For months I have needed to say things to my 16-year-old child. However, just because I need to say things doesn't mean my child is ready or able to receive the message. So I'm putting it here.-----------
My dear favorite child in the world,
I love you so. I want to share my heart with you. I hope you will read with curiosity and for understanding and take time to percolate on all I say.
A few months ago, you asked if I think of you as my son. I evaded the question. I also happened to overhear a comment you made on a call with friends, talking about your transition, and you said something like, "And my parents! Well, it's like they're grieving. But I'm still me!" So I will answer honestly.
In fall of 2021 at the start of 8th grade, I picked you up from school and you declared to me, "I'm nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them." You said it in a firm voice verging on angry; the energy felt foreboding and defensive.
Six months prior you had attempted suicide. So the moment you announced this, I pivoted. I didn't want to lose connection with you. I didn't give myself any time to think about this, to examine my own paradigm, to feel my feelings. Instead, when you said you wanted binders, I took you to a place to buy binders. You changed your name, and I used your new name. I trained myself to use they/them. I supported you changing how you dress and style your hair. I contacted the school for them to change the roster to your new name. I affirmed you. Now, two and a half years later, you state that you are a trans man. You asked us to use he/him, but still accept they/them. You very much want to proceed with medicalizing, which to your irritation your father and I do not support doing at this time. Our reticence does not come from a transphobic orientation or a desire to thwart and oppress you.
It comes from our lived experience. Our perspective is broader. I look at this transition from a fuller context.
Factor 1: life got very hard and complicated in 4th grade, and very bad that summer between 4th and 5th. We transferred you to a new school which we hoped would provide social/emotional support. Which it did to a degree (but not enough).
Things improved in 5th grade for many reasons -- identifying the root cause of your challenges and the coexisting mental health issues being primary. At the same time, there were social conflicts. In 6th grade bullying began intensely. I remember so well how distressed and angry you were, how overwhelmed, and how I could not improve the situation despite much communication with teachers and the principal. In January 2020 you called many days asking to be picked up from school early. I worried you might be on the verge of school refusal.
Factor 2: the summer between 5th and 6th grade your period started. Your body changed; secondary sex characteristics emerged. This is a huge change and challenging for every person who reaches adolescence. At first you were kind of positive about this change, this sign of moving toward adulthood. But I think at some point this shifted. I get why. It's messy and painful. Having breasts makes a person more noticeable to people (usually male) who have a sexual interest, which is often unwanted. Breasts are pointless to me, extraneous, except when I unsuccessfully tried to breastfeed you. Unlike many women, I would prefer to have a smaller bust. You inherited mammary abundance from me. As I've said before, it's hard to be in a body. All humans at some point have some dissatisfaction or struggle with the physical being.
Factor 3: the pandemic happened. It was traumatic. School shut down. We went nowhere for months and months. We did not see people socially in person, except a few times outdoors, distancing and wearing masks. The day of the shut down, March 16, was also the day my mother suddenly died. I am certain that my grief pervaded the house, adding to the distress.
A couple months later, three close friends moved away to distant places. A moved to Colorado, O moved to Fresno, and P moved to Texas. These girls were core in your life. About a year into the pandemic, another friend from school moved to Monterey and faded out of our lives.
School went online in 7th grade. Social life went online. We opened up Discord, Toyhouse, access to social media. It was your primary source of social connection.
Factor 4: you became a teenager the fall of 2020. A time of identity exploration and development, uncertainty, intense need for social connection with age peers, a need for acceptance. This process was hobbled by pandemic isolation. Your option was to go online. This constrained you. The development into a functioning adult requires in-person encounters and relationships.
Factor 5: social media, cell phones, and tablets -- we gave you access, despite knowing (through our own experience) how addictive these are. AND... we live in a misogynistic world. Hatred of women is real. Women have to cope with this. I understand that the prospect of living female is not very appealing.
Factor 6: 8th grade was in-person, and it was an awful year. You experienced exclusion and alienation in a small class; friends abandoned you. Your first romantic love abruptly ended your relationship and wouldn't give you a reason. This person was part of the school milieu.You were hurt to your core. These were days of rage. My goal was to survive your rage and maintain connection with you.
So, when I look at you now, I see a person whose maturation and growth was shaped by all these factors. When we have spoken about how you became aware of being nonbinary and later transmasculine, you said you had felt this way when you were younger. You just didn't have words for it.
I get it. I felt similarly as a child. I was ambivalent about becoming a woman. I did not have interest in "typical" female things. I didn't grok the social dynamics of "typical girls." I was drawn to androgyny -- to people who looked that way, and to presenting myself as such, through my early 20s. Looking back, I understand that I was grappling with my sexual orientation (back in the 1980s when it truly was risky to be out), which in the end is bisexual.
In your young years, there was no evidence ever of you expressing yourself in a masculine way. You were quite typically feminine but not a super girly girl. You never announced to us that you felt like a boy, or asked when you would get a penis. Absolutely nothing like that ever.
From where I sit, given all the factors, your self-identification as transmasculine does not feel utterly true and authentic. I think you believe yourself to be "a male in a female body," because that is what you've learned from the Internet and all your peers who are also on the Internet. I think the gender stuff for you arises from the intersection of factors: your anxiety disorder and depression, your autism, your body maturing, having been bullied, loss of friends, loss of social connection in person, the fear brought by the pandemic. And let's not forget the misogyny that pervades all cultures.
When I experience you talking about gender, I notice it comes from a place of anger and defiance. As if you expect to be dismissed and oppressed. Like you're ready for a fight.
My experience of your gender identity/expression is that it doesn't arise from a place of discovery, of "this is who I am" as much as it focuses on how others perceive you. That they misgender you. How you feel disrespected and are angry about that. It seems you are entirely concerned with the world's perception of you, more than you are living from a place of knowing and relating to yourself.
So, no. I do not think of you as my son, and I am grieving.
I've told you and others this story before, of how you came to us. In my early 40s, I had two miscarriages. We went to a fertility clinic that told us at my advanced maternal age, the possibility of success with my own eggs was less than 5%. So I went home to think about that; I decided that I wanted to carry a pregnancy, and I could live with it being another woman's egg. Not long after deciding, but before we began the treatment, I ended up pregnant, with you. I jokingly say I had one good egg left. Natural conception at 43 is fairly rare (1 or 2 percent). You are meant to be here. I
grew you in my body. The amniocentesis DNA testing showed you to have
XX sex genes. Your body developed perfectly, beautifully, in the womb
and out of it. You were born as my daughter, and I delighted in my
daughter.
My grieving comes from sadness about how all these factors in the world have shaped you to hate your essential embodiment. I am sad the world feels so daunting -- for you and for me.
You are still you, and yet you are changing into a person I don't recognize. This masculine you is brash, defensive, looking for a fight, performative, and misogynistic. You swear like a sailor. I have heard you say hateful things about females. Remember, I am among the group whom your hatred targets.This is not how we raised you.
I would rather you become my son from a place of authentic emergence, not from stuff you've learned on the Internet, a reactionary response to a scary world. I would rather have a son who is sensitive, thoughtful, and kind. The boy/man you present to the world is combative and invested in how unfair and mean the world is.
For 14 years I knew you as my daughter. Right now you cannot see a way to continue living as a woman, yet I can see it. And... I recognize I have no power over what you choose to do eventually. I simply wanted to share how I experience you and the world.
You know about brain development. About how the adolescent brain basically goes haywire and isn't finished until the mid-20s. So I have given space for your exploration. My refusal to consent to your taking testosterone and getting a double mastectomy comes from knowing that this is a time of change. What feels true to you now might change. If it IS genuine, it will be true in the future. Life is a process of becoming. There is no need to rush.
I will write another letter about my practical concerns regarding medical transition. There are many serious side effects and potential health issues that come with this. So if when you turn 18 you are determined to do it, I want you deciding with informed consent. I want you to understand what you are taking on. But this letter is long enough as is.
I love you. I know you know this. I'm grateful that you read this.
