Parents With Inconvenient Truths about Trans #transphobia

Parents With Inconvenient Truths about Trans #transphobia pittparents.com

It was the summer of 2018 when the transgender hurricane hit our family. At 21, our never gender distressed son made the inexplicable announcement he was transgender. Any attempts at discussion were shut down and within weeks he'd estranged himself from us.
[...]
I've always been at a loss to explain why the question, “Would you rather have a live daughter or a dead son?” bothered me so much. Now I know. I have no memories of a daughter. We never carefully selected her name, never cheered her first steps, never took her to her first day of school, never encouraged her interests, never went first time bra shopping, never commiserated with her over her period. I only have memories of a son, a treasure trove of memories of my son. If I'm transphobic for remembering my son and admonished not to remember, then not only do I not have a live daughter, I only have a dead son.
[...]
We lost our only child and grieve alone without the support or even acknowledgment of anyone from “before.”

12 comments

Your daughter was always a daughter, you just weren’t aware of it. She is not dead, and she was the one who you chose a name for, who you watched all this time… you just weren’t aware of her gender identity. Not anyone’s fault, but she is not another person now. You are deluding yourself because you simply can’t accept that change, and you revel in your own imagined victimhood instead of loving your daughter unconditionally. People like you sicken me.

It’s a sad thing when this happens, and it does. Parent(s) either dismiss the “signs” as nothing and it doesn’t stick in their memories, or they punish it out of their kids so harshly at a young age that they spend most of their childhood hiding/suppressing it. While it’s typical for parents to not see the child’s journey of self-discovery until the middle or the end (for a lot of things, not just gender identity) these sorts don’t even get to see the end if the child has good reason to believe that doing so will result in them facing violence or homelessness or even just a combination of sabotage and verbal abuse. Instead, as soon as becoming fully independent they pull an Adrian Veidt: “Did you think I would tell you about it if there was any possibility of you affecting the outcome? I transitioned already.” Or possibly they give an advance warning that they’re about to start transition and make it clear that this is not open for discussion, if they believe the risk of the parent sabotaging their life is minimal.

“I’d rather have a live daughter that a dead son” (or vice versa) is obviously not going to apply here. This is a (often post-hoc) justification used by those who were not so hostile or transphobic that their child was afraid of them, was resistant at first, and then relented when they saw how much happier their child is presenting as the “other” gender.

After reading the blog in question, I can be sympathetic on the level of the OP being stuck in a state of unresolved low-level grief, “he’s not dead but not alive either”, as that kind of thing is really not easy to get out of. On the other hand, their *daughter* almost certainly made the right call. I get the impression that “the family” is being treated as a single concrete “person” which all the individuals are subordinate to - and the OP’s personal identity is extremely tied up in being a mere appendage of the family, to the point where someone becoming fully independent feels like a betrayal. (While probably also dictating what “the family” wants and needs, and who the individual members “should” be, because they’re not self-aware enough to notice that they’re projecting their own subconscious on everyone else. Admittedly speculation on my part, but that’s usually what happens when families when families become enmeshed.) This is a toxic situation which needs to be broken up regardless, but the fact of one of the members being trans only makes things worse.

TL;DR as horrible as it must have felt for the OP, the OP’s daughter made the right choice.

At 21, our never gender distressed son made the inexplicable announcement he was transgender

So your daughter-in-the-body-of-a-son was deep in the closet or you chose to ignore the signs. Or both.

On the year of our Lord 2024 the transphobia hecatomb hit the alternative media and families were destroyed.

It's the same, very alive person, you just refuse to know and accept them fully. Your mental barrier may eventually be lowered but currently you are instead conditioning it on a transphobic concern trolling website.

Your child hasn't been bodysnatched or replaced with a fetch from the Feylands, they've just pulled the cauls off of their existence and unmasked their true self. You never had a son, you had a daughter that presented as a son, that's something you're going to have to come to terms with.

"Any attempts at discussion were shut down”
I’m willing to bet that at 21, she already knew everything you were going to say to her.
And that your ‘attempts at discussion’ were actually attempts to get ‘him’ to ‘see reason.’

"and within weeks he'd estranged himself from us."
Sadly, I also bet that your discussion of transgendered people up to that date was what estranged you from your daughter. She heard all that, and only she knew you were talking about her.

Like a guy on my first boat. When they told racist jokes, it took a while for him to admit that legally, he was black. THEY acted like victims, for not knowing they were telling racist jokes to a black man, because it was unpossible they’d ever been in the wrong.

"I only have memories of a son, a treasure trove of memories of my son.”
And now that’s all you’ll have.

“We lost our only child and grieve alone without the support or even acknowledgment of anyone from “before.””
That’s a choice you’ve made and hew to. Y’all reaping what you carefully sowed and lovingly curated and hatefully expressed.

I think every fucking entry on PittParents can be summed up with:

“ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME ME”

You could make new memories right now with your daughter. Take her clothes shopping, get her a new haircut, buy some jewelry together. I'm sure she'd appreciate any feminine guidance on how to present herself.

But if you persist in this pity party, she'll abandon your sorry ass and figure things out on her own. You'll end up alone and miserable, and it will be your fault.

You looks more invested in your vision for your child than in this child in reality.

“ She heard all that, and only she knew you were talking about her.”

For her entire childhood, my wife pretended she was only attracted to men, when she tends to be more attracted to people based on their personalities, and tends to prefer “feminine” personalities. She had grown up hearing her dad and stepmother say all the usual “Christian” things about sexuality/ When she got a job and moved out of her father’s house at 18, she told her dad the truth, and said, basically, “this is who I am, accept it, or stay out of my life.” She said it was rough at first, but her dad has gone out of his way to show her he loves her no matter what. Still, the obvious relief on his face when she and I started dating was painful for her.

Despite a bit of resentment over the pain he’s caused her, and very different views on many major issues, I get along pretty well with my father-in-law. Still, I’m sure he hasn’t missed that I’m not exactly a traditionally “masculine” man, though I think it may have impressed him when, after I asked for his blessing to marry her (at her insistence, believe it or not,) I agreed to go on a late night dune-buggy ride in the desert with him and a few of his male relatives (if you’ve ever been off-roading in the dark, you know it takes some guts, especially when you don’t know the driver. The thought that they could have left my dead body in a ravine and probably gotten away with it never even crossed my mind, no siree!)

The point is, I sometimes wonder if he would have been more careful with his words if he had known how much they would hurt her from the beginning. Either way, I’m glad she knows now that her father loves her, even if his misguided views on disabilities sometimes lead to him giving well-meaning advice that only hurts her feeling. We’re all works in progress.

I only have memories of a son, a treasure trove of memories of my son.

I dunno, I think back on a lot of the memories with me and my parents, and I don’t know if they’d really be THAT much different if I were Christina or something instead of Christopher. (that being my first name, btw) I saw an awesome concert with my mom last October, we both had a very good time, enjoyed it very much, etc…I don’t see how it would have changed it all that much if I was her daughter as opposed to her son.

(Though if nothing else, at least thinking about that gave me a good chuckle, at the thought of me trying to pass as a girl, lol)

Just because you never realized something was up about your 21 year old daughter doesn't mean she wasn't questioning who she was for years and working up the courage to tell you. Given your reaction it's no wonder she was afraid to come out. You are not a victim.