“Being transgender [or non-binary] is not just a medical transition; it’s discovering who you are, living your life authentically, loving yourself, and spreading that love towards other people and accepting one another no matter the difference.” — Jazz Jennings
It wasn’t too long ago when my child said to me, “Mom, did you know that some parents do not accept their pronouns?”
Yes. Yes, I did know some people’s parents did not accept their pronouns.
But I have a hard time explaining why.
That doesn’t mean my child’s pronouns have been easy for me to understand, or get right. In some spaces, I still refer to my child as “she” – because it is easier. Easier for whom? A question for a different day.
First, I can only try to address why some parents do not accept their child’s pronouns. There is an easy explanation – it isn’t grammatically correct. Then the reasoning gets more complicated: “It defies science.” “There is no such thing.” “It’s just a phase.” “We were made boys or girls.” “Society will make your life harder.” “What else will “they/them” lead to?” The list of excuses is endless.
Before I was a therapist, I was an English teacher for over two decades. My own child was more nervous of my English background when they told me: “Mom, I think you are going to be upset with me . . . my pronouns are not grammatically correct.”
I am proud of both of the above anecdotes, each suggesting a broader world in which I allowed my child to exist–at least for a bit – it never occurred to them that I would not accept their place on the gender spectrum and for a while, they believed the whole world was open.
And yet even with that ease for my child, they suffer. Trans kids suffer over a body that defies their vision of themselves, they suffer over gender roles at school, on teams, a constant barrage of asking: which bathroom should they go to? What clothes can they wear? They do not fit typical expectations, they suffer the language telling them they are something to make laws against. They suffer in ways we simply cannot even envision, because we are not non-binary, we are not queer, we are not capable of knowing or understanding their experience.
They suffer.
The statistics for queer children who preform self harm and contemplate suicide are three times the rates of typical kids. Three times. And yet we know the one factor which allows for queer kids to bring those numbers to the same rate as typical kids is familial acceptance.
Maybe we aren’t meant to understand. I know we aren’t meant to judge.
Mom and dad, aunts and uncles, grandmas and grandpas, all caregivers, I know you love your queer children. Protect them. Accept them. Love them.