Banned from College Tours

A Personal Tale

It’s an amazing and exciting time in my now 18-year-old daughter’s life. She is a high school senior, who applied to several colleges, and has been admitted to most of them. Now she gets to choose where she will spend the next four years learning and growing, intellectually, emotionally and socially, and preparing for a future career. Almost everyone who has been lucky enough to go to college remembers those years with some fondness. It is a very special time in life, when you have a lot of freedom, and yet very little responsibility. I met my husband while I was in college. He wasn’t a student, but was busking in a nearby park, and I would listen to him on weekends. I would not have my two precious children (now 21 and 18) if it were not for that. I also met some life-long friends at college, and I learned a lot about research and writing, making presentations, and so much more in my classes, all of which helped me to be the lawyer and person I am today.

The next exciting step for my daughter is to visit the five colleges she had narrowed down her choices to. My husband and daughter were going to make a weekend of it, driving to 3 of the four out-of-state schools, leaving the last out-of-state school for another weekend, which I would also attend. I hoped to attend the tour of the local college as well. This coming weekend was going to be a nice father-daughter bonding experience. I looked up the “accepted student days” and made a plan. However, I was told today that my husband and I do not deserve to accompany her on the accepted student tours. In fact, she asked that my husband drop her off at each of the three tours this weekend and wander off by himself for several hours at a stretch, while she toured with the other students and their families.

Why would my daughter do this? It’s simple. Because my husband might forget and use her “dead name” around the people on the tour. Granted, neither my husband nor I have ever “outed” her to any of her high school friends or even to waiters at restaurants who call her “buddy” and “sir.” We just smile and nod along, like it’s a big game, even though our concern for our daughter’s health, mental and physical, is no game. But still, even though we have gone along with the pretense in front of others for years now, we are not to be trusted. I must have looked dubious, for my daughter added on to this answer.

Even if we could be trusted not to “out” her as biologically female (a fate worse than death, apparently), there’s another good reason to ban us from these tours. She will be uncomfortable “acting a certain way” and using her chosen name around us. So we can’t be there, even if we won’t say or do anything to get in her way or spoil the pretense that she is a boy. Our very presence is too uncomfortable, so we must just stay away.

After I was told these things, I dared to ask a follow-up question, even though I apparently was treading on thin ice, threatening to create an argument (or so I was told). Never mind that I was not raising my voice, not being accusatory, just trying to understand. Apparently, I should have known that bringing this up would be upsetting and “trigger her dysphoria.” Yet I pressed on.

I asked the follow-up question that could only hurt - but it had to be asked. What about the future? Would she just avoid us and keep us separate from all of her friends, co-workers, anyone in her life, forever? Would she avoid us most of the time, for the rest of our lives? She answered without hedging. “Yes.”

I then indicated that this was like a knife twisting in my back. I was scolded for being manipulative. I was told I was gaslighting her by pretending I wasn’t doing anything awful to her that deserved this treatment. I was told the ostracization was simply a consequence of my actions. What actions, I asked? She didn’t have time for my silly questions. So I answered my own question.

My husband and I were to be avoided forever because we didn’t think medical transition, particularly for someone who has never lived life as a woman - having decided at 12.5 that she was “trans,” having worn a binder from age 13, and having pretended to be male to everyone she met starting at 14.5 (the start of high school) - was a good idea. We thought she should try and live without pretense, and certainly give her health the highest priority, and see if she couldn’t eventually simply accept her biological sex. This didn’t mean she couldn’t dress a certain way, wear her hair a certain way, or do anything else that makes her comfortable. It just meant we thought she should not bind, and not pretend to be biologically male, for the next several years, as she grew up and adjusted to adult life. If, as a fully mature adult, she determined that she would be happier appearing male and interacting as if she is male, and if, at that point, she was able to give all the serious medical issues the appropriate weight, then so be it. We would have to accept that decision. But we’re not there yet, and she has never tried to live life in her female body.

And she also has a false belief that she has a “male brain,” that became male when it was suddenly washed in testosterone that came mysteriously from my womb (even though I have no hormonal imbalance and there is no indication this ever happened), at just the right moment in the pregnancy, after her female body had formed, and that this “male brain” expects to see male body parts like a penis (but will accept a faux penis), and that this “male brain” expects to see male secondary sex characteristics like facial hair and a deep voice and greater musculature, and that this “male brain” expects other people to interact with it as if it was attached to a male body. Yes, the “male brain” is hard-wired to expect other people to treat it as if it is attached to a biologically male body even when it is attached to a female body.

She believes this is established science, and that, because she was born with this defective condition, this mis-match, she must change her body to adapt it to her “male brain.” If she is to ever, as a mature adult, make the choice whether to cosmetically alter her appearance to live as if she is male, believing the social dynamics will be so much better suited to her personality (which, by the way, is similar to a gay or bisexual effeminate male with classically feminine characteristics), she cannot make that choice coherently while being duped into believing she really has no choice in the matter. She must become aware that this is a choice based purely on social dynamics, and perhaps an aesthetic choice about how she wants her body to look, but that it is not based on a mis-match between her female body and a “male brain.” That is Flat Earth science, and making decisions on that basis is dangerous.

So, because my husband and I don’t believe in her faux science - which, funny enough, most of the people who would demonize my husband and I for not “affirming” her, would not agree with either, since most of them believe in a “male gender identity” (a meaningless, circularly defined amorphous entity) rather than a “male brain” - we should be banned from attending any college functions attended by other parents. We deserve this as a consequence of our lack of faith in the “male brain” theory. We are persona non grata.

So, like her school play before, where at first we were told we could not come, and then we were told to come but were banned from coming backstage afterwards like all the other parents, now we are excluded from college tours. I can safely predict that we will not be welcome at Parents’ Day. I’m already bracing for her to say we cannot attend her high school graduation, or, more likely, that we should attend, and then leave, and she will see us later at home - while she poses for photos with her friends and their families.

It’s getting very lonely out here in the land of reality. I could never live with myself if I caved and encouraged my daughter to harm herself, and I will not do that. I am not questioning my decisions. I just feel sad, and needed to share my feelings with someone. Maybe one or two of the parents reading this can relate. Thanks for listening.