The Truth About Parenting a Transgender Child

MUSIC Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. What is it like to have your child come home and announce they are now the opposite sex? Or to learn that he or she has changed their name and identity at school and there was apparently a concerted effort to keep that information from their parents? Well, our guest today is a mother who has experienced the reality of the trans movement in her own family. Her experience and efforts to learn as much as possible about this issue led her to discover how many other families are being affected by gender ideology. Our guest co-founded the substack Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans, where families were given a space to share their stories. Now Josie has compiled many of those stories in a new book called Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans, Tales from the Home Front in the Fight to Save Our Kids. Well, we're grateful to have Josie with us today to share these important experiences. Welcome to Family Policy Matters. Thank you for having me. First of all, you've asked to be identified with not your real name, but with a pseudonym.

Why is that? It's to protect my family. I have a trans-identified son and, you know, I wouldn't want him to hear this or his friends to hear it or to hear my name.

All the parents I know that have a trans-identified kid use pseudonyms. The only parents I know that don't are the parents whose kids have desisted. Is it a desire to maintain a relationship with your child? Is that the most important thing or are you getting threats of some kind? Absolutely, to maintain a relationship.

And also, a lot of us live in a very liberal state or city and we don't want to lose our jobs. Do you want to tell us more about your story before we get into some of these other stories that you're sharing in your book? Sure. My son in 2019 told us he was trans one day and it very much blindsided us. We didn't understand what he was saying. We had to Google it and there was no information on the internet at that time and we just thought this doesn't make any sense. He was always a typical boy.

He never had any gender dysphoria as a child and he's not feminine. So we just thought something else was going on and I just asked him to sort of wait and then I started researching it and I realized that there were all these other parents. I found a parent group and realized that I wasn't crazy and I wasn't alone and all these other parents were skeptical about medicalizing their children and didn't think their children were trans. So I started writing and a bunch of the other parents started writing their story and then we also researched. We met all these people that confirmed that the regret rate is very high, there's lack of medical evidence, the studies are weak and that's when we realized, uh oh, this is a medical scandal and we need to do something. So we started writing and that's how we started our sub stack.

So when you mentioned right then something else was going on, were you referring to the medical scandal or what were you finding when you looked below the surface? It's not about gender, it's something else. It's like they're asking for a need for change, it's a cry for help, they're being bullied, they're uncomfortable in puberty, they think that if they have this new person, this new life, everything will be better. Most of these kids are socially awkward, they're on the autism spectrum or they're gay and so this is like a way to get out of those uncomfortable situations. Puberty is not a disease and these kids think, I don't feel comfortable and they look up stuff on the internet and it says, oh, it means you're trans. So what did you mean then about the current approach to gender ideology and transgender issues as being a medical scandal? There's lack of data. So this new cohort that has affected my son, there never used to be adolescents who decided they were trans out of the blue. It used to be little kids and older men and now since 2010, all of a sudden there's all these adolescents who decide they're trans and this is a new cohort that has never happened in history and they've never tested this group of kids. There's no statistics. The hormones are not FDA approved.

The hormones, they say that puberty blockers are harmless and a pause and that their puberty will start once they stop. Those are all lies that the medical industry has said. It's a huge moneymaker. People think that it's like being gay, but it's not, you don't have to change your body in order to be gay and people are making a lot of money.

It's a billion dollar industry now. So you started this sub stack, which I'm not sure a lot of people even know what that is. So maybe you could explain that, but also this was an opportunity to hear the stories of other people. Tell us a little bit about that and what kind of response you got there. Well, it's an online newsletter and it's become very popular. A lot of journalists have started their own sub stacks when they're not happy with the quality of journalism in the regular papers and they feel like they can't say what they want to say. And so a lot of very good reporters started sub stacks and you know, they publish and so it's just basically a newsletter and our response, we didn't know that it would, we had no expectations.

So we didn't know that there was such a need for it. We started out just the mom and I who started it, we wrote a bunch of stories and we were publishing two days a week and then we asked other moms, we do, will you write something? And they did. And then we were, so we're just going along publishing two times a week and then people started noticing it and I mean they were, parents just started sending us their stories and we got so many that we had to start publishing five days a week. And then we really realized we were on the map when we saw that gender doctors were subscribing to our sub stack.

Like they were like, what's going on? There's a different voice here. And you know, now we have over 11,000 subscribers. We've published over 530 essays. Not all of them are parents.

You know, sometimes we've had grandparents and other people publish. You're listening to Family Policy Matters, a weekly radio show and podcast of the North Carolina Family Policy Council. This is just one of the many ways NC Family works to educate and inform citizens across North Carolina about policy issues that impact North Carolina families. Our vision is to create a state and nation where God is honored, religious freedom flourishes, families thrive and life is cherished. For more information about NC Family and how you can help us to achieve this incredible vision for our state and nation, visit our website at ncfamily.org. Again, that's ncfamily.org and be sure to sign up to receive our email updates, action alerts, and of course our flagship publication, Family North Carolina Magazine.

We'd also love for you to follow us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. Wow. So are you seeing some themes emerging? Is there some commonality that is obvious to you? Yeah, that everyone says this is my exact same story. Our stories are so similar. I mean, sometimes I'm reading something and I think, wait, did I write that? Because that's my story.

And other people say the same thing. And you can tell that it's a social contagion when a lot of our parents write from all over the world. We, you know, we have parent stories from every continent except for like Antarctica, but their kid will have said the exact same thing in two different countries.

So there's no way that that kid so it's like they get a script off the internet. And we see a lot of the kids saying the same thing to the parents, the doctors and the medical establishment saying the same thing to parents. So, so we see a lot of similarities.

Oh, we see a lot of similarities of kids on the autism spectrum, and that they're socially awkward, or they had a trauma, or something is going on that led them to this, you know, some kind of family crisis, or, you know, a death in the family, something. So who's behind this? Who or what is behind this social contagion?

Do you think? Well, it's a great question. And I wish I knew there seems to be so many theories behind it. I think it's society in general. Some people think big pharma, some people think billionaires who have a lot of money that is coming from Russia or China.

I don't know. Do you have a message for parents that have not faced this in their own families? Are there things that these parents can do that could kind of help you and others who have experienced things like you have? I think that they need to know that it could happen to anyone's child.

And it's not like, oh, it's just his family, their kid, because all of us parents were completely blindsided in the parent groups I'm in. And so what we suggest is to talk to your kid early. Let them know they'll always be a boy or a girl.

They will grow up to be a man or a woman. And just stay connected with your kids. There's a really great book called Hold On To Your Kids by Gordon Neufeld, just by making your family more important than the friends, because it seems to be like this friend culture. And so the kids are substituting the family for friends or for the internet and set really good boundaries, model good cell behavior and make huge internet restrictions. I mean, don't even let your kid on the internet.

There's so much wrong on the internet that the kids stumble into and they can hide it from you. They're very smart. So that's our advice. So what about policy? Can lawmakers or policymakers do anything that you think would be helpful? Well, I think they need to study up on this.

Miriam Grossman wrote a really great book called Lost in Translation. They should read it and look at the medical treatments. Try to figure out where the money's coming.

Investigate the money. Puberty blockers are not a pause. They're not reversible. They need to learn all this so that they can make policy. I know a lot of people are against making policies, but they need to figure out that this is harming a whole generation of kids. And it's sort of treated like a recreational drug. A kid at 18 can go to a Planned Parenthood or college campus online, get hormones just by asking for them. And it seems to be all the kids. It's cool to be trans. It's cool to be on hormones. It's crazy.

And that needs to be regulated. We're almost out of time. Do you want to end with a story from your book that you think would really symbolize a lot of the similarities that you're seeing? Is there one that's most powerful in your mind? Well, there was one called Transgender's Connection with Pornography, and it'll scrub its living daylights out of you. How easily your kid could find stuff on the Internet and what this parent found and how she pulled her daughter out of it. It's a really powerful story and shocking. And that's a success story in your mind? Yeah. Her daughter's completely desisted, thinks it's all stupid now.

All right. Well, before we go, can you give us one more time information about where our listeners can go to get a copy of your new book and just keep up with all the work that you're doing on this important issue? The book is on Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

Some stores carry it. You can look it up online. We're at pitt.substack.com and you can subscribe.

It's free and you'll get an email with our every publishing. Well, thank you so much for being with us today, Josie, on Family Policy Matters. You've been listening to Family Policy Matters. We hope you enjoyed the program and plan to tune in again next week. To listen to the show online and to learn more about NC Families work to inform, encourage and inspire families across North Carolina, go to our website at ncfamily.org. That's ncfamily.org. Thanks again for listening and may God bless you and your family. We'll see you next time.