I'm deeply grateful for your donations to help me continue making music and making positive change happen in our troubled world. You can contribute any amount to my paypal account: paypal.me/ElizabethHummelMusic

Enjoy!

This song was born from the stories of parents of children who have tumbled down the rabbit hole of gender ideology. It is about their fears, their anger, their confusion, and their shock: but most of all it is about their love. It is love that will finally conquer this terrible spiral of harm.

I have followed these stories from loving parents through a remarkable publication called Parents with Inconvenient Truths About Trans (PITT).

pitt.substack.com

Many of these parents, like me, come from the political left, others come from conservative belief systems. They are gay parents, and they are straight parents. All of them are full of brilliant insights and fierce determination to protect their kids. They have found themselves in a fight for their children’s safety and health, with little social, legal, or societal support.

These parents are not hateful or bigoted, and do not wish harm to trans-identified people. But they don’t buy the idea that their child can be born in the “wrong body” or that any child can correctly self-diagnose a non-medical condition called “trans” or “nonbinary” or other offshoots of gender ideology.

These parents read the stories of more and more detransitioners who have come to deeply regret their choices to inflict irreversible damage on their bodies. Will that be my child one day, they wonder? They are alarmed about both the psychological and physical harm to their children resulting from the cult of gender ideology, absorbed through social media, schools and other institutions. They see their once-thriving children become sullen and hostile, withdrawn and depressed.

What is happening is not the fault of these parents any more than an infectious disease sweeping through their children's schools is their fault. They birthed these children, held their hands when they took their first steps. They cherished hearing their children’s first words, relived their own childhood by seeing the beauty of nature through their children’s delighted eyes. Like all parents, none of them are perfect, but they love their children. These parents know in their hearts, in their heads, and in their guts that there is something terribly wrong with this contagious cultural trend that embraces a non-scientific ideology and a medical scandal as Truth.

These parents are fighting for their children’s lives and well-being, all while being told they are bad people for questioning the story told by online “glitter families," most health professionals, the media, and politicians. In 2022 when this song was written and still in 2023, most of them must remain anonymous in their fight because they fear losing employment and social connections. In some cases, their children have been taken from them by government agencies if they do not accept the “affirmation” approach as the best and only response to their children’s proclaimed gender identity or gender dysphoria. (“Affirming” a child’s gender identity includes “social transition,” but also harmful puberty blockers, opposite-sex hormones, and irreversible surgery.)

In other cases, the kids of these parents are in their late teens or early twenties: technically adults, but they are often still dependent on their parents financially and lack the maturity to make profound decisions such as electing for surgery to remove healthy body parts and ingesting opposite-sex hormones. Current science tells us human brains do not fully mature until at least the age of 25. The young cannot believe they will one day be old. (Did you?) Although they may feel passionately certain they are finding their “authentic selves,” they cannot truly understand that there may be serious social and medical consequences for these choices as they age: loss of fertility, inability to orgasm, bone density loss, higher risk for osteoporosis and cancer to mention a few.

These are powerful medical interventions with some known, and some as-yet untold damaging physical and mental effects. In a free and tolerant society, mature adults should be able to weigh these risks and benefits and make their own choices, and they should absolutely be able to live without discrimination or hatred. But these young people cannot see they are being influenced by others, some who have powerful financial interests to make them life-long medical patients.

I don’t see these parents as “transphobic,” “abusive,” or unwilling to accept an immutable truth about their children. This collective parental response to the explosion of children wanting to adopt gender identities, take hormones, and undergo surgeries is a very different phenomenon from parents who reject or shame children who don't conform to gender stereotypes. It is not the same as "praying away the gay." I strongly disagree with that kind of response from parents as much as I ever have. In fact, a high percentage of gender-questioning children will simply turn out to be lesbian, gay, or bisexual if allowed to outgrow their gender dysphoria. So in essence, some of these young people are being subjected to a homophobic form of conversion therapy by the affirmation approach. Many are also on the autism spectrum and have other mental health issues. What is wrong with a boy who wants to twirl around in a tutu? Why should that mean he is "really" a girl? What is wrong with a girl who wants short hair and would rather wear a t-shirt with sharks than mermaids? Why should that mean she is "really" a boy?

I am not a parent, and I am not a therapist or medical practitioner, but I am an empath and an artist. I care about living in a healthy society and leaving a healthy society to the people who come after me. When PITT began, I decided that the very least I could do is to bear witness to these parents’ anguished tales, hard as they sometimes are to read.

I wrote this song for the parents, the people fighting for the well-being of the ones they love the most--their kids. Parents are our best hope of turning the madness around: never lose hope, never stop fighting, and remember to nourish yourselves and keep the flame of your love alight.

To learn more and read the stories of these parents, visit PITT (pitt.substack.com). Another great resource is Genspect (genspect.org) an international alliance of professional groups, parent groups, and others who advocate for a rational and informed approach to gender issues. Sources for data can be found on this site.