Chinese-American Mom: Gender-Confused Children Are Victims of an Enormous Lie

Childrens books on gender in Irvine, Calif., on Sept. 7, 2022. John Fredricks/The Epoch Times

On the surface, Yalan (a pseudonym) was living the American dream. She and her husband, both doctors, were devoted parents who put their children before their successful careers. But their apparently tranquil family life was shattered by their daughter’s revelation that she was transgender.

As a medical professional, Yalan was horrified that her daughter would inflict what she saw as irreparable harm to herself.

Moreover, it seemed that the whole world was against her. Yalan found herself battling feelings of isolation and despair when she discovered that those around her daughter not only knew about her intentions, but encouraged her, all the while keeping the teenager’s parents in the dark.

Yalan recently shared her story with The Epoch Times.

‘Everyone Is Against Us’

Yalan and her husband, Christian immigrants from China, now reside in the Midwest. They were the parents of three children—two sons and a daughter—who were raised in the United States. Their youngest child, Mary, recently turned 19.

When Mary was born, Yalan took a five-year hiatus from her medical career to devote herself to her children. Once all her children were in school, she started a work-from-home job to balance her professional life with her responsibilities at home.

“Our greatest source of pride is our family,” Yalan reflected. All their efforts revolved around nurturing a healthy home environment for their children.

Therefore, Mary’s announcement that she was transgender and planned to have gender reassignment surgery sent shockwaves through their formerly peaceful family life.

“The sight of my daughter in this state is shattering,” Yalan said. “We are powerless in this struggle against the world. Everyone is against us. It’s a despairing situation.” She described an excruciating ordeal that tore her family apart.

Betrayed by Schools, Doctors

When the couple left China, “We had been through so much,” Yalan said. They trusted that things would be better in America. “We never expected something like this to happen in our family.”

Instead, Yalan says she was betrayed by the school system. “Never send your children to public schools,” she said. “The school board displays rainbow flags. They harm your children like this, turning them against you.”

Mary was “an exemplary child,” academically gifted and particularly advanced in math. “She’s incredibly diligent, disciplined, and kind. She’s such a wonderful child. We never imagined she would encounter any issues,” Yalan said.

Yet, two months shy of her 18th birthday, Mary unexpectedly disclosed to her parents that she identified as transgender and that she intended to transition after turning 18.

Yalan compared the revelation to a “bolt from the blue.” Her parents had no idea about Mary’s gender identity struggles.

Mary said that she had begun questioning her gender identity around the age of 12 or 13. She had felt uncomfortable with her body and believed transitioning might be her solution.

Both public and private schools had a pivotal role in shaping Mary’s feelings, Yalan said. Mary had attended a private elementary school where discussions about homosexuality had been introduced as early as the fifth grade.

Yalan now discovered that during her first year of high school, Mary began identifying as a male at school, and adopted a male name. Teachers advised her to conceal her gender identity from her parents, cautioning her: “Your parents are Christians; they will disown you if they find out. We’ll keep it a secret for you.”

The Missing Puzzle Piece

Although Mary’s revelation seemed like a complete surprise, Yalan realized with horror that it was actually the missing piece of a puzzle that had been haunting her since Mary was in 9th grade.

Yalan remembered that Mary’s behavior had shifted when she started high school. Mary became increasingly distant, hardly engaging with her parents.

Initially, Yalan dismissed this as typical teenage behavior and decided to be patient. However, Mary’s mental health began to deteriorate rapidly. She suffered from severe insomnia, displayed emotional instability, and even began trying to harm herself.

Yalan became alarmed by her daughter’s escalating struggles. “Night after night of insomnia, self-harming, emotional instability, and an inability to communicate normally—it was clear she was battling internal turmoil,” Yalan said.

However, despite her attempts to understand her daughter’s struggles, Yalan hit a dead end. Her inquiries at school yielded no insights. Each time she contacted the school, she was assured that Mary was doing well and that there was nothing to worry about. Moreover, her daughter’s good grades did not deteriorate immediately.

‘The Whole World Knew, Except for My Husband and Me’

Now, Yalan discovered that Mary’s teachers, her classmates—and presumably their parents—were all aware of Mary’s predicament. Mary had even changed her name at school.

Yet, Yalan said, “No one told us.” She was left to witness her daughter’s pain without understanding its origin.

“Just watching our child struggle, my husband and I agonized over her struggle every day; it was so painful.” But they had no idea what was actually behind their daughter’s distress.

The concealment extended beyond the school premises. Even Mary’s brothers, under the influence of the school’s environment, hid the truth from their parents. They had been aware of Mary’s situation for years and had advised her not to disclose it to her parents.

This lack of shared perspective on gender issues led to a severe communication breakdown within the family.

“Essentially, none of our children listen to us anymore,” Yalan confessed.

Shockingly, Mary’s pediatrician not only withheld the information but also proactively scheduled an appointment for her at a gender clinic.

“It’s frightening how doctors behave these days. Since when do doctors make outpatient appointments on behalf of [minor] patients?” Yalan asked.

Too Late

In October 2021, Mary, now a high school senior and just two months short of her 18th birthday, finally revealed her transgender identity to her parents.

The revelation was prompted by the fear that her mother would accidentally discover her new name and male identity at an upcoming parent meeting at school.

As a medical professional, Yalan explained to her daughter that a person’s gender is determined by their genes and cannot be altered by surgery or other methods. She expressed her belief that so-called transgender care inflicts significant harm on healthy bodies.

“Doctors are supposed to save lives, not harm healthy teenagers’ bodies with drugs and surgery. It’s utterly immoral and wrong,” Yalan argued.

Despite her mother’s pleas, Mary remained convinced that she was born in the wrong body. When Yalan asserted that Mary had been healthy since childhood and that the problem was more likely psychological, Mary countered, “This is how I think, so I want to change my body.”

In a desperate bid to stop her daughter’s transition, Yalan reached out for help from every conceivable source, only to find doors closing in her face.

‘Like We’re Fighting the Whole World’

“Everyone is urging her to transition; everyone is endorsing her transition,” Yalan noted. “We tried to find help everywhere—from the church, from our friends—but we found no support. No one came forward to help us; everyone was supportive of the transition.”

Yalan found the silence of the parents whose children had grown up with Mary deafening. One parent even suggested, “Let the child do what she wants; as long as she’s happy, you should support her.”

Instead, Yalan and her husband devoted their energies to finding a qualified counselor to help their daughter address potential mental health issues. Their efforts, however, proved futile.

Yalan explained that the American Psychological Association, the American Pediatric Association, and the American Medical Association, all unequivocally support and validate gender transition.

“These institutions reinforce your gender identity if you claim to have gender dysphoria, pushing and coercing you to take medication, to undergo surgery to transition,” she said.

Yalan observed that not only were doctors and teachers silent, but her attempts to seek help from churches in her hometown also proved unsuccessful, as pastors avoided discussing the matter.

All of society, including the church, seems mute on the transgender issue, she noted. Worse, many churches now hoist the rainbow flag.

“We are left wandering in the dark, unable to speak to anyone,” she lamented.

‘A Tremendous Lie’

Yalan remembers feeling more and more helpless as Mary neared her 18th birthday. “There’s nothing I can do. Everyone is encouraging her, and she’s old enough that I can’t interfere. Every day we feel cornered, with no way out; our only recourse is prayer.”

Mary’s mental health spiraled downward after her revelation, and her insomnia intensified. It led to so many missed school days that it nearly prevented her graduation.

In May 2022, after high school graduation, Mary left home because her parents refused to give their blessing to her transition. Yalan was heartbroken.

She reflected with anger on how her daughter, despite being mentally distressed, had maintained straight A’s up until her junior year of high school.

“Our amazing child was driven to this state by society. She can’t relax, can’t sleep, is self-harming, suicidal, and nearly failed to graduate,” she said. “We had no means of understanding why she ended up this way.”

“People insist that she must transition to get better,” Yalan said, “What a tremendous lie.”

Yalan had told Mary’s teachers that the teenager was harming herself, but they seemed to treat it as a normal occurrence. She speculated that there might be numerous children in similar situations and that schools might be advocating gender transition as a means of alleviating psychological distress.

The New Red Guards

Yalan and her husband lived through China’s Cultural Revolution. There are parallels, they say, between what is happening in America and that nightmarish time in China’s history.

To Yalan, advocates for radical gender ideology are akin to the Red Guards of that era, seeking to dismantle traditional culture and sever familial ties.

“It has turned into a form of pseudo-religion for children,” Yalan said. She compared it to the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) portrayal of communism as an ideal of equality, fraternity, and acceptance—an escape from an oppressive society.

In her view, however, the actual goal seems to be to turn everyone into members of the LGBT community. “It’s not about equality; it’s about control.”

“In reality, there’s a force behind all of this, obtaining power through it, controlling all these people, destroying society’s most critical foundation—family and moral ethics. This happened in China.”

Like the tremendous societal upheaval of the Cultural Revolution, this force is eroding society’s core foundations. “Traditional concepts, family, order—all shattered.”

‘They Need Real Care and Love, Someone to Tell Them the Truth’

“Who doesn’t know that gender is male and female?” Yalan asks rhetorically.

The current push to recognize not just males and females but a myriad of other genders is essentially brainwashing, she feels. To her, it is a political movement that tries to compel everyone to perpetuate a lie.

“It’s terrifying; exactly like the communist party.” People are being deceived on a massive scale, Yalan believes.

Yet the pain of seeing her daughter struggle has given her a great deal of empathy for those she calls “victims:” children and teens who identify as transgender. “They are a very, very pained group of people,” she said.

Gender-confused young people are “often very sensitive inside; they are intelligent, especially considerate of others’ feelings, and full of compassion. They might have been deeply hurt at some point.”

Likewise, Yalan questions whether some kind of trauma could have influenced her daughter’s decision. She may never know.

What she does know is that transgender youth are “truly struggling in darkness and pain.” They are convinced that transitioning will solve their problems.

Instead, “What they need is real care and love, someone to tell them the truth.”

False Love: Like Enabling a Drug Addict

Her daughter’s case is a prime example, she said, with relatives and family friends endorsing her transition by agreeing with her sentiment: “Yes, you are a boy.”

To Yalan, the notion of being born in the wrong body is inherently misleading; no one is born in the wrong body. Asserting that a girl is a boy when she’s biologically a girl is an “enormous lie,” that adds to their confusion rather than helping.

This “false love” is like offering drugs to an addict, she said.

Yalan acknowledges that gender-confused young people may indeed be dealing with pain and possibly psychological issues. However, the answer, she says, is to help them resolve those psychological problems rather than exploiting their vulnerability.

For Yalan, guiding them toward treatments like hormone therapy or surgeries, which she believes are inappropriate and damaging, is both horrifying and beyond comprehension.

Live Not by Lies

“Consider how terrifying and dangerous this lie is. No one tells her the truth, and this is the situation throughout America now.”

Society is complicit in feeding the lie, Yalan said: “What’s being said becomes what’s believed, not what’s real. So everyone is lying, and it’s terrifying.”

The lie is being fed to children, which makes it more terrible. “In their confusion, a simple, happy child suddenly experiences pain, and in this agony, we all lie to them. How pitiful this child is.”

“There will be retribution in the future. We'll all pay a significant price for this,” Yalan said.

However, she stressed, there is something that can be done, and anyone can do it: “Everyone has a responsibility to take a stand in clear and truthful situations. If everyone lies, society becomes incredibly bad. This is what’s happening in China.”

Pseudonyms are used in this article to protect the family’s safety and privacy.

Kerry Xue contributed to this article.