A Fine Article About Trans Kids And Their Parents

Jesse Green's S/He, in the most recent issue of New York magazine, is one of the more interesting articles I've read in a while.


It's also one of the fairest and most nuanced pieces of writing about transgenderism I've seen from someone who isn't trans.  


Specifically, it's about transgender children and the choices their parents face in raising them.  On one hand, we don't want kids or parents making decisions they might regret later on.  On the other hand, we also don't want to see those kids (or any other) commit suicide or do any harm to themselves.  All of the research done on the topic indicates that transgender teenagers have, by far, the highest suicide rate of anybody. The research also confirms what almost any of us can tell you:  Those of us who kill ourselves don't do so because we're trans.  Rather, we do it because of the ostracism and even violence we face too often.


So, some parents realize that starting a hormone regimen before, or just as, their kids reach puberty might save their lives.  And, as one parent of a male-to-female kid said, "I'd rather have a live daughter than a dead son."


What really makes Green's article stand out, in my mind, is that he understands that transgender kids aren't crossdressing or "experimenting" in any way.  He also realizes that it's not a form of "rebellion" or "pushing boundaries."  Instead, he seems to realize--if he doesn't state outright--that a person's gender is subconscious and will surface sooner or later in much the same way a bubble held underwater will rise to the surface.  


What that means--again, he doesn't state it, but from reading the article, I think he understands and intends--is that notions like "gender is performative" and other such nonsense taught in Gender Studies classes simply won't work for the parents or kids.  The parents seem to understand their kids' gender expression is not a "performance" (as if the kid were in a Broadway show), but a natural expression of what he or she is, or at least feels at that time.  This means, of course, the parents have to be as open to the idea that the kid might decide, at puberty or later, that he or she is not really transgender, or may simply decide (for whatever reasons) that he or she doesn't want to go through surgery and other advanced parts of the transition.


Also, the article shows that "liberal" parents wouldn't actually be helpful for such kids.  The parents who believe in the fluidity or ambiguity of gender simply aren't going to be helpful to a kid whose birth certificate is marked "M" but insists on having her bedroom painted lavender and festooned with Hello Kitty and Hannah Montana memorabilia.  In fact, the parents Green interviewed come off, in some cases, on the conservative side--both politically and in their view of social mores.  


Some of the comments that followed Green's article were thoughtful.  But there were others, predictably enough, that expressed ignorance or even hostility toward the kids and their parents.  But what really bothered me were the stupid ones--namely, the ones who carped on Green's pronoun usage and other such details.  I think he did the best he could and tried to follow the wishes of the kids and parents as much as he could.  Almost anyone who's gone through a transition can tell you that, at least early in the transition (which is where most of the kids are), they'd rather hear the wrong pronoun but be treated decently otherwise than to be called the right pronouns by someone who is otherwise untrustworthy.

Remembering Dreams And Fantasies That Weren't Mine

After going to the Jersey Shore and having lunch, I didn't feel a sense of nostalgia or deja vu.  You can't really feel those things for people with whom you have a current relationship.  Or maybe it's just me.  All I know is that these days, I don't think that much about my childhood or adolescence when I'm around Mom and Dad.  

It strikes me as odd that, with the people with whom I have my longest relationships, I essentially have no past.   At least, I don't feel as if I have one.  It's as if the person who lived as their son, who fought with his father and cried to (and, at times, with) his mother was somebody else.  In a sense, he is:  I am not living his life now.  Of course, that is what I wanted, and still want.  But it's still strange nonetheless.

So what was so different about me during my teen years, when I lived there?  Or in my early adult years, when Mom and Dad were still living there and I used to visit, at times grudgingly?  Or even my early thirties, before they moved?  

I remember that once I wrote a poem about not having fantasies.  I have it somewhere, if not in digital form.  The fact that I didn't bother to preserve it electronically probably means that it's even worse than my other poetry, or my other writing, for that matter.  (If you've been reading this blog, you know that's saying something!)  I think it was bad because, if I recall, I turned it into a poem for whomever I was involved with at the time:  In essence, I didn't need fantasies because I had that person.

Of course almost nothing could have been further from the truth, but not through any fault of the subject of that poem.  The truth was that I didn't have fantasies--of the sexual, or any other, variety.  For much of my life, I didn't even dream, and when I did, those dreams--the ones I remembered, anyway--were utterly mundane or outright depressing, even more so than my waking life was.

I didn't dream of being an astronaut or pilot, or of making love to Faye Dunaway or anyone else.  I didn't even daydream about any of the girls, or boys, in my classes.  When anyone asked what I wanted to be when I grew up, I couldn't tell them.  An astronaut, a doctor, an accountant:  nothing appealed to me.  The things people wanted from me were even less appetizing, for they included such as the aspirations of a career as a military officer that my father and a family friend had for me.

One question I don't ask is whether Dad still thinks about that--in part, because whether or not he does isn't going to change much, for me, him, Mom or anyone else.  Just as I didn't have other dreams, I didn't share his dreams.  And, of course, I couldn't share my mother's dreams, which included my giving her the grandchildren she wanted.  At least my brothers took care of that.

Actually, I had one dream. Of course, I did not reveal it to anyone until long after Mom and Dad had moved, my brothers had kids who were in school and a few people we knew were dead.  I don't think any young person could have revealed such a dream to anyone else in those days, even if he, she or I had the words for it.  

I have learned that language only during the past few years.  That is why I have just begun to have dreams, and why I am just starting to learn about my fantasies.  I suspect that some of them will be fulfilled as I begin to have memories of my own.  One can only have those things in one's own language.

Passing Showers and Coming Weather

Last night, and for part of today, I felt sadness moving through me like showers that sometimes pass through the afternoons or evenings at this time of year.  In the day, sunshine follows; at night, the sky fills with bright stars and moonlight.  But you know that those showers will pass through again, if not tomorrow, then on another day.

Of course, the pattern of sun and rain and sun, or rain and stars, is simply the meteorological cycle, at least in this part of the world at this time of year.  However, the sadness that follows happy, or at least good, events is somehow less predictable, if just as inevitable as the weather.

What that play between joy and sadness means, I think, is that I’m working something else, whether consciously or not.  About a year after I started to take hormones, and had been experiencing giggle fits and crying jags for a few months, I realized that tears are a means for the psyche—and, sometimes, the body—to cleanse itself.  As with any kind of cleansing, it doesn’t happen all at once, which is why we (or at least I) need the crying spells or giggle fits to repeat themselves.

So what is it that I’m working out?  I suppose it has to do with the time I went to high school in Middletown, New Jersey and the years my parents lived there afterward.  Going to see my parents there—or, at least, a couple of towns over, in an area that was almost as familiar to me—was bound to make me think about a few things. 

During our conversations, my mother and father talked about some of the mistakes we made and the things we might do differently.  While I was often unhappy —Indeed, I was probably clinically depressed, or in some state close to it, much of the time—I don’t feel that I had a bad childhood or even adolescence.  We didn’t have much, at least materially, and I think we were trying to negotiate relationships with each other, and people outside the family, as well as various other types of situations, without much to guide us.  In my case, there wasn’t much that, or very many people who, could have shown me what I needed to do.

I tried to explain, as I have in some of our other conversations, that I don’t blame them—and, truthfully, I never did blame them, or at least not my mother—for whatever difficulties I might’ve had.  I was trying to deal with things for which I didn’t have names, much less explanations or other ways to portray.  Even if I did have the words and other knowledge that could have helped me to make sense of what I was feeling, I’m not sure that my mother, and I am certain my father, wouldn’t have had the means—whatever they might have been—to understand what I was thinking about, much less a way to deal with it and even less a way to help me with it.

My father had his ideas about the kind of man he wanted me to become and the career—that of a military officer—he wanted me to pursue.  But I don’t even see that as being as much a part of the problem as I once did.  I get the feeling that his own upbringing, and the milieu in which he grew up, didn’t give him very effective tools for understanding his own needs and wants, much less those of anyone else.

My mother, at least, has always been a very, very good listener and had plenty of empathy, at least for me.  I think she understood, at some point, that I really was trying to do the things that my teachers and others expected of me, and the things those people—as well as she and Dad—hoped and wished for me.  I’ll admit that I didn’t want to fulfill some expectations because, at best, they were incongruent with my psyche and at worst they could have destroyed me.  And there were others I didn’t want to fulfill simply because of my own anger.  In some way, Mom understood all of that. 

It may have had to do with the fact that, as she said, she married and had kids at as early an age as she did.  In her time, most young women married and had their first kids at about the same age as my mother did those things, but today almost any parent who’s not some sort of religious fundamentalist would not want his or her kid to marry or have kids at such an age.  She did what was expected of her and, I think, because of that, she knew I was trying to fulfill expectations, too.

I began to understand what those expectations were, at least for me, when I was in high school.  That was also when, I believe, gender roles started to become more rigid and the genders more segregated.  Furthermore, in high school, we were expected, for the first time, to seriously think about onthe course of the rest of our lives.  That would determine, among other things, how much longer we would go to school and what kinds of schools we would attend.

Although there were no rules that said only males could go into certain occupations and that only females should work in others, gender expectations came into play when we were deciding what we wanted to do with the rest of our lives—or even in the immediate future.  For instance, only boys studied auto repair and only girls studied “beauty culture.”  Plus, in high school, many kids start to think about what kind of family life they would or wouldn’t want to make for themselves. 

I often think about what those years might’ve been like if I knew some of what I know now.  And I can’t help to wonder what Mom and Dad might’ve done.  Then again, some things could and would not have been different; others might've passed.