Sylvia and Gwen Araujo
During the heady days of the Clinton administration, when our worst national nightmare was consensual adultery, before 9/11, before the drumbeat of global warming, during that first flush of enthusiasm for the internet, we had two kids.
We arrived at the decision to have them almost wordlessly. I was making foolish amounts of money, my wife could negotiate a three day work week, and I figured that if I turned out to be a shitty parent, I could hire good people to help me.
The first Fear is birth defect. You’ve gotten a bit…old. Will you abort a defective child? Won’t you? Without making up your mind either way, you pass that hurdle. Now, it’s the birth. Will the child make it through that passage unscathed?
The next fear is bonding—will you feel what you are supposed to feel? Will the mother experience crippling post-partum depression?
Your child is born, you look into it’s eyes, you realize your life is forever changed, though you have no idea at that point to what extent. You feel what you are supposed to feel. In fact, words doesn’t do the feeling justice.
The fear recedes. Childhood illness. Childhood cancer. Car accidents. Abduction. A lifetime of studiously putting thoughts like this out of your mind stands you in good stead now.
Then you’re watching your preschool son twirl in a skirt fashioned from dozens of plastic grocery bags. Twirling and twirling and twirling. And the Fear surges up in your throat, becomes a small knot of pain in your chest.
The fear tells you, “supress this. Or he will be destroyed.” Think what they did to you because you had thick glasses and liked comic books.” Dear God.
If you grew up in the 60s or 70s, the fear has a lot of oomph. Perhaps like me, there wasn’t a single out of the closet gay student, from K-12, in sight. But the ones that looked or acted gay, what happened to them? What did people do to them?
What did you do to them.
You wait for the other shoe to drop. Daycare is…Ok. Preschool is OK. Every moment is a gift, as you dread the approach of Kindergarten. Maybe he’ll stop. Maybe.
He doesn’t. You talk to teachers, school officials, therapists. You brace yourself for impact.
If you are lucky, you find that the world you grew up in has truly vanished. You walk through the hallways and school, see groups of kids sitting in circles on carpeted floors; look at the art on the walls, sniff the hallways for the smell of fear and despair. And you don’t sense it.
But these are little kids. In a k-8, you see fully mature seventh and eighth graders barreling past your kindergartner, texting on cellphones. The girls look like they’re in their mid 20s. The boys look younger, but they’re still too big, too gangling, laughing too loud, shoving each other.
So, he’s a little kid. You can handle that. But what happens at puberty? And if something happens…could you ever forgive yourself for your decision not to stick your kid in a costume?
Somewhere, somehow, the knot loosens. You meet the parents of other special needs kids, who are supportive. There’s a cadre of parents of special needs kids; adoptive kids; aspergers kids; we talk and smile and nod at each other.
And at some point, the knot fades, the Fear recedes. Oh, it will come back, you know, it will be with you until they put you in the ground, but it becomes just part of the background mental static of being human. Global warming, conservative revolution, bioterrorism, the mushroom cloud, Mathew Sheppard, at a tolerable remove.
Because, if you’re lucky, your kid is brave. Kind of…fearless. If he can do it, so can you.
You stare down millennia of oppression. You count the years since Stonewall, from” I have a Dream to Barrack Obama.” There’s no turning back. We are what we are.
Hold on
You have gambled with your own life
And you face the night alone
While the builders of the cages
Sleep with bullets, bars and stone
They do not see your road to freedom
That you build with flesh and bonePeter Gabriel
“You can’t enslave a free man, the best you can do is kill him”
R.A.Heinlein.
The quote is true for women, too; and everyone in between.Your kid is not a slave to fear. You won’t be either. Together you will make your mark on the world. You will change the world.
You just hope you can change it fast enough.
{ 7 comments… read them below or add one }
I just wanted to let you know that I linked your blog from my website today. I love the way your write, and the message you are sending about raising gender non-conforming kids is absolutely inspirational.
Thanks for the link! I need to start a new section in my blogroll, friends, fellow travelers, something. I’ll do it now. Writing is my way of working through the fears, and my own lingering traces of homo and trans phobia. I am an imperfect parent and person; I think that a lot of the suppression and rejection of GLTBQ youth occurs because of a lack of support, a lack of community; I think many people suppress their children with the best of intentions, with love in their hearts. Which is what drives me crazy. Because I know if parents had support and community, they wouldn’t. Even if they had qualms, even if they were homophobic, trans phobic, if the community they lived in, if the air they breathed, had enough acceptance in it, they’d act differently. Research I’ve heard quoted at gender conferences suggests that there is a world of difference between an ambivalent parent, and a truly rejecting parent. You don’t have to move people very far to save kid’s lives. If you can move people from ‘you are going to burn eternally in hell,’ to ‘I don’t agree with your decisions but I still love you and you’re my kid,’ you can move kids from a serious suicide risk to something approaching the baseline.
So, I write this for those parents who are looking for an excuse to accept their kids.
And of course, I write this blog for J.D. Salinger’s Fat Lady. http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/J._D._Salinger
You don’t have to move people very far to save kid’s lives.
That is very true.
Thanks a lot for writing this blog. I’m a trans teenager and I want to come out to my parents soon. I’m probably going to send them links to several of your articles, such as this one.
PS: Oscar is one of my new heroes.
Thanks wavygrass. I’m willing to email with any parent who wants to discuss the process of coming to acceptance. Mainly I’d recommend joining a listserve, at TYFA, transfamily, or the CNMC, which I link to.
You have probably seen this information before:
http://www.plannedparenthood.org/teen-talk/lesbian-gay-bisexual-trans/coming-out-your-parents-26319.htm
it describes a sort of safety checklist about coming out to your parents as a teen. I want you to make sure you have the support you need to do this without risking your future. I’m not qualified to say much about this, really, I am not a counselor, psychologist, or therapist. But you have my best wishes, and the perhaps ineffective prayers of an agnostic. Be careful. Life is long; for some kids waiting a few years is probably the safest thing. It’s up to you of course. Be sure of yourself. Take care.
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/TransKidsFamily/
I found the group above the night our 24 yr old daughter told us she was transgender . I was up all night trying to find any and all information I could about a subject I had never heard much about. They have been a sanity saving, venting, ranting, screaming, crying, advice giving, sympathetic source of information and incredible support. I really don’t know what might have happened had I not found them when I did. All of its members are parents of transgender ‘kids’ of all ages, and they have been and are still going through journey with their kids. I think as a result of this group’s support and information, my husband and I are able to better understand why our daughter is now our son. I am glad someone on that website posted a link to yours. You write wonderfully.
And to the trans teen, give your parents one of these groups links.. it really does help.
If there is one message I’d like parents to take from this, it is to get support; this is an area where, in many cases, professionals are hard to find who can really do much for a lot of people. Some therapists will do more harm than good. Peer support works wonders. When I found the lists, it felt as I had laid down a huge weight I hadn’t known I was carrying.