By @peak_up (YouTube)

Imagine you need to get to the washroom for a female issue, or one you wish to deal with privately, and your biologically male partner decides to go along into the same washroom thinking it’s an opportunity for some fun “girl time”. Bathroom retreats and female-only rituals are things men want badly to be included in when they try to become women. Perhaps they imagine we strip down to our underthings and bounce our boobs around, splashing in the water any time we are out of sight of them. It seems to be an extension of the lingerie pillow-fight fantasy they think they missed out on growing up because they were boys. 

Imagine falling in love with someone of the opposite sex, and then being expected to identify as homosexual when your partner undergoes attempted transition to the same sex you are. Or imagine the obverse, wherein you are expected to identify as heterosexual after your same-sex partner decides to be identified as a member of the opposite sex. This is a serious problem for people who want and enjoy their true identities and orientations the way they are. Being gay might be part of one’s personal political stance. He or she may enjoy occupying that minority position, or doing activist work from it, and feel invalidated if expected to identify as anything but gay. Some might simply fear that being forced to suddenly identify with a different sexual orientation could put unnecessary strain on other relations or activities in their lives. “Transgender” partners’ identities seem to assume automatic precedence over all others, and everyone else involved is expected to make adjustments that may be difficult or impossible for them.

Even when people know themselves to be bisexual, it doesn’t mean they will stay attracted to lovers who medically alter their sex characteristics. Bisexual people are not just attracted to everyone. They are attracted to certain chemistries and compositions, like most other people. When a bisexual person is attracted to someone, the attraction is not determined by sex charcteristics, but is based on the whole combination of qualities, which sex characteristics largely factor into. When a lover alters his or her hormonal chemistry, that will change the attraction, and can completely negate it.

People who try to change sex rarely ever truly “pass” as the opposite sex. Most end up looking much more abnormal as patients of a medical “transition” than they did as gender non-conforming individuals. For this reason, many people who are trying to “pass” (deceive) as the opposite sex end up engaging in obsessive behavior regarding their appearance. This can be time consuming and expensive, putting pressure on their partners to emotionally support them and absorb any financial burden it poses. It can also make their partners feel judged about their own engagement in such behaviors. If a woman’s husband transitions and dresses up with loads of makeup and jewelry, for instance, the woman may feel like she is expected to do the same, or that she has been doing womanhood wrong by his standards. When sex-based stereotypes are made hyper-prevalent by one partner, it can cause the other partner to question his or her own expression of gender. The obsession is potentially contagious, and will infect many people who come into contact with it, including kids.

People who try to change sex expect their parents, children, and siblings to learn a whole new way of referring to them, which is much easier said than done. Naturally, people will slip and use the old names or the correct sex pronouns, and then they may claim to be personally attacked and try to induce feelings of guilt about it. People who wish to live as the opposite sex often have underlying emotional issues or personality disorders, and the use of dramatic tactics for attention or alienation can derive from those issues as well. The added element of a “transgender” identity may amplify this drama and be used to legitimize and solidify claims of victimhood. Even in cases where a person is mentally stable, family members will surely have different opinions and feelings about the choice to try to change sex, and this can easily cause strain on family relations. Perhaps in some families, relatives like these are accepted without any complications, but in many families, the choice to try to change sex will be questioned. This can cause conflicted feelings and some will even start to avoid family functions. Families divide over such things, and it hurts everyone involved. The family member who is trying to change sex usually claims to be the most injured party, but it is probably mothers who suffer the most from family upset.

Children with “transgender” parents are at as much of a social disadvantage as any other child whose parents have visible abnormalities. In many cases of abnormality, such as a handicap, acceptance is rightly taught to children; some even learn to see certain abnormalities in a favorable way. There are several active campaigns designed to teach children to be accepting of visibly “transgender” people this way, but is that the same thing as a handicap or a disability? People who look different should be accepted absolutely, but people who try to change sex do not have that abnormality until they dress themselves up to deceive. People should be accepted when they dress in clothing designed for the opposite sex, or do activities that are typically assumed to be done by the opposite sex. Breaking gender stereotypes is a wonderful way to show kids (and everyone) that it’s acceptable to wear whatever clothing styles and do whatever activities a person likes. However, people who say they’re “transgender” are reinforcing stereotypes rather than breaking them. They wear clothes made for the other sex, and say they are that sex because of the clothes. Further, they are not asking for acceptance for the gendered clothes they choose to wear, but to be accepted literally as something other than what they are. Children can generally tell whether someone is a woman or a man by instinct, and they are being taught to deny their accurate perception and placate the delusion that these particular people should be called otherwise, and be accepted as such. Gaslighting is a well-known abuse tactic, and the fact that people are being told it is morally correct to do it with children this way should alarm us.

How are children, or is anyone, expected to differentiate between the people who appear in opposite gender stereotypes because they are simply more comfortable in them, and those who expect to be called the opposite sex because they appear in opposite stereotypes? People who try to change sex rely on harmful stereotypes to be identified as the sex they say they are, implying that these stereotypes are what defines a person rather than physical reality. All the while, families and teachers are left to try to explain to children the baffling rhetoric that some women are men, and some men are women, which is contrary to many other things they are learning, and can easily result in shame and serious confusion. Even if teachers and parents don’t subscribe to this false message, they have no choice but to teach it anyway, or have children removed from their care.

Mothers of “transgender” teens must suffer the greatest emotional strain of anyone from this cult-like contagion. After laboring to carry and give birth to their babies, and being providers of all of their needs, entertainments, and comforts, their peer-oriented, media-influenced kids tell them they have done it wrong. All along, they have called them the wrong names, wrong pronouns, dressed them wrong, given them the wrong toys and the wrong answers. They will now take into their carefully tended bodies some toxic “medications” that will help correct all of these wrongs. They will consult professionals to “fix” what parents have done. There are no words that could encompass the fear and hurt a caring mother feels when her kid thinks that he or she was born in the wrong body. Mother knows that the child’s body is right. She watched as it grew in normal stages and into the person she could never love less. When the child who has only the first glint of what a lifetime is worth is trying to tell her that body is wrong, she has no recourse. The schools, peers, therapists, and doctors all agree that it is wrong, and that they can fix it by affirming the lies and destroying the health of her beloved creation.

Parents and partners who try to change sex often shorten their lives with hormones, causing their families to lose a loved one sooner. Some feel the need to surgically alter their bodies, which can be devastating to partners and children who need or love them as they were before. It may also be devastating, or horrifying, to partners and kids who find the surgical modifications repelling. It can be traumatic for kids to see their parents obsessed with forging an appearance that strives to oppose physical reality and deceive others. Kids look to their parents for an example of maturity in handling complicated problems, and people who try to change sex show pure denial and unwillingness to admit truths that make them uncomfortable. Many kids will see their “transgender” parents as people who could not deal with reality or make healthy choices.

After sex reassignment surgery, it often happens that people are not happier with their new bodies, and this can cause emotional upheaval, as well as a whole new set of challenges for their partners and families to deal and live with. Emotional mood swings can easily result from taking massive doses of artificial hormones alone, but after an irreversible surgery that didn’t turn out well, and did nothing in the way of fixing their problems, their moods may variate even more unpredictably.

People who try to change sex often have a harder time fitting into social situations because of their insecurities and appearance concerns. Many cannot go swimming because of the required garments, or engage in any activities that take them too far away from their “passing” tools or comfort zones. Many have trouble finding work because of the discrepancies between their abilities and their comfortability, and some are discriminated against by employers who are disturbed by their oddity. Many cannot hold jobs when they get them because of their emotional instability. All of these things add more problems to the already difficult predicament their partners live with, while the “transgender” partners use all of these problems as reasons to call themselves the victims.     

It is somewhat understandable that so many people are falling for the lie that people can change sex. People are trained to believe the decrees of doctors and therapists, and many are rightly taught in many families that acceptance of peoples’ differences is a virtue. This is a tricky subject, and a confusing one to people who are trying to do the most loving thing. Many people think that what they are feeling is prejudice when they question a person’s “trans” identity, and for some it may be. Personally, when I question it, I feel a protective, caring intuition that trying to change the sex of the body is harmful and unnatural. Some people will hear that statement and think, “That’s what bigots used to say about gay people!” I would agree that when people said that about gay people, it was out of fear and hatred of homosexuality. The difference is that being gay did no harm to anyone, and didn’t infringe on anyone else’s rights. After much research and education, I have confirmed that my skeptical intuition was correct about this. There is nothing loving about accepting false identities based on harmful stereotypes, or devastating medical procedures to affirm them, as progressive. 

@peak_up was born and raised in Humboldt County, California, and now resides in southern Oregon where she teaches Yoga, volunteers for a nutrition organization, hosts a feminist consciousness-raising group, and homeschools her teenage daughter. She is forty years old and has been married for five years. She was politicized by radical feminism after her husband tried to become a woman, and speaks out to help others affected by the harms of transgender activism.