Youth Blog

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July 21, 2023 (Campaign Life Coalition) – A Canadian father who lost contact with his teenage daughter due to transgender ideology is warning parents about how this could happen to their children too.

Shannon Boschy, a concerned father, wrote an article published in True North about his experience of fighting against his child’s gender transition, and how she came to view his love and concern for her as a form of “hate.” He questioned his daughter’s decision to start hormone replacement therapy, and lost contact.

Speaking about the relationship that he has with his daughter now, he said that “She stands on the other side of the divide, believing that I am the enemy, that I hate her, that failing to affirm her was abuse, and that I failed as a father for loving her girly-girl nature as a child.”

Boschy spoke about the ideology and beliefs which he attributes to the degradation of their relationship, and his child’s anger towards him, saying that “this ideology tell[s] her that I somehow imposed my beliefs about gender on her as she grew up, and that my stereotypes made her believe that she was a girl, when she was really something else.”

The father blames the culture and school system for the animosity between him and his child. He says that the purpose of him writing this article is to speak where others aren’t, and perhaps warn parents about how children struggling with mental health are being manipulated by the powers that be.

“Loving parents across the country are paralyzed, intimidated into silence, and threatened with repercussions for speaking the truth about what’s happening with gender and schools,” he stated.

He brought attention to the argument that troubled youth are targeted by the culture of affirmation by speaking of his own family's issues. “I lay bare my family struggles to say openly that like many, my daughter was dragged through a needlessly acrimonious custody battle at a young age, that she was caught in the crossfire common to so many vulnerable kids swept into gender ideology. Like so many, she struggled with mental health issues, self-harming, food, body image, depression and anxiety, and the challenges she faced growing up,” he said.

The father warned parents and argued that these radically interventive procedures and pharmaceuticals ought not to be so available for young people. He argued that “the wholesale medicalization of vulnerable children with drugs and surgeries that will render them infertile and, in many cases, will undermine their capacity for fulfilment in intimacy as adults, is a modern atrocity.”

He pointed to “the decision … in the UK to ban puberty blockers for treating gender dysphoria in youth except in limited and controlled clinical trials” as a good example of people fighting back in the interest of their children.

Boschy continued with the story of how he lost contact with his child. “My daughter estranged herself the day I asked if she understood the risks of hormones versus the benefits. I asked if she understood that she would lose her beautiful hair, that her singing voice, which left me puddled with fatherly adoration since the first sounds she intoned upon this world, would be lost. I asked if she understood that testosterone would lead to a hysterectomy in a few short years, to lifelong shots and significantly elevated risk of cancers.  I asked only as any loving dad.”

A summary of the final rift in their relationship can be found in a quote near the end of Boschy’s article where he explained the perception that “any question of her choices meant I hated her, that anything but affirmation meant I denied her existence.”

This article was published very recently; on June 18^th, 2023. It is made more relevant by recent developments in the Canadian conversation around schools and gender ideology. There presently exists a heated debate about whether teachers should be required to collude with students who want to socially transition without the knowledge and consent of parents. New Brunswick’s Policy 713, which is now being revisited by Premier Blaine Higgs, is an example of policies promoting the acceptance of gender ideology in schools without the consent of the parents.

Boschy mentions these debates in his article. “Schools across Canada have explicit policies to keep gender transitions secret from parents. They are mandated under the rubric of so-called human rights to divide children from parents, to assume that questions based in evidence, research, and science make a child ‘unsafe.’  They are empowered to radically act,” he explained.

“In British Columbia, Child and Family Services have the authority to remove a child from parental custody for failing to sufficiently affirm a child’s stated gender identity. Federally, Bill C-4, passed late in 2021, makes it a punishable crime for anyone to question a child’s gender confusion,” he said.

He concluded his article by writing that “two years ago, most of us never questioned the binary of sex, the basis of nature itself or even heard of such convolutions as AFAB (Assigned Female at Birth).”

The rift between this concerned father and his child over transgender ideology, according to his own words, has caused him a large amount of grief. His warning about how the systems in place, and transgender ideology at large, target vulnerable youth should prompt parents to be more attentive to their children and what is influencing them. Above all, Boschy’s account is a warning to parents that transgender ideology has some particularly divisive implications.