Pride is upon us this June and instead of seeing families of different makeups being celebrated, or tasteful protests for rights and equality- we are inundated with the crassest, crude, overtly tacky corporatism with an underlining of cynical totalitarianism.
Glitter moms, far from being a phantom, operate amongst us in plain sight- their message to children "if your parents are having second thoughts about you being born in the wrong body, or non-binary or gendergreen- then I'm your mom, now."
Carol, a grieving mother from Texas, tells;
" My daughter was taken away in the night while I slept by a family who I barely knew. All their kids are trans identified and are on cross sex hormones and undergoing surgeries.
After moving in with them my daughter didn't finish high school, started testosterone and ceased all contact with us.... to this day she still lives with them"
Far from being a cautionary tale, these stories are becoming more and more familiar. There are several "glitter moms" on Tumblr, Deviant Art who speak to children as young as 16 and then encourage them to move state, leave everything and move in with them.
My daughter has always struggled socially, with social cues and two months after starting to identify as trans, we told her to be cautious and take it slowly. My beautiful daughter is autistic, but she was managing- after making contact online with a "glitter mom" living 6 hours away she left her university degree and the woman paid for a flight to a different state.
It appears that COVID has made the ground much more fertile for "glitter moms", who are often men pretending to be women who have a harem of youth flanking them- most of the time living in low socioeconomic areas, claiming disability and many are working in online prostitution.
When kids' TV shows like "blues clues" promote the idea that glitter families are akin to parents, they are playing the game of pimps and johns- who look for weak families to separate girls and boys from in order to indoctrinate them into prostitution.
Glitter Moms may also be affirming parents of your child's friends, who are duped into the belief that they must save every trans-identified friend of their trans-identified child from their non-affirmative parents.
Essentially, it's kidnapping. But we're powerless to say anything against it. We're branded hateful for not wanting to buy our daughter a binder, and my husbands job is threatened- they really want to paint us as abusers, but nothing could be farther from the truth.
I want to scream a battle cry to every mother who has been the victim of these predators- you are not alone.
Please consider visiting the gender mapper store for stickers, flyers to support the cause.