Talking to My Kids About Sex

And Stories of Sexual Conditioning and “De-Transitioners”

Recently, psychologist Dr. Jordan Peterson interviewed an 18-yo young lady named Chloe Cole, who is “de-transitioning” to reclaim her female body she was born with, the best she can.

It all started at age 11, when she was given a cell phone, and spent countless hours with Instagram. She didn’t really “fit in” with any peer group, and Insta showed her idealized images of women who were curvy, with “hourglass” figures.

Thin, broad-shouldered, Chloe was devastated to think she could never look like these women.

Chloe followed feminist content talking about how awful it is to be a woman:

From men oppressing women throughout history; to PMS and menstruation; to the pain and risks of childbirth; to menopause and women being criticized for aging.

Not only was that scary to her, but with her muscular, wiry frame, and small breasts and booty, she concluded that how she was, was the “wrong” way to be. She was only 13.

And when she was young, she was taller than most girls, and she preferred hanging out with boys. She was physically attracted to boys, but she was mostly just isolated and lonely.

Eventually boys were taller than her, and she couldn’t compete in their activities very well.

Chloe was the youngest of five children, but her siblings were all much older than she was. They were teenagers living a lifestyle that didn’t include a little kid. She didn’t feel that she fit in there, either.

She really just felt disenfranchised, in life, as many pre-teens do, and she would later be diagnosed on the autism spectrum.

Modern culture, delivered by the device Chloe spent many hours a day with, convinced her that she was in the wrong body. At 13, she wrote her parents a letter, telling them that she wanted to be a boy.

Her parents were shocked and actually pushed back. Both of them. But the therapists Chloe went to didn’t spend the time and effort to understand the complex dynamics she was in, and at the age of 13, she began taking puberty blocking and hormone drugs.

Dr. Peterson said that a good therapist should have spent “hundreds of hours” with her trying to understand her circumstances better.

At 15, Chloe had a double mastectomy. Awful things happened. Including skin and nipples that turned black and died after her breasts were removed, so that her nipples and some of her tissues had to be removed later.

But Chloe’s fear and concerns were dismissed by the professionals, because it was “all part of the process.”

She has many health issues today, at 18, some too painful and personal to talk about in that interview, in which she became emotional and tearful.

She is now a beautiful girl with long hair in braids for the interview, attracted to boys, and very much hoping to be a mother one day. Hoping that three years taking testosterone and puberty blockers did not destroy this possibility for her.

The “trans” movement is now not whatsoever friendly to her, since she changed her mind about “transitioning.” It turns out they aren’t particularly “inclusive.”

When I was a little girl, I never played with dolls. On my 5th birthday, when my grandparents gave me a gift I was very excited about, it was a doll. I remember thinking, “What am I supposed to do with this?” and crying.

I was trying so hard not to cry, but I did.

Part of my tears were at being ashamed that everyone was looking at me with anticipation of my reaction, and realizing that I was embarrassing my parents, not showing the enthusiasm and gratitude to my grandparents I was expected to.

My confusion and disappointment, and embarrassment that I didn’t have the “correct” response–just caused a flood of tears, though I hugged and thanked my grandparents, and then fled the room.

A few years later, my friends wanted to play with Barbies. I didn’t have Barbies, as my mother thought they sexualized and conditioned young girls to think they had to have a body like Barbie.

(Which almost none of us would ever have, although in my 40’s, one of my adolescent children told me that I was “trying to look like a Barbie.” Damned if you do, damned if you don’t?)

My friends had Barbies and wanted to play with them for hours.

I was bored out of my mind, and I would propose another activity, at the earliest possibility, after pretending to play with the dolls and dress them and make-believe, to please my friends.

I felt like something was “wrong” with me, since I’d never had any interest in dolls, as a child.

I was very jealous of my 6 brothers, who were enrolled in sports, and my parents bragged about their athletic accomplishments. Sports were not encouraged for me, though I did talk my way onto some basketball and softball teams. My mother did not attend my games, or show any interest.

To this day, I do not have a shred of interest in hair, makeup, purses, shoes, or shopping. Gossip bores the heck out of me. I can’t say I always “fit in” all that well, to female culture.

Sometimes at conferences of my colleagues, I am assigned a seat with the wives, and I look longingly at the other end of the table, where my longtime friends and colleagues are talking about the industry we are in, and political issues, wishing I could be in that conversation, instead. 

I had a strong sexual attraction to a girl in high school, and one other time, I had a strong physical attraction to another mom of three small children, a friend of mine.

I did not act on these two sexual attractions, or discuss them with anyone. I wonder if I had, if my sexualization during a formative age–had been with my own gender–what the outcome would have been. On my “identity.”

Actually, this blog post wasn’t supposed to be a tell-all, but I think this matters:

I have a third experience–my first sexual experience was with another girl. When I was 10 years old, a family friend moved in and babysat us while my parents went to England for two weeks.

One night, as their 10-year old girl slept on the floor with me, our two families occupying my family’s very small home, the 10-year old began touching me.

Then it went both ways–as I experienced feelings I did not understand, and would feel ashamed about for many years. And I experienced my first-ever orgasm.

Had I continued to be same-sex sexualized in that formative period of my life, having other experiences like that–and if I had not been raised in a very conservative culture, I imagine that I would probably today consider myself “bisexual” or something else.

Much later, in graduate school, I learned that the more mature or sexually experienced child is considered the perpetrator, in sexual abuse.

I was very confused about the sexual experience when I was 10 years old, but it hadn’t occurred to me that this little girl had likely been sexually abused, or how would she know to initiate a sex act on another girl?

However, I didn’t have any more experiences like that, and I am 99.9% attracted to men. I am happily married to one, and consider myself firmly heterosexual.

Interestingly, the high-school friend I’d had such an epic crush on, no less than any crush I’ve ever had on boys–married a pastor, had two children, and later got divorced and married a woman.

She is very officially gay. Was I attracted to the “masculine” in her?

She was a legendary athlete at my high school. Perhaps she was how I wanted to be–an incredible basketball and softball player, and super smart. I was athletic, and less smart.

She had short hair, had aced all the AP classes we had together, one of our valedictorians, in fact–tall, thin and strong, wore no makeup and exclusively athletic clothes.

See how nuanced our “sexual identities” are? And how they change? I don’t know that just as we are discovering that we are sexual beings is the right time to make permanent, life-altering decisions.

After not seeing my high school friend for decades, she showed up at a lecture I gave in South Carolina, with her daughters.

Later, I told her that I’d had a big crush on her earlier in life. Not because I had any remaining physical attraction to her–I didn’t, and we were both even single when we reconnected–

–but because life is so strange, and I thought she’d find that amusing. Given that she was gay and I was straight, all these years later.

There’s no explaining the attraction I had to the young-mom friend I had, in my early 30’s, who was very classically feminine.

The young girl whose mother babysat my siblings and me while my parents went to Europe–I wasn’t “attracted” to her. I just found myself in a strange situation, late at night.

I never saw that girl again until she showed up at a Walnut Creek lecture I gave, a decade ago.

When she told me who she was, and said, “My mom babysat you guys, when your parents were in England, remember?” Oh, my. How that memory came flooding back.

But that wasn’t the time to ask if she had been sexually abused, as people were standing in line for me to sign my book for them, and I have never heard from her again. I don’t even remember her last name.

I was not attracted to her at the age of 10–my body just reacted to a stimulus I had never experienced before.

We are all different. We are more than just gender. We are also influenced by the experiences we have in our formative years.

Sexual experiences at a young age can “hard-code” to become our “sexual identity,” especially if they are repeated.

The “nature versus nurture” debate raged for years, but now, the LGBTQIA+ community becomes angry if it is brought up, because the demand is that it be accepted, not questioned.

A longtime friend of mine was sexually abused by his male doctor as a child, and he grew up to be a gay man.

But I don’t think we are necessarily sentenced to something that happened to us, prior to age 18, to become the way we are “defined.” I don’t pretend to have all the answers, about “sexual identity.” It’s obviously complex, and my experience is not everyone’s.

But my first sexual experience wasn’t the “identity” I have now.

I love all my friends–gay, straight, I even have a gay drag-queen friend who is a political conservative and dresses up as Lady MAGA. But I am opposed to sexualizing children early, and so is he.

I am, however, a big fan of parents talking to their children about sex, at a young age, in a context that the parent and child feel comfortable with, using anatomically correct terms.

(A penis is not a “pee-pee.” They may be “private parts,” but why should you spend your entire childhood not knowing what these body parts are?

Calling bodily parts and functions silly names just tells the child that her parent is uncomfortable with talking about the facts of his life and his body, making it shameful or embarrassing.)

My mother gave me a very good “birds and bees” talk when I was five years old. She used the correct words, and she was unashamed, and she shared her morality around the topic. Which was that sexuality was something I should look forward to, but reserved for marriage.

She also bought an age-appropriate book I read many times, called “You Were Smaller Than A Dot.”

I just checked, on Amazon. It’s there, but only a few copies. Hurry, get one. They’re used copies. I hope it’s good–I’m not sure, because I haven’t read it, in 50 years.

But I read it dozens of times. Trying to make sense of this thing that my mother told me men and women do, but I’d never seen them do. And I struggled to imagine them doing such a thing.

But somehow this act made a person who was smaller than a dot. That eventually turned into an entirely unique small person. The sex act certainly struck me as a powerful one, that should not be taken lightly.

My mother probably felt it was important, having a precocious child who had read hundreds of books by the age of 5, to talk to me about sex early, although my main reaction was shock and horror.

(I also went on to gather my cousins, and fill them in. Their parents, my uncles and aunts, were something less than pleased, my cousins told me when they were adults.)

I did the same for my children when they were 6 or 7. In fact, we took some of them out to dinner, for a special night alone with Mom and Dad. To share the story we knew they would find bizarre, of how they came to be.

I did tell my children that some parents would not be happy, if my children “educated” their friends who didn’t yet know about these “facts of life.” That was the parents’ job.

(Since it’s a running joke with my cousins, about how Robyn filled them in, about the “birds and bees.” Including a cousin two years older than me.)

My children reacted with the same dumbfounded shock, and one of my daughters told me many years later that I should have done it in several conversations, not just one big shocking download.

That struck me as true. I just didn’t want my children to learn about sexuality first from others, and I wanted to put it in language and context that fit my values.

I wanted them to know that I considered that God-given sexuality to be expressed for one special person we are committed to, as it is a powerful act and not to be taken lightly.

I didn’t want them to find themselves in a compromised situation, not knowing what they were dealing with. Your children aren’t with you 24-7, after all, even when they are little.

Both my husband and I were sexually abused by the time we were 10, by someone who knew more than we did.

The conversation Dr. Peterson had with Chloe Cole is an important one, especially since most of our psychiatrists, psychologists, and therapists readily and quickly sign off on “gender affirming care” that involves drugs and surgeries.

If they don’t, they are at risk for losing their licenses. The therapy Chloe Cole got was appalling. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) has eliminated “gender identity disorder” in its most recent version.

The Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in the UK lost a court case two years ago brought by Keira Bell, a young woman who was subjected to the drugs and surgeries, only to realize as she became an adult, that she is actually a woman and had subjected herself to life-altering procedures and drugs at a tender age that has caused her a great deal of misery.

A higher court has overturned the ruling against NHS, who have performed thousands of gender reversals, but hundreds of parents are suing this institution in the UK, whose children have come of age and are angry and ill, after the use of drugs and surgeries.

Your media does not tell you about these people seeking to “de-transition.”

But Dr. Peterson also interviewed Dr. Miriam Grossman, a psychiatrist who has felt compelled to support the parents of a “transitioning” child, as he or she is often up against the other parent, siblings, and school and community. The parents who don’t immediately choose “affirming” for their child face not just gaslighting and heavy social pressure, but may even lose their child.

Finally, Dr. Peterson has interviewed therapist Sarah Stockton, who helped children with “gender affirming,” until she gradually came to feel that her profession was harming children.

But I think we are culturally ignoring what a confusing time pre-adolescence is, and how much we will change, from the age of 10, to the age of 20 and 30. I believe we should protect childhood at any cost.

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