MY CHILD IS TRANSGENDER, AND I HAVE LOTS TO LEARN

My little girl hated girls’ clothes from the age of 2 or 3, and chose to play with boys her own age, not girls. She preferred boys’ toys and activities. I saw it but didn’t realize what I was looking at, and I saw it every day for years.

I couldn’t process the behavior I was witnessing beyond the parameters of what and how I’d been taught to think. There were male and female, and there were no other options. The answer was clearly that she was a tomboy, and of course effeminate boys were sissies. Everyone knew that. Simple explanation, right? Wrong.

At the time there was no internet, no LGBTQ, no gay pride, no AIDS and no Facebook. No place to learn about such matters. Things like this were learned about in whispers and at that time I’m guessing neither of us knew what transgender was.

My child was transgender, and I was clueless to help ease her journey through an unfriendly world. Not only that, I made it harder by invalidating everything she knew herself to be. Our relationship was conflictual from the beginning. She wasn’t what she was supposed to be, and it was my job to make her fit into the gender role that society had decided was hers. We fought all the time, and we both lost.

In retrospect, I shudder at the conceit of invalidating her experience of her own body, psyche and sense of self.

When my child was 18, she told me she was bisexual. When the shock wore off, which lasted only a couple of minutes at most, suddenly her childhood made sense. Everything clicked. The lack of interest in boys and no dating, the preference for things traditionally attributed to masculine attributes and interests, hating her breasts and binding them so they didn’t show. A few years later she confided in me that she had originally told me she was bisexual because it was an easier transition for par

ents to accept.

She was considering my feelings when for so many years I had ignored hers. She was a lesbian, she said, and that was reasonable to me because she never dated guys or showed any interest in one at any time in her life. At the time there was no internet, no LGBTQ, no gay pride, no AIDS and no Facebook. No place to learn about such matters. Things like this were learned about in whispers and at that time I’m guessing neither of us knew what transgender was. I was in a master’s program in psychology — if anyone should have seen, it should have been me. Nope. She dated women and lived her life as a lesbian.

Being in the queer community has its benefits, one being that information is shared openly. She had always been uncomfortable with her physical feminine attributes. They were a contradiction to who they were. Slowly they came to realize and accept they were transgender. Again, with what I’d witnessed over the years the puzzle pieces fit together more seamlessly than a lesbian identity. It was like peeling an onion in that every layer moved us closer to the core, the truth. However, the transgender identity was harder to digest because it was an unknown to me as well as our family.

The preferred pronouns, definitions and vocabulary to describe gender preference can be confusing. For instance, sexuality and gender are not the same. Gender is who you are and who you know yourself to be. It’s not limited to a binary expression and goes far beyond the binary he/ she. He and she are at opposite ends of a spectrum and there are many iteration of gender identity in between.

It was a long and difficult journey, but my son has arrived at a place in life where he’s comfortable in his own body. It’s taken years, but it’s happened. Is the journey complete? Unknown. I just know he’s comfortable in his own skin, and loved and accepted by his family. Finally.

The LGBT experience isn’t a new phenomenon. There are many cultures throughout history that have embraced members of the LGBT community: Ancient Egypt, India, Assyria, Africa, China, Israel, the Americas, Persia and the South Pacific. In Europe, there were the ancient Celts, Ancient Greece and Rome as well as Italy. Some of these cultures have documentation and illustrations as far back as 3000 B.C.

It would seem that our LGBT brothers, sisters, family members, friends and acquaintances have lived among us as far back as history has been recorded. Trying to force them to fit into an imagined mold of what we think they “should be” is unrealistic and unkind. It would seem we’re hardwired to be who we are, and whether approved of and respected, or devalued and discriminated against, they’re part of us.