With ROGD, from the parent perspective, the change is abrupt and without warning – thus the term “rapid”—but that term is somewhat deceiving.
Originally Published by Pitt through Substack
I am a parent of female child who has Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria (ROGD). This is a new phenomenon where a child, who was perfectly happy in his or her body until right around puberty, suddenly announces that he or she is the opposite sex. In the case of my daughter, when she developed this condition, she threw away all of her feminine clothes, cut her hair super short, refused to go out in public without a chest binder and stopped shaving her legs. And, of course, she came up with a new male-sounding name and insisted that everyone use it, along with the associated male pronouns.
With ROGD, from the parent perspective, the change is abrupt and without warning – thus the term “rapid”—but that term is somewhat deceiving. ROGD doesn’t quite pop up out of nowhere despite how it might initially appear, nor does the body incongruence of gender dysphoria spring up organically as the gender ideologues proclaim. It is not something that the ROGD child always felt. And the trans identity is not something that child determines on her own. Rather, it is carefully manufactured and cultivated on the internet and in peer groups, like a tended-to plant. The pretty pot is placed out; the dirt is added; the seeds are implanted; water is carefully poured; and the pot is placed in the sunshine, so that it can grow stronger and bigger until, eventually, and tragically, the child who was happy in her body is no longer recognizable, and not just by sight. Her personality changes to be sullen, combative and disengaged. She is no longer jovial or interested in much of anything unless it related to being trans.
Let me take you on the journey of how my daughter was groomed into being a trans identifying child at the age of 13—and I assure you, my story is not uncommon, I have heard its refrain echoed from many others with ROGD kids. My daughter’s story began innocently enough, with a friend joking to her that she always took charge of the games that they came up with at the playground at school. Take-charge girls are like boys, her friend said, and she gave her a male nickname.
That same year, my daughter got her period. She was the first in her friend group and it was heavy and a nuisance. Her breasts developed. Naturally, she did not like these sudden changes, as most girls initially don’t. Most girls in my generation spent a few years wearing baggy clothes to cover up their maturing bodies. These days, that perfectly normal and to-be-expected discomfort is a clear sign of being trans, per the internet.
Also in 7th grade, after their sex ed class at school, my daughter’s all female friend group sat in my backyard discussing what sexual categories they fell into. “I think that I am an L” one announced. “L” stood for lesbian. Another said that she was agender. My daughter said she was L or pansexual. All 5 girls chose a label other than what is now referred to as “cis” or in my daughter’s words, the scorned and derogatory term “basic”. I was concerned about this new language so I attended our public school’s sponsored sex talk. It was put on by Pflag, I believe. The presentation was senseless. Gender is fluid, yet immutable. There are 46 genders and all kids regardless of age should announce pronouns at introduction. I was the only parent interrupting them to question their illogical logic. I was eventually told, essentially, to shut up.
Then, in 8th grade, my daughter stopped being a good student. She became obsessed with an older girl she met, who identified as a boy. My concern grew. I started to go through all of my daughter’s devices, old, obsolete i-phones and kindles. During my initial investigation, I saw some odd texts and TikToks but nothing too worrying.
After a night in which my daughter had a panic attack, she started to open up to me about the cause of her pain and anger, and why her behavior had changed so dramatically. She gave me all of her passwords for all of her accounts, even her secret ones. She admitted to having accounts in every possible platform – Discord, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and TikTok – some that I had no idea existed. I spent the next couple of weeks going through each device and every platform. What I saw made me physically ill.
My daughter’s crush, the girl who identified as a boy and was 3 years older than my daughter, had sent her a 10-minute video of herself masturbating with an enormous dildo. Yes, I had child pornography on my device. That older girl discussed fisting and described in intimate detail female anatomy and orgasms to a group of some 6 or so 13-year-old girls online. This girl admitted to having been sexually abused as a child. She admitted to being obsessed with pedophile cases and serial killers. Now, she was passing that abuse onto my child and other kids. She admitted to meeting random people in the city’s park to smoke pot and engage in sexual acts.
The young girl followers treated this older girl as a sage. They hung on every word, asked her for advice, watched her endless of stream of TikToks, with her drug induced dances in Super Hero costumes with bulging packers. They listened to her stories of being on acid and mushrooms. My daughter got interested in the dark arts, because that is what this older girl liked. My daughter started asking for everything that this older kid liked – a tarantula, a throne, various records, a nose ring – you get the idea.
I now knew why my daughter had become unrecognizable. The history on every device was filled with pornography, and the porn was mostly guy-on-guy. It was violent porn. It was anime porn with rape scenes, pregnant cartoon men being sodomized, gang bangs with cartoon children. There were internet sites that contained written porn, with beatings, followed by forgiveness and sex.
My daughter had been sucked into the dark web.
She was only 13.
There were searches for ball gags, hand-cuffs, whips and leather outfits. There were surveys to determine what deviant sex acts she would partake in. There were Discord and Instagram chatrooms where girls discussed whether they are bottoms or tops, givers or receivers, abusers or abused. There were discussions of turn-ons with weaponry. There were images of cartoon dogs giving oral sex. My daughter started drawing penises on her walls in her room, her shoes and her pants.
I accessed my daughter’s group chats with young girls from across the country where they were teaching each other how to disassociate with their bodies so that they would be comfortable posting pictures of themselves naked. Advice that included things like “since you are really a boy, your girl body really isn’t yours so it’s no big thing to sell pictures to stupid men for money”. There was a tutorial for how to find a “sugar daddy” and how to set up an amazon account so he could buy you things. The more seasoned trans identified girls would say “don’t worry you can start off slow, just show your midriff. You can hide your face and show more.” Find a sugar daddy who does not screenshot snapchat, otherwise you will be all over the internet, some 14-year-old warned. One girl bemoaned how long it took her sugar daddy to climax while he watched her dance.
I dove in deeper. I looked at all of my daughter’s followers on TikTok – the followers were MTFs, FTMs, young girls showcasing bouncing breasts, tongues simulating oral sex by 14-year-olds, grown men following, kids advertising their trans-ness which increases their followings and invites predators. I delved into her Twitter followers, and found men posting gang bangs with demonstrations of things that I can never unsee. I read the written porn that my daughter had read. It was beyond disgusting.
I started calling random contacts from her phone. There were adult men answering. An anorexic male college student who was taking estrogen. Strangers from other states.
After several tries, I stripped my daughter’s phone of all internet access. I stripped her school iPad of the most egregious sites. I bought a safe and locked up all the phones and devices. I got her a new phone number so that I could block all of the pedophiles and groomers with whom she was in contact.
I would love to say that was the end of it. But, you see, the plant that grew from the groomers could not be cut down so easily. It kept replanting itself, regrowing as addiction is wont to do. The pull of the porn was so strong, that my daughter had friends give her their old phones. She had friends send her screen shots of “food” (her word for written porn). She ran away, stating that I abused her because I blocked the internet.
So, you tell me, is my now 15-year-old daughter’s trans-identity organic? Is it her transman identity her authentic, true self? Is her self-realization that she really is a boy something that should be celebrated? I know and you know now that she was transformed slowly and methodically with intent by those who prey on young vulnerable kids.
This week after finding yet another stowaway phone, my daughter offered to transform back to being a traditional girl – wear bras, grow her hair out, wear stereotypical female clothes, tell everyone to use her female name – in exchange for access to the internet with limited controls. Is she so addicted to porn that it trumps her alleged “trans identity”? Is she merely offering to bide her time until she is 18 to transition again? I don’t know. I am not sure what we will do, but one thing that I am sure of is that this ROGD group of kids does not come by their cross-sex identities organically or authentically. Someone plants the seed. Someone waters the seed and someone places it in the sunshine and cultivates it carefully for reasons of their own. And our children are the unwitting victims.
