Maura's Illuminated Manuscript

I have a friend who has a trans son in his early teens. She's been a superb mother to him. I wish I could say the same about the boy's father. He's not supporting his son and trying to stop or delay any transition because, well, he wants a daughter.

The two parents have had some arguments about their son, and naturally, my friend brought me up as an example of a trans person who's much happier for having transitioned*. The dad said, yeah, well, she transitioned as an adult. The teens are too young to know that you're trans.

Bullshit.

I knew. I knew. When I was this boy's age, and maybe a little younger, I would sneak into the University of Florida undergraduate library and read scary, creepy, misogynistic academic literature about "transsexuals", as we were then universally known.

This was in the early 1980s. Supportive parents simply didn't exist anywhere. If they had existed, I might not have spent twenty-five years waffling about transitioning, starting when I was 17: I told my parents I wanted to transition. Dad took me to a doctor. He mentioned shock therapy.

My father died in 1995. I have reason to be grateful for that. He was deeply emotionally invested in having a son. Evidence? My only siblings are two older sisters; I'm a third try for a son. He tried to make a man out of me by making me play team sports and read The Leatherstocking Tales**.

The boy does not exist to be what his father wants him to be. The parents exist to give the boy the best life they can. Making his life feel like one long, slow suicide attempt that's guaranteed to succeed isn't how you do that.

I hate the boy's father. I hate him for what he's doing to his son. I hate him for forcing me to see my own father for what he was. And I hate him for the encouragement that he gives to other parents to be horrible.

I want my twenty-five years back. I know I can't have them***, but I'll be damned if I'll stand idly by while another trans child's years are stolen from him.

I've started going back to the Mercury. In the immediately before times, the boy's father was a regular, too. Someone should start a betting pool about which of us gets kicked out of the Merc, and when.

Oh by the way, if cis kids can know that they're cis in their teens, trans kids can know they're trans. Any assertion to the contrary is cis supremacy. Cis queers tend to figure themselves out around their early teens as well, so trans kids doing so should surprise no one.




*Jesus Christ, that's an understatement.
**Respectable critics agree with me that James Fenimore Cooper was utter shit.
***You want to know why I seem kind of manic on here so often? It's this right here. I'm making up for lost time, and I'm so very, very grateful that I'm not losing it anymore.

We had a Halloween party at work yesterday afternoon, with at least 90% costume participation, to which people brought their children. One little girl of about seven or eight looked at me gravely and said, "You're a boy."
"I used to be," I said.
The little girl stared wide-eyed.
"Seriously. Not anymore."
The little girl wandered off, maybe to ponder that, maybe to freak out a little.

What do mamatimes3, speedie316, and I have in common, aside from being fabulous? Parenthood, and presence at the Merc last night.

I entertain two fond hopes:

1. Many of my friends reproduce, enough to keep the world from being overrun by nimrods.
2. They maintain or reclaim social lives as their children's babyhood and toddlerhood recede into the past and they gain more time and energy.

No, neither one of those are easy if you do them right, but they're both worth it.

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And on a completely unrelated note, Andiamo in Bellevue doesn't suck. We had Nibsdad's birthday dinner there tonight.