The disappearing article
On Friday, leading psychology journal, Psychology Today, published an article by one of its regular contributors, award-winning journalist and documentary maker, Tina Traster. It was called “Trans Kids May Reject Family, Not the Other Way Around”.
“The generally accepted narrative among activists, the therapeutic community, and the media is that many trans kids are living with parents who reject them based on morality or intolerance. However, there are legions of parents who themselves are being rejected because they have not picked up a pair of pom poms to cheer their tween or teen through cross-dressing, name-changing, hormone-treatment and life-altering surgeries…
Parents tell their trans declared children that they are worried about them, that they don’t think they should make life-altering decisions, that they’re young and they should explore slowly. In return, trans children will recite what they’ve learned to parrot from internet influencers and activists. They will call these parents transphobes. They treat parents like the enemy. They will demand total buy-in or the gig is over.”
Parents responded to the article with gratitude and by sharing their own experiences, stories which reflect just what Traster has written about. (Huge thanks to EZ on Twitter for screenshotting some of the comments before the article disappeared.)
However, the voices of concerned parents were drowned out by a barrage of abuse from trans rights activists in what looked like a co-ordinated campaign to get the article shut down. These comments all seemed to follow a particular pattern ie the article is irresponsible, the author is transphobic, parents are transphobic…
Some comments were just trolling.
And some even deployed the now standard “Dead daughter or happy son” trans kids suicide myth.
Within hours of it being published, Psychology Today editors pulled Traster’s article. “This post is more problematic than needed”, they said.
It is not surprising that Psychology Today caved into the bullies.
But it is deeply concerning.
Remember when trans identified male, Munroe Bergdorf, encouraged vulnerable children to contact him in secret, in direct contravention of every safeguarding policy advised by all children’s organisations and charities?
Remember when trans identified male, cycling cheat and university teacher, Rachel McKinnon, made a YouTube video on Mother’s Day encouraging kids to leave their parents, find their ‘glitter family’ and contact him in private?
Remember when dodgy ‘charity’ Mermaids tempted children to visit their stalls at Pride events with sweeties and puppies?
Remember them wanting to ‘reach out’ to ‘vulnerable teens with no parental support’?
Remember professional narcissist, Jeffrey Marsh, telling followers that he is their “Auncle” and their “Enby parent” and telling them that “My page is your family”?
Remember that Aimee Challenor and the predatory men who make up his family and close friends are Reddit admins on numerous sites aimed at children and teenagers?
Instead of caving into them, Psychology Today should be asking themselves just why the TRA attack dogs are so intent on shutting down this article? They should not have pulled it, they should be shouting it from the rooftops.
Luckily, Transgender Trend have a far sturdier backbone and are happy to host this important piece on their site.
Because the safety and wellbeing of children depends on having this discussion.
I’ve come to the conclusion that it’ll take either a class action, or a lot of lawsuits in the US for all the cowards to finally admit they were wrong and for the hand-wringing to begin. It is always the case - you look at the history and it has happened over and over again. Bad people - mostly men - are never stopped in time, partly because they are men - men in charge didn’t listen to women and girls in Rochdale, and they didn’t listen to nurses and matrons in Savile’s case. I want to be wrong about this, and there are rumours that the lawsuits are coming soon.
‘Child Hater’. Dear God. The people who make these decisions must be waking up in a cold sweat in the middle of the night, jolted out of sleep by the cognitive dissonance wrangling with their conscience. I have no idea how they come back from this.