First, I wanted to thank you for your responses and apologize for not posting sooner. I have such a busy schedule I had time to pop in a few weeks ago to read them but have not yet had time to craft an adequate response. I thought you all might want an update so…
In response to the comments about me “clearly label certain activities as "boy" or "girl" centric. ” I was refering to how STORES refer to those items/aisles and not stating that I personally feel items should have a gender attached. I personally do NOT feel this way. Refering to my child by birth gender was for clarification because there has been no official determination of whether my child is TG or if so, what sub-group they would likely feel attached to. And yes, my child was in therapy, though this was a “youth services” therapist and not a specialist in TG issues, and I felt she ended the therapy too soon even though she stated my child was “in a good place”.
And yes, I did read a lot about TG and youth that transition and terms, but as far as I could see all the sites I saw (which I’m sure was not all the sites out there) have the standing that if your child thinks they might be, then they are and you have to support them or you’re a horrible person and you’re discriminating against them or you’re emotionally damaging them. They also come from the point of people whose children showed signs from very young age which mine did not, which was very confusing and is why I continued to seek help and ask for insight, which I didn’t get (in the past few years).
I haven’t been in a situation before where I had access to such a gender diverse group of people, where I could try to get the advise of people in a real life situation, rather than a random 3 people who agree with this person, comment loudly but have nothing to do with what 98.6% of the rest of the group think. I don’t go on reddit or troll comment boards. I don’t have hours to do research. And my kid seems basically happy. If there seemed to be emotional distress, believe me I would be much more active about getting to the heart of this matter.
That being said, after I read your comments a few weeks back, my child and I did have a lenghtly talk about this and I offered a compromise. A transition to the transition, as it were… and was flat-out rejected. Our compromise was about the home transition now and public transition later but, turns out school was utmost important part and deal-breaker for my child. It turns out when it comes down to the nitty gritty, it’s about their life is normal and boring and they want to feel special. They don’t have any interest in publicly being known as a boy by our friends and relations. It’s all about the kids at school. They have created this persona and it actually improves their rep with them if there is conflict with me about it. None of this has been outright said but when I’m around their group and just the two of us talking alone, as a mom I am good at reading the body language cues and I see this is the case. The more this claim is rejected verbally the more I see the reactions and it’s reinforced. Over the past couple weeks I have been gently pressing and watching reactions and seeing this is the case.
I am 100% ready to support my child if it turns out that they are indeed transgender, I just feel sick at the thought that my child could be using the popularity of the term and the growing awareness of this sector of the population to try to become more popular when they aren’t really TG. However, with the various subheadings under the broad term, one could feel comfortable using a more gender neutral term when refering to themselves and still later end up using she/her pronouns as an adult, even though they used he/him pronouns though high school. I have decided with your insight and help, that this is basically a non-issue that will work itself out and whatever “label” my kid falls under now or later will not affect how much I love them. Thanks Chat. <3
