A Resource for Gender-Questioning Youth: Coming Soon
A YouTube channel that treats identity distress with honesty, depth, and respect
For the past nine years, I’ve cared for dozens of adolescents questioning their gender identity— many of these young people were caught in the social whirlwind of ROGD, but there’s so much more to their story. I’ve had thousands of conversations behind closed doors. And through those sessions, I’ve learned something vital:
If you can move through the fear, the tension and the high stakes, these kids are not ideologues.
They are, however, often confused, highly sensitive, introspective, and yearning to make sense of themselves in a world that’s feeding them all-or-nothing narratives.
I’ve also consulted privately with over 900 parents who care deeply about their children and want them to use discernment, critical thinking, and caution. Ultimately, they want their children to heal any root issues that may lie beneath the gender dysphoria. And I’ve seen firsthand how hungry families are for something different that might resonate with their kids—something grounded, intelligent, respectful, and hopeful.
So after many years of conversations, reflection, therapeutic techniques, psychological concepts, and nuanced gender discussions behind closed doors, I’ve created a vehicle to share these ideas publicly with young people themselves:
Introducing The Metaphor of Gender — a YouTube channel for curious young people who prefer deep thinking over dogma…
We’ll explore personal identity, meaning, and how to live well—without getting stuck in literalist traps about gender.
This is not an advocacy channel for either “side.”
It won’t be an easy feel-good channel that confirms everything the viewer already believes. But it also won’t be a “gotcha” channel filled with gender-critical talking points or detransition horror stories.
It’s something new.
I’ve poured myself into this project. The first six episodes will launch soon—they’re an introduction to The Metaphor of Gender, and I’d love your help getting them into the right hands. The channel is geared towards adolescents between 14 and 25.
I’ll also be sharing a downloadable Parent Guide that walks you through a variety of strategic ways to share this channel with your child, regardless of how open or hesitant they are about this topic. The Parent Guide will teach you how to get this resource on your child’s radar without triggering resistance or defensiveness.
If you're a parent, please read the guide when I share it in my next post (on Tuesday, June 17th).
If you're a therapist, an educator, a person whose experienced distress about your own identity, transition or detransition, you likely want to get a more nuanced discussion in front of the right people too—please help me amplify this resource once I’ve launched.
I’ll post again soon with official launch details and links.
Until then, thank you for your encouragement, interest and help! Your support will really help me bring this vision to life.
With appreciation,
Sasha
I’m so excited about this. I’m hoping some gender content starts looking at things much more broadly. A big part of my healing was zooming out and looking at gender and queerness across time and space - at how every culture has gender queerness, but that there are a myriad of ways to do it - and risky medicalization is new, western, and optional. This is not the kind of messaging you get from the American “right” or “left” right now who are both so closed-minded about this topic right now but in different ways.
Thank YOU, Sasha! We’ve been in this maelstrom for almost 4 years with our 14 y.o. daughter - and rays of light and nuanced understanding are so important and useful to find. I’ll remain hopeful that this IS a useful resource to our child …but my head does start turning to how hard it will be to get my kid to open up to take in such information when it comes from a resource that is beyond her usual media sources? …and, like most parents caught in this snare, we’ve had such difficulty finding ways to help her think critically or avail herself of “real” information on the topic. Hopeful, but not necessarily optimistic in Boston.