Coming out - a personal blog about being the parent of a transgender child
Ella was never a very girly girl, but it didn’t seem to matter too much. After all, I’d been a tomboy too – often mistaken for a boy, especially in my pre-teen years. So what if people thought Ella was a boy? As a feminist, I tried not to impose gender stereotypes on either of my kids and wanted them both to believe they could achieve anything they set their minds too. Gender didn’t have to get in the way.
Sometimes I noticed a gender bias in myself I hadn’t been aware of though - Ella wanted a football shirt and I didn’t want her to wear one…although I was ok with my son, Luca having one. She wanted to wear boys clothes and pretty much refused to wear girls clothes. That was ok, but it was frustrating that she wouldn’t even wear plain T-shirts in blue or red, just because they were from the girls range.
Looking back now of course, the signs were there. My child was transgender. When she was 3 or 4 she was insistent that she was a boy – and she wanted us to call her ‘John Lewis’. It was a family joke for years. But what I didn’t realise until almost a decade later was that in fact that was her earliest expression of who she was. Ella really did see herself as a boy, and as soon as she was able to tell the difference, she told us. We let her dress pretty much as she wanted to and just assumed she was a tomboy too, no big deal. Aged around 6 or 7 she even went through a very brief quite girly (for her) phase…we bought her a dress and she even wore it once or twice. We were secretly happy that we were finally getting a proper girl.
It didn’t last long. By age 8 or 9 we were back to boys clothes with a bump and we started to clash a bit about it. Everything else was fine - she was a bright child, had friends at school and was doing well. She was mature for her age and everything seemed pretty rosy.
Until the bombshell dropped. It was about the same time that Caitlin Jenner came out. One night, while putting Ella to bed, she started crying. Really crying, inconsolably. I asked what was wrong but she couldn’t seem to get the words out. Starting to get frustrated I said ‘If you don’t tell me what’s wrong then how can I help?’. Then the bombshell. ‘Mum, I think I’m transgender.’ Silence. Then I sat down and put my arm around her…I explained that she was approaching puberty. That many people are coming to terms with their identity at that age. That they feel like they want to experiment or challenge things they’d previously thought. That it would be ok. That I’d help her and be there for her. Then I said the words that I still wish I could take back, because only much later did I understand how much they’d hurt. ‘Ella, you’re not a boy.’
Over the next few months, things went from bad to even more painful. Ella became more and more persistent that she was a boy in a girl’s body – and it was terrible for her. We talked, we argued, we cried. I was at an almost total loss. I’d never heard of ‘transgender’. I’d heard about adults who had ‘a sex change’ operation – was that the same thing? I started to do some research and discovered that being transgender was actually much more common than I thought, and that the number of transgender people coming out was increasing all the time. That more and more kids were identifying as transgender. I was confused, heartbroken and felt hopeless. Even worse – my relationship with Ella was getting harder, not easier. I found it so hard to accept that my daughter wanted to be my son. All of a sudden I realised that the assumptions I’d made about my daughter’s future – about how we would go on girly trips, spend time together, choose a wedding dress - was all in jeopardy. And for my husband it was even worse. He already had 3 sons. Having a daughter, he told me, was the best day of his life.
And that’s how we went on for about a year until a good friend told me about an amazing organisation – Mermaids. Mermaids is a charity that helps to raise awareness about transgender issues, supports families trying to come to terms with it, and helps them through the process. I got in touch and had my first conversation with another parent of a transgender child. It was such a relief! Then, we went to our first meeting. I went with Ella. That was the first day I tried to really accept my son as my son. I called him Leo – his chosen name, and tried to use male pronouns. Of course I got it wrong a few times but every time I used his name, or ‘he’ in front of someone else, I could see how happy it made my child. At the meeting, we met a whole room full of other trans kids and parents. Some kids were just coming out, like Leo, and some were going through a physical transformation too. (So far removed from the simple ‘sex change’ operation I knew about. A physical transformation includes hormone blockers to suppress puberty, cross sex hormones to help the child develop physical traits of their desired gender and numerous operations.) There was another couple in the room. It was also their first visit and they had come without their transgender son (previously their daughter) coincidentally also called Leo. The mum, Dawn told her story through floods of tears. How difficult it had been to accept. How much they loved their child and wanted to support them but how lost, and scared she felt. It felt as though she was speaking from my heart. After she finished I went over and hugged her – both of us were sobbing our hearts out!
Since that day, things have certainly not gotten any easier. We’ve had to find our way through a jungle of health services, a bewildering array of new terminology, a year of family counselling, and helping Leo to live finally as himself. This may make it sound straightforward or simple. I can only assure you, it has been anything but. The only thing that has made it easier is knowing that we are doing the right thing for our child. Leo being accepted as Leo has made such a massive difference. I’ve gone from finding him crying, heartbroken and silently in his room, to seeing him blossom in confidence. And his attitude towards us and his transition has astounded me. Leo has supported me through everything. He has been patient, understanding, loving….everything that sometimes I’ve struggled so hard to be. Sometimes he has been the adult, and I’ve cried on his shoulder. I am overwhelmingly proud of him. The courage it must take for a 12 year old child to admit that something so massive is wrong – to realise what that is and tell his family, and then to have to deal with our hurt as we’ve come to terms with it. I couldn’t be prouder of him and the person he has become.
We’re now at the stage where Leo has lived as himself for over a year. His name has been officially changed and we’re in the process of updating his passport to reflect his name and gender. We’re going through the process of assessment for medical support with hormones, and later physical changes with the help of the Gender Identity Development Service at The Tavistock clinic in London – the main clinic that helps transgender kids and their families. Our family and friends all know about Leo, and we’ve been so lucky that everyone has supported him, and us, even though we know it’s been hard for some of them. (Sadly, this is not the case for many transgender kids, around 25% of whom experience rejection even from their parents – leading to them being depressed, self harming and even suicidal.)
So now I felt like it was time for me to ‘come out’ as a transgender parent. While my friends know what we’ve been going through, most of my wider circle, don’t. I’ve only told one person at work. And yet, I’m not ashamed of Leo, or anything we’ve gone through. And while part of me thinks it’s a private thing, I have seen what ignorance, small mindedness and discrimination can do. By telling the world about my son – what we’ve gone through, how proud I am, and our story, I hope that I can shed some light on an area that is still so difficult for many people to think or talk about.
Many people ask me how Leo can be so sure he is transgender – they say that he’s too young to ‘decide’ such a massive thing. That it will affect the rest of his life. If you think that too, then let me ask you….how and when did you ‘know’ you were a boy or girl? Is it something you decided? Or just something you are? And there’s your answer. Now imagine you know you’re a boy, but you’re in a girl’s body. That you start to develop a female shape, have periods – how wrong would you feel? That’s what transgender kids have to live with. It’s called gender dysphoria – it’s a feeling of hating the body you have because it’s the wrong gender. It causes trans boys to bind their breasts everyday, lower their voices, and shove socks in their trousers to appear more masculine. For trans girls, it can often be worse, especially if puberty has kicked in and their beard is starting to grow and their voice is breaking. It’s heartbreaking, and takes months and years of drugs and surgery before many trans kids feel that they can be the person they were born to be. Now imagine the strength and courage you have to have to face that, and you’ll know how proud I am of my son.
If you’d like to find out more about transgender issues, then have a look at these two sites:
https://tavistockandportman.nhs.uk
Any errors in the above text are mine alone, and the views expressed are also my own.
Gemma x
#transgenderrights