A father in Virginia, USA, describes his fears for his daughter’s future, and his efforts to get her to slow down her transition.
Transcript
I’m a dad in Virginia.
Withholding my name for now, because my trans-identified daughter turns 18 years old next week, and my wife and I still have some thin hope that we may be able to persuade her to postpone her plans for medicalization.
This has been like watching a slow-motion train wreck for the past three years. And now we’re facing the date at which, because she technically meets the legal standard for being, “adult”, she can choose to move forward and put wrong sex hormones in her body.
Despite our efforts to try to help her understand what the ramifications of that are, how experimental it is, and that the afterglow effect that I think so many of her trans-identified peers talk about and have experienced if they’ve transitioned themselves, is unfortunately short-lived. And what I really believe is that she would be setting herself down a path for a lifetime of difficulty, both emotionally as well as physically having made herself a lifelong medical patient. And, of course, it’s heartbreaking to watch this happen as a parent.
For her 18th birthday, I’m preparing a video montage for her every year since she was four years old. I’ve filmed interviews with her on her birthday, about 10 minutes worth of question and answer about her hopes, dreams; what she likes to do in the present time; what she imagines doing in the future. As I’ve been putting this together, I’ve watched a stark change from this lovely happy girl all in pink, always with stuffed animals, always very stereotypically feminine, suddenly turned into someone at puberty, in her early teens, who I barely recognise. It’s like seeing two different children.
Fortunately, my wife and I have managed to stay emotionally close enough to our daughter. That despite the constant tension of the gender questioning and our daughters’ understanding that my wife and I don’t believe in her identification as a male, and we don’t support it, we’ve actually managed to keep a fairly healthy relationship which I feel grateful for. I know not everybody else who’s facing this debacle has been as fortunate.
We’re hoping against hope, perhaps, that that connection that we have will be what will allow us to persuade her to pump the brakes, hit the pause button. Give this time to breathe, before she goes down a path that we are 1,000% certain is going to be a mistake.
Any of those of you out there who are facing the same thing: My heart goes out to you. I feel your pain.
Better days ahead, let’s hope.