Has “ROGD Parent” Become an Identity?

The stories of parents caught between the techno-medical complex and their kids sucked into the gender cult have contorted my heart into positions I didn’t know it could stretch, so much have I felt for them. But listening to Youtuber, Karen Davis’s critiques of the parent advocacy group, GenSpect recently, and the vitriol she is receiving from parents, I started to notice these organizations are now becoming a hindrance to real political action that might change the landscape for parents and for women whose rights to even name themselves are being rapidly stripped away.

This past week, a mother from another organization of parents, which is umbrellaed under the GenSpect parent group, wrote a piece entitled It's Strategy People!!, in support of GenSpect. The group is called Parents with Inconvenient Truths about Trans (PITT) and is housed on the Substack blogging platform. The piece was a caged memo to feminist activists who have recently been pushing a harder front line that does not capitulate to gender ideology, and specifically putting Karen Davis, critiquing GenSpect and those aligning with her on notice: Parents would not tolerate dissent from their narrative and the organizations buffering them from the public

ROGD, an acronym that stands for Rapid Onset Gender Dysphoria, coined by Lisa Littman, a physician, and scientist, describes an explosive social phenomenon of children presenting with body dysphoria related to their sex. In the past several years many organizations to help parents navigate their children’s ROGD have emerged in various countries.

4th Wave Now, was one of the first organizations for people questioning the medicalization of gender-atypical youth, which was begun by a parent, and attracted other parents of children claiming special sex identities and seeking serious medical interventions. On its heels, TransgenderTrend, a group of parents, professionals, and academics who are concerned about the number of children diagnosed with gender dysphoria formed. Current iterations of these organizations and the ones finding themselves under the scrutiny of Karen Davis, are Gender Dysphoria Alliance and GenSpect.

While these organizations have been helpful in getting information to parents, supporting them when there seemed no place else to turn, they have become, for many of us in the pro-reality movement, an anchor on the necessity of ending the lie that anyone transitions, or that anyone’s body should be treated as experimental fodder for a corporate agenda to colonize human sex.

As these organizations grow, through fundraising, the justification for their existence will need to be continually solidified with the idea that some children should be medicalized, that “transgender” is something real, which in turn solidifies the attack on women’s rights and on women who will not submit to this concept. These organizations, whether they realize it or not are becoming part of the gender industry, supporting the medicalization of children, in moderation, and to hell with whatever happens to women in the process.

In response to the PITT post, several feminist activists (myself included), a few parents, and a young person who’d almost been captured by the gender cult, jumped into the comments section of the piece to articulate our concerns. The concerns focused on the continued anonymity of parents, their partnering with organizations, like GenSpect, that solidify the concept of gender identity, and GenSpects message of better oversight for children with body dysphoria, versus ending the medicalization of children’s bodies entirely and unequivocally. There is no such thing as a little bit of eugenics and there is no such thing as “transgender people.” It is corporate fiction.

Those of us on the thread, supporting a feminist analysis called out GenSpect’s support of the overall concept of “trans” people, that there is such a thing as “transphobia” (a slur being weaponized to silence women resisting their own erasure), their affiliations with men in the sex research industries who support the destigmatization of pedophilia, their platforming of people who are self-harming and still claiming special sex identities as well as pornographers, interviews with adult men who have autogynephilla, and their lack of a clear message about what they are actually accomplishing politically against the gender industry.

This post is not to punish anyone for not being on a particular side or for not engaging in “purity stances,” a statement being thrown at people who hold to the reality that everyone is either male or female. It is an effort to get people to reflect on the broader picture, as most of my work tries to accomplish.

On today’s PITT Substack, entitled, It’s About Winning! one parent wrote, “Once we’ve won and our children are safe, most of us parents will dissolve back into our normal daily lives, civilians once more.”

Winning for who, I ask? Feminists and others have been here the whole time, fighting alongside these parents for their kids, exposing information, researching, organizing on-the-ground protests at gender clinics, tracking gender clinics, creating our own websites to get information out, writing articles, helping to get bills passed, organizing conferences, all of us operating as and with volunteers, while working full-time jobs, putting in hours and hours of our time, so that no other child is harmed and once these parents feel like their children are safe, its goodbye from them. Wow. Just wow. The privilege and entitlement dripping off these posts are astonishing.

The defensiveness with which the expressed concerns in the PITT comments were met by parents had me thinking that “ROGD Parent” has become an identity on par, in specialness, with the parent of a “trans” child. It is being solidified into an untouchable, unquestionable category of victimhood around which parents are creating identities that have them avoiding moving into the next phase of response against the gender industry. They have been anonymous for years, they are protected by organizations, soothed, offered comfort and compassion, given a place to share their stories of suffering within a community of loose-knit allies calling themselves gender critical. Their grief has become a shield against any inquiry.

The organizations themselves have helped create and solidify these parents’ identities as the walking wounded. Instead of moving beyond their grief into concrete political resistance that demands change, the parents are protecting the concept of gender identity while simultaneously begging for incremental change by calling attention to their woundedness and that of their children. These parents are overwhelmingly mothers, as are the parents solidifying their children’s identities of being “transgender.”

As one parent participating in the comments on the PITT Substack told me after the comments were shut off, “this virtuous victim narrative is entirely absent of any sense of accountability for the impact that their actions and advocacy of this harmful ideology have on others. It denies the agency of both kids and parents, and it feeds a preexisting narrative of white innocence/purity without actually acknowledging the power-seeking aspect of "being trans.”

Some of the themes that emerged on the comments thread at the original PITT post from parents were:

* How dare you question us, we are suffering

*There is no other group that has a higher stake in this debate

*Only another parent going through this can understand how much we have suffered

*We have a separate goal from others fighting the gender industry (we are special) - our goal is to save our children.

*Women’s rights are not our problem - feminists should fight their own battles

*GenSpect is our protector - how dare you question their motives

*Anyone questioning or critiquing the position of GenSpect are attacking us and are cruel, horrible, and unsympathetic people

*General outrage

Some of the responses from women with years of political experience as activists, who have provided these parents with the information and support they need to understand what is happening to their children were:

* You can’t solidify the concept of gender identity and simultaneously fight it and then expect children to be safe.

*GenSpect is not doing much politically when what is needed is organized, strategic political resistance to the techno-medical complex and the institutions driving gender ideology.

*Children aren’t safe if women aren’t safe. Leaving the ideology of gender identity intact leaves women unsafe.

*Capitulation and supplication to the ideology and the media pushing it, is doing more harm in the long run to everyone, including children.

*Effective resistance allows for critique, especially when it is in response to a publicly published piece about political strategy.

*Critique should lead to self-reflection not defensive posturing

*We care about children too, not just yours but children in the future who will be set up for medicalization unless the entire ideology is exposed for the lie it is and ended.

*Kids are harmed by the lies that some children might need medicalization for their feelings.

*Kids are harmed by the idea that anyone’s sex should be mutilated for identity.

*Capitulation to gender ideology creates an atmosphere for those resisting the entire edifice of “transitioning” to be seen as extremists

Mostly, women commented for two or three days. Though emotions ran high, the thread of comments in its entirety was rich with varying perspectives, that could have been reflected on for a long time to come, leading to constructive change. I went back the day after making my last comment to do some reflecting myself and the entire thread was gone. I was shocked. I understand the need to shut off comments at a certain point but those managing the comments could obviously brook no dissent to their views and removed it all.

One of the commenters had luckily left her browser open and sent me the entire thread this morning, which I am including a link to at the bottom of this piece, for your reflection. I believe there is no way to avoid conflict and controversy in life. As women, we are socialized to avoid it at all costs, but it is often valuable to work through it instead of trying to eradicate it.

No one has a corner on suffering here. Our society is being upended in its entirety. Women are being erased in language and law, threatened with job loss, social isolation, rape, and death. Some women have already been raped, in prison by men claiming to be female. Children are being drugged, sterilized, and mutilated. Unity is stronger than separation and consistent truth-telling is the only antidote to the enormous lie that there is any such thing as a “trans” person. It is my sincerest hope that women will find it in themselves to step beyond their fears and start telling the truth until telling the truth doesn’t look like extremism.

Here is the original article on the Pitt Substack and the thread of comments for anyone interested in reading through it and reflecting on the changing landscape in the war against the gender industry:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/15AD98rcB5w2U2eQ1MaE-muirqv0T1fcxIA70qKT7s1k/edit?usp=sharing

(read more)