My daughter was 13 years old when she first told me she wasn’t sure whether she was a girl. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the start of five years of challenges I never knew existed.
During these years, my daughter froze me out of her life. Her friends’ parents thought I was evil and I was flagged to social services on two occasions after her school accused me of abuse.
If the Conversion Practices Bill had been law at the time, I could have been arrested.
I presented facts, laws and regulations to her school, but no one cared. In their eyes, I wasn’t a normal mother protecting my teenage daughter from harm, I was an abuser committing what they thought should have been a crime.
Before my daughter came home that day, I had heard about children transitioning gender, but I hadn’t given it much thought and never considered that it would affect me.
So, when she started asking questions, my instinct was to say: “That’s not true.” But I remembered being 13, and knew how impressionable kids could be at that age, so I said: “Thank you for telling me, I love you.”
Around six months after the first conversation, the requests started coming in. First, she asked for a breast binder. Then, she said she wanted to change her name and use male pronouns.
I said yes to the pronouns but didn’t act on it. But when I said no to the binder on health grounds, she said she might kill herself. That was a frightening thing to hear. How was my quirky, smart, creative child all of a sudden contemplating suicide?
When I asked where she’d heard about killing herself, she said at school. It wasn’t until much later that I learned a so-called “diversity role model” had gone into her school and spoken about having wanted to kill herself until gender reassignment surgery saved her life.
After doing some research, I noticed emails from my daughter’s school had begun referring to her by the new name she had asked me to use. I asked why they were doing this without my consent, and from then on I became a bad parent for not being “supportive”.
Not long after, she told me that she had learned in school that I was committing hate crimes and was abusing her by not agreeing that she was a boy with another name.
It felt like I’d entered a parallel universe.
Reported to social services When I asked the school why they hadn’t contacted the authorities if they thought I was being abusive, I was reported to social services for the first time.
We moved school the next year, but again, it started calling her by a different name, explaining it was a “Stonewall champion” school that supported children in their chosen gender identity. They also gave my daughter therapy, despite my objections.
This led to a second call from social services. Except this time, they came to our house, went through our fridge and drawers, and interviewed my other children. They were scared and didn’t understand what was happening. They also felt ashamed.
If the Conversion Practices Bill becomes law, I’m terrified it will criminalise normal parenting, which involves saying no to things teenagers want in the moment.
It sounds strange, but throughout those years, social services and police felt like the only sane people I spoke to. Once I explained my situation, it was obvious to them that we were a normal family providing a safe and loving home.
But if this bill becomes law, they won’t be allowed to apply such a common-sense approach.