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My Son Thought He Was A Girl. He’s Now A Detransitioner.
Many detransitioners who speak out receive death threats. I know, because my son, Simon, is a gender apostate, and people call for his death all the time.
Gender ideologues become terrified when people like Simon prove there is life after trans identification. It turns out delusions can pass; people and families can heal. I knew this, which is why I stood up and spoke out when my son was in the throes of trans identification. When his doctor, right in front of my son, asked me, “Do you want a living daughter or a dead son?”, I told him it was the most shocking display of malpractice I had ever seen.
In college, my son’s classmates called for his death, yet they were allowed to remain on campus. My son was the one they wouldn’t allow to speak. He just wanted to tell people he had stopped believing he was trans, but the dean bellowed that he would never be allowed to speak on campus. They tried to get him expelled, his classmates screamed at him in the street, and he received threatening emails.
The gender ideologues want families like ours silenced. I’ve had a mob of trans activists scream at me, in my face, saying that I was evil and did conversion therapy on my son. I was surprised to feel calm — I knew there was nothing I had ever done in my life that was more right than helping my son find the way out of this delusion.
I loved my son then — as I love my son now — enough to tell him the truth. He was born a boy, he is a man now, and he has been male every day in between. For a while, he was angry I didn’t see it his way, but now he is thankful I held to the truth.
Puberty is hard for most kids, but it seems especially traumatic for autistic kids. When Simon was young, he would cry when anything changed — even when a restaurant or a gas station closed. When his voice began changing, he bawled abjectly — his own body had betrayed him from the inside.
Likewise, trying to find acceptance among peers is a challenge for all teenagers; try it when you can’t read nonverbal social cues or interpret your own feelings. As a child, a preteen, or a teenager, my son never knew when somebody was going to bully him. In the case of boys, he was surprised every time he was punched or threatened; in the case of girls, he was surprised to be the target of vicious rumors or a group shunning. He didn’t know how to handle it, and I couldn’t teach him. I didn’t know how to teach social skills to a kid I didn’t even know was autistic.
All of this contributed to Simon’s trans identification. My son was 14 years old when he called his mother and me into the dining room and played us a song on the piano about how he thought he was a girl inside. It was clear he didn’t want to be himself at that point. He was experiencing real distress, but he had been taught an escape rather than a solution.
I wanted to get him help for his discomfort, his sadness, his worry. It’s hard to get mental health support for a kid. Once a kid says he’s trans, though, it becomes almost impossible. You enter an upside-down world, where they believe parents hate their children, and the child tells the doctor the diagnosis. If you’re a parent who wants a therapist to help your autistic teen learn about how to perceive social and internal cues, that can all be derailed when he says he’s trans. They may want to wash their hands of him and send him to the gender center (where all patients are trans as a matter of policy). They may demand you get on board the trans train — or else.
This could be a kid who can’t tell whether he’s hungry or he’s angry. He needs help to distinguish those feelings. But if he says he feels like a woman, a therapist can’t even ask him what he means by that. Activists have gotten laws passed that can take a therapist’s license away if he doesn’t agree kids are trans whenever they say so. And if you, as a parent, aren’t careful, they could even take your kid away from you.
Trans-identifying boys have cheerleaders everywhere. It’s not just the therapists, or the girls who will take your boy shopping and buy him women’s clothes. There are the school groups like GSA, which used to stand for “Gay-Straight Alliance,” but now stands for “Gender and Sexuality Alliance.” These groups preach the religion of gender. Our kids are taught about gender identities in health class as if they’re as real as chromosomes or conception. Online, kids can meet people of all ages with sometimes prurient enthusiasm for their gender identification. What’s one father against all of that?
One father can be a start. I taught my son that lots of people believing an idea doesn’t make it true, it just makes it popular. Reality is what’s still there when you stop believing in it. Right now, trans ideology is popular. But sex is real, and it’s still going to be here when the trans fad passes or your kid overcomes his delusions. If you succeed in holding the line against medicalization, he may be healthy and whole when that happens.
Parents have so many roles. Sometimes you’re a guide, walking in front of your children and showing them the way. Sometimes you teach, sometimes comfort, sometimes inspire. Sometimes a father is just a lighthouse keeper, maintaining a beacon so they can find their way back.
My son found his way back from his delusion. I don’t know all the reasons why, but I know he couldn’t have done it if I had let my light go out.
* * *
Gareth Amaya Price is the father of Simon Amaya Price, a desister. Gareth Amaya Price was featured in a new two-part documentary produced by IW Features, Independent Women’s grassroots storytelling and original journalism arm, as part of its “Identity Crisis: Real Stories About Escaping Gender Ideology” series.
The views expressed in this piece are those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.
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