Our family is different now

Last Friday week, M walked into the room while L was telling me about stuff that happened during the day, and over her shoulder casually said, “Oh, bee tee dubyew, I’m using male pronouns now.”  Lowest-damn-key coming-out I ever saw or heard of, when that sentence really means “hi, you have a transgender son now.”  (The names and pronouns are going to get confusing at times here, and I can’t help that very much. Transition is confusing.)

This is not at all a sudden thing, nor a surprise to us.  It’s a point in a journey that began a full year ago, at the end of eighth grade.  At that time M began to use the name “Alyks” (you pronounce it “Alex”) as a way of leaving behind some of the baggage of junior high school, much as T did before her.  Over last summer Alyks did a bunch of thinking and talking and reading about identity, and by spring had begun to identify as “non-binary,” somewhere in between male and female on the gender spectrum—and gender identity is a spectrum, just as sexual identity is, ask your local psychiatric professional for details—but leaning toward male more than female.

Alyks started by asking us to use the pronouns “they” and “them” instead of “she” and “her,” which is common with non-binary identifying people.  They all have to fight against the male-female binary assumption that’s built into the structure of English, though not all other languages.  A also asked the same of their friends at school and elsewhere and most of the friends did, though there are still a few stick-in-the-mud holdouts who are now getting themselves onto the list of “used to be friends.”

I made a conscious effort to comply with what Alyks asked, as a mark of respect for their identity and feelings; L has had a harder time in giving up the old names and pronouns.  Alyks allows us some slack because we are Mama and Daddy and we aren’t being actively hostile to it, unlike the parents of some of their LGBTQ friends at school.  (A’s descriptions of how a few of these parents are behaving frankly horrify me.)  Still, using the “right” pronouns is a HUGE deal to all trans people, which is a thing to remember.

This is the situation we’ve lived with during A’s freshman year of high school, and it has been hardest on them; hard enough that A asked me in March to find a therapist they could safely talk to about feelings of anxiety and depression arising not only from the gender identity issues but from struggles with schoolwork.  A doesn’t find that schoolwork comes nearly as easily as T or L did, and their grades show it.  (We also discovered a daily casual Daddy check-in asking “what homework have you got tonight and in the next few days?” helps remind “oh yeah, I have this to get done” and things are getting completed and turned in more timely which avoids points-off. I’m like that too; that’s where A got it from.) Through friends I did find a therapist who specializes in teens with gender identity issues and gender dysphoria.  (That’s the currently accepted name for the condition—and it is a condition and not a mental illness.  This is also something to remember always.)

I wrote the first draft of this post sitting in the waiting room while A was talking with his therapist.  A likes Ryan a lot and wants to keep working with him, which we will make happen.  Working with Ryan is making a positive difference, the more so because he does specialize in teens and gender dysphoria, which is still an uncommon thing to find—or to need to find.

Alyks has been fortunate in finding a group of friends who are largely OK with people who don’t understand themselves as being the same gender now as the sex they came out of their mothers with.  There are two support groups for non-straight students at his high school (yes, I’m switching from “them” to “him” at this point), one for the whole LGBTQ spectrum and one specifically for non-cis students.  (Digression: “cis” in this context means identifying as the same gender as the sex you were born with, like L or me; “trans” is everything else but.)

I sent this information last week to all the immediate family and godparents, because we are expecting to go to a party for my oldest niece, her new husband and new daughter in July and didn’t want to show up with A wearing a chest binder and male-looking clothes (and we expect he will be doing that) and having to explain it all on the spot. And we are also not treating this change as “a phase” or any of the foolish euphemisms that people have used in the past for other people whose sexuality and gender didn’t conform to the majority opinion of what people do.

A knows this is a big change for everyone to process and is willing to allow some slack for us sometimes saying “she” or “M” since that’s how we’ve known him for the past fifteen years … but things are changing. So L and I now have a son and a daughter and not two daughters, and we’re asking everyone to start working on using the right name and pronouns. We’re all willing to accept mistakes, but we’re not going to put up with wilful ignorance. A’s life and our lives are too short to put up with shit like that.

If anyone has awkward questions to ask after this, please direct ’em to me in comments. I’m more comfortable than you might know at dealing with transgender issues, and A doesn’t yet need to try to cope with with well-meaning but difficult inquiries.

At the coachmen’s rendezvous the aperitif is orange-coloured. Fnord.