I’d seen the Cass Review.

Then I’d seen one systematic peer reviewed study after another.

The dominos of a protocol fell before our eyes.

And the building blocks of a Standards of Care began to topple as the sand beneath its foundation shifted with the changing tide.

Months went by.

I learned more about a toxic Theory: Delusion making waves in an attempt to subvert reality, cloaking itself in a credibility it could never earn, inverting truth with lies, and performing “liberator” while psychologically enslaving both its acolytes and its unwitting victims.

Meanwhile, the therapist lulled a vulnerable client within an ideological framework that reifies and deifies stereotypes, celebrates the regressive as progressive, and sacrifices lives and bodies on its alter.

One day, she invited me to a meeting.

Ostensible curiosity about my perspective.

She tried to convert, but it didn’t work. I’m inoculated against the virus.

Ostensible curiosity about a thought experiment.

“What’s wrong with someone wanting to grow a beard?”

A low growl forms in a mother’s throat.

I proffered up a list of possible harms.

[…]

“So what? Who cares?”

I do.

Two females begin to face-off.

In rising anxiety, I said I valued staying grounded in objective reality.

She said my values didn’t count in this - that the responsibility to honor someone’s values only went in one direction. Her solution was an ultimatum that facilitates fantasy…or else.

A mother exposes her teeth. A rival’s eyes widen.

Her arguments fell flat, so she said she refused to debate. Then she fell back on the last resort of the scoundrel: ad hominem.

With a rising voice, I continued to point to the harms. With a trained, taunting, calm, she continued to point at my person, insinuating the go-to slur without stating it explicitly.

A mother roars. A rival retreats.

And the mother stands here shaking, trying to recover… knowing that the Predator still lurks, and that the prey is her daughter.