After educators and a therapist drove her high-functioning autistic, gender-confused daughter into a mental breakdown, a mother in California is speaking out about the “trauma” and “catastrophic ruin” that gender ideology has caused her family.

“Children who have experienced trauma or adverse childhood experiences, who are neuro-divergent such as autistic or with ADD, ADHD are extremely susceptible to the transgender ideology,” said Vera Lindner, who spoke using a pseudonym. “Instead of the teachers and the doctors saying, ‘Okay, now let’s get to the bottom of this. Let’s see what’s really bothering you. Why are you saying you’re not a girl?’ the teachers and the doctors blindly affirm. They perpetuate this delusion.”

Lindner wanted to speak using her real name but doesn’t feel safe doing so. She is an industry leader in California who employs more than 10 individuals and mentors dozens more. Should she get “canceled” or blacklisted for sharing her politically unpopular views, she fears everyone she employs could lose their jobs, incomes, and livelihoods. Still, Lindner felt her story was important enough to risk telling on-camera, while concealing her face, to protect a generation of neurodivergent young girls who are being manipulated and exploited under the guise of compassion.

Lindner’s daughter first identified as transgender in August 2020, a few months after COVID lockdowns took full effect. She was 14 years old. Her mother believes her daughter was first exposed to the idea of gender identity in public school, which in the 7th grade gave her a “Genderbread” worksheet that claimed gender identity is separate from biological sex. The worksheet asked her daughter to pinpoint where she falls on the “gender identity” scale.

Lindner said that during the lockdown, her daughter and her friends watched TikTok videos for hours at a time. In her group of five female friends, one already identified as transgender. Bored and isolated at home, they started “nudging” each other to make up male names, use male pronouns, and take on transgender identities.

When her daughter told her mom, “Don’t call me a woman. Don’t call me a girl. Don’t call me she. I’m a guy. I’m your son,” Lindner said it came as a shock. Just one week prior, her daughter said, “I am a proud lesbian and a Democrat and that’s who I am.”

Lindner is also a lifelong Democrat who hired, mentored, and promoted members of the LGBTQ+ community. She always supported her daughter as a lesbian, and initially, she supported exploration around her gender identity, too. However, immediately after announcing she was transgender, Lindner’s daughter demanded things including testosterone and a binder to flatten her chest.

“I understood that there is a medical harm. There are profound side effects involved in taking opposite-sex hormones. They make the body ill but the side effects on the mental health are much worse,” Lindner said. “This is where I had to draw the line.”

In June 2020, Lindner hired a seasoned therapist, who was a lesbian in her mid-seventies. Lindner’s daughter faced a slew of mental health issues that needed to be addressed: in the fall of 2020, she was diagnosed with autism, ADD, depression, anxiety, and an eating disorder.

When her daughter announced her transgender self-identification just two months into working with this new therapist, Lindner said the therapist started referring to her daughter as a boy.

“At the time, I spoke with a therapist saying, ‘My daughter has autism, ADD, anxiety, and depression. Why is it not cool anymore to be a lesbian? Can you explore these issues?’” Lindner said. “I also wrote to the therapist, ‘out of the five friends in her friend group, four are now identifying as transgender. Could this be peer influence?’ None of these questions were ever addressed.”

Lindner describes being “profoundly disappointed” with the therapist for failing to explore the underlying issues that might be causing her daughter to identify as the opposite sex. Worse, Lindner said the therapist perpetuated her daughter’s confusion by telling her that testosterone would bring her ‘gender congruity,’ and instructed her to call her parents’ insurance to ask if she was eligible for testosterone at the age of 14.

These ideas, Lindner said, led her daughter into a mental breakdown, which exemplified itself as a severe depression. “My teen was in her room all day long, lying on the floor, catatonic with the cell phone in her hands, watching TikTok videos,” she said.

When Lindner asked the therapist to help her daughter minimize the time she spends on social media, the therapist did the opposite, telling Lindner, “She has a broken heart. She has to soothe herself and distract herself with social media.”

At that point, Lindner says her mother’s intuition kicked in and told her to approach the crisis “holistically.” This involved drastic measures: they packed up and moved to a mountain farm community, where her daughter could volunteer, be around animals, move her body, and get in touch with nature.

“That return to real people, real-life stories, and spending less time on social media has been the most healing,” Lindner said. Slowly, with the help of medication to treat her daughter’s depression and ADD, her daughter’s mental health began to improve.

“What I had to do is be loving, supportive, and kind without affirming the delusion. Without affirming the ideology,” Lindner said. “And drawing a very clear boundary that you’re loved, you’re safe. But we will do absolutely no medical interventions until you are 18.”

Lindner has been a lifelong voting Democrat since she was naturalized in 2000. As she watches politicians from California all the way up to the White House pressure parents by repeating the lie that children will commit suicide if parents don’t “affirm,” she feels betrayed.

“I’m profoundly disappointed that the Democratic party has chosen to affirm a delusion and a very toxic ideology that derails these vulnerable children,” she said, adding:

“Autistic people think in black and white; they are lonely and feel like misfits. They don’t see nuances. They hyper fixate over ideas. And here comes an ideology telling them, ‘you are in the wrong body.’ These children need to be taught what is the reality. They need to be taught coping skills and practical skills to live as functional adults. Instead, their minds are being poisoned with lies, with untruth, and harmful ideology.”

Autistic people often describe feeling disconnected from their bodies, in addition to having trouble understanding society’s expectations for “masculine” and “feminine” behavior. By sharing her story, Lindner hopes that instead of blindly affirming their gender confusion, politicians, doctors, and educators will begin asking why so many trans-identifying individuals are also autistic.

“One of the most toxic ideas of transgenderism is the idea that you’re born into the wrong body. What kind of an idiocy is this? Your body’s wrong? It has to be medicalized? It’s autism,” she said, adding:

“As a parent who has watched this first hand with my child and with her friends, I have to fight this. There’s no other way for me.”