This is the fourth installment of my advice column, Dear Sandy. To submit a question for consideration, write whatshelpingtoday@gmail.com. Here were the first, second and third installments.
First, just a couple of quick housekeeping announcements…
One correction: My episode of NPR’s Think talking about the Camp Lost Boys essay airs this Friday afternoon, the 20th.
And! I’ve got a big feature in the new issue of The Believer — a cultural history of electroshock, an effort many years in the making. It comes out next week. I’ll say more about this piece and what it means to me but, in brief, I am immensely excited for this one. Consider subscribing.
Alright, onto the letter…
Dear Sandy
I am new to gender dysphoria and my role is a parent. I am the Mom of [Deadname/Name]. I absolutely loved your article on Lost Boys Camp. I have not been able to explore all of your writings so perhaps you have already written about this but I find myself feeling very lost on how to navigate this new situation. [Deadname/Name]] is 22 and I just don’t want to lose her. I feel like I am not doing anything right. I have come to acceptance that this is what [Deadname/Name] needs to feel authentic and live her best life. There has been fall out a few friends that [Name] has have not been able to stay on board. I am crushed and worried and sad and I guess looking back I have felt this way for a long time worried about the loneliness. [Deadname/Name] is going on a solo trip on Wednesday for 10 weeks …. I have let fear take hold and I have been very worried. Hoping for some guidance for parents and maybe some messaging to those transitioning that there are well meaning parents that just don’t know how to support their kids through this
Keep writing Sandy
You are wonderful
[Mom’s name]
Dear [Mom’s name],
I admit my first reaction to your letter was I felt real annoyed, as I’ll discuss. My second reaction was I felt a lot of compassion for you. As you say, and is abundantly clear, you’re new to all this — and you mean well. My third reaction was I felt gratitude to you. I often monologue in my mind to some hypothetical parent who has views such as your own, and so I’m grateful you’ve written and given me this opportunity to respond. A warning / apology that my answer’s gotten both pretty long and pretty candid. I guess I’ve just felt moved to say quite a bit to you, and honestly, because I feel the stakes are that high. Namely, you love your daughter and as you say, you don’t want to lose her.
Your child’s allowed you to know her truth and that is a huge gift — and a sign that she does want you to come along with her as she enters this next, more genuine expression of herself. You mentioned she’s going on an extended international trip (I removed her specific destinations just to anonymize your letter further). That trip, those places, it sure sounded rad to me.
Traveling the world, let alone at twenty, is a privilege in this life. It also takes guts; I find it so admirable she is attempting something like that. I imagine visiting other cultures as one is coming out as trans would be quite powerful. I’m not a parent but you worrying as she does all this also sounds very reasonable to me. It’s understandable one might fret about a young woman traveling to foreign countries, especially perhaps a trans one. There are real safety concerns trans people must have when we travel, depending on where we are in our medical transitions and with our paperwork and so forth, and depending on our destinations.
I did travel young but I didn’t come out back then; I didn’t know trans people were a thing, really. An old friend — we studied abroad together in New Zealand, when I was twenty — told me much later that I did come out to him back then. Apparently I once confessed to him that I was basically a gay guy, like him. How drunk was I? I wondered. No doubt very; I don’t remember this exchange specifically and back then I tended to often be very drunk.
My situation has its own specifics, but when I was your daughter’s age I certainly avoided sharing my deepest truths with the likes of my parents. To everybody else and especially to myself, I tried to avoid my Big Secret inside, my gender, even though it was also always unavoidable — to me, at least.
So I escaped, or I tried to. I drank. I slept with people. I traveled, really as far away as I could manage — Bosnia, India, Philippines, Antarctica. I had many fun times and also many bad ones. I was often lonely, sometimes near-perilously so. Inside I’d known I was trans since preschool, though again I didn’t know anyone else had ever felt as I did. I now realize it’s not uncommon that trans people in such situations think we are the only one.
All to say, I do envy trans people of your daughter’s generation for example who get to experience their trans youths as actual youths, more or less, more commensurate with their cis peers. Not the further delayed and quite mournful and messy experience somebody like me, who comes out further into adulthood, has to have. I did write about my missing my trans boyhood and that’d be another essay of mine I recommend you check out.
So. You’ve come to me for advice. My main thought is you need to worry less about your daughter, who we both know is an adult. It’s plausible she is in college and / or that she is still reliant on you financially or emotionally or however else. I don’t know how close you two were or are or what your family’s cultural expectations are regarding adult children and their parents. But in general I’d assume someone like you, with a child of this age, is in the process of letting go of one role and accepting another.
It’s apparent to me you do feel distress about her being trans, even though you may be frustrated with yourself about this. Your choice to mostly call her by former name in addition to her new one betrays this (which is called ‘deadnaming’ and, as I’ll further explain, is highly discouraged; it can also cause confusion, as it certainly did for me in this case initially).
Your email emphasized how you feel — “crushed,” “sad,” and “worried,” a word you used repeatedly. You didn’t really describe what this change has meant to your daughter — like for example how she feels now compared to before. Perhaps she feels relief? Joy? No, you focused on the downsides and on yourself, because you’re kinda freaking out right now. And that’s okay. I assume you’re in shock. You were sold on one reality and now you’ve learned everything is some other way. It’s possible you felt okay with trans people in theory, but deep down you’d prefer you didn’t have to deal with this scenario. This is prejudice, anti-trans bias, transphobia — whatever we want to call it — and it is the product of the skewed perspective our society has led you to have about sex/gender itself.
Just to spell this out, in case it’s helpful: Your entire life you’ve been propagandized, you’ve been steeped in belief in a binary vision of sex/gender that isn’t as real as one might suppose. If one investigates sex/gender in terms of history, or in terms of biology, for example, this becomes evident. In addition to sexual and gender diversity long existing within the human family, throughout history and culture, if we want to widen our scope even further: across the animal kingdom, sex and gender are not binary, not at all.
What also varies greatly, according to time and place, is how those we might at present call ‘trans’ are regarded by everybody else. Whether our societies shun and even kill us, if we dare admit our truths. Or whether we’re deemed ill and submitted to treatments and cures. Or maybe we’re made into freaks, or jokes. Or perhaps we’re even regarded as gifted, for example with spiritual insight.
That a parent might feel as you do about your child being trans is a bummer to me but it’s hardly surprising either, given our society right now. In general, I feel so much compassion for you and for everybody in positions like yours. My response to your question, as alluded to by your subject line, “The Role of the Parent,” is now it is time to parent yourself. Some part of you is throwing a tantrum at present. I hope you’ll investigate the source of your own discomfort inside, and work to soothe yourself.
I’d advise that you start working with a therapist about this immediately. Ideally find someone who’s not cis and / or who’s queer and made working with trans people and their families a professional focus. (Here was a post I did on finding therapists.) I additionally hope you’ll consider connecting with others who are parents of trans people, whether that’s through a support group at a local LGBTQ+ center or online. Ideally you want to connect with fellow parents of adults. But find other parents who’ve been in a situation like yours already, ones who’ve had more time to get used to this premise; they will help illuminate paths forward that right now you cannot see.
I’d strongly suggest you take up other practices that’ll enable you to safely express what you are feeling — like the sadness and great worry, perhaps also confusion, surprise, disappointment, betrayal, fury, maybe even jealousy. (I sometimes do think cis people are indeed envious that trans people know and trust ourselves so deeply that we take on all the hardship that can come with being out as trans. I commend you for raising someone so brave.)
My point is you absolutely need get these yucky feelings out — just not directed at your daughter. I frequently recommend and myself rely upon a practice called JournalSpeak, which I’ve described at length before. In brief, it involves very unfiltered writing for twenty minutes that you then destroy, followed by ten minutes of meditation. It’s recommended done daily, at least at first, and usually in conjunction with therapy. I mention a practice like JournalSpeak because if you just try to ignore how you feel, your actual feelings won’t just go away, but they may become more powerful and find other ways to express. JournalSpeak is like a method for cleaning out the attic and basements and forgotten drawers of our hearts and minds.
Regardless, consider getting into meditation or another mindfulness practice. Take up anything that’ll encourage you to slow down, to get embodied, to calm your nervous system. Take walks. Take deep breaths. Finances permitting, maybe you should even go on a soul-searchy trip of your own? Or start some new hobby that’ll give you something else to focus your energy on? Maybe like go to a spa, soak in hot water, get a massage?
You spoke of your worry about your child’s loneliness, which, sure, being trans can invite loss of connections (as indeed I’ve written about and certainly have lived). But being queer and trans also invites much connection as I’ve also written about, especially with other queer and trans folk. And: When we as LGBTQIA+ people lose relationships with friends or family members who do not actually see or accept our authentic selves, what are we actually losing?
Sure I’ve been rejected by friends and family — however directly, however brutally — but oftentimes those rejections were done in such a bigoted manner it did thereafter become challenging for me to grieve whatever I supposed our connection to have once been. Because if what these people loved was merely my performance, my costume, my pretending to be something I never was, again, what have I really lost? (Not that it doesn’t all hurt; it totally does, which is one reason I’m also very into the sorts of practices I’m recommending.)
It’s your loneliness I am thinking about, and that of parents in positions like yours. Especially if you are inadvertently damaging your relationship with your child because of your unexamined bias and refusal to understand that it is your issue. So again, I hope you’ll work to find yourself some peers, as in other parents of adult trans people. And don’t turn to anyone who’ll do the opposite, as in, any friends or other parents online for example who will just flame the embers of your own internalized transphobia.
Transphobia is real popular right now. Hate, generally, is real popular right now. But these last few years especially as regards trans people, we’re experiencing an old fashioned moral panic. I’d speculate that one appeal of transphobia — this frightened, ignorant over-reaction to our mere existence — is to do with the fact that everybody else also feels discomfort at being placed into these pernicious little boxes we’re assigned at birth and all that’s then assumed. I’d guess that for many who are newer to learning about the existence of trans people, it’s probably easier to imagine we are the problem than to really investigate the whole rotten setup (especially in terms of what it’d mean for oneself, if somebody does not want to go there).
I want to be clear that I hear your concern for your daughter, about her loneliness for example; social loss is indeed terrible. I’d also offer it’s probably pretty normal for people of her age to shed some friends. And yes, it’s quite common that trans people lose friends and others when we come out, though my sense is sometimes some estranged people do eventually evolve and return and try to make amends.
I’d also imagine your daughter is making new connections during this time, and again probably will do so during her adventures. Or she won’t… Maybe she’ll be lonely and she’ll write poetry about it or play video games or go to metal shows or hike extensively or sit in silences at monasteries. I don’t much about her, though the little that I gleaned from our exchange, she did seem cool. And like she has a family that does genuinely care about her, which is great.
In sum, my advice to you is to put on your own oxygen mask first, so to speak. This may sound unappealing, what I’m recommending, hard work like therapy and daily unfiltered journaling and meditation, this project of trying to get real about your own unexamined (hateful) views and how they’re not helping you. But you can’t control your daughter. All you can control in this life, at best, is yourself. Your own choices. Your own level of self-awareness. Whether you accept reality as it actually is right now and try to grow to meet it.
I do highly recommend you continue to educate yourself about trans people and our humanity, whether that’s by reading my work or anything else created by us. This is because your information diet has no doubt been highly malnourished when it comes to our actual representation.
When you wrote that you’re “new to gender dysphoria” you chose to name the medical diagnosis associated with trans people rather than saying, ‘My daughter recently came out to me as trans’ or something like that. In general I’d suggest you move beyond medical ways of seeing us (because the medical establishment is largely controlled by cis people) and because, in general, such a framework assumes we are deviants, compared to some norm. I’d encourage you to instead get to know trans people on our terms. If you don’t know any actual trans people other than your daughter, you can again at least learn about us through our work, on the page, on the screen. I recommended an especially good handful of books, movies and podcasts in this previous newsletter. So, yeah, follow ALOK and pick up a copy of Transgender History and watch Disclosure on Netflix, really whatever appeals to you, and go from there.
It’s true right now that in this society trans people are forced to go get ourselves “gender dysphoria” diagnoses in order to receive the medical interventions we want and need. Perhaps learning about the concept of “gender dysphoria” may benefit somebody like you who perhaps hasn’t experienced it; I can’t be sure. (Another whole other tangent, one fortified by fifteen or so years of this being my professional focus, but in my opinion: Pathology-based ways of conceptualizing internalized diversity are probably counterproductive, as was the topic of my first book and a sequel I’ve long been working on.)
It’s also true that individual trans people may speak in terms of their own “gender dysphoria”; even I sometimes find this a useful shorthand when I am having a particularly tough time with some part of my body for example. But my point is that a medicalized framework is just one way of seeing us. You can try on that lens, yes, but there are other ones through which we can also be viewed, ones that may be more accurate and may instill in one more hope, less dread.
What else…. Tell your kid you love her, often and eagerly. And then I dunno, parent her as you would any twenty-year-old globe-trotting child whose choices perhaps you don’t fully get or perhaps candidly even like. Again I’m no parent, but isn’t that kind of a point of having children, that they aren’t actually you? I’d guess when you were twenty you also did things that perhaps confounded your parents that were nonetheless vital to your own becoming. And I dunno, if she calls at 3 a.m. because she needs money or she lost her passport or got her heart broken or whatever, I hope you’ll support her as you would any other young adult who’s gonna no doubt have moments of hardship or make some mistakes.
You expressed that you feel like you aren’t doing anything right. I hope you can take it easy on yourself given this is all new to you and you’re in the middle of a big activated response. It may take some time for that initial reaction settle out and then for you to adjust. You shouldn’t be expected to figure this out magically and perfectly and on your own, hence again my first recommendation is get some people, find that therapist and / or support group.
Believe me, I deeply envy those who have family who react as well as you have. Like you did use your daughters’ pronouns correctly (as I confirmed with you). The awful fact is that when faced with such situations, many parents do far worse than you are. The bar is super low right now. It’s subterranean.
And sure, I bet you can do better.
One final but crucial point: Whenever someone intentionally uses a trans person’s deadname or pronouns, that hurts. I had to like, walk the fuck away and cool down when your email initially landed in my inbox, because I was so irritated by someone referring to trans person as you had, no less their own kid.
Didn’t matter you also said nice things about my work, which, sincerely, thank you. Didn’t matter you had only good intentions. Intentions don’t actually matter when it comes to these innate biases, especially when someone is in a privileged — therefore ignorant — position. No assumptions being made here, but especially if you are white for example and haven’t ever done such work, I’d encourage you to become more aware of this concept of innate bias itself. Maybe in 2020 or whatever you already read books like this, but if not, please consider actually doing so. Or there are tests one can take online that will demonstrate how deep prejudice itself runs, whether we’re talking racism or transphobia or ableism or whatever else.
This work — deprogramming the category-based prejudices we carry inside — it has to be intersectional. Again we all carry this crap in us, to varying degrees. Because our brains are lazy and make quick shortcuts — like x is bad and y is good, or like this better than that that. And because, in general, ours is a cruel society, one fixated on comparative of worth and dehumanization (often for profit’s sake).
I’ve said it before and no doubt will again: Strictly enforced binary conceptions of sex/gender are so often in cahoots with their close cousin white supremacy. Hence right-wing politicians worldwide are so obsessed with transphobia in addition to racism and other more familiar forms of categorical oppression. How freely such bullies make a bogeyman of trans people — and in particular trans children — just like they do other highly powerless and voiceless groups, like psychiatric patients, like undocumented immigrants.
Especially before I started coming out, I used to be much more unaware of my own transphobia — in part because that hatred was a useful prop holding shut my own closet door. These days, I still labor to scrub the transphobia out of my thoughts and soul, work that I gather is standard amongst trans people. My head still sometimes deadnames and misgenders me, as do my dreams.
Also: we all mess up. I mess up peoples’ names or pronouns sometimes, if only in my mind. Or like the other day over email I accidentally misgendered a cis person I was discussing who had a gender-neutral name. When I make such a mistake, I acknowledge it, apologize when appropriate (like when if it’s done to someone or in their presence), and then I quickly move on.
We can’t expect perfection. But we can all do better, is my refrain.
Good luck to you both — especially to your daughter on her big trip, which I think is underway. I hope she has a blast. I’m totally jealous.
My best,
Sandy
p.s. What’s Helping Today: this episode of We Can Do Hard Things about breaking intergenerational trauma.
p.p.s. This question had me thinking about the comedian Fortune Feimster and her mom, Ginger Feimster, in particular the encouraging words Ginger shared for fellow parents who struggle at first with their kids’ identities (as she once did) at the very end of this episode of the Handsome pod.
p.p.p.s. It also made me recall this passage of Lucy Sante’s new memoir about coming out at sixty-seven, after a lifetime of trying to remain closeted to herself and everyone else (a book I recommended on here recently):
