Dear Judi,

Thank you for sharing with us, your readers, something of your thinking, feelings, and personal history. I would like to share some of mine in response. I do not intend to be attacking and I hope that you will not feel attacked; I do, however, want to be as honest as possible.

Yes, it is fiction but, being that we are human beings, we write from our experiences, even when we don't intend to. Sometimes the experiences we write from, whether placed overtly in a story or slipped subtly between the lines, come perilously close to the traumatic experiences of others, such that it smacks their "buttons" with a brute force that we as authors never intended. Some of the things that we write about in fiction, though they may not have happened to us personally, describe or contain elements of things that actually do happen in the world, and consequently may have happened to some of our readers.

In another comment on your page, I wrote that some people create because they have to, because there is a restless, driving force that empells them to self-expression. Writing fictional dialog is so powerful a means for us to sort out our experiences and feelings regarding them that some psychotherapists use methods based upon it-- look up Carl Jung's technique of Active Imagination for a primary example. We write not only from our experience, but also from our confusion, from our feelings, and all the rest that makes us human-- again, often without realizing just what we are putting into our stories, or that we are trying to sort ourselves out through it. These are the very things, though, that make our stories powerful: as a result of the human condition we all share in common, other people who have had similar experiences (and feelings about them) can often visualize all too well what we are describing, and strongly identify with it. And in the gender community, we have much more in common by way of shared experience and feelings than the general population at large.

By way of example, please permit me ("fair use" and all that) to include a snip from one of your stories (with some annotations), chapter two of Leslie and His Red Velvet Dress:

Mary Ann asked, "Leslie, how does it feel wearing a dress?" The child, who was standing demurely before them gently holding the sides of his first dress, replied in a timid little voice, "It's o.k." Do you like being a girl, Leslie", Mary Ann asked. The question seemed to startle Leslie as he had not arrived at that point of thinking of himself as a girl. He instantly said, "I'm not a girl. I'm a boy." Chrissy immediately interrupted saying, "No you're not, Leslie. Boys don't wear dresses and you are wearing a girl's dress and panties. You're a girl just like Mary Ann and me."

It is well known that young children of this age take outward things like clothing as the definitive indication of gender. They are neither sophisticated enough to understand the complexities of gender identity, nor do they know that most adults take anatomy as the basic and usually definitive indicator. A child's logic is exactly as described above.

At this, the bewildered child began to cry. His mother, hearing his cry from the kitchen came in to the living room and said, "Girls, girls, what is the matter? Why is Leslie crying?"

Because he is confused, and confusion is painful. His innate instincts tell him he is male, but his cousins tell him that he is female with a logic that he cannot contest at his age.

Mary Ann replied, "Chrissy called him a girl, Aunt Janice, and he started crying." Janice, turning to Leslie said, "Oh darling, is that all? Don't cry sweetheart. Chrissy wasn't trying to be mean to you. She thinks you look pretty in your dress. Besides, mommy likes you looking pretty just like her." The little boy looked up at his mother and said, "But I'm not a girl, mommy." Janice took his hand and walked him over to the sofa.

The story up to this point has lead us to believe that Janice, concerned for the welfare of her son, is prepared to back off at the first sign of resistance from him. Her son has made a powerful assertion: he knows who he is (and who he is not). Janice crosses a definite line at this point, as she discards all other considerations (including her child's welfare) in the pursuit of that which she wants.

Addressing his two cousins, Janice said, "Will you girls leave Leslie and me alone for a few minutes. I want to talk to him." The girls said, "Yes, Aunt Janice", and went into the kitchen with their mother, closing the door behind them.

Janice sat down on the sofa next to her feminized child and gently arranged the skirt of his dress over his knees. She then reached over and arranged his one leg next to the other so Leslie was sitting nicely with both legs together like a young lady. Holding his head between her hands his mother said, "Now honey, you must realize that your cousins love you and would never do anything to hurt your feelings."

Of course not, not intensionally. By redefining her son's complaint as a defensive response to a perceived attack (an insult), she draws her first "red herring" and sews more confusion.

"But mommy, they called me a girl", the child complained. Janice, not wanting to upset her child, quickly replied, "Is that so bad, honey? After all, you are wearing a beautiful dress and you look so pretty. Mary Ann and Chrissy were complimenting you and Aunt Leslie and I are so proud of you.

They were neither complimenting nor attacking him, they were making a(n incorrect) statement of "fact": "you are what you wear," and wearing a dress means that you are a girl by definition. He is not experiencing the pain of insult, but of confusion. The narrative thus far makes it clear that Janice is aware of the difference.

People call mommy a girl and they call Aunt Leslie, Mary Ann and Chrissy, girls.

Because they are girls-- anatomically, physiologically (female-structured brains and nervous systems), and culturally. Her son knows this difference intuitively at the deepest possible level-- that his mother is the source of his being, the person from whom he came. Unlike a mother's daughter, he also knows he is fundamentally different from her.

It is not wrong to call someone a girl who is wearing a pretty dress."

Here, Janice begins to condition her son to ignore what his own body's intuition tells him, and to replace it with a faulty childhood logic. This, by the way, is some of why "native" peoples (must) rely on observed animal behavior to tell them about their environment (like impending earthquakes and tsunamis), and why we need doctors to tell us when we are truly ill-- because it is through this sort of conditioning that we loose the ability to hear our own bodies. The confusion that Janice is sewing, however, is of an even more insidious nature.

The child looked up at his mother and said, "It's not?" His mother said, "Of course not, honey. Let me show you that it is not so bad. Mommy is going to call you a girl and you tell me if it makes you feel bad, okay?" The child agreed to his mother's little experiment. Janice smiled at Leslie and said, "Leslie dear, mommy wants you to be her girl so she can dress you in pretty dresses. Do you understand, sweetheart." The child hesitated and Janice continued, "Darling, I want you to accept being a girl for mommy. I want you to be mommy's girl.[italics added] You are a girl now, honey." The child hugged his mother tightly. Janice was trembling slightly realizing that deep emotional things were occurring inside her seven year old. She did not want this transformation to go wrong.

Janice literally instructs her son to disregard his own inner sense of being in order to satisfy her desires. In a very real sense, he is being told to sacrifice an essential part of himself to her, and that, by implication, her needs are more important than his. I would not be at all surprised if a real person in this circumstance would not also tremble as Janice does, at the certain knowledge of what she was doing to her son.

Hate to break this to you kiddo (and I know it's such an ugly word) but, by most modern standards of care, this is mental, emotional, psychological abuse-- regardless of the fact that it is not done out of malice or hatred, and that there are no visible bruises. Yes, I understand what you wrote in your blog entry above, that you are not advocating the forced feminization of children, and that this is "only fiction." Your description, however, of something that does happen to people, is so vivid and accurate that it could have been copied from a case history in a textbook. It is also something that is likely to "trigger" people who have suffered similar sorts of abuse.

Janice continued, "Leslie, mommy wants you to do something for her." "What mommy," the child said in a soft voice. "I want you to say, "I want to be a girl, mommy." "But mommy"......the child began to reply. "Hush sweetheart, Janice replied. Just say, "I want to be a girl, mommy." Janice stroked her child's hair. "Say it, dear," she said. Little Leslie seemed almost in a trance as the words came out of his cupid-shaped lips.

This, too, is an accurate description of something that really happens to people. You've probably experienced this trance-like state, too (which is why you are able to write so clearly about it)-- that spacey sense of unreality, that sense of "this is not happening to me, it's happening to someone else." This is a known, self-protective response of the human brain to trauma-- it is what psychologists call "dissociation." Again, this may be "only fiction," but it has really happened to people just as you describe it, including some of your readers.

"I want to be a girl, Mommy." "That's my baby," Janice whispered. Now darling, "I want you to say, "I am a girl, mommy." "Say it now, honey."

The boy repeated her words, "I am a girl, mommy." Yes darling, you most certainly are. You are mommy's girl. Now say, "I want to wear dresses, mommy." Suddenly, the last vestiges of boyhood welled up in rebellion from some part deep within Lesley as he fought to hold on to his birth gender. He reached out desperately for whatever boyishness remained within him and said, "But mommy, please may I wear my pants again."

All I can say to this is "Wow!" This is powerful writing, precisely because it describes the way people actually respond to an experience like this. There is absolutely no suspension of disbelief necessary, because this is real.

Janice seized the moment and said, "Darling, you just said that you want to be a girl. Mommy heard you say that you are a girl.

I once had an assertiveness class in a therapeutic day program. The instructor asked the group, "How do we get someone to do something?" or some similar question. I had come in late, just in time to hear that, and had not yet found a seat. We were standing only a few feet apart, with no tables or chairs between us, when I looked her in the eyes and replied, "Oh, that's easy! First, you get them to want to do it, and then you convince them that it was their own idea in the first place." This beautiful, stately woman looked at me like a deer caught in the headlights, and then produced the strangest rictus grin I have ever seen, and the strangest nervous laugh I've ever heard.

I don't think that an adult would fall for this crude attempt to convince him that saying "I'm a girl" was his own idea, and not even a 7-year-old child if it had come from his friends. But I can easily believe that, coming from his mom, and right on the heels of what came before, that he would swallow it whole. Again, no suspension of disbelief is necessary.

Honey, you must not ask mommy for pants anymore. You must wear dresses now, sweetheart, pretty lacy dresses together with the lingerie that mommy will choose for you. Do you understand, love? Girls wear dresses and you are a girl now." Janice then stood little Leslie up, smoothed his velvet dress and took him to the vanity mirror in the bedroom. "Look closely my love, "What do you see in the mirror"? "I see a girl, mommy." "And what is the little girl wearing, dear?" "She is wearing a dress, mommy." "That's right, honey. She is wearing a dress and that little girl is you." You are my Leslie girl. The little boy relaxed his body and finally seemed to embrace his mother's reasoning.. Janice straightened his hair ribbon , smoothed his dress and then took his hand as mother and son returned to the living room sofa. Sitting next to him, she called for Aunt Leslie and the cousins to re-enter the room.

Upon entering they saw a smiling mother and a slightly confused looking daughter awaiting them on the sofa. "Leslie has something to say to you, ladies," Janice said. Janice whispered directions in her son's ear and the child said out loud, "I am a girl, Aunt Leslie." Aunt Leslie clasped her hands together contentedly and responded, "Of course you are, sweetheart. You are a beautiful girl and you look so sweet in your red velvet dress. It is just right for the season and I know you must feel pretty wearing it. Let's take some pictures now."

Was there ever written a more simple and straightforward description of brainwashing? At this point, I had to stop reading-- it was pushing too many of my own buttons.

I do not recall my mom ever force-feminizing me (for what that's worth, since I have blocked out almost all memory of my first 8-9 years of life), but her anger at men was always plain to see. I really "got it" that males are wretched, corrupt creatures by nature, and that it's not so great to be one. I have often said to her, "You should've had a girl; we maybe could be friends by now." On one such occasion, she responded with "Oh no, I wanted a boy." Though I'm sure that the absence of mother-daughter competition that she mentioned was one reason, I came to realize (when I recognized similar impulses in myself with respect to girls) that she really wanted a "little man" who would be "safe," unlike the adult men (like her father) who had abused her. My sense of her power has carried into all 52 years of my adult life; it is only recently, within the last 5 years, that I have been able to even begin to stand up to her, and to truly give priority to my own needs. For more than half of my life, I have been totally afraid of women. A feeling of being powerless as a male and a desire for some of the power that I've seen women exercise is one of the larger factors in my own gender dysphoria.

Not only do I identify with the main character in his situation as a helpless, hapless child at the mercy of his mother's desires, I also relate to the main character's confusion with my own gut-wrenching, painful confusion, which goes along with my gender dysphoria. Who am I? Who do I want to be? This passage smacks some of my deepest wounds right on the nose.

The subtle and often devious means by which women "arrange" things and influence people in the single-minded pursuit of their desires is a recurrent theme that runs through much of TG fiction-- and commonly appears in other genres and media as well. Some stories, like Milady's Wiles by Brandy Dewinter (available at Story Site and on Brandy Dewinter's own site), revolve around it. While Brandy's heroine uses her wiles to rescue her kingdom and people from the grip of foreign conquerors, however, characters like Janice in the above quoted forced fem story use them for their own ends, to the detriment of those they supposedly "love." Such a story as Leslie and His Red Velvet Dress is much more powerful than forced fem stories that rely on such plot devices as blackmail or the surreptitious administration of hormones, because it is a more accurate portrayal of how ordinary people actually behave, and because it is so bloody insidious-- the ordinary housewife and mother, who convinces herself that no lasting harm can come of her actions. It evokes the old image of the mother who holds her child close such that she smothers him with her breasts rather than nourishing him. This is the sort of image that scares people.

A few TG authors have responded to such forced fem stories with stories of their own, in which they explore the possible consequences of this kind of mental manipulation. The best I have yet seen is Drew's Meltdown by Kate Hart, written in response to the forced fem aspects of Maddy Bell's Gaby series, where the main character, Drew Bond, is constantly being maneuvered into being "Gaby" by his girlfriend.

And so I come full circle, back to your blog entry. It is clear to me from it's "tone" that you wrote it in response to negative feedback that you have received in response to your stories. in your efforts to write "G-rated stories free from sex, abuse, cruelty, and questionable language," you have succeeded without realizing it, in describing something far more insidious-- the mom who, though she loves her child, would love him a great deal more if he were a she (thus telling him that there is something wrong, something deficient, in who he is-- something which is in need of "repair"). It is doubly insidious because the natural tendency of a child to mistake abuse for love is much more likely to happen in these circumstances.

Sure, there is no more overt malice in such a mom than in over-protective parents who wind up stifling their childrens' growth; but, at least over-protective parents, though misguided, are thinking of their children, while the feminizing mom is thinking of herself-- that's why it is abuse. The cruelty comes when Janice ignores her drowning child's cries for a life preserver, and heaps lies and misdirection upon him instead, because what she wants is more important than his sense of self.

In an effort to understand modern-day international terrorism, a sometimes-quoted quote goes "One man's terrorist is another man's freedom fighter."-- in other words, how you define its value depends on your Point Of View. POV is also crucial when dealing with gender identity issues, because there are lots of people out there with raw nerves sticking out and unhealed wounds, around those issues. Where some may see a story as a wish fulfillment fantasy, others see their own nightmare. While some may enjoy it as fiction, others recognize their own history lying between the lines, and are transported back to when they were small and vulnerable. And while some may see only a mother's love for her child, others will recognize the abuse, even in the absence of malice.

I don't think that anyone, after a moment's reflection, could hold to the assertion that you advocate forced femininization of children through your stories. It is an unfortunate "gut reaction" of many of us to strike back when we experience pain and/or fear. We sometimes do that if someone touches a sore spot-- though they were not able to see our wounds, we still react to the pain. The ability your stories have to provoke emotional responses (or cause people to silently run away without comment) is indication that your writing contains something powerful. It might just be worth your while to contemplate on what experiences, what deep emotions, your stories tap into. Beware if you do, though-- you just might learn something about yourself.