According to ABC, a father becoming a woman will not be any more traumatic for children than a move or a new job.
In ABC's July 21 “Primetime Family Secrets,” correspondent Juju Chang explored the adjustments one family had to make after Ted Prince, a husband and a father, decided to become “Chloe.”
Purporting to answer the question, “How do you tell your kids that mommy is now a daddy? Or that a daddy is now a mommy?” and despite calling it “one of the most unusual conversations to ever take place between a parent and a child,” Chang's report was a bald attempt to normalize transgenderism.
Prince, post gender reassignment surgery, appeared to be a normal looking woman. Jennifer, his ex-girlfriend said of Prince's new appearance, “It doesn't affect me at all because you're still the same person, you know? And that, to me, is what really matters.” His father, originally upset about Prince's decision, eventually came to the realization after Prince revealed suicidal thoughts, that he would “do anything to avert this” and would “try and understand this.”
Gender specialist Michele Angello insisted to ABC that transition from one sex to another, “is, if handled like any other family transition – meaning a move, a new job, a divorce in the family – if it's handled where the children feel safe, and they're allowed to talk about it, then it's not going to be traumatic. In the long run, they'll be perfectly fine.”
No other expert appeared in the program to offer a counter point to Angello.
But Prince's boys,
And nothing could hide the hurt and bewilderment of Prince's wife, Rene, as she discussed the process of watching her husband become a woman.
Prince told Rene about his issues before they married; she married him anyway but told Chang, about his transition, “I didn't want to accept it and begged, pleaded, cried. Please don't. Honor your mother and father. How can you do this, and the kids need a dad, and nothing I could say would change.”
Rene also confided, “Chloe is completely a woman, and you would never think anything other than that but to me, I don't see that. I still hear my husband, same voice. I still see the eyes, I still see the same eyes.” She later stated, wistfully, “I miss being able to go out on a date with my husband, and sit next to him and hug him and kiss him in public. I don't feel comfortable doing that.”
For Prince, it was “torturous” to see his wife recoil from him physically. “I still see her through the same eyes that Ted did. She's still the same gorgeous, you know, beautiful woman. So she's three feet away from me in bed and I want to go over there and I want to hug her, I want to kiss her, you know?” He continued, “And I can smell her. It's torturous. And when the lights are off, she says, I can still hear Ted's voice. And I can even smell, it's still the same. But she says, I'm not a lesbian.”
Chang failed to point out the utter selfishness of Prince wanting his wife to change her sexual orientation to engage in a physical relationship with him, or of expecting Rene and his sons to accept his decision.
At the end of the program, Chang detailed Rene's “emotional breakthrough” in which she decided to tell former coworkers and friends about Prince's transition. Rene read the email she wrote, which in part praised the television special for forcing the truth out. After explaining the circumstances Rene read, “I'm starting to think that telling people the truth is more important than hiding. So, there it all is. I hope you don't treat me differently. There are a few I tried to tell, but didn't know how. This TV show solves that. Maybe it's God's way of saying no more secrets.”