Conservatives: if you had a child who came out as transgender, how would you react?

[Ferguson97]

Sincere question. Many people change their perspective on this kind of thing when it applies to a close family member.

If one day your child told you that they were transgender and identified with a different gender than their biological sex, what would your reaction be?

[Ferguson97]

I would explain to them why I believe they are wrong from a religious, scientific and common sense point of view. If they continued to believe in it, I'm not sure what I would I do. I certainly wouldn't ever accept it and would take it is evidence that I was a complete failure as a parent. I would keep trying to persuade them against it and would restrict their access to material that promotes this sort of thing.

So would you rather lose your relationship with your kid than even begrudgingly accept them?

Why did you interpret his post to mean that?

What other way is there to interpret it?

Is your assumption that your kid would break their relationship with you if you tried to prevent them from embracing a trans identity?

Yes, and this is often the case for trans kids (and gay/bi/lesbian kids). Having the person who is supposed to love you unconditionally refuse to accept a fundamental aspect of your identity is really traumatizing.

[Ferguson97]

I would explain to them why I believe they are wrong from a religious, scientific and common sense point of view. If they continued to believe in it, I'm not sure what I would I do. I certainly wouldn't ever accept it and would take it is evidence that I was a complete failure as a parent. I would keep trying to persuade them against it and would restrict their access to material that promotes this sort of thing.

So would you rather lose your relationship with your kid than even begrudgingly accept them?

Why did you interpret his post to mean that?

What other way is there to interpret it?

Is your assumption that your kid would break their relationship with you if you tried to prevent them from embracing a trans identity?

Yes, and this is often the case for trans kids (and gay/bi/lesbian kids). Having the person who is supposed to love you unconditionally refuse to accept a fundamental aspect of your identity is really traumatizing.

So you are saying if an 8 year old child of us says one day they are different gender and we decide that they are not, that means we dont love our child.

Correct.

It's no different from those psychos who have a son, but wanted a daughter, so they force him to wear a dress and raise him as a daughter against his will.

[Ferguson97]

I would make absolutely sure it is not just a phase and not something that came about as a result of peer pressure, the Internet, etc.

Do you genuinely not see that these are just recycled anti-gay talking points from the 90s/00s?

[Ferguson97]

I would make absolutely sure it is not just a phase and not something that came about as a result of peer pressure, the Internet, etc.

Do you genuinely not see that these are just recycled anti-gay talking points from the 90s/00s?

It's not intrinsically bigoted to believe that sexuality and gender identity can be fluid and socially constructed, just as it's not intrinsically tolerant and loving to believe the opposite.

The most hateful anti-gay bigots don't consider being gay a phase. They consider it a defining characteristic of who someone is. They just happen to believe it makes someone a freak worthy of death rather than something to be celebrated.

There are degrees of bigotry. Someone can be homophobic or believe homophobic things without being a Bible-thumping "kill the gays" Evangelical.

[Ferguson97]

PSA to those of you espousing an “I’ll disapprove of it but I’ll still love them” approach; you have no idea how much irreparable damage that will probably do to your relationship with your child. This isn’t something you can take an “agree to disagree” stance on and then just brush off, because they won’t see it that way. Shockingly, people don’t love to hear that there’s something fundamentally wrong with them, even if you throw in a “I still like you anyway!”

You might not want to hear it, but in most cases you have a choice between genuinely supporting their transition or losing touch with them. If you think that the former is so reprehensible that you would prefer the likelihood of the latter occurring, that’s on you. That truly is usually the reality of the situation.

Yup. It's the same thing as the Christians who say "hate the sin, love the sinner" nonsense. When that "sin" is a fundamental aspect of who they are, it's not something you can agree to disagree on.

[Ferguson97]

PSA to those of you espousing an “I’ll disapprove of it but I’ll still love them” approach; you have no idea how much irreparable damage that will probably do to your relationship with your child. This isn’t something you can take an “agree to disagree” stance on and then just brush off, because they won’t see it that way. Shockingly, people don’t love to hear that there’s something fundamentally wrong with them, even if you throw in a “I still like you anyway!”

You might not want to hear it, but in most cases you have a choice between genuinely supporting their transition or losing touch with them. If you think that the former is so reprehensible that you would prefer the likelihood of the latter occurring, that’s on you. That truly is usually the reality of the situation.

This has a lot to do with the fact that these kids are constantly told by the larger trans rights culture that their parents hate them if they don't completely go along with it.  

This is correct. If you don't accept your trans kid, you don't really love them.

If you would refuse to accept a transgender child, you are unfit to be a parent.

[Ferguson97]

A parent’s job sometimes is to tell their kid when they are wrong or believing stuff that isn’t true

Hahaha kids have such wild imaginations

No, we're just talking about something with relevant similarities.

"Why does everyone keep calling us transphobic bigots???"

[Ferguson97]

There is no animosity in trying to protect your children from a culture that is pushing propaganda on them to make them feel alienated from their own bodies up to the point of being suicidal and calling this normal.

When trans kids do commit suicide, it's often because they have a parent like you who refuses to accept them.

I can't think of anything more devastating than having the person who supposed to love you unconditionally reject a fundamental aspect of your identity.

When a child hears their parent talk about transgender people the way that many conservatives do - calling them things like mentally ill, disgusting, sneering that they'll "never be a real man/woman" - you know what that kid is gonna think when they realize that they're transgender? "Does mom/dad think this about me? Are they going to hate me too? What if they beat me? What if they kick me out?"

And there is no 'propaganda' tricking children into becoming transgender. This is an absolutely ridiculous premise.

[Ferguson97]

What's ridiculous is the claim that unconditional love requires parents to consent to their children getting mastectomies when there isn't anything physically wrong with them.

Yes there is. Their gender does not match their biological sex. Preventing a transgender person from transitioning is child abuse.

How would you feel if, tomorrow, you woke up in a woman's body?

Which isn't surprising when they are told that if they don't feel like a "girl" then it means they aren't and they need their body to match their identity, and the medical and mental health fields are going along with it.

"Am I so out of touch? No. It's the doctors, psychologists, and people experiencing it who are wrong."

[Ferguson97]

Thank you for illustrating my point above: Calling refusal to allow a kid to get a mastectomy "child abuse" is the undeniable logical conclusion of "trans rights" discourse.  Let's not pretend anything less is being demanded by the call for "affirmation."

Why are you framing your position as if you're simply drawing the line at gender-reaffirming surgery? You've made it clear that you would go as far to deny your child the opportunity to use their preferred pronouns or a new name.

I can tell you this , I cannot see my self ever agreeing to let my child use puberty blockers or HRT and there is absolutely nothing abusive about it.

Forcing your child to go through the wrong puberty is abusive.

Let me ask you this. Let's say you had a child who was born male and decided, after turning 18, that they now identify as a woman. They're 18 and living on their own, and are paying for their own HRT.

All she asks of you is to use she/her pronouns to refer to her and call her by her new name. Would you do that?

[Ferguson97]

Thank you for illustrating my point above: Calling refusal to allow a kid to get a mastectomy "child abuse" is the undeniable logical conclusion of "trans rights" discourse.  Let's not pretend anything less is being demanded by the call for "affirmation."

Why are you framing your position as if you're simply drawing the line at gender-reaffirming surgery? You've made it clear that you would go as far to deny your child the opportunity to use their preferred pronouns or a new name.

I'm drawing the line at assenting to an ideology that leads to people using phrases like "gender-reaffirming surgery."

Why? Other than the fact that it's "ahhh new thing is different and scary to me"?

[Ferguson97]

Yes, it's different and scary, which is an irrational reason to oppose something.  Just like it's irrational to not want to have your brain sucked out by a space alien. Who's to say it isn't actually wonderful unless you've tried it!

This is a weird and disingenuous comparison to drawl, partly because transitioning is completely voluntary and having your brain sucked out by aliens is (presumably) involuntary, and partly because it's dehumanizing to compare a very normal and human experience to a fantastical and sci-fi experience.

Seriously though, I think I explained my reasons already.

No, you really haven't. You've just reiterated the conspiracy that there's some mass movement to brainwash kids into believing that they're transgender, and equivocated mere social transition with gender-affirming surgery. The reason that you have specifically mentioned mastectomies in nearly all of your replies here is because you're attempting to frame it as an inevitable next step after social transition. And you're framing it as such because you want to justify condemning social transition altogether.

[Ferguson97]

I said *want* which I would have thought obviously implies "voluntary."  You implied my refusal to consent to your ideological program was ignorance and prejudice, and so I gave you another example of something that I would be ignorant about but nonetheless justifiably prejudiced against.

Something can be a major risk without being inevitable. If someone socially transitions, are they more or less likely to medically transition?  Am I to believe these are unrelated?  I am very doubtful of this, particularly when people who hold your position on trans rights do not believe social transition is enough and say that not providing medical transition is child abuse. If we lived in a world where medical transition was not promoted to those who have socially transitioned as the next step in becoming their true self, this discussion would be very different.

You still haven't justified why medical transitioning is bad. You can't just frame it as a per se moral wrong, you have to actually defend this position. Why is it bad for someone to use puberty blockers or take HRT, or even go as far as having a mastectomy?