Emma Thomas was 11 when her father told her that he was a transsexual. She lived with him for the next 7 years while he went through that transition and later as an adult she set up the Children of Transitioners in 2019. She talks about finding other children of transitioners like her who describe the same behaviours repeating again and again from a particular “cohort of men”.
http://childrenoftransitioners.org
She assumed her group would be speaking to a tiny minority of people but has been surprised at how many families are affected. She’s concerned that while she grew up in the 1980s that social workers and the NSPCC understood that sexual fetishes were a red flag, these days she is concerned that if there’s a trans parent, that aspect is ignored. The parent is affirmed before any concern for the child. So if a child needs help there’s nowhere to go - the NSPCC, schools, social workers, the police - no one will help the child… it’s really chilling to listen to.
She talks about her dad’s trans journey “you loved this more than you loved me.” and having to grow up as a child with that feeling. She was exposed to sissy porn and other sexualised behaviour but was brought up with it as normal. She buried her experiences and would have described herself as an ally until she processed what happened and became a TERF.
“This man has fallen in love with this idea of himself as a woman. There's no part for you, no part for wives or children in that dynamic.”
You know, it is narcissus in love with the mirror, in love with the reflection. You are pushed aside, and that's where the grief comes in, because you've lost that person. But then the paradox is, you know, with my dad, he says, that time that you were, that I was your dad, and you loved me, that uncomplicated time was all a lie. And [dad says] I wasn't happy, and now I'm happy. he's happy, but you're not in there. So you lose not just the present, but you lose the past as well, don't you?”
Over the years she came to view his behaviour as abusive - using family income to fund his transition; the family were homeless for a time.
She talks about concerns for children in cases reported in the media then buried - in the US where there were 5 TIMs in a house and one was dead and the police found a group of children hidden in the house. “What was happening there?” “Where were the mothers?”
“And one thing that I'm wondering is, where is the safeguarding in that? Because there's a lot of sexualized stuff happening. You're exposed to quite a lot. I was, and my dad wasn't even particularly extreme. But I saw sissy porn. I saw the Beaumont Society newsletters and things like that.
I know that there are children who see much worse, who are exposed to fathers dressing in hypersexualized ways. This is a sexual thing. What the police knew in the past, what social workers knew in the past, was this was a sexual thing, transvestite fetishism. But now, it's a civil liberties issue,”
“What's been really lovely is the sisterhood that has listened. And Vaishnavi Sundar's amazing film, which I mean, Behind the Looking Glass, was the first time that we're in a film when we have a voice. Because there were so many films about the men who transition and the women who transition.”
There’s a discussion about breastfeeding by TIMs and the view that this is child abuse.
“What concerns me obviously is, it's as if you're a child of a trans person, and it's okay to do that to you. Because somehow you affirm the man and in all the women, right? And that's your point. That's what you're there for. You're just there for the affirmation. You have no agency of your own.
You're not an individual human being. You exist to affirm. I mean, there's one case where it wasn't even a father.It was a grandfather who has helped to lactate into his grandchild's mouth. And the people writing the paper who were all very, very supportive were saying, oh, well, it's helped them bond. Well, my grandfather didn't need to do that to bond.
And for God's sake, he bought me a bike. That's how we bonded. He taught me how to ride a bike.”
Lots more discussed but those are some of the key points. I found it very moving
From Inciteful Sisters: Episode 11: Emma Thomas and Children of Transitioners, 20 Mar 2025
https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/inciteful-sisters/id1802508941?i=1000700176286&r=2481
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