There are many of us parents who hold the line of biological reality and who refuse to be lured by the gender cult’s beliefs about gender: That men can become women and women men. That there are gendered souls, and that these souls somehow were born in the wrong body and are trapped in this strange vessel that doesn’t fit them. That a person can somehow manipulate their biological reality into some other sex by using dangerous wrong sex hormones and even surgeries. The belief that changing your name to a stereotypical name of the opposite sex and changing your pronouns to signify that you are the opposite sex and wearing clothes typically worn by the opposite sex somehow makes you a woman or a man. Yeah…those beliefs.
For those of us who refuse to accept the illogical conclusions that our children have arrived at, it becomes extremely difficult to show our kids that we love them while staying on the sane side of the aisle. This creates enormous amounts of distress to both our children and us parents. Children may feel dismissed, unheard and even rejected. We, the parents, feel those same things, the trauma of dealing with impending harm to our child, and the horror of insight and the foresight of knowing that our children are irreparably harming themselves for the rest of their lives. We also experience the anguish of seeing our children, as we knew them, disappear. We grieve the erasure they insist on, of their history as our children and as part of our family.
Sometimes it even feels like a death of the person we once knew. In fact, my son wanted me to kill his male self. He told me “(His name) is dead. Can we hold a funeral for him?” I was so wounded that I burst into tears and said “HELL NO! As long as you have breath, you are alive. Even if you kill your identity as a man and your entire history, I will not do that. We will keep you alive in our hearts, in our minds and in our conversations. The pictures and stories in this family will testify of who you are to us. So, no, I will not be part of this plan.
Our kids want us to see their true selves as gone. What they are doing is emotional suicide of their personhood. As parents, refusing to join in his desire to make them disappear is an act of rebellion and an anchor to reality and our hope. We often stand in very small groups as the majority of society seems more than happy to kill these vulnerable young people’s reality and lead them down a path of destruction,
So, even though my son’s absence as the kid and young man I knew feels almost like a death of his person in some ways, my son is still there in the questioning moments when the cognitive dissonance assails him. He is still there even as he fights to cling to this fantasy that he thinks will be the answer to his discomfort as an autistic man who doesn’t really fit in in this world. He lives in a myriad of reminders that pop up daily from Facebook memories, to pictures, to funny stories we tell about each other as a family.
I have eternal hope that my son will come back and I will be in the lighthouse shining a beacon to show him the way home when he is ready and able. And, when he comes back I will welcome him with open arms—my son, always and forever.
Dum Spiro Spero (While I breathe I hope).
