parents

What if I had come out as a child?

I just woke up from a nightmare about coming out as trans as a child. In my dream I was going to a private Christian school and having to fight for basic human decency among classmates and school administrators who didn’t believe me. Who didn’t believe that trans people were real.

But as scary as that dream was, it is probably nothing compared to what would have happened if I had come out as trans in my actual childhood.

Let me be clear. My parents have grown a lot in the intervening years since I left home and they genuinely seem to be trying to understanding my experience right now. But I shudder to think what would have happened if I had come out as trans or even queer as a child while they were still in the grasp of the cult. I am fairly confident that I would have been sent to life-threatening conversion therapy that would have made my depression a lot worse and possibly led to suicide.

It was bad enough growing up as a child, confused and afraid because I didn’t know why I was different. Knowing that I had a girl’s brain but not knowing what that meant. Feeling like I was alone in my experience because I didn’t know that transgender people even existed until college.

But it would have been so much worse if I had voiced those feelings as a child and not been believed. If I had been placed into “therapy” to “cure” me from this sin. If I had been told on a daily basis that my lived experience wasn’t real and spiritually beaten over the head because I felt that way.

My heart goes out to all the kids who are still in that situation. Who live among parents, educators, and peers who don’t believe them. Who have to hide who they are because of the explicitly transphobic messages they hear on a daily basis.

When we say “protect trans kids,” we say that because even in a day and age where awareness of transgender people is at an all time high, trans kids have a one in three chance of attempting suicide.

We live in a country where hard won trans rights that we fought for decades to achieve are being taken away from us on a daily basis. Just this week, the protections that we gained in the Affordable Care Act were stripped away. And that wears on trans people mentally and kills us daily through denials of care and service. That permeates our culture and compounds with racism to make trans women of color the most marginalized and murdered group in America. Already this year, 14 trans people have been brutally murdered; the majority of them women of color.

As a white trans adult, my nightmare was largely just that. My life is rarely at risk of anything other than my own depression and suicidal thoughts. But I am one of the lucky ones. I have a supportive spouse and partners, I have a large community of trans people and advocates who stand with me, and I have a low risk of murder because of the color of my skin and where I live.

So when you fight for Black Lives, when you fight for queer lives, when you fight for trans youth, please make sure that your fight is intersectional and intentionally includes the lives of those who bear the burden of all of our collective societal sins. Fight for Black Trans Lives because they matter. And until we stop these murders, we can’t truly mean that Black Lives Matter.

I just want to be seen

So I was watching BoJack Horseman this morning. I’m in Season 5 at the moment and I was watching the episode “Free Churro” where BoJack is at his mother’s funeral and is giving this very bitter eulogy based on his childhood trauma. But at the end there is this moment where he says something about how we all just want to be seen and the saddest part of his mother’s death is that he no longer has the opportunity for his mother to see who he really is. And even though I was only half paying attention, I start crying. And I’m crying again writing this out. Because ultimately, that’s what is most important to me too. I just want the people in my life to see who I really am. Not see my body or the person they thought I was based on how I was born. But the woman I truly am. And my mother is the person who I yearn to see me the most.

So when I talk about the pain of being misgendered by my family, it’s not actually about them making a mistake. It’s about the fact that when they do that constantly, it feels like they don’t actually see who I really am. They still think of me as the boy they thought they were raising. They probably still think this is a phase or that I have been corrupted by liberal society or something. And they can’t seem to successfully convert their brains to seeing who I truly was all along.

I have largely given up on my dad. I don’t think we will ever see eye to eye. But I guess I still hold out hope for my mom. And more than almost anything in my life, I want her to see who I am. I want her to embrace me as her daughter and give me her approval.

In my family, there is a middle name that started with my grandmother and has been passed down three generations in the women. It is my mom and my sister’s middle name and since in many ways, our family is not so secretly a matriarchy, it is a very important symbolic name. As I think about changing my name to make my chosen name my legal first name, I have been thinking about what I want my middle name to be. And a large part of me is drawn to choosing that name because of the symbolism. But I feel like I need to be given permission to claim that heritage and while I have gotten that from my aunt, I still feel like I need my mother’s seal of approval. And I know it probably won’t happen as long as she doesn’t see me as I am.

Most of my trans friends don’t have that relationships with their families anymore because they have either been rejected by their parents or they choose to distance themselves because of the pain that being constantly misgendered and deadnamed causes. But I keep trying to invest time into my family and I remain close to them even though it is painful because I want that closure. I want to be seen. And I truly hope that before my mom descends into alzheimers, that I get that moment with her.

The power of support

Have I mentioned recently how amazing my chosen family is? I am incredibly lucky to find myself at this point in my life surrounded by the queerest, most supportive friends and partners imaginable. And I want to take a moment to acknowledge how much that support means to me and keeps me going.

Do you know how wonderful it is to come home every day to a house full of amazing queer and trans humans who have chosen to make me a part of their lives? I live with my spouse and anchor partner of 4 years, a bold, proudly fat and femme, queer cis woman who supports me in all the little ways that matter so much. I never feel like an oddity or burden when I’m around her because she has shown repeatedly that she can handle the hard stuff, saying the right things to reassure me when my brain is being mean and holding me close when I’m depressed. Not to mention providing fashion inspiration!

My household also includes my spouses partner, my metamour, a sweet Southern transmasculine person who joined us last year, as well as an amazing queer woman who defies categorization filling simultaneously best friend, romantic-turned-platonic partner, and close chosen family places in my heart. Life isn’t always easy when you live in a house with a bunch of queers with anxiety disorders but we hold each other up and support each other both emotionally and financially by sharing expenses based on how much we make relative to each other. Sharing a house together holds so many perks, especially knowing that when you have a hard day there will be someone to talk to and hold close.

Then there’s my chosen family and friends who cheer each other along as we stride through this world that isn’t always so friendly for us. I have so many queer and trans friends, and a few token cishet ones, who show up for the hard work. When I’m down I know that support is only a message away and that helps a lot. And being polyamorous, there’s plenty of people that blur the lines too. My life is full of former partners, either of mine or my spouses, and budding new relationships with other nonbinary folks. The best part is that I’m never lacking in cuddles!

I’ve talked a lot here about some of the hard parts of growing up in a conservative religious family but for all that my parents have been far more supportive than I could have imagined. Despite some incredibly vast ideological differences, they have stuck around and showed me that they do love me even when they don’t understand me. They live close enough that I get to see them at least once a month and they have opened up their hearts and home to all my partners and friends as well. They still struggle with pronouns but are slowly getting better and have grown so much in the past dozen years.

I am so sad that every person doesn’t have the kind of love and support in their life that I have found but I want to offer some proof that you can find that even if things seem bleak at the time. I went through some very isolating years in my previous marriage where even when I had friends, there were very few I could truly be honest with. I’m really lucky that my best friend from college survived all my ex’s attempts to sabotage our attempts to stick together. I’ve lost almost all my friends several times now but seeing who sticks around when it’s hard does help you find your true friends.

I know it sounds cliche but the point is that you need to keep trying. It does get better. And it’s because of all the support that I have gotten as far as I have in my transition.

What’s in a name?

For a lot of trans people, changing their name is a really big and meaningful step. But for me, I have a hard time figuring out exactly how I feel about the idea of changing my name. Some days I feel apathetic about it and others I feel conflicted. Never once have I felt strongly that I should either keep my name or change it. So for now I take the easiest path which is keeping my first name, although I did change my middle and last names when I got married which was a much bigger paperwork ordeal than I thought. I changed my middle name to something gender neutral so that if I decide to change, I can just go by that name.

The part of me that wants to change it is driven by the idea that people would make less assumptions about me if I didn’t have a male-gendered name. But realistically I know that people make those assumptions regardless based on my voice and appearance. The other reason to change is because of the religious baggage associated with my name. The cult I grew up in treated your name like it was your destiny and when you met the leader, he would tell you the meaning in a very creepy way. All the children in our family had biblical names because of that background. And this month I had a difficult conversation with my dad where he made it clear he would never use a different name for me because this one was “god ordained” and that’s always who I’ll be. And while I had no plans to change my name before that, my first instinct is to say “well if you’re going to shove your “gift” down my throat, then I will reject it.”

The reason I haven’t done that yet is because I have seen how difficult it is for my trans friends to have their new name respected outside our own community. Trying to get coworkers and old acquaintances to switch sounds overwhelming to me and I know it would just increase tensions with my parents when I am still just trying to get them to use my pronouns. I wish I had the courage to be more assertive about these things but right now I am so tired of fighting.

As much as I want to start using my gender neutral middle name with my chosen family and friends, I am also afraid of getting used to it. And more importantly, I don’t feel any stronger a connection with my new name than my old one. To some degree, the name isn’t important to me, at least relative to my pronouns. Is it normal to never feel an emotional connection to your name?

Transgender Big Siblings

More and more I’m getting requests from friends and acquaintances for resources for their own friends who have trans or nonbinary kids or for youth who need role models to see what it could look like to be a trans adult. And while I’ve added some info I found on gender identity in young children to my resources section, I’m starting to think that maybe what we need now is a Transgender Big Siblings program that would pair trans adults with families where the parents are trying to be supportive but need more than online resources.

The idea literally just came to me as I was reading yet another article that talked about a parent who has a trans daughter and is trying to follow her lead but fears for her future. And yes, the future isn’t as easy for a lot of us trans folk, but it is getting better all the time and it would probably be incredibly relieving for someone like her to talk to someone like me who has supportive partners and a job where I can be out.

Does anyone know if such a thing already exists or if there are other people trying to start this?