After this, our son told us he felt that all the gender stuff was coming from things that he was dealing with at school, and he begged us not to return. So, what did we do? We disconnected from internet and change to a new school. We listen to books about rhetoric and practice critical thinking. We tried our best to feed his mental and physical health, with nutritious food, physical activity and music.
Luckily, we found a wonderful therapist who just let him talk. Over time, hints of, and small glimmers of, his previous wit and quirky sense of humour began to emerge. He never again asked us to use the different names or pronouns, and when asked about the previous request, he said that he could care less.
He revealed that in never feeling like he fit in he had tried to put himself into a more restrictive box, the transgender box, a box that really didn’t work for him. Activists may call us transphobic. And the media may say, affirming and celebrating a trans ID is suicide prevention. Well, I disagree. In our experience, the more our child attached to trans identity, the less functional and more self-destructive he became.
Our son’s ID was a cry to be seen, and a cry to find a place to fit in. We answered, not with affirmation of the identity, which is the popular suggestion, but with affirmation of his pain, confusion and need for help.
We love our child and will always love our child. I’m a parent of a formerly trans-identifying son, and I will fight against the medicalization of developing bodies and minds. I will help others uncover the disturbing influence of online porn and destructive subreddits, where predators find and target young kids, encouraging them to disconnect from their physical bodies.
I am one of 1000s of other parents that are now, at last, questioning the harmful trans narrative.