Desist, Detrans & Detox: Getting Your Child Out of the Gender Cult

by Maria Keffler

In this actionable analysis of one of the most damaging movements of the modern age, renowned author Maria Keffler makes a compelling case that what lies at the core of the transgender phenomenon is a crisis of identity, and that only a loving but firm reality check can staunch the hysteria.

Keffler makes unassailable Maleness and femaleness are immutable biological facts. Masculinity and femininity are personality constructs, conditioned by societal norms.

But “gender,” the term favored by activists, has no solid definition. The language introduced by gender ideology is entirely subjective, which allows emotions to redefine reality. The very premise of the ideology is flawed and requires mental gymnastics of its adherents.

Keffler outlines the disturbing parallels between cults and gender recruitment tactics that prey upon insecurities, indoctrination in nonsensical beliefs that must never be questioned, requirements to shun nonbelievers, and in-group newspeak which cultivates a sense of belonging.

She exposes the cult of gender ideology with journalistic detail, digging into aspects the mainstream media chooses to ignore. She

The origins of modern gender ideology in the 1960s How the obsession to “affirm” gender identity leads to medical negligence in overlooking mental health issuesThe role of bullying and peer pressure in the gender cultThe rapidly growing community of detransitioners and their insightful firsthand testimoniesKeffler also provides a manual for parenting children during the time they are most vulnerable to predatory gender activism. She instructs parents in navigating this brave new world, including discerning fact from fiction, setting boundaries regarding names and pronouns, how to find a trustworthy therapist, and how to determine what vulnerabilities led the child to the gender cult in the first place.

The book includes an abundance of resources for parents whose children are currently in the throes of or recovering from gender dysphoria. Central to her approach is unconditional love and forgiveness, with a focus on moving forward together.

Packed with statistical data, reasoned arguments, and practical advice, Desist, Detrans, and Detox equips readers to prevent, work through, and heal from the “medical scandal of the 21st century.”

Genres: Nonfiction, Transgender, Parenting, Feminism, Gender, Health

254 pages, Kindle Edition

First published April 7, 2021

About the author

Maria Keffler lives in Arlington, VA near (but not in) the cemetery with her STEM-y hubs and three darling cherubs who all wish they were only children. Maria is a co-founder of Advocates Protecting Children, which helps individuals, families, churches, and organizations navigate transgender ideology. Ms. Keffler is also a co-founder of the Arlington Parent Coalition, a watchdog group in Arlington, VA, which works to safeguard parents’ rights and children’s safety in public education. An author, speaker, and teacher with a background in educational psychology, Ms. Keffler has fought to protect children from unethical activism and dangerous policies around sexuality and transgender ideology since 2018. She is also an award-seeking novelist/blogger, and is writing her next book, as well as working on a simple formula to predict prime numbers to infinity. She lives in Arlington, Virginia (USA), with her husband and three teenage children.

Reviews

[Kay · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finally, a book about options in the fad of young, especially, girls who think they are trans. The numbers of young women detransing are increasing and the effects of surgery and Big Pharma on them breaks my heart. Well-meaning parents should have some support when TRAs on Tik tok convince the kids that their parents are bigoted and evil. It isn't usually true. And, parents should decide what is good for their children not school and certainly not cult leader on the internet.

[Karen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read.
A voice of sanity during these troubling times.

[Sharon Olivier · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is an absolute must read.

[Clem · Rating 1 out of 5]

awesome read for narc parents who are incapable of conceptualizing opinions different from their own, so they resort to bullying their children into holding the worldview that they believe is the objective truth.

also: lame, poorly written, and raises no new or interesting points.

[Robin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Science based, factual. Not transphobic as some say. It’s looking at science and being smart about a very serious shift in a child’s biology. Looking at differing sides of an issue when so much is at stake is smart.

[N. K. · Rating 1 out of 5]

This book seems to be more about doing whatever possible to keep your kids in strict gender roles than it is about protecting children. Aside from the writing being poorly edited (it looks like it was copied from blog posts), many of the suggestions are concerningly involved with depriving children of basic necessities and healthy exploration (I'm not talking about sexual NSFW exploration, I'm talking about regular growing up exploration) in order to convince the child that only their parent's worldview can be fully trusted. There is no room for parents to make mistakes and no room for a child to grow up and question the world. This is concerning because that is a very typical way to enable child abuse by parents who care more about being right and in control than about their child's wellbeing.
Also, although the book is focus on transgender issues, it also seems to be poised against gay people as well, and I was shocked to see how many of the praise reviews in the book were written by people who are known for advocating that gay people to be erased, eradicated, and "turned straight," despite how far research has come in showing how traumatic, unproductive, and inhumane that is. This book seems to set aside trying to turn gay people straight, and is instead trying to squash every single sign of a child moving even slightly out of the author's idea of gender roles, even when it is not something sexual and even when it's something that has only become associated with a specific gender fairly recently. Keffler seems convinced that all people are not only in two completely seperate gender categories, but those categories are almost universally the same for everyone everywhere all the time. This is strange, since humans are a very diverse species and we not only have a wide range of bodies but have very different ideas about what is associated with different genders. In my anthropology work I've learned that there are very few gender roles that are 100% universal, even if there are tendancies for certain gender roles to be more common. Keffler doesn't acknowledge this and holds a very specific view of gender roles that makes little exception for any culture or body or person that does not fit perfectly in this.
The book is also very anecdotal, which is something that can be fitting for some books, but for this one I think it falls short because there is no data on how these methods actually affect a varied group of children in the long run instead of just her own children and ones she's worked with briefly or heard about on the internet. That's not a great sample for figuring out effective and healthy parenting methods, in my opinion. For something that seems to promote itself as a life saving parenting guide, I would have liked more data on how these parenting methods affect a child's wellbeing.
Anyway. This book does not seem to help a child's well being or even get them out of abusive strangers' hands. It just serves to control every aspect of a child's life until they are exactly like their parents, even if it means the child is unhappy.

[Mary McAlister Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding resource for anyone interested in protecting children

This is a invaluable contribution to the transgendered debate. It offers parents solid, well-researched advice on how to prevent their children from being taken captive by the trans cult, or if they have been lured into it, to help them understand what is happening and how to overcome it. Parents are given practical, solid advice in a very readable manner.

[Martha J. Shoultz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is the only one of its kind as far as I know, and it addresses parents whose kids have been convinced by strangers online, or their friends at school, that they are "trans" because they have anxiety, OCD, PTSD, autism or many other mental health conditions and thus may have temporary discomfort upon or after puberty. While not a guaranty of a child's recovery, this book provides tools for helping a child or young adult to understand that parents are not "transphobic" just because the parents are concerned about a recent declaration of gender identity and the resulting medical consequences that a child is encouraged by unethical doctors to pursue. The author has thoroughly researched this bizarre new phenomenon and includes thoughtful insights from young people who have already de-transitioned after realizing that medical transition was not the answer to their problems.

[Adrienne · Rating 5 out of 5]

The perfect resource for parents, professionals, and others to approach the topic with logic and compassion.

[Lovisa · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must read for any parent with a gender questioning child…

[Tri · Rating 1 out of 5]

A shockingly cruel guide on how to isolate and manipulate teens and adult children to the breaking point. This book encourages the reader to make antagonists of anyone and everyone. This isn’t an exaggeration:
“Grab a sheet of paper or open up a new document on your device and draw a line down the center to make two columns. Label one column Protagonists (people who are on your side) and the other Antagonists (those who are working against you). You're going to place the people you know (and those with whom your child has contact) in one of these two columns... Everyone. Family, friends, extracurricular activities."

This book is also focused on manipulating and/or punishing a child until they act/agree with everything a parent says, regardless of the detriment of the child’s mental, emotional, or physical health:
“Your child may run away. Your child may self-harm. Your child may call a child protection agency on you... A year or two (or more) worth of hardship, struggling with an intractable and infuriated son or daughter, may prevent a lifetime of regret."

These methods have no support from child psychiatrists and doctors. To ignore medical professionals on how to work with their child to instead favor isolating and demonizing them is abuse. Even adult children are not spared in this book, and adults being able to make decisions for themselves is somehow unfathomable to the text.

Nearly every point is anecdotal, none of the suggestions are backed by any medical board or would be upheld by any child psychiatrist. Being trans aside, doing these things to a child let alone one that may have Autism or OCD is nightmarish and will cause more harm to a child, especially if they’re young.

This is an great book if your plans are to drive your children to the breaking point, teach them how to hide and lie to you to save face, show them that they can’t trust you, and severely damage the relationship for a lifetime. I’m utterly appalled this is published let alone sold, and much like “To Train Up A Child”, this is going to lead to unbelievable amount of heartbreak.

[Fred Klein · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thank goodness this book exists. It fills in a gap I found in Abigail Shrier’s book: What can a parent do if their child has been taken in by the transgender cult? I am sorry if you are going through this. If you are, get this book. I hope it helps.

[Julio J. Baylac · Rating 5 out of 5]

Calling it for what it is

After reading other also excellent books on the subject, I have to say that Desist, Detrans, & Detox is the most straight to the point explanation of this horrific ideology that is invading our homes and our spirits and destroying everything that is good about our cultures. It not only provides very helpful tools to help families deal with the horrific consequences of the gender ideology and help the victims work their way out, but from the start, it calls it for what it is: a nefarious, profit driven, criminal machine. The book explains how this ideology targets specifically vulnerable children using predatory methods, comparable to typical cults. It also warns you about the health industry (sociologists, surgeons, pharma) that is for the most part in bed with this ideology and how to seek for real professional help.

A must read for families that are victims of this monster called gender ideology.

[Sarah · Rating 3 out of 5]

Offers difficult but practical steps toward extracting children from the cult that has been not just allowed but officially encouraged to run wild in our schools and society for the last few decades. While both minor and adult children are considered, this book is more useful for those with minor children rather than grown.

[Richard T. Powell · Rating 5 out of 5]

Everyone needs to read.

It took four books to get to this one. The others were footage informative but this one gives real world solutions through out. This gender ideology will come to an end but until then this book is a.must read.

[Ron · Rating 5 out of 5]

I've read several books on the topic of gender ideology, but this is the most practical so far. I would recommend this book to anyone who has a child suffering from gender dysphoria or whose son or daughter has been caught up in the "cult" of transgenderism. A must read.

[Monika · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read the book for insight, as I have a coworker struggling with the issue. Good info and research presented and practical advice as well. I'll be passing it along to her ❤️

[Catherine Thurlow · Rating 4 out of 5]

While I personally do not have a child that is in the "Gender Cult," I was able to take in a lot of good from this book. I appreciated the author's tenderness while approaching it, recognizing that there are persons who struggle in this area. She is not afraid to share the research that exists on de-transitioners - while also noting that there is a lack of research on the topic due to relentless backlash. Her comparison of the ideology to a cult is intense, but the parallels that she lays out are very meaningful for reflection. At times, reading it felt circular and repetitive, but perhaps that is a rhetorical strategy employed by the author to highlight how it feels to walk with someone who is trapped in a cycle of false identification.

Personally, I noticed a gap in the depth of answering the question “who am I really?”. The author answers scientifically based on sex. But there is a cry from the human heart that seeks a deeper answer. If I am a woman, what does that mean? If I am a man, what does that mean? How do we help each other better understand our sexual identity as man and woman?

[Josie A.]

An important book to help parents guide their kids.

[Neuberger · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first book against gender woo woo that I read. It is clear, to the point and covers many aspects that are very helpful like pointing to other resources like books for people who fall into cults (other than gender ideology). Maria and her friend Erin also have a series of videos related to each chapter that you and watch. Newer books cover other aspects such as those of Az Hakeem, but this one was the first on my long list. One detail that could have improved the book is that it focuses on girls, with little about boys. Perhaps at the tome this was written the majority of those captured by gender ideology were girls.