Doing what you instinctively feel to be right is all you can do. Easy to say, i know, but forget about legalities; the law can’t change your love and care for your child during this vital time in their lives.

The world is far more complex for teenagers to negotiate than ever before, and their biggest influence will always be their peer group, exacerbated now by being ever-present via mobiles. When my son & daughter entered their teens in the 2000s mobile technology was still developing so the generation of parents you represent are having to find a way through something entirely unprecedented in human history.

All i can add is, let no-one tell you what is best for your child. So-called ‘experts’ are nothing of the kind – how can they be, at such an unprecedented juncture? Above all, go easy on yourself, if possible. Just staying true to your own principles is the only way forward, and whatever storms hit, as so vividly described in this much-needed article, keep believing your daughter will come through towards fully-fledged womanhood. The overwhelming odds are, she will, despite how overwhelming the changes taking place might seem both within and around her.

And good luck!

The parental rights issue is huge ! Not to mention that if your co-parent isn’t on the same page, there can literally be civil war in a household and make things even more confusing and dangerous for the teenager. It makes me think that the only safe place to raise childrin these days is in the middle of nowhere.

Doing what you instinctively feel to be right is all you can do. Easy to say, i know, but forget about legalities; the law can’t change your love and care for your child during this vital time in their lives.

The world is far more complex for teenagers to negotiate than ever before, and their biggest influence will always be their peer group, exacerbated now by being ever-present via mobiles. When my son & daughter entered their teens in the 2000s mobile technology was still developing so the generation of parents you represent are having to find a way through something entirely unprecedented in human history.

All i can add is, let no-one tell you what is best for your child. So-called ‘experts’ are nothing of the kind – how can they be, at such an unprecedented juncture? Above all, go easy on yourself, if possible. Just staying true to your own principles is the only way forward, and whatever storms hit, as so vividly described in this much-needed article, keep believing your daughter will come through towards fully-fledged womanhood. The overwhelming odds are, she will, despite how overwhelming the changes taking place might seem both within and around her.

And good luck!

The parental rights issue is huge ! Not to mention that if your co-parent isn’t on the same page, there can literally be civil war in a household and make things even more confusing and dangerous for the teenager. It makes me think that the only safe place to raise childrin these days is in the middle of nowhere.

Upvoted for instinctively putting your daughter’s well-being before an ideology.
I am just a man and don’t even have children (an army of neices though)
It was always held to be a commonplace that girls had crushes on older girls or women teachers, but that didn’t mean that they were gay or required transitioning. They were/are children and not to be treated as adults. Children have parents for a reason – to stop them from mutilating themselves, falling out of trees or being eaten by lions. You know your daughter better than I do, but I was a young boy and I suggest that pre-puescents have, by definition, no libido and therefore no real awareness of sexuality except that which is planted there by adults. My mother took a position of benign neglect where my mental/sexual development was concerned – Thank goodness. “He’ll be okay” was her mantra. I am pleased to hear that your daughter is just fine – They invariably are if we leave them alone, but we seem to live in a society where adults visit their own obsessions upon children, to the detriment of all.
See Philip Larkin on the subject.

Upvoted for instinctively putting your daughter’s well-being before an ideology.
I am just a man and don’t even have children (an army of neices though)
It was always held to be a commonplace that girls had crushes on older girls or women teachers, but that didn’t mean that they were gay or required transitioning. They were/are children and not to be treated as adults. Children have parents for a reason – to stop them from mutilating themselves, falling out of trees or being eaten by lions. You know your daughter better than I do, but I was a young boy and I suggest that pre-puescents have, by definition, no libido and therefore no real awareness of sexuality except that which is planted there by adults. My mother took a position of benign neglect where my mental/sexual development was concerned – Thank goodness. “He’ll be okay” was her mantra. I am pleased to hear that your daughter is just fine – They invariably are if we leave them alone, but we seem to live in a society where adults visit their own obsessions upon children, to the detriment of all.
See Philip Larkin on the subject.

LOL. There were times that I wished I had been born a female with curves and a pretty face. Life for many of those with that profile seemed much easier than mine. They were kept very well for a time at least. Until the youthful appearance started to fade and the wrinkles and spare tire appeared.

Correct. Transmengeles in fact. Sadistic paedophile groomers, fronting a child genital mutilation cult.

Absolutely! Social contagion amongst girls is particularly marked and it tends to go in phases of diferent types of malady or suffering at different points in time. Anorexia and other eating disorders; cutting and other forms of self harm. In Victorian times young women would suffer from fainting episodes, and there was a condition that became very ‘popular’ that involved the legs no longer working and the young woman having to take to her bed.
You will find that many young women presenting with ‘gender dysphoria’ have a back catalogue of previous conditions, such as some of those mentioned above.

I know that correlation is not necessarily causation, but one thing has recently increased by more than 4000%: children’s access to pornography. Are there any other alternatives to pornography-access as causation for a change of this magnitude?

How can it increase 4000% in a short space of time? Well if you’re being paid handsomely to mutilate children you’re going to make sure lots of them need mutilating I suppose

There is some truth to that however its mostly in the younger age bracket. A sign of a very dangerous full on propaganda initiative among our children and young people. Its been portrayed as their generations fight against ‘the man’ if you’ll pardon the sex based reference, as homophobia was to mine. That was indeed a very noble crusade. This however is not.

You’re referring to internalized misogyny.
The term misogyny doesn’t refer to all men, just as racism doesn’t apply to all white people (or the people in any dominant class).
Autogynephilia and vast violent online pornography are directly related to the rise trans-ideology, which is inherently a very misogynistic ideology–frankly, a reactionary one to the real progress women were making.
Until trans-ideology, researchers understood that transsexuality among men was about their ORIENTATION, not some inner identity. Most transsexuals were highly feminine boys from a young age who are attracted to heterosexual males–and those are the ones who’ve mostly wanted to be left alone by this awful movement. The second dangerous type–ones associated with all sorts of sexual violence–are the heterosexual autogynephiliacs, meaning men who get off on pretending to be women and, like exhibitionism, FORCING WOMEN TO PRETEND, because they know what a degrading experience it is. they literally get off on it. There are porn genres and social media groups obsessed with it.
The man “Lia” Thomas is a heterosexual intact male who forced women to watch him undress while they were forced upon pain of career humiliation and school tuition loss to undress in front of his. This was a sexual crime, not a civil rights benchmark.
AND, a NEW scary dimension among the millenia old eunuch-ification of boys is a third category of trans-ing boys, who may be joining out of porn use since age 12 and cosplay internet obsession and mental illness, who then become victims of grooming and direct sexual exploitation by the older bisexual autogynephiliacs. On social media sites boys are encouraged to show naked photos of themselves “transitioning” and a fave is to go into women’s spaces and secretly film themselves trying on lingerie. Or, in OnlyFans, some trans have accounts where they film themselves masturbating in women’s spaces and get paid for it.
This movement by Pritzker (a trans-id’d male) with his pharma money is about putting on woman-face and turning it into a civil right while enjoying the transgression against females. These guys CONSTANTLY TALK ABOUT BECOMING THE HOT GIRL YOU CAN NEVER HAVE. It’s a predatory paraphilia popular among incels who introject an image of a pubescent girl as their “identity” and then demand we all stand back and watch them exhibit themselves for their own orgasm.
The social contagion among girls is that they don’t want to turn into the things in porn culture. And they’re afraid if they don’t go along with the trans nonsense they’ll be excluded.
Having said all of that, women can be terribly misogynist to other women, and all humans can be nasty to others. Of course there are some very good, brave men, who’ve been nastily emotionally abused by toxic women. it’s just that women as a class don’t have the structural and physical ability to abuse men in the way that they can with us. That’s why 3000 women are still murdered each year by male partners in the US–a rate of 500:1, w/ women’s murders usually in self-defense. A yearly 9/11 for women. We don’t murder like that.
Misogyny isn’t about you, unless you perpetrate it. Morally courageous men who speak truth to power about this are more needed than ever–please be one.

There is some truth to that however its mostly in the younger age bracket. A sign of a very dangerous full on propaganda initiative among our children and young people. Its been portrayed as their generations fight against ‘the man’ if you’ll pardon the sex based reference, as homophobia was to mine. That was indeed a very noble crusade. This however is not.

You’re referring to internalized misogyny.
The term misogyny doesn’t refer to all men, just as racism doesn’t apply to all white people (or the people in any dominant class).
Autogynephilia and vast violent online pornography are directly related to the rise trans-ideology, which is inherently a very misogynistic ideology–frankly, a reactionary one to the real progress women were making.
Until trans-ideology, researchers understood that transsexuality among men was about their ORIENTATION, not some inner identity. Most transsexuals were highly feminine boys from a young age who are attracted to heterosexual males–and those are the ones who’ve mostly wanted to be left alone by this awful movement. The second dangerous type–ones associated with all sorts of sexual violence–are the heterosexual autogynephiliacs, meaning men who get off on pretending to be women and, like exhibitionism, FORCING WOMEN TO PRETEND, because they know what a degrading experience it is. they literally get off on it. There are porn genres and social media groups obsessed with it.
The man “Lia” Thomas is a heterosexual intact male who forced women to watch him undress while they were forced upon pain of career humiliation and school tuition loss to undress in front of his. This was a sexual crime, not a civil rights benchmark.
AND, a NEW scary dimension among the millenia old eunuch-ification of boys is a third category of trans-ing boys, who may be joining out of porn use since age 12 and cosplay internet obsession and mental illness, who then become victims of grooming and direct sexual exploitation by the older bisexual autogynephiliacs. On social media sites boys are encouraged to show naked photos of themselves “transitioning” and a fave is to go into women’s spaces and secretly film themselves trying on lingerie. Or, in OnlyFans, some trans have accounts where they film themselves masturbating in women’s spaces and get paid for it.
This movement by Pritzker (a trans-id’d male) with his pharma money is about putting on woman-face and turning it into a civil right while enjoying the transgression against females. These guys CONSTANTLY TALK ABOUT BECOMING THE HOT GIRL YOU CAN NEVER HAVE. It’s a predatory paraphilia popular among incels who introject an image of a pubescent girl as their “identity” and then demand we all stand back and watch them exhibit themselves for their own orgasm.
The social contagion among girls is that they don’t want to turn into the things in porn culture. And they’re afraid if they don’t go along with the trans nonsense they’ll be excluded.
Having said all of that, women can be terribly misogynist to other women, and all humans can be nasty to others. Of course there are some very good, brave men, who’ve been nastily emotionally abused by toxic women. it’s just that women as a class don’t have the structural and physical ability to abuse men in the way that they can with us. That’s why 3000 women are still murdered each year by male partners in the US–a rate of 500:1, w/ women’s murders usually in self-defense. A yearly 9/11 for women. We don’t murder like that.
Misogyny isn’t about you, unless you perpetrate it. Morally courageous men who speak truth to power about this are more needed than ever–please be one.

One children’s hospital in the U.S recently proposed that the uteruses of transgender identified girls be transplanted into the bodies of trans identified men. ( A Pittsburg hospital, I believe). Dystopian stuff!

It is certainly a manufactured condition. The crisis it has created, though, is very real.

It is certainly a manufactured condition. The crisis it has created, though, is very real.

Ah, the good old days of the Jim Crow South and women leaving town in shame (or worse) because of an illegitimate child the father skipped out on.
I’d agree that 1955 had it right when it came to surgical alteration, partly because that was barely available (first sex change in 1952). But let’s please find a middle ground between exploding all our traditions with one blast and romanticized hindsight.
{follow-up: As a general matter, I stand by comment, if not the snarky tone. But Ms. Rosenthal’s comment did not warrant my reply, and I accept the communal downvote as a just one}

I enjoyed this article very much. It gave me hope that if reframed our default position that a human body should be a stable phenomenon and our minds have the upper hand to a position that is more align with the truth ie our bodies change all the time , puberty gets a turbo charge , there is a huge number of calibrations that our bodies do at every nanosecond of our existence that we have no conscious awareness off, our minds are very limited and should not delude themselves that our consciousness is in control of our lives . Example: cancer will grow inside you whether you like it or not and may or may not kill you despite all you do on the conscious ( and medical) level. So a little more humble default position ( I think ) would go a long way. Let’s talk to our children about their changing bodies, that is a normal part of life not to be challenged but accepted . If we don’t ride that wave we will drown.

Your comment doesn’t reflect reality. What people want to do to their bodies is their own business and no one else’s. People, especially women and even teenage girls, spend countless sums modifying their meat bag.
Here’s a partial list of body modifications undertaken by women. And these are only the ones that are considered permanent. The list of temporary modifications is considerably longer.
Tattoos, ear, nose, eyebrow, belly button, prepuce and l***a piercings, dental implants, permanent hair removal, lip fillers, lip plumping, butt lift, liposuction, nose jobs, cheek and chin sculpting, blepharoplasty, buccal fat removal, face lift, tummy tuck, breast implants, vaginoplasty.

Exactly, and it’s not unknown among boys, though I acknowledge the imbalance. The quest for a disembodied spiritual existence, which might be part of some “body dysmorphia disorder”, is bound to be thwarted by changing the constituent parts. Has anyone studied the degree to which “wrong body” aversion might be “any body” aversion?

“Efforts to liberate children from the burden of traditional gender roles have helped lead to a net increase in related anxiety and adolescent self-disgust.”

I see it the other way around. The idea that there are fixed, unchangeable male and female features is what leads to a lot of unnecessary pain. Within this mindset, you can’t be a boy and like pink and dolls. If you like those, then you have to be a girl. That’s clearly expressed by parents who supported their children through transitioning. Just accepting that people can like or dislike different things, irrespective of gender, would go a long way toward helping children accept themselves as they are.