Update, 5/10/2023:
RIP Heather Armstrong. Very sad.
Why are you agreeing with us when we are telling you that we hate ourselves?
Wow.
This account is turning into nothing but saints, gender ideology, and travel.
Someday I’ll read a book again, I suppose.
Or…what about this…write one, perhaps??
Anyway, to the Friday afternoon business at hand:
Those of you who have observed the blogging – especially the Mom Blogging – world for a couple of decades now – well, you know about Dooce.
Dooce, aka Heather Armstrong, was the first Mom Blogger to get big with huge readership, notoriety and a book deal or two, I guess. I was never a big reader of Dooce, but checked in with her once in a while as a part of taking the temperature of the Online World. I had no strong opinions about Dooce except…wow. Oversharing much?
But that was definitely her brand. In super-stream-of-consciousness, anxious prose. About everything.
The last I’d read, a few months ago I guess, was about her older daughter declaring a non-binary identity.
Then today…whew.
The gist is below and a link to the entire post here:
Heather, who has, by her own account, dealt with body dysmorphia her entire life (she is skeletal), very astutely ties the trend to non-binariness and transness with that particular issue. She is, of course, being cancelled right and left and accused of transphobia, but my Lord, the pain here is so real and deep and again…real. And the writing is very brave.
When I was your age I was angry at everything and everyone, and if I had thought that testosterone would make me feel better about how skinny I was or wasn’t, how curvy I was or wasn’t, how a pair of jeans never fit my body the way they fit the bodies of supermodels I had hanging all over my walls, I would have injected testosterone into my arms like heroin.
Instead, I did was de rigeueur at the time. I tried to control what I put in my body. I tried to control the way I looked…
…..
When we shackle ourselves to an idea of happiness, and that idea can look like anything — a thin body, a man’s body — we blind ourselves to a million instances of happiness that don’t look like that image. We are shackling ourselves to a life of constant suicidal ideation that is in no way temporary.
When I stopped drinking I returned to that eating disorder only this time I had Adderall. I had developed a whole new league of eating disorder. Let’s call it Anorexia on Speed.
That’s how fucking serious I am.
I want you to memorize this phrase and repeat it to yourself over and over again in case you ever think that you would be better off dead:
Suicide is a permanent fix to a temporary problem.
Moms, and more specifically WHITE PROGRESSIVE MOMS, you know exactly who you are because you want to be the fun mom, they need you to knock off your bullshit.
Stop playing into this nonsense because you are helping them destroy their lives…
….
White progressive moms, I am talking to you now. And I have no fucks to give should any of this hurt your feelings. I feel your pain, too, because when my they/them told me they wanted to change their pronouns I believed they were riding this massive cultural shift in acceptance and inclusion.
But I was wrong. America is fucking wrong.
During my recovery process I began to realize that I was not asking the right questions about what we think is a radical new way of celebrating diversity.
White progressive moms, are you asking yourselves the right questions? Maybe you should so that I don’t have to do the work for you. But since none of you are doing the work, lean in close and let me give you the answers to the questions you won’t ask.
Gender dysphoria is social contagion.
Should your theys and thems be afraid to read this or disinterested in the manic rambling spiral of some looney white anorexic on the internet, this part is for you and your kids together. Read this part together calling upon the pain of your childhood that in hindsight might have made you realize that your girls are experiencing normal human sadness. They are teenagers. They were once your precious baby girls.
They are experiencing the same sadness you experienced when you were their age.
Your children are perfect. They were born perfect. And you love them just the way they are.
Let me say it again, and you need tor repeat this over and over again to your girls. Every single day for the rest of their lives because WHO KNOWS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN WE DIE:
Your children are perfect. They were born perfect. And you love them just the way they are.
That’s how fucking serious I am. I have been thinking a lot lately about how much I have destroyed my body, and that has made me consider death in a way I never have. I cannot imagine losing anyone in my life knowing how many memories I have decimated with drugs.
And now, at last, we have come to the Radio Free Europe portion of the program, kids.
And adults if you are still reading and not already writing an angry missive to your progressive congressperson who doesn’t give two fucks about your kids anyway, this is important for you, too.
Desisters and Destransitioners, these women are my heroes. And they are going to save this planet because no one else has the guts to do it. And I am going to help them.
Desisters and Destransitioners are being silenced. And they are being kicked off every forum and social platform for trying to tell you to stop doing this to them and to each other. They are telling you what they wish they had known long before they headed down a path toward transition, and I am the only progressive white woman alive who is willing to say publicly and proudly and authentically and unapologetically:
These Desisters and Destransitioners, these women, they are right.
I am a white progressive women who co-opted oppression and saddled my own teenage girls with all that baggage. These Desisters and Destransitioners are now tasked with the burden of undoing the damage done to them by their own parents and trying to figure out a way to get everyone to safety before the whole boat sinks.
They are trying to megaphone the shit out of this goddamn tragedy of millennial proportions. They are screaming:
Get off that boat because that boat is heavier than the Titanic.
Celebrities won’t say it because they are buying into it. Celebrities are selling it. Celebrities are cloaking themselves in it as if they are aligning themselves with all that is good and right in the world and no one seems to be asking, have we lost our goddamn minds? These celebrities and white progressive moms think they are on the right side of history.
And let me tell you, they are dead wrong.
Desisters and Destransitioners — these genuine heroes of mine — they are being silenced and threatened and canceled by their friends and every one in power who should know better.
They are the poster children for the question I have asked myself every goddamn day of my life, “Why are you agreeing with us when we are telling you that we hate ourselves?”
She even (briefly) dedicated a part of her website to publishing detransitioners’ stories.
God bless her. Really. Sure, she’s rambling, but also: She’s not wrong.
Well, I was going to also address the Shakespeare Globe’s non-binary interpretation of Joan of Arc, but..I think this is enough for one post.
I hope you’ve been watching Better Call Saul, I told my wife last episode that I get the feeling the writers know their working on a masterpiece here, “maybe you should turn yourself in” then a voice comes from outside the office, “It’s time to sing”. Is Flannery mysteriously working on site
I HAVE!!! But really, what’s the point of writing about it until it’s over??? I can say, “Well, I think this might happen” or “I think this means this” – but until I know the whole picture, it’s a waste of energy. It’s like writing a book review when you haven’t finished the book!!! Am awaiting Monday night with both excitement and dread.
Amy, I am so indebted to you for sharing all these links and quotes on your blog. It’s literally how I stay informed on this topic, about which I am very concerned, but my situation does not allow me to search and sift. Thank you.
I could not believe it when I saw the email regarding this blog post! I had been thinking, just last night, about wasted time from years back (won’t go into detail) but thought about all the “early” blogs I read. Dooce being one. Wow-and amen to everything she wrote regarding this travesty being launched at our children, and regarding her past, and your writing about it!!