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Gender: A Wider Lens

16 - Gender Dysphoria: What It's Like For Parents

Gender: A Wider Lens

Sasha Ayad and Stella O'Malley

Health & Fitness, Society & Culture, Mental Health

4.6961 Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2021

⏱️ 63 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Loneliness, isolation and confusion often characterises the experience of parents of the gender dysphoric child. A parallel process emerges where the children are obsessed with transition and the parents become obsessed with ROGD. Trying to set loving boundaries is often misinterpreted by others as the parent being the last standing bigot. In this episode we try to empathise with parents who feel they’ve lost control over their child’s wellbeing

Links:

Gender Dysphoria Support Network:

https://genderdysphoriasupportnetwork.com/

Sasha’s Parent Resource Page:

https://www.subscribestar.com/sashalpc

Sasha’s YouTube Channel:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCGNuXjES0uUGfvXaRwixgag

Bayswater Support:

https://www.bayswatersupport.org.uk/

Gender Critical Support Board:

https://gendercriticalresources.com/Support/index.php

Our Duty:

https://ourduty.group/



Extended Notes

  • Many parents feel lonely and isolated to be a parent of a child going through gender dysphoria.
  • Sasha has been contacted by 1,500 families and has consulted with around 500 families on the topics of gender dysphoria.
  • How did Stella and her parents deal with her inner struggles with her gender when she was growing up?
  • There is a tendency to take a gender non-conforming child to a professional. Parents want to be good parents. Parents don’t want to screw their children up.
  • For parents who are referred to a gender clinic, the things that the clinic recommends are utterly shocking. Why can’t kids just be kids?
  • Gender clinics use fear tactics on the parents, and they listen.
  • Early gender intervention is very damaging to the child.
  • Suddenly, it no longer becomes about the child and their unique tastes. Their gender becomes political.
  • Parents feel very guilty when they find out that they were being led down a path of puberty blockers that could permanently alter their children’s lives forever. They thought they were just being liberal and supporting their child’s gender identity.
  • A good parent does “this.” And most parents blindly follow that rule.
  • Puberty is coming fast and now parents don’t know what to do.
  • Puberty blockers are made to seem normal in these circles, but this is a serious decision that you should not be taking lightly.
  • What do you do when you have a very traditional gender-conforming child, and then one day they decide they’re no longer a She and want to be called a He?
  • Parents get such a shock that they end up researching and researching to find out more.
  • Some parents are drowning in trying to keep this a secret.
  • By questioning whether this is right/wrong, parents get seen as transphobic,...

    This is a public episode. If you’d like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.widerlenspod.com/subscribe

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're listening to gender, a wider lens.

0:04.0

I'm Stella O'Malley, a psychotherapist in Ireland.

0:06.5

And I'm Sasha Ayad, an adolescent therapist in the United States.

0:10.6

Since 2016, my practice has been exclusively dedicated to gender questioning teens

0:16.1

and families impacted by gender dysphoria. I also work with gender questioning

0:20.7

teenagers and I facilitated support meetings for families and

0:24.2

individuals who have been impacted by gender issues. We're curious about the

0:28.1

concept of gender and how it's unfolding in the wider culture. Join us as we look at gender through a wider lens.

0:35.0

Hi Stella.

0:38.0

Hi Sasha, how are you?

0:40.0

Doing great.

0:42.0

I'm really happy to be doing this episode today. We're going to talk about

0:46.2

something that I think is kind of like an invisible victim group in a way

0:51.9

which is the parents of gender dysphoric kids and you know you

0:56.8

and I both we create a lot of resources and opportunities to give parents advice on how to parent.

1:05.0

But we're kind of covering something different today.

1:08.0

Yeah, I think ever since I first kind of got immersed in this world a few years ago I have been kind of my eye has kind of been

1:18.1

Turned towards I wonder what it's like for the parents of all these children that are part of this extraordinary

1:24.2

explosion and where are they? And as a result of my, because I've written a couple of books on

1:30.4

parenting already and I'm very interested in kind of the the dynamic in

1:35.4

families and so as a result of that somewhere along the way I was asked by a few

1:41.6

parents if I'd run some therapeutic support meetings and in the end we started the

...

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