Stories

Lived Experiences to challenge and inspire

Hi, I’m Tash

This Is My Story

"This is really hard to talk about and to share my story. I was a FTM trans, all my friends were doing it and finding things online about being trans.

As I watched all the trans videos and heard their stories, I guess I just felt like I could really relate, that I didn't fit into what I thought was being a normal girl. I don't like wearing dresses and make up. It was really easy to talk to doctors, and get my gender affirmed and have 'Him/He pronouns and have most people call me 'Tim". I started 'T' and at first I thought that it was great, but I found it really hard to make friends, or be in relationships, I felt really, really lonely.

I had all the surgery, but found that with all the hormones that the docs were giving me and the surgery I just felt sore all the time, my bones ached and I didn't fit into men circles either. I wasn't a girl and I wasn't a boy. I was a no one.

I stopped the 'T', 2 years ago. I have my good days and my bad days. I regret it. I regret all the things my friends and I said about people like Mel Day, who are just trying to help and get the information out there. When I was trans I thought that people like her were attacking me and my identity, now I see that they were warning me of the dangers and I really wished that I hadn't ignored them. I wouldn't have all these scars, this pain and I would have my old body back. I just wish I had given that body the chance to be all that it could be.

I think the work that Mel Day is doing with 'Staying You' is so important and I've realised that being a girl means different things to different people. If you are born a girl, you are a girl for life and being a girl isn't the restrictive thing I thought it was. I know so many amazing women in every kind of industry, dressing in every kind of way. There is no one size fits all approach to being a woman, it's a biological thing!" - Tash, 25. (2023)

Dead Name

'I lost my daughter, she now wants to be called, 'he/him'. If I call her ‘she/her’, ‘my daughter’ she is triggered, and yells, she tells me that I’m not respecting her identity. That I’m old. That I don’t respect her. She is mad all the time anyway. I miss her laugh and her sunshine, the sound of her rich voice and the relaxed spring in her step.

But, I’ve lost my daughter. And that is very hard to accept. That all those ways of doing things in how I raised her she now perceives as wrong. That her rejection of her gender is a rejection of my parenting.

It’s hard too because 3 years ago my son, Todd was hit by a car and died. The grief and loss of that experience shook me, it’s a pain that broke all of me. Todd will never return. No matter how much I scream his name to the wind and wish for him to walk through the door. Todd is gone forever. But my daughter, not wanting to be a daughter, but wanting me to call her my son. Getting mad at me for misgendering her, telling me her old name is a dead name, dead like Todd. As I watch my beautiful daughter shift and change before my eyes as the hormone treatment makes hair grow on her face and her neck widen. As I nurse her after her surgeries. I feel the same grief and loss that I felt when Todd died. I grieve that I can’t use her name any more, a name I choose just for her. I grieve that all my memories of her I have to talk over, like she has always been a boy, when she never was before.

I grieve because I want my daughter back. I grieve because I am angry that she is locked away inside a body she is bent on changing. I grieve because she will never know the joys of motherhood through her own body, because of this sacrifice she has made for a cause she may identify with today but maybe not so tomorrow'.

Deb - 48( 2023).

I am angry, I am raging

'I've never felt so, so, so mad

I want to scream and scream and scream.

But who would listen, who would hold me as the rage bends my body and breaks me a hundred times over.

We did everything, everything. We couldn't have done more. When Jessica told us that she wanted to be a man, that she'd always felt that she was a man. We did what all caring parents do, we took her to a therapist who diagnosed her with gender dysphoria. We supported Jessica to transition into Jake. We used all the right pronouns. We went to every appointment. We helped the school to understand. We put 'Jake' on hormone inhibitors we gave Jake Testosterone as prescribed by the gender clinic. We were Jake's advocates through every step of his transition. We helped his school understand. We made sure he was comfortable in his boy uniform. We couldn't have done more.

With each change from happy Jessica into distant and moody Jake, we said, 'oh, it's just the hormones, they'll get through it'.

But Jake never got better and happy Jessica was gone forever.

When Jake got his breasts cut off, we thought he'd feel happy, but nothing made him happy, none of the treatment worked to make him feel comfortable in his body.

And now Jake is gone too, just like Jessica. And I am a mess. We are all a mess.

Jake took his life 6 months ago.

We were told that there is a high rate of suicide for trans people that's why they pushed us so much to support Jessica in her transition! But what they failed to tell us, was that those with gender dysphoria pre treatment aren't the ones with high suicide rates, it's post trans, it's post trans who have the highest rate of suicide! Why? Because you can't magic your gender away and become a different person and escape your troubles, and they hit you hard when you are on the other side of transitioning and you realise that you are still you, just stuck in a body that no longer feels as comfortable as it used to.

I think Jessica had BPD or something. I just wish I could have helped her with that instead of focusing so much on supporting her to change her gender, then I would still have my beautiful child'.

Amy, 52 (2023).

My girlfriend became a horrible boyfriend

I had a wife, the most beautiful, sexy women. She was so strong and confident. More on the masculine presenting side, with super short hair, and she'd wear men's clothes, in a really sexy way. We had 2 kids together. We even owned our own home. We were a family. And I honestly thought that we were so happy, I was happy! When the trans movement really kicked off in 2017, at first it seemed like a joke, people would ask her if she was going to transition, and she'd shrug it off, like that was a ridiculous idea, 'girls can't be dudes and why would you want to, girls are super sexy'. But more people kept saying it, asking her. It affected her you know. After a few years she caved. She thought if everyone thought she really was a dude, and she'd never felt comfortable presenting as a girl, well maybe she was a dude. And I supported her every step. All the appointments.

But my god she changed! I wasn't prepared! I'm a lesbian, and it looked like got a boyfriend. But to be honest, I stopped finding her sexy anymore. Her smell changed, her weight changed, she grew hair everywhere. We went though all this surgery.

'And it didn't make her happy, like she expected! She didn't feel comfortable, she was always insecure about passing as a dude, she was always at the gym, working out. Trying to be the dude she imagined, but the dude she became wasn't what she thought, and I think she hated herself'.

I felt like she took it out on me, like it wasn't right. And the 'T' made her cross. She was just angry all the time. Not the woman I fell in love with. She was cheating on me with girls and guys, before taking 'T' she never would have done that! She was a stranger to me, living in my house, but a total stranger.

I broke up with her when she raged and hit me a few times. After that she stalked me, threatened suicide. We had custody fights over the kids. I've never been so scared of any one in my whole life.

In the end I had to go through a DV service just to escape her. I moved house, so she couldn't find me and our kids.

I don't support the trans movement! I wish no one had put that stupid idea into my wife's head, made her think who she was needed adjusting through hormones and surgery, when it didn't, she was 'F@$king perfect' and now she is some stranger I'd never trust'.

Kate - 31

I blame myself

"It's hard, hard to admit your part in all this. I am ashamed. I feel stupid, just so stupid. But I know I need to be honest with myself, honest with my family, my workplace. My daughter.

I've done a terrible, terrible thing that will haunt me until the day that I die.

I was so sure, I had so much conviction. I pushed this crazy agenda in my workplace, I was able to, I was the CEO back then. If any one questioned the trans rhetoric I had them shamed so much that they left, or I found reason to fire them. I was at every trans activist event. I pushed it down everyone's throat, all the time. I made the world around me bend to my delusion. I lost friends, I didn't care, because I was sure that I was right. I had to be right. My daughter told me that she was born in the wrong body and I did everything I could to make her feel better, included. To justify what I let happen to my beautiful baby. The irreversible thing that I let destroy not just mine and my daughter's life but all the other poor souls who I lead down this terrible dangerous path with me.

I remember her coming home from school, telling me she was a boy and I went along with it, absolutely encouraged it. I fought for her to wear what she wanted, I empowered her every step of the way. I let her go on 'T' after we all went to the gender clinic together. I nursed her through her mastectomies and all the surgeries, I was sure, positive; that I was being a great, progressive parent.

But then her pains started, her liver sickness kicked in, her bones were sore all the time. She regretted transitioning. Regretted that she couldn't have kids. Regretted that she couldn't dress like herself, the girl that was; now forever trapped in this manish body that she despised and still despises. That her voice is deep and she can't keep her beard away. That her body is forever changed and she will never, ever be who she could be if I'd just let the phase pass. I've met up with other mums from her school, whose kids were friend's with my daughter, we all realise that our kids regret it, they all transitioned at the same time, ROGD (Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria), influenced by each other. And now they are all stuck in these bodies that don't work like they should. None of us mums will ever be grand parents. We all peaked, all wished we hadn't gone down this pathway with our kids. All wish we could set the clock back. But we can't! And to think I pushed it like I did to everyone around me, I persuaded others to join me on this stupid, dangerous path and have caused the infertility of all these other children, destroyed their future, their families. I will live with this terrible shame for the rest of my life.

Anon - 53.

"I'm a heart broken mom!"

“ My Experience as a parent whose young adult daughter needed time, exploration of treatment options, and healing of multiple issues but instead clambered aboard the medicalized trans train has led me to feel like I’m in a tortured dream state. Parental struggle such as mine is hidden from most people. We live in virtual isolation except for private support groups and a few dear friends. Any version of losing a child is every parent’s worst nightmare. This nightmare has a name, and it is transgender ideology and their partnership with the gender affirmation care system, which encourages medicalisation for kids who self-identify as trans.

It still shocks me when I realize how fast and furious the movement overtakes young people and families. One moment, you are enjoying time together, and the next moment, those relationships are broken. When trans ideology comes to a family, it is like a bomb drops and relationships are decimated, the profound ripple effects spreading from the point of detonation. The “care” is missing from the model, replaced by profits and urgings from strangers to move forward with medicalized procedures and medications that are difficult, even impossible, to reverse if the person changes her mind, underlying issues resurface, or she suffers too much from social ramifications or the adverse effects of testosterone and surgery.

Even when raised by a loving parent, a young adult may be influenced to the point of hopping on the fast-moving trans train and leaving the loving family behind. If the trans ideology can touch my family it can touch anyones!”

Lisa Shultz

Author of The Trans Train: A Parent Perspective on Transgender Medicalization and Ideology

LisaShultz.com

EyesOpen

My sister is driving me crazy!

"Our mum has been going through treatment for breast cancer so I have to do so many of the chores around the house. It's been really hard. But my sister won't do any of the jobs or help in any way at all. She's always looking at herself in the mirror and practicing her 'boy' walk or she's pretending she's a furry and crawls around on the floor and wants to be feed with a dogs bowl.

At school she insists that everyone call her Ricky, and that she is a 'they/them or whatever. But at home she is just Bec. It's stupid, all the teachers call her Ricky, one of the teachers even said that "Ricky" is more masculine than all the boys in the class, when the students rightly asked if she is a girl! Don't they see that it's all an act and she's just pretending to be something that she isn't.

"What my sister needs is help! Like serious help!"

I'm sure that this is her way of covering how scared she is about mum being so sick.

Part of me gets it, I've had a girl friend for 2 years and when I first started to date her, I was confused I thought that being attracted to a girl meant I was a dude and I for a while I made everyone call me "Ash". Gosh, I'm so embarrassed about that time in my life, and that people even now still call me "Ash" sometimes. But I'm 17 now, and I'm now really happy in myself and my body.

I wish people would help my sister, instead of going along with her craziness, don't they realise that they are just making her behaviour and sense of entitlement worse!

I miss the old her, the one that would help me, the one who wasn't always looking in the mirror or being a furry , the one who I could talk to."

- Millie, 17

Alexa Young, CA

Come Back

Anon. 16/1/24

Come back

I scream your name into the abyss

Into the darkest void

Over and over

But you don’t answer

It is a dead name

I want to hold you

Console

Comfort

Oppose you

Look into your curious hazel eyes

And say ‘No’

Don’t

You are enough

You are so beautiful

Beautiful

Your face

Perfect

Innocent

Kind

Your figure

Just right

For you

But you won’t listen

Blind

Deaf

Angry

Afraid

Brainwashed

You want to cut

Slice

Pull

Push

Implode

Obscure

This you

Into a new you

To grow

Beard

Go bald

Thick necked

Big bellied

No breasts

Deep voiced

New smell

A not you

Are you not aware?

Have you not been told?

The pain you’ll feel

When you stare intently at the mirror?

Your reflection will disappoint

Scars

Broken skin

Ripping

Bitting

Muscles

Bones aching

Your

Private temple

Hurt

Smashed

Destroyed

What if you regret?

Walking

Backwards

Reversing

Can’t be

Done

Forever this you gone

New voice

Beard stubble

Body changed

Morphed

New name

Strange pronouns

They

Them

A group

For just one

In time this movement

Will dissipate

Dissolve

When dissolution

Is resolved

It will be seen

For its destruction

With love

I scream

Your old name

I call to you

Halt

Wait

Stop

Don’t

I love you

You are beautiful

Now

So beautiful