How Trans Activists Alienated Me From My Parents

And what I wish my parents knew about why I trusted trans activists instead of them.

It took less than a year of unrestricted internet access to turn me from a happy, loving kid who obsessively researched niche neurological conditions for fun, into a 12 year old who obsessively researched ways to kill herself because her parents refused to affirm her transgender identity. 

After less than a year of receiving an iPad as a gift for my 12th birthday I went from watching hours of clips from the Ellen DeGeneres show to being carried along via the algorithm into believing that I was born in the wrong body. 

Coming Out as Transgender

One spring day in 2012 I was desperate to tell my mom about the feeling that I was born in the wrong body. I was already in puberty for a few years and was fully convinced by online trans communities, documentaries, and talk shows about “trans kids” that if I waited any longer, my bones would fuse at the height of five foot one and make it impossible for me to really ‘pass’ as a man. I knew that time was of the essence. I was convinced that if I wasn’t allowed to transition immediately, I was doomed to suicide. In a desperate bid to save myself from my own developing female body, I had finally decided to stop delaying the inevitable conversation.

After fretting about ‘coming out’ to my parents all day at school, I decided to summon my mom into the parked car outside of our small house for a private conversation. My mom sat in the driver's seat and I sat behind her in the left passenger side, instinctively buckling myself in— though we had no plans to go anywhere. After I’d buckled myself in, and sat in silence for seconds that felt like hours, my mom asked me what it was that I wanted to tell her.

I felt as if a block of cement had settled in the base of my throat, preventing me from uttering the words I so badly wanted to say. What came out instead was: “I can’t say it. Can you try to guess?”

Without hesitation, my mom asks: “did you get a ‘B’ on the math test we studied so hard for?”  

It makes sense that this would be her first guess, after all, I was struggling to pay attention in math class and my mom, dissatisfied with American math pedagogy, had spent hours educating me herself from Singaporean math books and with the help of her old childhood Soviet textbooks.

“Yes, I did get a ‘B’” I answered “But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.” 

Sensing my nervousness, my mom fixes her eyes on the idle steering wheel. She asks, “Are you gay?”

I wasn’t expecting her to cut through the noise in my brain so quickly and get so close to the secret I’d been keeping, but I should have. After all, I had been obsessed with two lesbian TV personalities: Ellen DeGeneres and Jane Lynch, as well as with the broader Gay Rights Movement at the time. I had already begun to have crushes on other girls, but was too confused about what a crush was to understand that it was feelings of budding romantic attraction rather than an orange-flavored soda at the supermarket.

My voice shook as I responded “no.. not really… but you’re close”

She looks at me through the rearview mirror and asks “Do you want to be a boy?”

My heart stopped. A hypothermic coldness overcame my body, starting from my chest and emanating throughout my limbs. I felt the block of cement that had lodged itself into the base of my throat, preventing me from saying the very thing I felt so desperate to say, had dissolved into a waterfall of tears. Within three guesses, my deepest secret had been revealed. To this day, I have never felt so naked as I did in that moment. I do everything in my power now to never feel those sensations again.

I should have known it was this easy for her to x-ray vision her way through the darkest secrets of my innermost soul- after all, I had been instructed by trans adults online to ‘drop hints’ about ‘LGBT topics’ to assess my parents’ potential reactions before coming out.

I had spent months dropping increasingly more obvious hints; from talking about gay public figures at dinner, to asking my mom if she knew what a “cis” person was as we loaded groceries into our car in the supermarket parking lot, and even inquiring if my mom knew what a “chest binder” was as she dropped a few bay leaves into her famous Borscht- which we would eat for the next ten days. 

I decided to show my mom music videos of trans singer Ryan Cassata whose vlogs I was obsessed with. She was not amused. “I don’t think this person is a good role model for you, Maia” and I responded: “but mom, look at him. He graduated high school early and with honors”

I couldn’t understand why my mom would think that a transgender influencer who wore cool vests, RayBan glasses like mine, who sang decently well, who had a beautiful girlfriend who tenderly cared for Ryan following her breast removal, and who had even graduated early from high school- could possibly be a bad role model for me.

Me (three years later) at 15 with trans singer and influencer, Ryan Cassata. I was given advice about how to sneak off and meet her without my parents knowing. They found out- because I’m not a good liar.

I had planned for the moment of revealing my innermost self-perception to my parents for months. But when my mom finally managed to guess correctly, I felt as if I had lost all control. All the tears I had repressed for months of this fraught identity exploration, over my newly-developed desperation to become the impossible, all came flooding out. I immediately realized I had made a big mistake by disclosing my feelings to my parents.

I was met with panic, with a barrage of arguments about why my self-perception was false, and a bunch of questions which all seemed like a trap “how can you say you’re a boy? You write poetry, you love cats and you do theatre. Remember that ballet class I put you in as a kindergartener? You enjoyed it so much.” Then, my mom uttered the phrase that would change my life trajectory:

“This is just a phase.”

From that moment on, I became determined to ensure that this would not be a phase. I became determined to prove my parents wrong.

That day, I cried until my lungs hurt. I had just made the most important revelation of my life. My parents always told me they’d love me no matter what. Following my ‘coming out’ as trans I didn’t feel love, or warmth. I felt dismissed, confused and rejected. Worst of all I felt totally alone. I was scared to reveal such a thing to my parents, and their reaction only made me panic more. I was already anxious about the prospect of my parents saying “no” because I saw my time running out. I was convinced that the more I would progress through female puberty, the harder it would be for me to become a convincing man and to live a normal life as an adult. I fully believed that I would die if not allowed to transition- not because I was actively suicidal, but because I saw documentaries featuring “experts” like Johanna Olson-Kennedy, saying that kids whose parents don’t allow them to transition, are doomed to end their own lives. I became fearful of myself. 

There are so many things I wanted to say to my mom that day, but the words swirling around in my head kept forming a barricade at the base of my throat- and they wouldn’t come out. As an adult, I now understand my parents’ panic and their impulse to not affirm. I frankly don’t know if I would have been able to handle the situation better than they did. But I do know that their panic only caused my distress to escalate. I needed someone to help me slow down my thoughts, to assure me that everything would be okay so I could get to the bottom of why I felt this way. Instead, I felt that a war was being waged against me.

The ‘Trans Kid’ Narrative in 2012

Leading up to 2012, many gay and some trans vloggers discussed how their parents had disowned them and had kicked them out of the house following their identity declarations. They advised us to prepare a bag of clothes and toiletries, and a backup ‘safe’ person to stay with in the event that our parents reacted negatively. I had gotten so caught up in the anxieties of disclosing my trans identity that I forgot to pack, or to plan anything. My mind went to the worst place- would my parents kick me out and I would have nothing but the clothes on my back?

This was of course a baseless fear put into my mind by online trans activists: that parents who don’t affirm a child’s trans identity will disown their kids over it. But I fully bought into this claim. 

Following my Coming Out as Trans, My Parents Panicked- and So Did I.

I began to use my iPad to reach out to the moms of public “trans kids” for help through their publicly listed emails and the comments sections of their blogs, begging for help. Every email bounced. I began devising ways to bind my breasts without my parents knowing, based on online instructions published in old trans discussion forums online which I had already consumed. In the same way as my parents were scrambling to solve this problem- I was panicking too.

Over the next few days following my coming out as trans, my parents cracked down. They knew that I was getting these ideas from the internet, so they told me that I was no longer allowed to search for any “LGBT” content. They installed spyware on my iPad which slowed the already basic machine so much that it no longer functioned. I was angry and distraught. ​It wasn’t fair. I was the only member of the family whose internet use was restricted. My brother had won this latest battle in our sibling rivalry, openly flaunting his use of the internet around me, knowing that I could not do the same. It made my situation feel even more unjust. My parents said they were protecting me, but I didn’t believe them. 

As a 12 year old, I saw my no longer having internet access as a punishment. I didn’t do anything wrong. I developed the courage to be honest with my parents about my feelings, and yet I got punished. Now that I no longer had internet access, I was stuck alone with my thoughts. If I were just born a boy like my brother, I wouldn’t be going through any of this. But, I wasn’t going to stop researching trans content even though my parents had forbidden it- I just knew that I would have to become sneaky.

When my parents said they were protecting me, I thought this was yet another trap- an excuse for them to stand in the way of me becoming my true, authentic self. I thought they wanted to prevent me from healing my inner turmoil. I now saw my body as being at odds with my mind because surely it’s not normal for a girl to relate better with the boys than with other girls, surely it’s not normal for a girl to find it difficult to control her gaze in the locker room as the other girls are changing for gym class. Sure, I felt uncomfortable with my body developing earlier than other girls in my class- but, I didn’t interrogate those feelings much, or even feel that my body was fundamentally at odds with my personality until I adopted the caustic beliefs of gender identity theory. 

I was a true believer in every single word that these online trans communities uttered and I became convinced that my parents hated me and were actively trying to harm me, which could not have been further from the truth. I thought surely that they would have rather I committed suicide than to have their daughter become a “trans son.” This baseless paranoia would consume me for the next half of my life.

I thought that my parents were as ashamed of me as I was of myself for having these feelings. In reality, they were just worried about the implications of adopting an identity which required life-altering and lifelong medical treatments in order to sustain. But of course, I was way too young to see that.

The 'Conversion Therapy’ Narrative

Some months after my trans coming out, my mom had revealed to me that a former classmate of mine, Joe¹, was struggling with similar feelings about his gender. She told me that Joe’s mom had found his social media accounts, where he changed his name to ‘Joelle’. His mom, she told me, had sent him to a therapist who was helping him become more comfortable with being a boy. She asked me if I would like to do the same thing. 

Alarm bells in my head began to sound. Trans activists around 2012 were already deeply averse to any exploratory psychotherapy as a requirement for access to cross-sex hormones and surgeries, calling it ‘gatekeeping.’ They thought of any therapeutic attempts aimed at reconciling a dysphoric person with his or her body without transition as ‘conversion therapy.’

Around the same time, there were gay vloggers who discussed having undergone conversion therapy in which they were subjected to electric shocks and other forms of physical and psychological torture aimed at changing their sexual orientation. The outcome of this abuse was not only that the person’s sexual orientation did not change, but that they were now even more ashamed and psychologically tortured over their sexual orientation than they were before. Many of them were suicidal and had friends who had ended their own lives as a result of the same torture.

Because trans activists online had made the explicit claim that any therapeutic tactics which questioned one’s gender identity, or helped one to reconcile with their birth sex were forms of “conversion therapy” akin to electrocuting gay people, I was convinced that if I found myself in a therapists office over this, that I too would be electrocuted over my feelings. 

Immediately, I told my mom that I didn’t need this therapy, that I was over my feelings and that I would stop thinking about them. At the time, I was surprised that she didn’t push harder to convince me to see a therapist. It turns out that in 2012, despite her efforts, she couldn’t find a therapist who would take my case, because these cases of pre-teen and teen onset gender identity declarations were practically unheard of at that time. 

Giving a 12 Year Old, Full Internet Access Was a Mistake.

My life had become so complicated and filled with anxiety over these thoughts I couldn’t get out of my head. Though I had originally found solace in the trans explanation for my distress around my body and not living up to sex stereotypes, I began to wish that I had never come across the topic of “trans kids” to begin with. I knew that at that age, I could do very little of what I wanted without the permission of my parents and being presented with the option of transition and not being allowed to embark upon it caused me a new type of anxiety that I never had before.

I thought I would be able to stop myself from obsessing about the trans topic because of how much strife it was causing at home- but the genie was out of the bottle already. The harder I tried not to think about transition, the more I couldn’t stop myself from continuing my spiral into the obsession I had developed around learning everything I could about transition.

I found hope during this time within my school library. Not only did I have unrestricted internet access that I could use to consume more trans-related content, but the following school year there would even be a few books in the library featuring LGBT stories. My school librarian helped me locate the titles and I would sit in the library and read them as quickly as I could- even skipping class to do so. 

Attempting My Own (Secret) Social Transition

I would sneak my brother’s old clothes into my backpack, change into them at school, and hide in groups of other kids as we made our way across the school between classes. I was terrified that my parents would randomly show up to the school and “catch” me. At the end of the day, I would begrudgingly change back into my ‘girl clothes’ and catch the school bus. Because my parents wouldn’t be the ones showing up to the principal’s office, advocating for me to be recognized as a boy, I felt the need to do all of this myself without anyone ‘catching on’ and alerting my parents. Even in the days before schools socially transitioned students behind their parents’ backs, I attempted to do the same thing and it left me in constant anxiety.

I had one gym teacher with whom I discussed my various topics of my obsession: from rare brain tumors, to Ellen DeGeneres, to my pocket-sized version of the US Constitution and even my fixation on all things “trans”. By eighth grade, I regularly showed up to school wearing masculine clothes. After class one day, I discussed my theories about the future of transgender medicine with my gym teacher. I remember the conversation vividly.

I stared at my tan cargo pants and blue velcro shoes (I would not learn to tie my shoes until I was 14- the following year) and suggested to my teacher that maybe someday there would be a way to avoid patients needing to inject cross-sex hormones for the rest of their lives, if only we could figure out how to stimulate the pituitary gland in such a way as to allow male and female bodies to produce high levels of these cross hormones by themselves. Was it a crackpot theory, devoid of any basic understanding of human biology? yes— but that’s not the point. The point is that I was by then, 13. I was so fixated on this topic that I couldn’t avoid speaking about it (or thinking about it) even though doing so was forbidden.

As the bell rang, my gym teacher asked me “Do you think you’re transgender?”

Being the paranoid teenager I was, instead of answering her honestly, I said “I’ve gotta get to math now” and scurried away with my textbook drenched in chocolate milk from lunch.

I spent several of my middle and high school years trying to attain whatever version of a social transition I could, trying to align my appearance with my male ‘gender identity’— without my parents finding out, and eventually the pressure was too much to bear. Despite my best efforts to conceal my social transition attempt, my parents were onto me, and we had daily arguments about my appearance while never addressing the important underlying issues regarding my trans identification. 

My Clever Disguise

The pressure between my school life and my home life had mounted so significantly that for the last year and a half of high school, I made the choice to adopt a more feminine appearance. I knew I needed to get my family off of my back so I could have space to breathe. I made a pact with myself that if these two years of “pretending to be a girl” (dressing femininely) didn’t make me feel better, that I would go to college and begin the transition which by that point, would have been already six years in the making.

I thought that if I had attained a typical female appearance, either I could make my life easier and make my distress go away, or I could later use it as evidence that I really had given ‘being a girl’ the good ole (high school) try- but that it just didn’t work out.

Deep down, I desperately wanted to grow out of these feelings and to be comfortable in my body and the social role of being a woman. But, wearing girly clothes made me feel like I was living a lie. I didn’t feel comfortable dressing in the most socially acceptable ways for teen girls to dress. I tried to live up to the phrase “fake it till you make it” and I’d always find a reason to smile, no matter how much it felt like I was betraying myself by putting on a dress. But I knew this was something I had to do if I wanted to experience less social tension for the time being.

I had swallowed whole so much gender ideology propaganda that I was convinced that masculine lesbians were actually just men without the right body parts, who would always struggle to find girlfriends and be lonely forever. I also thought that adopting a more feminine appearance would finally get me a girlfriend. After all, the lesbian representation on TV by that point had become mainstream, by featuring only lesbian couples where both partners were feminine and conventionally attractive. The masculine lesbians of past eras had already embraced transition and blended into society as men. I had no possibility model for becoming comfortable in my body and in my gender non-conformity (which is largely what motivated me to start doing this type of activism one year ago).

Having a few high school girlfriends to sneak around with took some of the sting out of getting out of bed every day and putting on clothes that felt like a costume, rather than my own. So I convinced myself that at least for a short while, I can swallow my pride and live like this.

“The Fosters” was a popular TV show that I watched as a teen. I thought that all lesbians who didn’t look like these actresses were actually just closeted trans men. Thanks, internet!

The only thing that sustained me during this time was the affirmation I was getting from those around me, who were so relieved that I had finally “grown out” of this ‘tomboy’ phase and blossomed into a ‘beautiful young woman’. Little did they know that this feminine appearance was merely my last chance at deciding whether I would pursue lifelong womanhood- which I thought required me to wear feminine clothes. I thought that if in the next year and a half, I couldn’t manage to stomach becoming a feminine woman, I would discard womanhood entirely upon entering college.

I did not see the option of living as a highly gender non-conforming woman even being a possiblity. I thought I had to either conform to every trapping of femininity, or to spend the rest of my life injecting testosterone if I wished to live a fulfilling life. When a 12 year old is indoctrinated in this way, their thinking stays childlike well into young adulthood. All nuance gets lost within the rigid framework of gender identity.

The pressure of trying to conform to a social role in which I felt viscerally uncomfortable, finally got to me. The summer before entering college, I cut off my hair again, began to gather masculine clothes and got a formal breast binder which I shipped to my friend’s house. Then, I went off to college and introduced myself to everyone with a male name and pronouns. I could finally live the life that I had fought to create for myself since I was 12. I smelled freedom on the horizon, and I had successfully thrown my parents off my trail… or so I thought.

Conclusion

The story of my alienation from my parents and our eventual reconciliation does not end here. What you’ve just read is only the beginning. But for the purposes of this essay— I will end my story here with some reflections:

My parents’ non-affirmation of my trans identity was ultimately in my best interest, but it didn’t prevent me from transitioning and sustaining harm as a result— though, had they affirmed, I would have been hurt by this far worse. I railed against my parents’ attempts to protect me because the ideological beliefs I had adopted at a very young and impressionable age made it impossible for me to see them as anything other than a frustrating obstacle in my way.

My biggest transition related regret isn’t about the permanent damage I have sustained to my body as a result of a decade of breast binding, nor is it related to the low dose of testosterone gel I was able to acquire from a friend, or even about living a lie for so many years.

The aspect of my transition I regret most, is the years of a close relationship that I lost with my parents. I adopted a belief system as a young child which convinced me that my parents who were only trying to protect me, literally didn’t care if I lived or died— simply because they refused to affirm an identity I had adopted during a time of adolescent confusion. Now that I am older, I realize that everything they did for me was out of love. Though buying into the cult-like beliefs of gender ideology after being relentlessly bombarded with them at age 12 wasn’t my fault, I can’t quite forgive myself for it either.

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I will soon publish a follow up to this article featuring advice for parents of trans-identifying kids and young adults available for paid subscribers. Stay tuned!

1. Not his real name