Of all the comings-out we have to do as trans folks, telling our parents is one of the very hardest. What it even means to be trans has changed so much that it can be incredibly hard to even get them to understand what your gender is.
This week on #StainedGlassWoman, we've got "Oh, s#!t, my child just told me they're trans," a guide meant to be handed off to parents of trans teens and adult children, to help them get there.
This bit really caught my attention. I always felt a bit gaslit when people from the cult of #GymRat would talk about how energized & great they felt after exercise, or a run.
In the case of my body's chemistry, either exercise does NOT produce #Endorphins, or I suffer from some sort of Endorphin Sensitivity... 'cuz it makes me nauseous & pissed off.
But I remember enjoying sports as a teen. #OurBodiesChange in sometimes mysterious, unexpected ways.
@kelvin0mql One of the things that blew my mind when I learned it a couple of years ago, as someone with CPTSD, is that there's an initial rush of cortisol when you exercise in most ways. For people like me, that rush is identical to the rush of cortisol we get when we're having an emotional flashback, and when we first lived through the traumatic situation.
And it's not just people with PTSD. Lots of other conditions are sensitive to it too.
@kelvin0mql skating is often a really good exercise for cortisol-sensitive people because it has a very gentle up ramp to aerobic activity. Lots of passive rolling and a slow build of aerobic effort, so you don't get the cortisol surge.
@Impossible_PhD I never feel like we are the ones who got our gender wrong. It's the people forcing some particular gender on us from childhood without ever asking for our input. Sometimes we just don't question their assertions for too long.
@Impossible_PhD I think we're saying the same thing. ;) A person not suspecting they're trans is just them not questioning what they've been told since childhood. It doesn't mean they got it wrong. It means they believed what they were told & maybe never questioned it.
That's not the trans person making a mistake. The ones who made the mistake are the ones who "assigned" them a gender from the beginning instead of waiting until they could speak for themselves on the topic. ;)
@masukomi It just makes the assumption that we would, for sure, always know absent that bad information. I'm not convinced--people mess up all the time.
To be honest, it is my experience that I got my gender wrong. Did other people have a hand in me getting it wrong? Yep. But I had really all the information I needed for about a decade, the ability to question, and I just didn't. And honestly, the expectation that I should've known was the thing that held me back the most.
@Impossible_PhD 100% get what you're saying. But think of it like being intersex. Most intersex people have no idea they're intersex. Adults know that intersex people exist, but unless there's something non-standard about your genitalia it would be freaking weird to seriously contemplate that you might be intersex.
Combined with no representation & billions of signals implying "everyone's their assigned gender" it's no wonder most of us don't ask "am i what everything says i'm not?"
@masukomi I get what you're saying. Let me be as plain as humanly possible:
I believe the "always knew/always would've known" line is actively harmful for people questioning their gender. That's why I will not and do not use it.
In the same way as "you don't need dysphoria to be trans" is true, but mostly a rhetorical device that allows questioning people to not consider the dysphoria they don't recognize they're feeling while they're questioning. By the same token, doing away with the--
@masukomi --"always knew/always would've known" line is for some true, and for others allows them to set aside any "signs" that may or may not have been there from childhood. Such things are red herrings to the questioning process regardless, but their expectation does measurable harm.
As to age of knowing, this chart is the best data I am aware of. As you can see, median age of first recognized experience of dysphoria stretches as young as early childhood, well before puberty, for some, but--
@masukomi --comes much later for others. Put another way, for every 45-year-old who transition, each person who first felt dysphoria at age at means there's another who first felt it at 37.
I believe it's crucial that we leave the door wide open to as many possible experiences of transness as we can. Every time we've tried to narrow things down, or lay down expectations and definitions beyond "I want to be X," it's turned into gatekeeping and exclusion.
Yeah, I just don't like normalizing the idea that the trans person made a mistake.
I think western society failed us by refusing to support & normalize the idea that your gender isn't the same as your genitalia.
How different would things be if we were in one of the cultures that treated kids as a kind-of "undecided" until they entered adulthood, and then let them say for themselves?
You and I would have both had & embraced that question early on.
@masukomi First of all, please don't make assumptions about what I would or wouldn't have done. I don't know that I would've. There was a lot going on in my childhood to obscure things.
And by counterpoint, I don't like normalizing the idea that we can't make mistakes, or that we don't. Failure is the very heart of queerness, and I think that that's important to honor and respect in and of itself.
@Impossible_PhD i think you misunderstood what I meant. In a society where the default process is to have an adulthood ceremony that has the person state their gender, then part of the process IS asking those questions. What would result from us participating in that... 🤷♀️ who can say. To NOT ask would be weird.
ex. I suspect most practicing Jews WILL have a bat/bar mitzvah and WILL engage with the questions & acts it demands of them regardless of their future relationship with the faith.
@Impossible_PhD and 100% re normalizing making mistakes and it being part of queerness.
Especially where gender is concerned. Our society is SO effed that it's HARD to be anything other than your assigned gender and NOT make some mistakes along the way.
Our culture doesn't support "i'm figuring it out" very well.
@Impossible_PhD also, this back and forth reads to me like one that was frustrating for you. I'm sorry if that was the case. I think we're very much on the same page, but ... it feels like the words are getting in the way.
@Impossible_PhD This post hit me hard, not so much because of the subject, but your description of frustration at finding nice clothes/shoes that fit. Gods but I know that all too well. :hug:
@Impossible_PhD thank you for this gift. I read it carefully and have sent it to my parents as something they can draw on to help them cope and help them think about my transition.
My mom somehow inferred that I was trans and then sent me a terrible article from a transphobic organisation for parents of trans kids.
She's a doctor at the NHS so she should be at least a little exposed to trans people but from the article it feels like she's kinda leaning into believing that I've somehow been "misled" into being trans or something.
I've been looking for articles to try and get her to understand, so this is rly helpful!
@Impossible_PhD Then you so much for this. I've been looking for resources I can provide to my mum who has not taken things well, and they're thin on the ground.
@nictea That's why I wanted to write this one. There's loads for parents of young trans kids, but shockingly little for older trans children, adult children included.
This is another JUMBO SGW, weighing in at nearly 6500 words!
As a note, though, Substack's alt text feature is bugging out for some users, and I'm one of the ones affected. As a result, all alt text has to be done as captions for the time being.
Small update: @JoscelynTransient mentioned https://transfamilysos.org/, a nonprofit she works with, as a great resource for parents of trans kids, and so I added it as well as /r/cisparenttranskid as extra resources for parents!
@JoscelynTransient A second small update: I read the Results section of an important study that I cited too quickly, and misunderstood it. The correction has been made--it's relatively minor, but still.
What I get for slamming this thing out in an airport, i guess. 😅
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