Our middle child was born a biological female on 1 May 2007. This summer, that child informed us that his biological sex was a physical misrepresentation of his true gender. That, in fact, he was a boy in his heart and his mind. Thus, we now have a son. His name is Scott, and we love him very much.
If anyone decides they cannot embrace Scott with the same love and friendship as they did when he was still being presented as our daughter, then you are no longer welcome in our lives. We love our son with all our heart, and we will not tolerate anyone misgendering him or treating him with anything less than respect and kindness. More than 40% of all transgender children who are misgendered by their families or friends attempt suicide, and if you think we will tolerate that kind of risk for Scott, you are badly mistaken.
Life will be problematic enough for our son without us allowing people into his life that don’t accept him for who he is. Transgender kids are more likely to be bullied at school, and transgender adults are discriminated against in almost every aspect of life. They are frequently denied jobs, housing opportunities, and medical care, as well as facing an appallingly increased risk of physical assault, sexual violence, domestic abuse, and harassment by strangers in public settings. The last thing Scott needs is ‘concern trolling’ and/or disdain from so-called loved ones.
Even something as simple as going to a public bathroom is fraught with issues for transgender people. Scott prefers to use the men’s room, but if his father isn’t with him to escort him it is worrisome. What if some anti-trans or homophobic buttmunch sees Scott and says something cruel or shoves him around?
At least going to the bathroom isn’t a problem for Scott at school. We’re lucky to be living in Wales and that Scott goes to an excellent school with a gender-neutral bathroom and a special place for transgender or gay kids to change into their gym clothes for PE. Not everyone has that comfort and safety. A school in Georgia (a state that ranks 30th out of 50 in education) recently had to close it’s gender-neutral bathroom because some knuckle-dragging, moronic asshats sent death threats to the staff and students. Imagine being so stupid and bigoted that you would threaten to kill people to prevent children from peeing in peace. One would assume these idiots would be too busy humping their livestock to send random children a death threat, but no – they made time for it.
Discrimination against transgender children and adults is made worse by the public’s general ignorance of the condition. Conservative pundits love to toss out phrases like ‘craze’ and ‘explosion’ to explain why more people are coming out as transgender, but there has always been transgender individuals. The only difference is whether or not they have to hide it from their culture due to fear of discrimination and persecution.
Archeologists have found 3000 year old graves for transgender people in Iran. Archeologists have found a 5000 year old grave in Czech Republic where a male body was buried with female grave goods, indicating this was the body of a transgender person accepted by her community. The ancient Greeks and Romans had transgender priests/priestesses conducting the worship of the goddess Cybele. Several Native America cultures, including the Diné (Navajo), Zuni, Iroquois, and Zapotec people, embraced transgender acceptance. There were also many African ethnic groups, including the Igbo, Meru, Kikuyu, and the Dagaaba people, who had culturally sanctioned transgender roles. Alas, they learned to discriminate against transgender individuals after being colonized by the trans-intolerant British Victorians, and now many counties in Africa are plagued with anti-LGBTQ violence. In the 13th century, a Jewish philosopher and physician named Kalonymus ben Kalonymus wrote a “lament for being born a man instead of a woman.” India had, and still has, a third gender known as the hijra (or Kinner).
Just as transgender people are nothing new, biological sex isn’t the hardline this-or-that condition most people think it is, either. Intersexed infants – babies born with both male and female sexual organs or systems – may be as many as 2% of all live births, even though only a fraction of those babies are ‘obvious’ to the eye. Most of the intersex babies will ‘look’ either male or female, but chromosomal analysis will find boys with XX or XXY chromosomes, and girls with XY chromones. In the mid-80s, Spanish Olympic athlete María José Martínez-Patiño, who had female genitals and a normal testosterone levels for a woman, was found to have “XY chromosomes instead of the “normal” XX for a woman … She was ejected from the Olympic residence and deserted by her teammates, friends, and boyfriend. She lost her records and medals because of a genetic mutation that wasn’t proven to give her any competitive advantage.” Apparently chromosomes mean more than genitals in assigning people gender against their will?
Moreover, gender identity probably lies as much (or more) in the brain than in the genitals. A fetus starts developing genitals in the first trimester, but it’s brain structures mostly grow in the second and third trimester, so the genitals and brain don’t always ‘match’. Although there is very little real difference between a male and female brain in terms of function (research claiming inherent differences in the way male and female brains function has been debunked), hormones cause certain brain features – such as the hypothalamus – to form differently. The preoptic area of the hypothalamus is sexually dimorphic, and transgender individuals show a higher likelihood of having the ‘opposite’ hypothalamus for their biological gender. However, it should be noted that most people with ‘opposite’ brains remain cis-gender, so there is a lot of variables to being transgender we just don’t understand yet.
Whatever the reason our child is a transgender boy, the important thing is that we love him and accept him for who he is – not for who we thought he was born to be. It is heartbreaking to know that so many kids are rejected by their families for being transgender (more than 1/3 of homeless teens are homeless because their families rejected them for being LGBTQ). How do you just stop loving a child simply because he or she is not cisgender or straight? Did you EVER love that child at all, if you can throw him or her away like that? And how can children rejected so cruelly by the parents who insisted they loved them for years ever trust anyone else who says “I love you”? How can they ever feels loved and safe again?
Unlike the monsters who would throw their child on the street to demonstrate their so-called morals and fake values, we will continue to treasure our son. We will continue to be grateful this wonderful boy came into our lives. We will always, ALWAYS, love him. Scott is our child. How could we do anything other than love him?
