I used to parrot the standard left ideology on gender identity. Then, my nine year-old daughter declared herself “non-binary,” cheered along by a step-parent who (without my permission or knowledge) took her to a hair salon, had her head shaved down to a short fuzz and dyed purple.
This occurred on the day before she started fourth grade. Her classmates (and the school administrators) were stunned. This was not the same child who ended third grade.
The step-parent kept leaning in a little too much, buying her “pre-binder training bras” (that she did not need…she was nine years old), lapel pins with the message “My pronouns are they/them,” t-shirts with pro-trans political messages…
Remember…my daughter was nine at the time. She didn’t have her own source of payment for these items or the means of ordering them.
Until this step-parent entered her life, my daughter never rejected typically “girly” things. I had never heard her say things like “I’m queer” or “I’m nonbinary.”
She then announced that the name she was given at birth was now her dead name, demanding that everyone call her by a new name comprised of her initials.
Who taught my nine year-old the term “dead name”?
I tried with the new name. I tried with the they/them pronouns. I really did. But, it seemed so afflicted. It was like she joined a cult.
I tried to intervene, legally. Nearly $200k in legal fees later, I lost her. She was coached on all of the “buzz words”…that she did not feel “safe” expressing her gender around me…that she hated me, that I was just a womb that gave birth to her and not her real mother.
Looking back, I now see where it all might have started. For a few summers/school breaks, she attended a STEM camp for girls, where she learned how to code and design circuitry. Nearly all of the counselors had name tags with their alternative pronouns (they/them, zie/zir, etc.).
At first, my “I campaign for Democrats and am a liberal” former self thought “Wow, how progressive of them!”
Looking back, I now realize it was internalized misogyny. I now understand the message they were subtlety giving (intentionally or not): Even though this was supposedly a camp for “girls” (it even had the word “girls” in the name of the camp), to have skills in the tech world, you have to reject the fact that you are a girl/woman. You have to reject your sex and adopt an “alternative gender identity.”
I later found out that the step-parent was bringing her to drag shows and often hosted parties and charitable fundraisers where drag queens were the featured entertainment (my daughter was in attendance at these events).
Many years ago, I went along with the suggestions of friends that we meet up for “drag queen brunches.” If anyone even suggested that they perhaps were not comfortable with that idea, they would be met with looks of shock and the insulation that they were homophobic.
I remember sitting at those drag queen brunches…I was typically picked on by the performers because I probably looked uncomfortable. I was touched without my consent (fake breasts shoved into my face), sexually harassed (asked about my “blow job skills”), mocked for what I was wearing.
But, if I objected, it automatically meant that I was a homophobe, At least in the eyes of this group of former friends.
Pivot: About a year later, my daughter also told me she was gay. Let me state this LOUD AND CLEAR: I have *zero* issues with this. Repeat: I have *zero* issues/concerns whatsoever with my daughter’s sexuality or sexual preference.
What horrifies me is that she is slowly being erased as a lesbian girl/young woman. That she has been taught to conflate her sexuality with the need to adopt an alternative gender. That she has been taught that she was born in the wrong body.
I now consider myself politically unhoused. I have been abandoned by my former friends. My ex-husband (during a failed attempt at family therapy) insinuated I was a Nazi.
His new wife is in PR/marketing. How wonderful for her “disruptive” approach to PR to be able to parade around my child as a token, just like the drag queens she hires for her charity events.
So, in short, yes…I have completely had my beliefs shattered. I now see the physical and mental harm being inflicted upon young women. I see the erasure of lesbian women.
I wait here. Alone. I am going to get her back one day. I know I will. Because the identity movement is unsustainable.
What an incredible experience you’ve been through. I hope that you will find a way to live authentically and reconnect with people who will understand you. And I sincerely hope that you will be able to reconnect to your child one day. I’m glad you’re waiting for that day and not writing her off. She may well change her mind about many things as well.
Thank you, Sara. You don’t know how much it means to me to receive a reply. Substack is my only “anon” social media outlet. Sharing my thoughts here (which I actually do very rarely) is therapeutic. Your kindness is appreciated.
More than I ever wished I had to. I have always been a little bit envious of people who haven't asked themselves the hard question of "What if I'm wrong?". Having your fundamental beliefs shaken and questioned can be completely earth shattering and heartbreaking. Growth doesn't come easily
I spent most of my 20s as an irreligious "preacher" in the local Unitarian Universalist community. I had been raised Catholic and, far from rejecting it, I sought to expand on it. God loved everyone, you see. Excommunication is bad--churches should accept everybody! Universalism!
Long story short, I had to face the limits of my own ability to love everybody. I was very much a fair-weather friar, not really going out of my way to actually relieve anyone's suffering in this world. I didn't pay the costs of loving anyone; what I thought was love was just squishy good feelings about arbitrary strangers, combined with a very self-centered approach to anyone I actually interacted with. Certainly, if someone didn't love me as much as God loved me, that was their fault and their transgression, not mine!
To quote from the last sermon I gave when wearing that identity (almost 20 years ago now!):
"I thought that the world's many denominations were split because they put boundaries on their membership; I thought that all that was needed was more universalist preaching, a reminder that we are all members of one great family. But looking at the world around me, I'm embarrassed that I ever thought it was so simple. Most of those Christians out there believe in a God that at least approaches the infinite mercy of the universalist God's universal family. But only such a creature of myth could pull it off. We who are merely human have a limited capacity to love, and we must make choices about who we will commit to as family. Poetic exclamations of our universalism only serve to obfuscate such discernment."
To this day, I still believe God loves everybody. But having to decide who I personally love, in the true sense of being willing to take on responsibility and give of myself and sacrifice (once I learned to do that for anyone) pretty much turned my entire life on its head. It lead eventually to a small number of actually loving relationships, but it took real time and work, and I do wish I had started that sooner in life.
A common thread I see in all these youth-to-adulthood conversion stories is the transition from ideal to practical. As kids, we're taught the ideal and taught to obey it. As adolescents, we reject what we were taught was ideal, but we still cling to an ideal. But there's a point in adulthood where there's no parent or other moral authority enforcing the ideal, just you trying to do the best you can and frequently failing, and that's where we find out what we really believe, what we really prioritize and who we really are. Probably not a universal human experience, but common enough in our day and age.
Dear Kier I am coming to montreal and I wonder if we could meet. I would be very grateful. I am not very good at navigating Substack. I would be happy to send you information on myself. I just don’t know how to do it privately. Many thanks for advice.
I was a very traditional conservative Christian, all I ever wanted to do was teach. I felt like the only place I belonged was school... I believed there was something intensically wrong with me and didn't care if I was miserable as long as I was pleasing those around me, namely God and the church, and my parents.
I didn't examine a lot of the things I believed because doubt was hell and I really didn't want to displease God, and I believed whatever I desired was sinful... It was a whole mess.
Well... I lived my life with the saying, "I didn't get this far just to get this far." And I finally got to teach...and I sucked and hated it. And I was like, "My future students deserve better... I deserve better..." And I just... Took that belief and watched it burn and a lot of other beliefs went with it, and I put trust in God as I learned to love myself, and came out of the closet. I changed my major to Social Work... Learned about affirming theology, examined it and beliefs that contradicted it and fully embraced the idea that God fully loves and fully affirms LGBTQ+ people, including myself, and that maybe I'm supposed to advocate for them
For a long time I was convinced that being intelligent was synonymous with doing well at academic endeavours. And since I did well at most academic endeavours, that obviously made me smart. Actually, a lot smarter than most people in my classes. It was hard not to feel superior to those poor people who struggled to pass courses or those who got average grades.
Years passed and I read a book by Daniel Goleman called “Emotional Intelligence”. It was on best seller’s lists and I was intrigued by the title. That led me to read Howard Gardner’s book called “Multiple Intelligences”. I read Daniel Goleman’s book called “Social Intelligence” the minute it was first published. I couldn’t get enough of this stuff.
Those books changed everything about the way I look at myself and at other people. I could definitely see areas where I had underdeveloped or even low intelligence. I could see how other people who failed at academics could still have high intelligence in other areas. I was especially intrigued by the concepts of both emotional and social intelligence and how much more linked those particular intelligences are to “success” than simple book smarts are.
The fact that the various intelligences are quite separate is incredible to me. When I listen to the work of an amazing musician or watch an Olympian gymnast, I am in awe. I know that it reveals to me only one thing about that person’s overall intelligence.
I also now know that my “book smarts” is just one aspect of myself and not necessarily at all the most important aspect. It’s my hope that educators understand all of this and no longer favour people like me the way I used to be favoured when I did well in school. It’s my hope that educators these days understand more about the importance of all aspects of intelligence.
I used to believe that I had to (and was *entitled to*) forcefully correct people that said things I thought were wrong. I thought it was my moral duty to pick out any slightly off-color comment and squash it without question. I cringe at the way I used to bully the people in my college classes like this.
I used to believe that I had to bear witness to every atrocity in the world and tell everyone how much I condemned such actions (on social media mostly) in order to be a good and moral person. If I looked away, I was bad.
I used to believe that I had to believe everything every other leftist believes in order to be a leftist.
I used to let this kind of purity infiltrate everything I did and I forcefully policed my own thoughts as a result. I could not and would not tell my partner about my doubts because the few times I tried to, they acted like I had committed a crime. They once told me they were questioning my politics because they saw I had one of Obama's books on my shelf... which I'd never even read and had been gifted to me by a well-meaning family member.
I starter to steer out of this thinking by covertly following a few instagram accounts that were posting some left-critical stuff. I cannot remember them now or even the contents of the posts themselves, but I remember feeling so SANE reading them. Then about 4 years ago I got off of Instagram and all social media for good and I was able to really, truly think for myself. I formed my own opinions that I now happily question and debate with my current partner and trusted friends.
There are still some things I do not (and probably will not) discuss with most of my friends -- the biggest example I can think of is my criticism of autism self-diagnosis. But I feel so much freer, calmer, and happier. And even more settled into my leftist beliefs!
Hey Ace! I relate to so much of what you describe, particularly the regret for how self-righteous and condescending I used to be—although it’s a natural consequence of thinking you have all the answers and everyone else is bad!
Glad to hear you’ve found a social circle in which you can think and speak freely. What a joy and a relief after escaping the fundamentalist region of the social justice world.
Autism self-diagnosis sure is a touchy issue… have you read Freddie DeBoer on the gentrification of disability? If not, I think you’d enjoy it.
Thank you for your kindness and the space to share!
I have read that piece and appreciate Freddie's thoughts on the subject-- thanks for suggesting it. I just took a moment to re-read it. It definitely mirrors a lot of what I see in/around my social circle as well.
I do not think it's my place to 'correct' or question these folks because at the end of the day I do think there are plenty of people that have greatly benefited from their own self-diagnosis and I do think that some of these folks are autistic. And I don't think that most of these folks are coming at things from any sort of malicious standpoint... it is clear they are experiencing pain and friction in their lives and they are searching for an answer for that pain or friction. In my opinion, the answer is often that life is very hard for no reason. Pain and friction are unavoidable. And sometimes there are things about our brains that can worsen that pain and friction, but outside of the spectrum of disorder is a whole spectrum of neurotypical struggle.
The high-functioning high-masking autism-related tiktoks are so persuasive that I even spent an hour or two questioning if I had autism. I think the main issue lies in self-diagnosed people who may not have autism create content for other folks about having autism that flatten and de-contextualize autism symptoms.
Wow I just read that DeBoer piece on your recommendation and I feel significantly less crazy now than I did before reading it. I've been noticing that a lot of people in/around my social circle identify as being mentally ill in some way or another, but that the specific labels they choose really don't seem to bear much resemblance to traditional understandings of mental illness and disability. And there's obvious pressure not to question these people, lest the questioner be accused of being ableist or otherwise intolerant.
I used to be really involved in a reproductive justice organization that primarily focused on abortion rights but also on many queer rights issues. One of the biggest beliefs the organization had was to "center the most marginalized people." The idea was to find the most marginalized group, focus on addressing their problems, and that will solve everyone else's problems because all oppressions are linked together. It seemed like an obvious idea at the time and a way to counteract the history of reproductive rights as mainly focused on issues relevant to wealthy white women. But over time, I realized that this approach is a bastardization of intersectional theory that does more to alienate people than it does to help anyone.
The biggest problem is that finding the "most marginalized" forces you to rank oppressions. Everyone would say that it doesn't force people to play the oppression olympics but it absolutely does when you're claiming that you can easily say who is more marginalized. But life is more complicated than that. Not all types of discrimination and stigma easily fit together. Addressing the problems of a homeless Black trans woman doesn't necessarily help a pregnant refugee. In addition, focusing too much on labels makes it difficult to talk about people with more ambiguous identities and can feel dehumanizing when so much of the conversation focuses on being x, y, z. They wanted us to start every meeting saying who were are people, which meant listing out all of the marginalized identities we could lay claim to. I always hated doing it. I'm unabashedly queer but I was resentful of how performative it felt.
What changed my mind was a combo of feeling uncomfortable as someone who doesn't fit easily into certain labels/groups and seeing how the concept was used to stop conversations rather than propose any solutions. "Centering the most marginalized" was mainly just brought up when someone felt a solution didn't address whatever group they had in mind even though no solution could help everyone. It just became so exhausting and it really felt like no good work was being done since most our time was spent discussing theory as conservative Christians rapidly tore down our reproductive rights.
Wow—you write about this quagmire so eloquently! So many social justice ideas sound good in theory but totally break down when they become organizational policy, and the ideas don’t stand up to scrutiny either.
I heard an interview on Theory Underground with Walter Benn Michaels, and he said (something like) when universal programs are unimaginable because of the state of politics, then of course people will start to make particularist arguments to try and get their needs met. “I deserve healthcare because I’m x identity.”
It gave me more compassion for people who are stuck making arguments in this way, even while I maintain that it’s not the way to go.
I've had a lot of beliefs shift over time! Raised conservative Catholic, by middle school I was a progressive new athiest. Around 5 years ago, I switched from eating meat to veganism and moved from the left to the classical liberal/center politically. In the last year, I shifted from new atheism to Buddhism. I think the major shift that came with that was learning how to relate to my body and the emotional value in that rather than intellectualizing everything.
What's helped is having people who take me and my ideas seriously and respect when we disagree. I try to hold my strong opinions loosely. My day job is rooted in viewpoint diversity, and if I never change my mind when I encounter good ideas, something is wrong. Rather than rooting my identity in a particular belief I try to root it in the way I reach my beliefs—writing and thinking deeply, having intellectual humility, self awareness, etc.
Holding strong opinions loosely—I love this, alongside not rooting your identity in a particular belief. Those have both been a great help to me in the last number of years.
I used to believe in the standard leftist position on trans issues - that some people were inherently trans (which was presented as sort of an opposite gender soul) and that there was a lot of strong evidence that transitioning was the only way that these people could live. If they didn't transition, they would kill themselves. Childhood transition was presented as unquestionably good, and almost noone did it by mistake or regretted it afterwards.
However there were always quiet doubts in my mind:
1. I never felt like I had a "gendered soul" and I was sure that if I had been born in a male body, I would have been fine with that. For a long time I assumed that only some people have this, but I was also exposed to trans activists who insisted everyone have a gender identity, and this made no sense to me.
2. There were other statements from the trans activist community that were clearly wrong or contradictory as well. E.g. the position that males don't clearly have an athletic advantage and to say that they do is saying that women are weak.
Or the fact that the movement insists on "not pathologizing" trans identity but also insists on medical intervention.
3. The idea of changing the body to deal with emotional distress was clearly in conflict with how we treat mental health in general. I had an eating disorder as a teenager and once I started coming across more FTM trans people, it seemed clear to me that there were some parallels.
My brother sent me a podcast that was gender critical. Pretty risky move on his part but I had just moved and Twitter (where I interacted with my more left wing friends) was falling apart due to Elon, so I was speaking to them less and was more open to other ideas.
I think that a good way look at it is that there are two(main) aspects to "transness" with one being gender identity, which is a psychological thing built by our society which relates to the way you identify yourself. The other is a medical condition, which happens to be called "gender dysphoria" although it isn't really related to gender. Recent studies about trans people discoverd that there is an inherent difference between male and female brains, and that trans woman had brains that were closer to female than male and the same for trans man (with their brains being closer to male brains). The reason people with that condition need to change their bodies with medical procedures isn't because of a mismatch with their gender identity, which relates to pronouns and how you present yourself but is more about a mismatch between their brains and bodies which causes them difficulties with being able to function, therefore requiring medical intervention in order to attempt to correct the mismatch and make their bodies match their brains.
Your comment on the gendered soul is particularly interesting to me. The idea of a universal feminine spirit or essence sounds metaphysical, something which some people experience, and others really do not.
I'm 46. I believed until sometime in the last few years that we were on a course toward an unavoidable civilizational collapse of unprecedented scale and consequence (or at least I believed it was unavoidable unless we changed some very basic things about the way "civilized" societies live. I put the word in quotes not to be snarky but just because I think it's an inherently vague, hard-to-define word, but nevertheless most people will more or less understand what I mean when I say it).
I no longer believe that. I'm not sure I *don't* believe it either. I simply don't know any more. I've heard compelling, well-researched arguments on both sides of the debate, and I truly don't know what to think. It's a topic that pulls in a billion others; it gets at foundational aspects of what it means to be a human who doesn't live in a hunter-gatherer society. So there's no shame in not knowing; it's pretty damn deep and complicated and requires a lot of knowledge to even take a stab at a well-informed answer.
As far as what this has felt like, it's sort of humbling, but nbd really. I think as a younger man I was more insecure in my attachment to my beliefs; I had the whole identity protection cognition thing going on more so than nowadays. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but I do think I've managed to internalize the idea that my beliefs aren't really "part of me" per se; that it's ok to change my mind and doesn't reflect badly on me (quite the opposite, in fact). So it doesn't sting the way I imagine it would have had I gone through this transformation, say, 10 years ago. That said, I guess it probably wasn't possible to question my thoughts in this way at that time in my life precisely because of that insecurity. I sort of think the emotional process of changing your mind is concurrent with the intellectual maturation required to do so; one might say good critical thinking skills are actually a form of emotional maturity.
That’s a compelling connection you’re drawing, between critical thinking and emotional maturity, when thought and emotion are so often treated as opposing forces.
I also found this line really beautiful: “It's a topic that pulls in a billion others; it gets at foundational aspects of what it means to be a human who doesn't live in a hunter-gatherer society.”
It’s so easy for we contemporary humans to regard ourselves as outside of history and superior to all those who came before us. I’m reading Plato’s Republic right now, and it’s shocking just how timely many of the debates seem. Nurturing some historical humility, and being willing to listen to those from the past, seems beneficial, even in our increasingly high tech societies.
Thanks! Not to get too fanboi-ish, but I'm really fond of your writing, and it feels good to receive a compliment from you. 🙂
That's interesting to hear about Plato's Republic and the debates in it being timely. I read an article here on Substack recently that had a few quotes from some old Greek philosophers and, though of course it was just a small sample of their writings, I was struck by the same as what you've described; they sounded surprisingly like current discussions. I'd like to read some of those old, foundational texts one of these days. I feel like it's a bit of a blind spot for me.
You know, this is my first time attempting to read something this old, and it’s not as hard as I thought it would be. The little bits of everyday sprinkled throughout (horse-riding competitions, all night parties, sacrifices) add some real vibrancy. If you’re feeling called to read some primary texts, I’d say go for it!
So, so many. The existence of God was the first huge one. It started with realizing hell couldn't be real, and went from there. Bertrand Russell nailed the coffin on that topic. It took about ten years before the emotional ramifications of losing faith caught up to me. I think that's how I bought into progressive politics so fervently. I needed a new faith system. Untangling from progressivism has been much slower, and in some ways, more painful. Not so much the conclusions, but certainly the tone, black and white thinking, and tendency towards group think. I'm no better at avoiding that than anyone else. October 7 made it clear to me that we're all still susceptible to hive mind thinking, even in spaces where not being a hive mind is the stated goal.
We keep trying to get it right. It's all we can do.
Ryan—I can only imagine how destabilizing it must have been to lose faith in God, and how tempting an alternative value system would’ve been. I’m curious: when you say it took ten years for the emotional ramifications to catch up to you, what did that look like in your life?
Most of it was in my head, but it did spur a series of actions. As a Christian, I knew that when I died, I was going to heaven. My consciousness was never going to end. That's a really strange idea to have and then to lose. Losing it created a sense of panic. There was an end date to my thoughts that hadn't been there before. My physical death was the entire end of everything, not just the end of a body.
I tried to trick myself into faith again by going to a liberal Quaker meeting. They were all the pro-LGBT things, but also within the Christian framework. That's where I met the progressive people that pulled me into that world for a few years. This was peak online activitism era, 2012-2015.
So, to answer your question, within my life I made new friends, fell out with most of them, and developed a much stronger skepticism about joining groups of any kind. Usually if everyone around me is going the same direction, my spidey senses start to tingle. It sucks because community is important, but most communities exist around ideas. I try not to join those anymore. These days my community is at a karaoke bar, based around a thing we love DOING, not something we all believe. I'm finding that to be much more fulfilling, and less stressful.
Community based around a shared activity rather than a shared belief system sounds incredibly refreshing, after all you’ve described going through. I remember receiving the “get a hobby” advice several years back, and honestly, it’s done a lot of good for me! A little singing or gardening never hurt anyone ;)
You’ve got a very interesting perspective! I do agree that we are much more shaped by culture than we realize, perhaps most of all when we feel ourselves to be rebelling against it.
I used to parrot the standard left ideology on gender identity. Then, my nine year-old daughter declared herself “non-binary,” cheered along by a step-parent who (without my permission or knowledge) took her to a hair salon, had her head shaved down to a short fuzz and dyed purple.
This occurred on the day before she started fourth grade. Her classmates (and the school administrators) were stunned. This was not the same child who ended third grade.
The step-parent kept leaning in a little too much, buying her “pre-binder training bras” (that she did not need…she was nine years old), lapel pins with the message “My pronouns are they/them,” t-shirts with pro-trans political messages…
Remember…my daughter was nine at the time. She didn’t have her own source of payment for these items or the means of ordering them.
Until this step-parent entered her life, my daughter never rejected typically “girly” things. I had never heard her say things like “I’m queer” or “I’m nonbinary.”
She then announced that the name she was given at birth was now her dead name, demanding that everyone call her by a new name comprised of her initials.
Who taught my nine year-old the term “dead name”?
I tried with the new name. I tried with the they/them pronouns. I really did. But, it seemed so afflicted. It was like she joined a cult.
I tried to intervene, legally. Nearly $200k in legal fees later, I lost her. She was coached on all of the “buzz words”…that she did not feel “safe” expressing her gender around me…that she hated me, that I was just a womb that gave birth to her and not her real mother.
Looking back, I now see where it all might have started. For a few summers/school breaks, she attended a STEM camp for girls, where she learned how to code and design circuitry. Nearly all of the counselors had name tags with their alternative pronouns (they/them, zie/zir, etc.).
At first, my “I campaign for Democrats and am a liberal” former self thought “Wow, how progressive of them!”
Looking back, I now realize it was internalized misogyny. I now understand the message they were subtlety giving (intentionally or not): Even though this was supposedly a camp for “girls” (it even had the word “girls” in the name of the camp), to have skills in the tech world, you have to reject the fact that you are a girl/woman. You have to reject your sex and adopt an “alternative gender identity.”
I later found out that the step-parent was bringing her to drag shows and often hosted parties and charitable fundraisers where drag queens were the featured entertainment (my daughter was in attendance at these events).
Many years ago, I went along with the suggestions of friends that we meet up for “drag queen brunches.” If anyone even suggested that they perhaps were not comfortable with that idea, they would be met with looks of shock and the insulation that they were homophobic.
I remember sitting at those drag queen brunches…I was typically picked on by the performers because I probably looked uncomfortable. I was touched without my consent (fake breasts shoved into my face), sexually harassed (asked about my “blow job skills”), mocked for what I was wearing.
But, if I objected, it automatically meant that I was a homophobe, At least in the eyes of this group of former friends.
Pivot: About a year later, my daughter also told me she was gay. Let me state this LOUD AND CLEAR: I have *zero* issues with this. Repeat: I have *zero* issues/concerns whatsoever with my daughter’s sexuality or sexual preference.
What horrifies me is that she is slowly being erased as a lesbian girl/young woman. That she has been taught to conflate her sexuality with the need to adopt an alternative gender. That she has been taught that she was born in the wrong body.
I now consider myself politically unhoused. I have been abandoned by my former friends. My ex-husband (during a failed attempt at family therapy) insinuated I was a Nazi.
His new wife is in PR/marketing. How wonderful for her “disruptive” approach to PR to be able to parade around my child as a token, just like the drag queens she hires for her charity events.
So, in short, yes…I have completely had my beliefs shattered. I now see the physical and mental harm being inflicted upon young women. I see the erasure of lesbian women.
I wait here. Alone. I am going to get her back one day. I know I will. Because the identity movement is unsustainable.
And, when she’s ready, I’ll be here.
What an incredible experience you’ve been through. I hope that you will find a way to live authentically and reconnect with people who will understand you. And I sincerely hope that you will be able to reconnect to your child one day. I’m glad you’re waiting for that day and not writing her off. She may well change her mind about many things as well.
Holy smokes this is devastating to read. Wow. Thank you for sharing.
Thank you, Sara. You don’t know how much it means to me to receive a reply. Substack is my only “anon” social media outlet. Sharing my thoughts here (which I actually do very rarely) is therapeutic. Your kindness is appreciated.
More than I ever wished I had to. I have always been a little bit envious of people who haven't asked themselves the hard question of "What if I'm wrong?". Having your fundamental beliefs shaken and questioned can be completely earth shattering and heartbreaking. Growth doesn't come easily
I spent most of my 20s as an irreligious "preacher" in the local Unitarian Universalist community. I had been raised Catholic and, far from rejecting it, I sought to expand on it. God loved everyone, you see. Excommunication is bad--churches should accept everybody! Universalism!
Long story short, I had to face the limits of my own ability to love everybody. I was very much a fair-weather friar, not really going out of my way to actually relieve anyone's suffering in this world. I didn't pay the costs of loving anyone; what I thought was love was just squishy good feelings about arbitrary strangers, combined with a very self-centered approach to anyone I actually interacted with. Certainly, if someone didn't love me as much as God loved me, that was their fault and their transgression, not mine!
To quote from the last sermon I gave when wearing that identity (almost 20 years ago now!):
"I thought that the world's many denominations were split because they put boundaries on their membership; I thought that all that was needed was more universalist preaching, a reminder that we are all members of one great family. But looking at the world around me, I'm embarrassed that I ever thought it was so simple. Most of those Christians out there believe in a God that at least approaches the infinite mercy of the universalist God's universal family. But only such a creature of myth could pull it off. We who are merely human have a limited capacity to love, and we must make choices about who we will commit to as family. Poetic exclamations of our universalism only serve to obfuscate such discernment."
To this day, I still believe God loves everybody. But having to decide who I personally love, in the true sense of being willing to take on responsibility and give of myself and sacrifice (once I learned to do that for anyone) pretty much turned my entire life on its head. It lead eventually to a small number of actually loving relationships, but it took real time and work, and I do wish I had started that sooner in life.
A common thread I see in all these youth-to-adulthood conversion stories is the transition from ideal to practical. As kids, we're taught the ideal and taught to obey it. As adolescents, we reject what we were taught was ideal, but we still cling to an ideal. But there's a point in adulthood where there's no parent or other moral authority enforcing the ideal, just you trying to do the best you can and frequently failing, and that's where we find out what we really believe, what we really prioritize and who we really are. Probably not a universal human experience, but common enough in our day and age.
Amazing.
This is so beautiful!
Dear Kier I am coming to montreal and I wonder if we could meet. I would be very grateful. I am not very good at navigating Substack. I would be happy to send you information on myself. I just don’t know how to do it privately. Many thanks for advice.
I was a very traditional conservative Christian, all I ever wanted to do was teach. I felt like the only place I belonged was school... I believed there was something intensically wrong with me and didn't care if I was miserable as long as I was pleasing those around me, namely God and the church, and my parents.
I didn't examine a lot of the things I believed because doubt was hell and I really didn't want to displease God, and I believed whatever I desired was sinful... It was a whole mess.
Well... I lived my life with the saying, "I didn't get this far just to get this far." And I finally got to teach...and I sucked and hated it. And I was like, "My future students deserve better... I deserve better..." And I just... Took that belief and watched it burn and a lot of other beliefs went with it, and I put trust in God as I learned to love myself, and came out of the closet. I changed my major to Social Work... Learned about affirming theology, examined it and beliefs that contradicted it and fully embraced the idea that God fully loves and fully affirms LGBTQ+ people, including myself, and that maybe I'm supposed to advocate for them
For a long time I was convinced that being intelligent was synonymous with doing well at academic endeavours. And since I did well at most academic endeavours, that obviously made me smart. Actually, a lot smarter than most people in my classes. It was hard not to feel superior to those poor people who struggled to pass courses or those who got average grades.
Years passed and I read a book by Daniel Goleman called “Emotional Intelligence”. It was on best seller’s lists and I was intrigued by the title. That led me to read Howard Gardner’s book called “Multiple Intelligences”. I read Daniel Goleman’s book called “Social Intelligence” the minute it was first published. I couldn’t get enough of this stuff.
Those books changed everything about the way I look at myself and at other people. I could definitely see areas where I had underdeveloped or even low intelligence. I could see how other people who failed at academics could still have high intelligence in other areas. I was especially intrigued by the concepts of both emotional and social intelligence and how much more linked those particular intelligences are to “success” than simple book smarts are.
The fact that the various intelligences are quite separate is incredible to me. When I listen to the work of an amazing musician or watch an Olympian gymnast, I am in awe. I know that it reveals to me only one thing about that person’s overall intelligence.
I also now know that my “book smarts” is just one aspect of myself and not necessarily at all the most important aspect. It’s my hope that educators understand all of this and no longer favour people like me the way I used to be favoured when I did well in school. It’s my hope that educators these days understand more about the importance of all aspects of intelligence.
I used to believe that I had to (and was *entitled to*) forcefully correct people that said things I thought were wrong. I thought it was my moral duty to pick out any slightly off-color comment and squash it without question. I cringe at the way I used to bully the people in my college classes like this.
I used to believe that I had to bear witness to every atrocity in the world and tell everyone how much I condemned such actions (on social media mostly) in order to be a good and moral person. If I looked away, I was bad.
I used to believe that I had to believe everything every other leftist believes in order to be a leftist.
I used to let this kind of purity infiltrate everything I did and I forcefully policed my own thoughts as a result. I could not and would not tell my partner about my doubts because the few times I tried to, they acted like I had committed a crime. They once told me they were questioning my politics because they saw I had one of Obama's books on my shelf... which I'd never even read and had been gifted to me by a well-meaning family member.
I starter to steer out of this thinking by covertly following a few instagram accounts that were posting some left-critical stuff. I cannot remember them now or even the contents of the posts themselves, but I remember feeling so SANE reading them. Then about 4 years ago I got off of Instagram and all social media for good and I was able to really, truly think for myself. I formed my own opinions that I now happily question and debate with my current partner and trusted friends.
There are still some things I do not (and probably will not) discuss with most of my friends -- the biggest example I can think of is my criticism of autism self-diagnosis. But I feel so much freer, calmer, and happier. And even more settled into my leftist beliefs!
Hey Ace! I relate to so much of what you describe, particularly the regret for how self-righteous and condescending I used to be—although it’s a natural consequence of thinking you have all the answers and everyone else is bad!
Glad to hear you’ve found a social circle in which you can think and speak freely. What a joy and a relief after escaping the fundamentalist region of the social justice world.
Autism self-diagnosis sure is a touchy issue… have you read Freddie DeBoer on the gentrification of disability? If not, I think you’d enjoy it.
Thank you for your kindness and the space to share!
I have read that piece and appreciate Freddie's thoughts on the subject-- thanks for suggesting it. I just took a moment to re-read it. It definitely mirrors a lot of what I see in/around my social circle as well.
I do not think it's my place to 'correct' or question these folks because at the end of the day I do think there are plenty of people that have greatly benefited from their own self-diagnosis and I do think that some of these folks are autistic. And I don't think that most of these folks are coming at things from any sort of malicious standpoint... it is clear they are experiencing pain and friction in their lives and they are searching for an answer for that pain or friction. In my opinion, the answer is often that life is very hard for no reason. Pain and friction are unavoidable. And sometimes there are things about our brains that can worsen that pain and friction, but outside of the spectrum of disorder is a whole spectrum of neurotypical struggle.
The high-functioning high-masking autism-related tiktoks are so persuasive that I even spent an hour or two questioning if I had autism. I think the main issue lies in self-diagnosed people who may not have autism create content for other folks about having autism that flatten and de-contextualize autism symptoms.
Alas~
Wow I just read that DeBoer piece on your recommendation and I feel significantly less crazy now than I did before reading it. I've been noticing that a lot of people in/around my social circle identify as being mentally ill in some way or another, but that the specific labels they choose really don't seem to bear much resemblance to traditional understandings of mental illness and disability. And there's obvious pressure not to question these people, lest the questioner be accused of being ableist or otherwise intolerant.
I used to be really involved in a reproductive justice organization that primarily focused on abortion rights but also on many queer rights issues. One of the biggest beliefs the organization had was to "center the most marginalized people." The idea was to find the most marginalized group, focus on addressing their problems, and that will solve everyone else's problems because all oppressions are linked together. It seemed like an obvious idea at the time and a way to counteract the history of reproductive rights as mainly focused on issues relevant to wealthy white women. But over time, I realized that this approach is a bastardization of intersectional theory that does more to alienate people than it does to help anyone.
The biggest problem is that finding the "most marginalized" forces you to rank oppressions. Everyone would say that it doesn't force people to play the oppression olympics but it absolutely does when you're claiming that you can easily say who is more marginalized. But life is more complicated than that. Not all types of discrimination and stigma easily fit together. Addressing the problems of a homeless Black trans woman doesn't necessarily help a pregnant refugee. In addition, focusing too much on labels makes it difficult to talk about people with more ambiguous identities and can feel dehumanizing when so much of the conversation focuses on being x, y, z. They wanted us to start every meeting saying who were are people, which meant listing out all of the marginalized identities we could lay claim to. I always hated doing it. I'm unabashedly queer but I was resentful of how performative it felt.
What changed my mind was a combo of feeling uncomfortable as someone who doesn't fit easily into certain labels/groups and seeing how the concept was used to stop conversations rather than propose any solutions. "Centering the most marginalized" was mainly just brought up when someone felt a solution didn't address whatever group they had in mind even though no solution could help everyone. It just became so exhausting and it really felt like no good work was being done since most our time was spent discussing theory as conservative Christians rapidly tore down our reproductive rights.
Wow—you write about this quagmire so eloquently! So many social justice ideas sound good in theory but totally break down when they become organizational policy, and the ideas don’t stand up to scrutiny either.
I heard an interview on Theory Underground with Walter Benn Michaels, and he said (something like) when universal programs are unimaginable because of the state of politics, then of course people will start to make particularist arguments to try and get their needs met. “I deserve healthcare because I’m x identity.”
It gave me more compassion for people who are stuck making arguments in this way, even while I maintain that it’s not the way to go.
Thanks for sharing your perspective, Mia!
I've had a lot of beliefs shift over time! Raised conservative Catholic, by middle school I was a progressive new athiest. Around 5 years ago, I switched from eating meat to veganism and moved from the left to the classical liberal/center politically. In the last year, I shifted from new atheism to Buddhism. I think the major shift that came with that was learning how to relate to my body and the emotional value in that rather than intellectualizing everything.
What's helped is having people who take me and my ideas seriously and respect when we disagree. I try to hold my strong opinions loosely. My day job is rooted in viewpoint diversity, and if I never change my mind when I encounter good ideas, something is wrong. Rather than rooting my identity in a particular belief I try to root it in the way I reach my beliefs—writing and thinking deeply, having intellectual humility, self awareness, etc.
Holding strong opinions loosely—I love this, alongside not rooting your identity in a particular belief. Those have both been a great help to me in the last number of years.
I used to believe in the standard leftist position on trans issues - that some people were inherently trans (which was presented as sort of an opposite gender soul) and that there was a lot of strong evidence that transitioning was the only way that these people could live. If they didn't transition, they would kill themselves. Childhood transition was presented as unquestionably good, and almost noone did it by mistake or regretted it afterwards.
However there were always quiet doubts in my mind:
1. I never felt like I had a "gendered soul" and I was sure that if I had been born in a male body, I would have been fine with that. For a long time I assumed that only some people have this, but I was also exposed to trans activists who insisted everyone have a gender identity, and this made no sense to me.
2. There were other statements from the trans activist community that were clearly wrong or contradictory as well. E.g. the position that males don't clearly have an athletic advantage and to say that they do is saying that women are weak.
Or the fact that the movement insists on "not pathologizing" trans identity but also insists on medical intervention.
3. The idea of changing the body to deal with emotional distress was clearly in conflict with how we treat mental health in general. I had an eating disorder as a teenager and once I started coming across more FTM trans people, it seemed clear to me that there were some parallels.
My brother sent me a podcast that was gender critical. Pretty risky move on his part but I had just moved and Twitter (where I interacted with my more left wing friends) was falling apart due to Elon, so I was speaking to them less and was more open to other ideas.
I think that a good way look at it is that there are two(main) aspects to "transness" with one being gender identity, which is a psychological thing built by our society which relates to the way you identify yourself. The other is a medical condition, which happens to be called "gender dysphoria" although it isn't really related to gender. Recent studies about trans people discoverd that there is an inherent difference between male and female brains, and that trans woman had brains that were closer to female than male and the same for trans man (with their brains being closer to male brains). The reason people with that condition need to change their bodies with medical procedures isn't because of a mismatch with their gender identity, which relates to pronouns and how you present yourself but is more about a mismatch between their brains and bodies which causes them difficulties with being able to function, therefore requiring medical intervention in order to attempt to correct the mismatch and make their bodies match their brains.
I hope this helps!
Your comment on the gendered soul is particularly interesting to me. The idea of a universal feminine spirit or essence sounds metaphysical, something which some people experience, and others really do not.
I'm 46. I believed until sometime in the last few years that we were on a course toward an unavoidable civilizational collapse of unprecedented scale and consequence (or at least I believed it was unavoidable unless we changed some very basic things about the way "civilized" societies live. I put the word in quotes not to be snarky but just because I think it's an inherently vague, hard-to-define word, but nevertheless most people will more or less understand what I mean when I say it).
I no longer believe that. I'm not sure I *don't* believe it either. I simply don't know any more. I've heard compelling, well-researched arguments on both sides of the debate, and I truly don't know what to think. It's a topic that pulls in a billion others; it gets at foundational aspects of what it means to be a human who doesn't live in a hunter-gatherer society. So there's no shame in not knowing; it's pretty damn deep and complicated and requires a lot of knowledge to even take a stab at a well-informed answer.
As far as what this has felt like, it's sort of humbling, but nbd really. I think as a younger man I was more insecure in my attachment to my beliefs; I had the whole identity protection cognition thing going on more so than nowadays. I'm not trying to toot my own horn here, but I do think I've managed to internalize the idea that my beliefs aren't really "part of me" per se; that it's ok to change my mind and doesn't reflect badly on me (quite the opposite, in fact). So it doesn't sting the way I imagine it would have had I gone through this transformation, say, 10 years ago. That said, I guess it probably wasn't possible to question my thoughts in this way at that time in my life precisely because of that insecurity. I sort of think the emotional process of changing your mind is concurrent with the intellectual maturation required to do so; one might say good critical thinking skills are actually a form of emotional maturity.
That’s a compelling connection you’re drawing, between critical thinking and emotional maturity, when thought and emotion are so often treated as opposing forces.
I also found this line really beautiful: “It's a topic that pulls in a billion others; it gets at foundational aspects of what it means to be a human who doesn't live in a hunter-gatherer society.”
It’s so easy for we contemporary humans to regard ourselves as outside of history and superior to all those who came before us. I’m reading Plato’s Republic right now, and it’s shocking just how timely many of the debates seem. Nurturing some historical humility, and being willing to listen to those from the past, seems beneficial, even in our increasingly high tech societies.
Thanks! Not to get too fanboi-ish, but I'm really fond of your writing, and it feels good to receive a compliment from you. 🙂
That's interesting to hear about Plato's Republic and the debates in it being timely. I read an article here on Substack recently that had a few quotes from some old Greek philosophers and, though of course it was just a small sample of their writings, I was struck by the same as what you've described; they sounded surprisingly like current discussions. I'd like to read some of those old, foundational texts one of these days. I feel like it's a bit of a blind spot for me.
You know, this is my first time attempting to read something this old, and it’s not as hard as I thought it would be. The little bits of everyday sprinkled throughout (horse-riding competitions, all night parties, sacrifices) add some real vibrancy. If you’re feeling called to read some primary texts, I’d say go for it!
All night parties and sacrifices?! Now you're speaking my language. ;)
So, so many. The existence of God was the first huge one. It started with realizing hell couldn't be real, and went from there. Bertrand Russell nailed the coffin on that topic. It took about ten years before the emotional ramifications of losing faith caught up to me. I think that's how I bought into progressive politics so fervently. I needed a new faith system. Untangling from progressivism has been much slower, and in some ways, more painful. Not so much the conclusions, but certainly the tone, black and white thinking, and tendency towards group think. I'm no better at avoiding that than anyone else. October 7 made it clear to me that we're all still susceptible to hive mind thinking, even in spaces where not being a hive mind is the stated goal.
We keep trying to get it right. It's all we can do.
Ryan—I can only imagine how destabilizing it must have been to lose faith in God, and how tempting an alternative value system would’ve been. I’m curious: when you say it took ten years for the emotional ramifications to catch up to you, what did that look like in your life?
Most of it was in my head, but it did spur a series of actions. As a Christian, I knew that when I died, I was going to heaven. My consciousness was never going to end. That's a really strange idea to have and then to lose. Losing it created a sense of panic. There was an end date to my thoughts that hadn't been there before. My physical death was the entire end of everything, not just the end of a body.
I tried to trick myself into faith again by going to a liberal Quaker meeting. They were all the pro-LGBT things, but also within the Christian framework. That's where I met the progressive people that pulled me into that world for a few years. This was peak online activitism era, 2012-2015.
So, to answer your question, within my life I made new friends, fell out with most of them, and developed a much stronger skepticism about joining groups of any kind. Usually if everyone around me is going the same direction, my spidey senses start to tingle. It sucks because community is important, but most communities exist around ideas. I try not to join those anymore. These days my community is at a karaoke bar, based around a thing we love DOING, not something we all believe. I'm finding that to be much more fulfilling, and less stressful.
Community based around a shared activity rather than a shared belief system sounds incredibly refreshing, after all you’ve described going through. I remember receiving the “get a hobby” advice several years back, and honestly, it’s done a lot of good for me! A little singing or gardening never hurt anyone ;)
You’ve got a very interesting perspective! I do agree that we are much more shaped by culture than we realize, perhaps most of all when we feel ourselves to be rebelling against it.