Santa Claus, Dolls, and Gender Confusion

A Letter from a Heart-broken Father to his Transitioning Daughter

This week in What in the World? we are taking a different approach to one cultural issue we’ve been discussing lately. Below is a letter from a brokenhearted father pleading with his 15-year-old daughter to reconsider her decision to become transgendered.

Although the conversation is hypothetical, the situation is not. Every day parents, pastors, and concerned friends and family members are having to address the painful reality of young men and women—sometimes mere children—making a life-altering decision with limited information.

Here’s the challenge: How can we share the truth with love, compassion, and grace? My hope is that the letter below will provide some clarity on the challenges lying ahead for transitioning teens and how we can communicate this out of care for the individual. Please feel free to share this with anyone who is, or could be, struggling with this difficult issue.

Dear Rachel,

After our heated discussion tonight at dinner, when you stormed to your room, I thought it might be better to write you a letter. You know that your mom and I love you very, very much—even when you cut your hair and wanted to change your name. We have always supported your decisions and will continue to do so. But there are some things you need to know.

First, we will always call you by the name we gave you, Rachel. As much as you would like us to call you Robert now, we can’t. When you were a child, we wouldn’t even lie to you to say that Santa Claus was real. Why would we lie and pretend now that you are really a man? It’s not going to happen.

I know you are angry and confused. Your counselor at school is telling you that you are a boy trapped in a girl’s body, and your only choice is to go through with this transition. But know this. That confusion, loneliness, and sadness will not get any better. It will only get worse.

I hate to break it to you, but being a man isn’t all that great at times. I see how your mom meets friends for shopping and dinner on a regular basis. She gets all giddy when she shows me the clothes she bought and tells me about how much fun they had. Men don’t do that.

I also hear your mom talking to your grandmother on the phone nearly every day. I talk to your grandfather, my dad, maybe once or twice a month about the weather and if the Steelers win, but that’s about it.

Mom brags to Mimi about you, your brother, and your sister. I’ve even heard her complaining to her mother about me not taking out the trash. Haha. But you won’t have to worry about that because you will never have a husband or children.

When mom took you for your wellness checkup yesterday, the pediatrician prescribed medication for you known as puberty blockers. Let me guess; she told you the effects are reversible, right? If you decide you want to go “back to being a girl,” you can just stop the treatment and resume puberty.

But that’s not true. The results from these drugs are irreversible. Even if you were to stop taking them, your risk of cancer, heart disease, and sterility (not being able to have children) would still increase. Girls often experience a loss of bone density. This could stunt your height and make it more likely that you will break bones as an adult.[i] So, you can forget about playing basketball in college as you had always dreamed.

I know you hate going to the doctor’s, but you should be prepared for a lifetime of doctor and hospital visits. Medical providers will be all too eager to rush you through experimental treatments because you, a female transitioning to a male, are worth over a million dollars to the healthcare industry because your surgeries are more complex and expensive.

Do you remember your Aunt Sally, my brother’s wife? She had a double mastectomy a couple of years ago because she had cancer. My sister went over to help her with basic tasks because she couldn’t stand up, make her bed, or even feed herself because the doctors had cut the muscles which allowed her to raise her arms. She eventually got back on her feet, though. It took her about three months, but she was able to drive once again.

You will have to go through the same surgery, even though there is no disease in your body that needs to be removed. But you don’t mind having to wait to get your driver’s license, do you?

On a practical note, what should Mom and I do with your doll collection? I know this has been your prized possession since you were a little girl, including the one my mother brought you back from her trip to Spain a few years before she died. But, since men don’t play with dolls, should we donate them to Goodwill?

Oh, and one last thing. I want you to be prepared that because of your compromised medical and psychological condition, you could become a target for predators. These are adults who will want to get close to you and may even buy you gifts. But stay far away from them. They have only the worst intentions in mind.

However, if you are not able to avoid them and someone hurts you, know this. As your father, I will do anything to protect you. ANYTHING. If that day comes, we won’t be able to have dinner together as we did tonight because I will be in prison. But don’t worry about me. With a good attorney, I could be out before your 40^th birthday.

Rachel, it’s not too late to turn back. There’s no shame in it.

God has a plan and a purpose for your life. A part of that plan is to get married, enjoy intimacy with your husband, and have children together. If you continue down this path, you will never be able to experience the pleasure of sex. You may not understand now what that means, but it will be tragic when you truly grasp what you have lost.

As your parents, we will always love and support you. But we are pleading with you not to make a life-altering decision that you could regret for the rest of your days.

With much love,

Dad

Thanks for listening today, and remember to always pursue the truth—your children and your children’s children depend on it.

Next week we will discuss the opposite side of this scenario with an email from a mom sharing tough love with her gender-confused college student.

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[i] https://wng.org/roundups/study-effects-of-puberty-blockers-can-last-a-lifetime-1617220389