Maybe Not

These views are my own, and this letter is written as my own take on what the friend might respond to, as inferred from the letter, with the opportunity and artistic license used to add some facts and make a point. This is very much how I might respond to the original letter. This is not to be understood or mistaken as “The Friend’s” actual response.

Dear Anonymous Parent,

I've been turning your letter over in my mind these past few days, pondering how to respond. There was a time when it would have been so easy - I would have dashed off a reply full of inside jokes and shared memories, eager to dissect the latest developments in our lives and yours. But now, I hardly know where to begin.

You asked what it is I miss in you, who it is I think of fondly. In truth, it's not one thing but a thousand little things. I miss the sound of your laugh and the way your eyes crinkled when you smiled. I miss the easy way we could talk for hours about everything and nothing. I miss the friend who was always up for an adventure, whether it was trying a new restaurant or planning a weekend getaway with our families.

More than anything, I miss the friend who approached life with an open heart and an open mind. The friend who put kindness first, even when we didn't see eye to eye. The friend who believed in fairness, equality and respecting others' humanity, regardless of who they were or where they came from - you only looked at who and what they are now.

It's hard to reconcile that friend with the person I see now - someone who speaks of trans people, let alone any minority, with such callousness and contempt. Someone who dedicates herself to attending conferences that spread misinformation, pseudoscience, and undermines civil rights. I barely recognize you when you use words like "gender-fucking-nightmare-bullshit" - that's not the Friend I knew.

The Friend I knew stood up for the marginalized and the mistreated. She stood up for women's rights and liberation. She believed that our diversity as a society was our strength. She would have been appalled at the thought of denying anyone's fundamental rights or access to healthcare and bodily autonomy.

I don't know when or how you started down this path of intolerance. But I've seen how it's changed you, how it's narrowed your worldview and hardened your heart. You've become so fixated on attacking the trans community that you've lost sight of the bigger principles of compassion and equality that used to guide you.

It pains me to see how far you've strayed from the person you once were. The friend I knew would have been horrified to see you pouring so much energy into tearing others down and spreading hurtful myths not supported by science or fact.

Like your anecdotes about trans athletes "pummeling" women, when the research shows trans women on hormone therapy don't have any significant advantage. Or your fearmongering about high rates of transition regret, when every reputable study finds detransition is rare, lower than regret rates for many other procedures.

But I know you'll likely dismiss those facts as biased, just as you've dismissed my attempts to have an honest dialogue as me trying to be "self-righteous". You seem to have made up your mind that your anti-trans views are righteous and anyone who disagrees is deluded or lying.

Then you paint my concerted effort to not engage on this topic specifically to keep things copacetic between us, to preserve what parts of our friendship we can, by not wanting to engage in this because I knew that you knew my position, and you were spoiling for a fight. I desperately did not want to get dragged into this minefield, and you did everything you could to pull me into it.

Then, when it backfires, you did not hear that it was my kids your rhetoric was hurting. It was my kid, and a few others at their school. One whose only safe space outside of school is in my house. And the entire time, all you could do was make this about you and how I was not being honest with you, because I was trying to avoid the argument I did not want to have with you?

I wish I knew how to reach the open-minded, open-hearted Friend I used to know. The one who would have been the first to stand up against the kind of hate and misinformation you're now spreading. The one who valued our friendship enough to really listen, even when we disagreed.

You say that your fight to save your daughter and other children threatened, and nearly did destroy you? You did not want "trans issues" to interfere and destroy another part of your life? Look at what you have become, look at what your choices, words, and actions have wrought upon your relationships and connections to others in your life?

It is not trans people or trans issues, or "gender ideology" that is interfering and destroying parts of your life; you are doing that well enough on your own. No one is forcing you to behave as you are, to make the choices and engage in the actions that you do. That is not "gender ideology" or trans people at fault. That is all you. You had a choice to make, and you chose this. You chose to become a pale shadow of your former glory.

Maybe she's still in there somewhere. Maybe one day you'll start to question whether this crusade is really worth sacrificing your relationships and your values. I hope so. Because I miss my friend.

Until then, I wish you the best.

Your former friend,

“The Friend”