In my last post, I highlighted an amazing dad who supports his transgender teen daughter. Sadly, parental support is not common. Few parents have heard about transgender issues, and some react so strongly to their child's gender nonconformity that they force their child to leave home.
I've wanted to know more about what life is like for these rejected children, and so I finally cracked open my copy of Cris Beam's Transparent: Love, Family, and Living the T with Transgender Teenagers. It's an eye-opening peek at an experience quite different from my own.
Beam met over 50 transsexual kids during the five years she worked at a small high school for gay and transgender teenagers in Los Angeles. The kids "came from as far away as Alabama...and even Hawaii." She says, "many had been kicked out when their parents caught them (their sons!) trying on a dress in the bathroom or stashing stilettos in a schoolbag." Beam describes how one of the transsexual women she connected with, Christina, was treated by her mother:
Gloria was starting to notice her son's femmy touches...and she wasn't having it. She thought her son was probably gay, which, for her, was a black mark upon the family, an indictment of her already-questionable parenting. She told Christina she wished she (Christina) would just die of AIDS if she was going to act this way; she called her "whore," "puta," "slut," and, in their nastier fights, would throw her out, once even changing the locks. Later I would learn that Christina attended five junior high schools in the span of two years as she shuttled between foster care and homelessness and her mother's house.
Gender identity has nothing to do with sexual orientation, but parents often conflate the two. Beam tells another story -- the one of Nina:
Nina's mother cried and cried and said wasn't there something they could work out? Maybe Nina could just dress up on weekends and leave late at night, when the neighbors wouldn't see? Maybe they could work together to hide Nina's girl things from the mother's new live-in boyfriend, who wouldn't tolerate girlie dress-up? This new boyfriend had a decent heart, her mother said, and he paid half the rent so, Dios mio, the boyfriend had to stay. The boyfriend helped Nina's mother afford her youngest son's good Catholic school. Everybody has to sacrifice something in this life, and wasn't there a compromise, wasn't there a way?Nina told her mother no and gently hung up the phone. For Nina, then 16, prostitution was easier.
Of course, not everyone Beam met had been thrown out by parents. Dominque's mom had been a crack addict since her birth, leaving Dominque to forage for her siblings with little support. Lenora was abandoned by her mother at birth and raised by her loving grandparents in Mexico, but when they felt she could have a better life in the United States, they let her go into the foster care system in the U.S.
But regardless of background, these students were all experiencing the same life. Beam says all knew where to:
... find girls trading secrets about how to shoot-up black-market hormones purchased from the swap meets in East L.A.,...find out about 'pumping parties' where a former veterinarian or a "surgeon's wife" from Florida will shoot free-floating industrial grade silicone into hips, butts, breast, knees -- even cheeks and foreheads ... and learn which dance clubs let in underage kids and have go-go boxes for dancing.
Beam's insight into these lives helps explain one of the key findings of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey Report on Health and Health Care:
Respondents reported over four times the national average of HIV infection, 2.64 percent in our sample compared to 0.6 percent in the general population, with rates for transgender women at 3.76 percent, and with those who are unemployed (4.67 percent) or who have engaged in sex work (15.32 percent) even higher.
Unfortunately, resources remain scarce for loving parents who have chosen to take a new course and support their transgender child. One of my favorites is The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals by Stephanie Brill and Rachel Pepper.
But at 200 pages, it can be a lot for a newly understanding parent to digest. Fortunately there is a new option -- Helping Your Transgender Teen -- A Guide for Parents by Irwin Krieger, a clinical social worker with years of experience. Krieger's style is gentle and accessible, yet it covers all of the basics. The best part is that, at 86 pages, it's the perfect intro for parents wanting to go where few parents have gone before -- support their transgender child.
Follow Joanne Herman on Twitter: www.twitter.com/joanneherman
'I'm a Girl' -- Understanding Transgender Children - ABC News
YouTube - 7yr. old Jazz's thoughts on being a Transgender Child
Meet Josie, 9: No secret she's transgender
Transgender Children, Transsexual Children , Parents of ...
A Boy's Life - Magazine - The Atlantic
The children in your village would be exposed to only one model for sexuality - the heterosexual, gender-established at birth model. They wouldn't FEEL like that, but they wouldn't know why. They wouldn’t know why they felt different. They would just feel like something was wrong with them.
Please - get it through you head that nobody becomes something other than heterosexual because they learn it from the media.. They are what they are from from birth. Becoming aware of homo or bi-sexuality, or of transgender people through media, education or other people only provides an "Aha!" moment. "Now I understand why I feel like I do".
I don't know why people like you persist in making pronouncements about why people are anything other than heterosexual or gender-set at birth. You obviously have NEVER had a close relationship with any of the types of people your pontificating about.. You've never been around them. You’ve never listened and believed them..
BTW, Transgender people don't change who they are inside when they 'cut off' or 'append on'. They simply change their bodies to be in harmony with the gender they actually are. If you ever step out of your box and talked to someone who had made the physical transition, they’ll tell you that after the transition, they felt at peace with themselves for the first time in their lives.
No one entering puberty can grasp the complexities of sex, their sexuallity, or sexual relations. A child who is a teen who is having problems with their sexual idenity needs help and the parent is obligated to help the child as much as needed.
A child being raised by their parents needs to respect their parents rules while they are in their parents home. A child who wants to set their own rules needs to move out and get their own place.
Sure you should tell kids all about sex but you don't have to accomidate them in your home. However if they are old enough to take on the adult pleasures of sex, then they are old enough to take responsibility for their own life.
http://todayyouareyou.com/
Her son told her that he was a girl inside when he was only 4 or 5 years old. The child now lives as a girl.
My mom, as accepting as she can be of what I do at home (her's or mine) refuses to let me be me in public. Her generation is REALLY conflicted about gender roles.
You need to cut some of these people a fair bit of slack- the closer they are to you, the higher the chances theyre not going to take this well. Children, particularly young children whose minds are still open, seem to cope better. Older children, teenagers and young adults will struggle. parents will be the most difficult as they have known you a long time and brought you into this world, and they will to some degree feel responsible for bringing this upon you, as rarely would a parent actually want their child to suffer. They may see
Parents are the main "go to" support people if their trans kids struggle with mental and emotional challenges and addictions and the loss of life opportunities that goes along with that.
When your kid is a trans person, you are along for the ride. You don't get any say in the matter.
I don't support the hateful actions of broken, narcissistic parents who reject their kids but I ask understanding for loving parents who struggle with the pain and loneliness of dealing with this.
"I wanted my son to be a doctor, but he shattered my dreams by becoming a plumber." That is obviously superficial and narcissistic. Same if a parent dreamed of their daughter marrying rich. Or even marrying within the families' socioeconomic group (or RACE, f'r gossake...) And all of these things can bring on "shame, fear, social rejection, profound social misunderst anding and stigma."
Or how about a child that becomes autistic? I suggest you re-read the above, replacing the word 'trans' or 'transgender' with the word 'autistic'. It reads the same.
The parents that @novabird describes in the sentence, "The child they knew and raised and loved and nurtured is gone, and replaced by a new person with a new name and new identity," never really saw their child for what and who the child truly is, but invested in that child their projected illusions of who and what they wanted that child to be.
Without proper education and awareness in place, what should we expect as a society when parents remain uninformed? We have a duty to provide the answers just as much as the struggling parents have a duty to seek out the answers.
--Randall
And they should seek the same help if their child has taken the wrong choice, confused, or doesn't understand their sexual self to cure them, and to help them live as normal as a life that they can.