The Desistance Series – Sabrina’s Story

“I did one thousand things to get her out”

Sabrina’s daughter, Katie, was 14 when the world shut down. Lockdown landed on a family already under strain. Sabrina’s marriage was faltering. Then her husband died suddenly from cancer. The household was under water.

Around this time, Katie began experimenting with clothes, hair, and her identity. She said she was joining a film class. She then said she was “they/them” and that she was non-binary. Sabrina felt alarmed but held it in. For two weeks she tried to use her daughter’s preferred pronouns. She watched her daughter carefully and realsied that what had begun as experimentation was hardening into something more fixed and more confrontational.

There had been no earlier signs of gender nonconforming behavior. Sabrina was sure that Katie was simply a teenager in distress, immersed in an online world that had opened up during lockdown. Tumblr was a key influencing factor.

For two months, Sabrina describes herself as “a deer in the headlights.” But she set some boundaries, as she said, “I did not do the concierge parenting.” She did not inform extended family. She continued to use her daughter’s name and avoided pronouns where she could. At the same time, Sabrina began to educate herself.

It was 2021, and Sabrina was afraid her child would be taken away from her for not affirming. She knew the dogma. She was a leftie with libertarian tendencies.

Sabrina was told by many that she “had to” go along with the pronouns. Sabrina said no. The hair became more extreme, as did the outfits. Katie asked her mother if she could not call her a “daughter” in public. Sabrina answered very clearly and very assertively, “Don’t you ever tell me what to say and how to speak about the child that came out of my body.”

Every single day of my life, I received emails requesting referrals to psychotherapists. I have learned to be very careful in this endeavour. Too many times, I have spoken to therapists who seemed to get it, who seemed to understand that trans identification is a trauma response, a coping mechanism for people who are suffering, just like anorexia, bulimia, self-harm, and countless other psychological challenges. Any competent therapist should therefore be very well equipped to work with this cohort. But there has been an unacknowledged ingestion of “true trans” theory, whereby countless otherwise competent therapists believe that a “tiny number” of people must medically transition. The reasons why, when questioned on this, are usually garbled. Basically, the therapist tends to say, “we’ve got a unicorn here, this kid really is trans.”

This is exactly what happened to Sabrina. She spoke to a therapist who seemed to fully understand that Katie was responding to trauma from the death of her father and seemed to understand the situation. The therapist said that she had many girls in her practice with similar challenges and agreed that she would not affirm. For this reason, Sabrina entrusted her vulnerable child to this therapist.

Just a few weeks later, this therapist emailed Sabrina and sent her links to the Trevor Project so that she could better affirm her “trans child.” Sabrina fired the therapist on the spot.

Sabrina then explored a range of other options, such as a residential therapeutic project and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. Sabrina was keenly aware of the impact of Katie’s peer group, such as a friend who was already on testosterone and had a mastectomy at 15 years old. The interventions didn’t work in the way that was hoped, and this child later attempted suicide. Sabrina told Katie that her friend group was not helpful. Sabrina helped Katie reintegrate with some old friends from before the pandemic who were healthier.

Sabrina explains that she did “one thousand things” to pull her child out of this. She put her in therapy, she took her out of therapy – she changed therapist many times. She sent her away to school, she pulled her out of that school. She told Katie she looked wonderful, no matter what she wore. She picked her battles and she would sometimes avoid her. But she also tried to keep connection with Katie by following the things Katie liked on YouTube. She introduced Katie to the finer things in life, such as lunch at the Four Seasons for the sheer pleasure of it. She brought her travelling to expand her brain. She bought Katie a vibrator so that she could learn to enjoy her body. She was “beyond permissive” when Katie had a boyfriend – again hoping that she would benefit from this experience.

This is often the case in recovery – it is vanishingly rare for one strategy to be the one factor – it is much more common for the person in recovery to say that in the end it was a combination of many, many strategies that helped them recover.

Katie was using he/him pronouns at her new school, a boarding school. Sabrina contacted the school to try to stop them. Then one day, Sabrina’s son came to her, when Katie was two years into trans identification, and told her that Katie was planning to get a mastectomy when she was 18. Sabrina felt ready to give up – she needed to look after her son who was getting lost in all this.

Some time later, Katie decided she would move to Canada and live with her boyfriend. Sabrina funded this idea in the belief that it would be good for her. By the following February, the boyfriend wanted to break up with her. In a surprising turn of events, Katie found Canada too leftie and too woke, even compared to California.

One evening Katie and Sabrina had a couple of drinks together, and Katie confided in her mother that the reason why she identified as trans was that when her dad died, she couldn’t stand living in her body. They cried together, and Katie promised her mother that she was “back.”

And yet the desistance didn’t come fully. Katie remained presenting as a boy. Slowly but surely, though, she started to revert towards her female body.

Erin discussed how this issue leads us into unusual directions. “I became a crazy person,” chuckled Erin, thinking about her signs such as “Stop transing the gay away.”

One evening, after a couple of drinks together, her daughter spoke. She said that when her father died, she could not bear to live in her body. Mother and daughter cried together. Her daughter said she was “back.”

Desistance did not arrive easily, nor was it all at once. Katie continued to present masculine for a time. But gradually, slowly, things began to change.

Sabrina remembers another big moment when she explained to her daughter that others viewed them as mentally ill. She warned her that if she continued in her trans identification, she would not financially support her – she would not be a participant in her destruction. Sabrina remembers that when she had a stepson, it was much clearer when she offered a similar strategy to her drug-addicted stepson. She would not financially support his drug addiction – she would not act as an enabler.

A rule of thumb is that enabling behaviour supports negative, self-destructive behaviour, while supportive behaviour supports positive behaviour.

Katie still does not believe that she dodged a bullet. Mother and daughter don’t speak about this issue. Katie still sees herself as a trans ally, but she doesn’t like labels anymore and she is no longer political.

In hindsight, Sabrina regrets going along with the pronouns – even though she only did this for a couple of weeks. She also regrets all the expensive therapy that didn’t help much. Had she not had her son, Sabrina would have left the country with Katie, but she couldn’t. Had she known how destructive the pandemic was, she would have removed Katie from high school and taken the computer out of the room. Sabrina believes that had she pushed Katie to go to college at 18, she would now be a “he/him Palestine protestor.”

Although Sabrina has some regrets, yet her family has come through a terrible tragedy and a frightening challenge. She is glad she wasn’t working during this period – it was a full-time job as she worked to get her child out of it.

This experience has made her politics much more complex and nuanced. She is bitterly disappointed with the Democrats. They had many off-ramps that they could have taken, but they chose not to take them. Instead, they doubled down and chose to support pediatric transition.

Towards the end of the conversation, Erin reflects on all the normal teenage stuff that ROGD kids miss out on. These quirky kids are always different, they tend to come into their own a little later in life, and they seem to need lots of guidance during their adolescence. Erin finishes the conversation speaking about how many unsung heroes are sitting behind black screens, working all the hours they have to try to keep their children healthy and to bring this issue to light.

Watch Erin and Sabrina’s conversation here: