I’ve had a number of people ask me how I felt after learning that our son is a dysphoric man. That’s a good question.
My wife asked me the other day, “what’s worse than a slap in the face?” I quickly replied with, “a punch in the nose”. But I misunderstood what she was asking. She was trying to come up with a way of describing how she was affected by our son telling her he’s pretending to be a woman.
The phrase “a slap in the face” is one of those things where everyone knows what it means but might find it difficult to put into words.
Before we found out about any of this, my wife had mentioned that, as a woman, she was completely offended by people who pretended to be her gender. Just the thought of a grown man “identifying” as a woman really pisses her off.
Then, she found out that her own son was one of those people. Yeah, it was a slap in the face, but cranked up to eleven.
That got me thinking. The English language is full of those phrases. Shorthand ways of communicating a lot of information without saying much. They’re called “idioms”. “A punch in the gut” is another one. So is “a kick in the teeth”. Put your mind to it and you’ll come up with dozens of examples of your own.
Our son hasn’t told us much about how he came to his decisions. He hasn’t said much about anything really. But from what little he has shared with us, and the way he shared it, it’s obvious to us that someone is telling him what to do.
My wife and I started joking about the “trans playbook”. It felt like he had someone following him around with a clipboard checking things off as he accomplished them.
As I told you previously, he’s been going down this path for nearly two years without even mentioning it to us. It’s quite likely that we could have talked some sense into him had we been given the opportunity. But, like a cult, whoever was pulling the strings made sure he distanced himself from anyone who might interfere with his programming.
We decided later that he couldn’t have hurt us more if he had tried. We got no warning or hint about what was going on. One day, out of the blue, my wife got a text. We learned later that he posted to his social media accounts a full two months before he told us. We were literally the last two people he told. That was a real kick in the teeth.
Playbook Achievement: Cut yourself off from your family…check.
When he finally did tell my wife, he asked her not to tell me. Little did he know that she was pissed because, being a woman, her entire gender had been belittled. I guess his thinking was that he could convince her to buy into his new identity bullshit as long as he could keep her from being influenced by me.
Playbook Achievement: Try to recruit someone…check.
My mom used to be big into genealogy. She had traced our family history back to before my first ancestor came over here on a boat. I was thinking about that the other day and wondering if history will record my son as my son or as my daughter. A hundred years from now, nobody will be around to make sure the facts are straight. I think about that, and it saddens me. I don’t have a daughter. I have a son. Nothing is going to change that. But what will history say? What name will it remember him by? The one we gave him, or the one he gave himself?
I remember the moment we decided what his name would be. It was about four months before he was born. For longer than he’s been alive, we’ve been calling him by that name. When we found out that he’s discarded the name we gave him like yesterday’s trash, that was a real punch in the gut.
After our son expressed his concern about telling me, because he was afraid that I’d judge him, my wife told him I’d give him a break because he’s our son. His reply was, “so I’m just the one exception safe from judgments?”
I don’t know about you, but when I’m sick, I don’t spend a whole lot of time thinking about how I’m going to make some else’s life better. Generally, I don’t think of anything other than taking care of myself. But my son was more concerned about how I’d treat other dysphoric people than how I’d treat him.
Playbook Achievement: Care more about the “cause” than you do for your own wellbeing…check.
He said he has chatted with a professional specializing in gender-related topics and her/his response was “validating”. Of course it was. That’s what they get paid for. No one should believe that someone who specializes in gender-affirming care is going to suggest anything else. And yet he implicitly trusts that person.
And that person has convinced him that I was a horrible father, was responsible for every bad thing that happened in his life and that he should no longer have anything to do with me. Finding out about that wasn’t just a punch in the gut, it felt like I was taking body blows.
Playbook Achievement: Unquestioningly believe what you’re told, no matter how ridiculous it sounds…check.
We set our son up for success. And he threw it all away. To see him follow the “trans playbook” and completely disregard everything we taught him, well, that was another kick in the teeth.
Playbook Achievement: Be rejected by your parents…well, that one he didn’t get.
We didn’t reject him, we simply told him we weren’t going to reinforce his delusion. I’m sure he’s going to tell his Glibtaq friends that we rejected him, but that’s not true. He rejected us because we wouldn’t play along. He slapped us in the face.
So, you want to know what it feels like to have your son throw away everything you gave him and pretend to be a woman? To hear him tell you, after everything you’ve done for him, that he hates you?
It’s like a slap in the face, a punch in the gut and a kick in the teeth. All at the same time.
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