WALSH: Father’s Twitter Thread About His ‘Trans Daughter’ Accidentally Reveals Truth About How Kids Become Trans

A few days ago, our country celebrated a Trans Day of Visibility. This was supposed to be a time to focus on trans people, celebrate trans people, and talk about the bravery and beauty of trans people. In other words, it was a day just like every other day. Our experience with the Trans Day of Visibility is like Bill Murray’s experience with Groundhog’s Day. It repeats forever, nothing changes, and it never ends. 

Indeed, there has never been a group as fractionally tiny as the trans population and yet so visible. There has never been a community so small and yet so accommodated by society. For the sake of trans people, we have changed the English language, thrown out the rules of grammar, passed laws, effectively abolished women’s sports, and tossed biological science into the wood chipper. Most of all, we have never seen such a concerted and effective effort to purposefully increase the size of a given population. 

There are 10 times as many “trans” identifying people in Generation Z as there are in older generations. That figure is no accident. It is also not the organic result of people simply feeling more free to live in their authentic identities now that society is allegedly more open and tolerant than it was in the past. Rather, this is the result of programming. Children are intitiated into the Left’s gender theory religion, and one Twitter thread meant to commemorate our Trans Day of Visibility perfectly demonstrates how this works. 

The thread from a podcaster named Jesse Thorn has been “liked” and retweeted thousands of times by leftists who insist that it is “heartfelt,” “beautiful,” and of course “stunning.” In it, Jesse explains how he and his wife (who hosts her own podcast, appropriately titled “One Bad Mother”) first discovered that their son was a girl. We are told that this is a perfect explanation of the trans phenomenon among kids. I completely agree. Here’s the story, as he tells it: 

I’m the parent of a trans kid. I want to clarify what that means (as best I can), because a lot of folks don’t know or make incorrect presumptions. Happy #TransDayOfVisibility. My daughter is nine. When she was born, we assumed she was a boy, gave her a boy name, called her “he.” We gave her all kinds of toys, she generally preferred the ones our culture associates with boys (like building toys, trucks and robots.) She hated getting haircuts and always wanted her hair long like my wife’s, but we just figured kids hate haircuts. She loved The Jungle Book, especially the part where Baloo the bear dresses up in a hula skirt, but what kid doesn’t love that? When she started kindergarten, my wife was bathing her. An adult friend of ours had just come out as trans, and my wife mentioned that not all girls have vaginas and not all boys have penises. Our daughter asked, “some girls have penises?” My wife said yes. Whether you were a boy or a girl wasn’t about your private parts. “I’m a girl with a penis,” my daughter said. All of a sudden all these things that had confused us about her when she was younger made sense. We went to learn about gender and kids – I mean I’m from San Francisco, grew up with a trans neighbor. My wife went to Sarah Lawrence. We were open but pretty ignorant.

On that last point, I must agree. As for the rest, I still am not ready to accept that so many people can read all of that and come away thinking, “Yes, well clearly that child was really a girl all along!” It is possible that half of the country has literally gone insane, but I think it’s more likely that lots of people pretend, for political and social reasons, to accept and agree with what they know is irrational and indefensible. 

Let’s review the process by which Jesse and his wife, Theresa, came to the conclusion that their little boy had a little girl trapped inside him. He says that his son enjoyed playing with trucks and robots. So far, so normal. He also hated getting his haircut. In my experience with my two sons, this is also quite normal. The boy enjoyed the film The Jungle Book. Again, my own sons can relate. But he was especially fascinated with the scene where Baloo the bear wears a hula skirt and dances around. Well, what child isn’t fascinated with a dancing bear in a hula skirt? Even if it were possible for a male child to, in some sense, be a girl — which it is not — how could any of this be sufficient evidence to support that conclusion?  This doesn’t pass the smell test even if we accept the fantastically delusional premise that boys can theoretically be girls, and vice versa. In no universe — this, or the fantasy land that the Left pretends we inhabit — is this boy’s behavior indicative of anything other than a normal boy who has normal boy-like interests. 

Yes, the boy said that he’s a girl with a penis. But he only said that after his mother told him that some girls have penises. If you tell a 5-year-old boy that some dragons are 3 and a half feet tall and look a lot like 5-year-old boys, he is almost certain to inform you that he is just such a dragon. Kids are highly suggestible. They also have underdeveloped brains and an underdeveloped sense of the world and reality. They cannot distinguish between fact and fiction. A child at 5 can’t be meaningfully accused of telling a lie, because he doesn’t fully understand the difference between a lie and the truth.

Recently, I came into the kitchen and found a broken glass on the floor. I asked my 4-year-old if he broke it. Over the course of the brief interrogation, he told me that he did break it, that he didn’t break it, that it was already broken, that his brother broke it, and that the dog broke it. We don’t own a dog. He does not have enough of a grasp on reality to deceive me effectively, because he is just a small child, and everything that he says, every claim he makes, should be understood in that context. Speaking of reality not being grasped, Jesse does not seem to understand these basic facts about child psychology.

He goes on, through the lengthy thread, to describe how his son “socially transitioned” in kindergarten. Now, at the age of 9, Jesse is thinking about what sorts of drugs he wants to put the child on. He also goes into detail about the herculean efforts needed to protect his boy’s parentally-imposed delusions. He writes: 

We still had to (have to) be on guard all the time. Every new care situation (camp, sports, babysitter, friends’ parents) had to get a briefing. We had to check every room for jerks. Because being misgendered, or forced to explain yourself is traumatic for a young kid. We basically had to be the professional trainers for every set of grownups that entered our kids’ lives. It was and remains exhausting. I can only imagine what it’s like for adult trans and gender non-conforming people.

Jesse does not stop to consider why an “authentic identity” should require  so much work to preserve it. If his son is a girl, why does every adult in his vicinity need to be prepped on the proper ways to address him and act around him? My daughter — real daughter, actual girl — does not need me to give a speech to every person she comes across. I don’t have to explain to anyone that she is a girl or make any effort, at all, to maintain her in her girl identity. That’s because there is a difference between my daughter and his. Namely, that my daughter is a daughter.

The rest of the thread is as disturbing and deluded as what we’ve already reviewed, but there was one brief moment of lucidity. Jesse reports:

Anyway, she told us her new name, Grace. Actually, she initially said “Grease,” but we figured out what she meant. Not the clearest enunciator back then.

Ah, yes. He figured out what “she” meant. This is indeed the duty of a parent. Children say many things and often do not know what the words that they are using actually mean. They make claims that are not true. They express desires that are not really their desires. They announce plans that make no sense and attempt to do things that would get them killed or maimed if you were not there to intercede. It is your job as a parent to use your maturity and wisdom to guide your child and lead them through their own confusion.

Jesse heard his “daughter” say that “she” wanted to be called Grease. Jesse knows that Grease is a ridiculous name. Surely, the boy can’t actually want that name. And even if he does, it’s for his own good that you guide him to a different one. A child at that age doesn’t understand the significance of a name. He can’t look ahead into the future and consider what it will be like to actually live with that name. That’s why we usually assign names to our kids. But, it turns out, even the parents who let their children “choose” their names still don’t really let them choose. There is a reason that, out of all of the “trans kids” who are allowed to “choose their own names,” none of them are now called Dragon Ninja or Pirate Bear or Awesome Cool Kid or any other sort of name that you’d expect a small child to choose for himself. Usually they end up with a simple and traditional name for the opposite gender, or else something trendy and gender neutral. The influence of the parents on these choices is evident.

This is an interesting fact, and it raises a question. If they won’t let a child select any name he wants, then why would they let him choose any gender he wants? If they wouldn’t want their child to be saddled by the ridiculous and immature name choice he made as a toddler, why are they allowing him to be saddled by the gender choice he made as a toddler? The reason, I think, is that these parents view their children more as political statements or fashion accessories than actual human beings. Jesse was quite excited to talk about his trans daughter on his podcast. He was eager to broadcast his enlightened and progressive parenting choices to the world. But he can’t very well brag about a kid named Grease. How embarrassing that would be. No, he needed his son to be a girl named Grace, not Grease. That’s much more palatable to him as the parent. More useful, more fashionable. And this is really all about him, in the end. Not the child.

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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