Chris had posted a video of Tania Joy Gibson speaking at a conservative event called the Great ReAwakening, which he was attending as part of his normal coverage of right-wing extremism. Tania, an anti-trans activist and former Miss Illinois who told the crowd that gender dysphoria was the work of Satan, is part of a growing wave of far-right influencers who are on a mission to drive transgender people underground and out of public life.

Trans people like her son.

As debates over trans people participating in public life continue, the trope of the concerned parent has taken hold in right-wing media. But often, those who portray themselves as simply worried about their offspring’s well-being are also deeply invested in the anti-trans rhetoric that targets their child. Though Renton doesn’t talk to his mother anymore, she frequently references him — misgendered as a “prodigal daughter” — when speaking to podcasts, at conventions, and on her streaming talk show.

Now 23 years old, Renton told Chris his own story, from his own perspective — about his mother’s attempts to send him through the discredited practice of “conversion therapy,” his effort to hold on to a sense of identity despite isolation and repression, his self-harm, and his eventual escape. About how his personal story has been the prologue to his mother and her allies’ ongoing mission to persecute young people like him.

He said that hearing his mother’s anti-trans rhetoric gaining traction made him reach out. “Just being in a position now where I’m like, OK, I can actually fucking stand up for myself, and I don’t just have to sit and just take this bullshit forever, and I can actually like have a say in it, that is cool,” he said.

Renton’s painful adolescence is one that his mother and her allies want to reenact, by force, on other trans kids, as conservative lawmakers do their best to implement Tania’s agenda across the country. We’re halfway through 2023, and GOP legislators have already introduced over 560 bills targeting transgender people this year, including bans on gender-affirming care, youth participation in sports, using the bathroom associated with their gender identity — the list goes on.

Renton told Chris about a text exchange he had with his mother before they stopped talking, remembering that he asked her whether she’d prefer “a dead kid or a trans one.”

The story leaves that question unanswered.