Rapid-Onset Gender Dysphoria (ROGD)

My once beautiful daughter is now nineteen years old, homeless, bearded, in extreme poverty, sterilized, not receiving mental health services, extremely mentally ill, and planning a radial forearm phalloplasty (a surgical procedure that removes part of her arm to construct a fake penis).

It seemed gradual, yet came at hurtling speed, the loss. I told myself that it was natural and normal—part of growing up and being independent. The calls became less frequent, the visits further between. She met a sweet young African American boyfriend that made us laugh. They seemed like a pair of angels despite their out-spoken activism and intelligence. One day, Anna let me know that her boyfriend wanted to start wearing some of her dresses—and then that he was “trans”.

Things began to rapidly decline and become difficult. She became depressed, obese and angry. She was rude, sloppy and thoughtless. She started Citalopram. She told me to stop texting her so much. She said she was trans, wanted to take hormones and get top-surgery and that “she” was now “them”. She changed her name to a cartoon name, and claimed she finally felt like herself, an "FTM" gay trans man.

“Ok,” we said, “Just go slow, be careful. We love you.”

My wife and I are liberal people. We are not homophobic or transphobic. If all that being transgender led to was being called a different name and pronouns then we would have no problem allowing our child to explore her identity. However, in the current climate, our daughter and her friends understand transgender as an innate condition that a person is born with and that can only be treated with hormone therapy and radical surgeries which have irreversible consequences. There is no discussion of a teen possibly misunderstanding their feelings (like every teen in the history of teenagers has done) and no discussion of the long-term effects.

In the fall of 2018, she turned 21, and gave us a letter telling us she was transgender, and that if we couldn’t accept it she would simply “leave.” She knew we wouldn’t accept it, and we begged her to come home and go to counseling. We told her we would not continue paying for college while she was pretending to be a boy. So she dropped out of college, and left the state with a transgender girl she met online.

My wife died when my daughter was 12-years-old. A good death, if there is such a thing, would have been bad enough. My wife did not have a good death. There were many unnecessary layers of trauma inflicted on my daughter surrounding my wife’s illness and death.

Ana had a 4-year old son when I met her and I had no issues with that.  Then I learned that this child’s other mother had declared to the world that he was female at the age of three.  At first, I couldn’t fathom that it was anything so terrible.  Our green city was hip after all, and the environment with which to raise children was considered excellent. 

Then, I met little Paulo and my coherent, liberal, confident mind was instantly rattled.  This was no transgender girl.

His trans insanity has destroyed us. My husband is 72 and reduced to tears that if he "slips" and uses the "wrong" pronouns, he is severely chastised. He deals with the loss of our sons by not talking about it.

The trans insanity is destroying my marriage. I am terrified of losing everyone and everything I love. I feel totally alone, isolated.

My best friend -- a social worker -- dropped me after 45 years of friendship, for my refusal to CELEBRATE losing my son. I have nowhere to turn, no one to talk to about this.

I have seriously considered suicide rather than deal with the pain and insanity of losing BOTH my sons. My worst nightmare has always been losing my children.

I found a psychologist in a community two hours away that listed “gender disorders” as one of her specialties. At the first meeting, after only five minutes of talking to our daughter privately, the therapist informed us that transgender is no big deal. She said it was easy for girls to become boys. “Just start wearing cargo pants and wear your hat backwards.” She also said all teenagers sleep with everybody regardless of sex nowadays, anyway. And, “Any day that your kid is still alive is a good day.“

At some point during 7th grade she renamed herself Jake online, which I only discovered following an endless online chain. At the end of 7th grade she entered a partial hospitalization program for severe depression, anxiety and cutting. It was then that we became more aware of her transgender thinking.

She withdrew from her friends and family over a period of a year and a half. Over time, many more connections were made online with incredibly dysfunctional people. In seventh grade, she became engrossed in the online world far more than we were aware.

She can still only recite what I consider the online mantra of explanation of being transgender. Her tolerance for any other views is limited.

A year ago, when our teen was 14, she told me she was pansexual. This announcement came shortly after joining the middle school Gay-Straight Alliance (GSA) as an "ally". Fast forward 3 months and she tells us she is a trans female-to-male (FTM).  There were no signs at all until that day when she came out as pansexual.

We had agreed to let her see an endocrinologist after six months of therapy, but the therapist neglected to tell us that this meant instant hormones.