Coming out as trans
2005-01-12 11:11![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
flexibeastWhilst staying at my parents' place between Christmas and New Year, i decided to come out to my parents as transgendered. i wanted to do so partly because i love and respect my parents, and don't want to feel like i have to hide things from them; and partly because my breasts are becoming increasingly noticeable, and i wanted to avoid a situation where i'm suddenly bizarrely busty.
It was quite a difficult experience. A day or so previously i'd been talking to my father about how i had written, and plan to continue to write, articles about bisexuality, and how i have posted on bisexual lists; he raised his eyebrows, but didn't seem particularly phased. Coming out as trans, however, stunned him - not to mention my mother. She was most upset; she felt (and probably still feels) that it was in some way her fault - either because of how i was raised, the environment in which i was raised, or because of genetics. :-( My response was to tell her that, regardless of how it arises1, there's nothing wrong with being trans, although it may require some kind of medical intervention to maximise the congruities between mind and body, and that that is what i am seeking to do by taking hormones. She asked me if that wasn't really only creating something artificially; i said that i felt it was no more so than the many other medical interventions we impose on our bodies in order to make them work a certain way (e.g. taking tablets for headaches, wearing glasses and/or contact lenses, going on hormone replacement therapy, etc.). She seemed to accept that.
Another issue for my parents was "What do we tell friends and relatives?", because not many of their friends and relatives would be particularly accepting of me being trans. i said that i didn't see any need for them to mention my trans stuff, since i hardly ever see either our relatives or their friends; and that i didn't expect them to change how they refer to me, either in terms of proper nouns or pronouns. The fact that i am now going by a different name - i've actually changed both my first name and my family name - upset them, which is understandable. Although i must say i would be happy to reconsider keeping my family name; but one of the reasons i changed it in the first place was to avoid the linking of this weirdo trans person to my family. If my parents aren't concerned about that, or are concerned but are more concerned about me keeping the family name, then i'll happily continue to use my original family name.
Still and all, i am most fortunate to have had such a relatively good response, compared to other trans coming-out stories i have heard . . . . i am very fortunate to have such loving, caring parents whose ultimate desire is for me to be happy.
It was quite a difficult experience. A day or so previously i'd been talking to my father about how i had written, and plan to continue to write, articles about bisexuality, and how i have posted on bisexual lists; he raised his eyebrows, but didn't seem particularly phased. Coming out as trans, however, stunned him - not to mention my mother. She was most upset; she felt (and probably still feels) that it was in some way her fault - either because of how i was raised, the environment in which i was raised, or because of genetics. :-( My response was to tell her that, regardless of how it arises1, there's nothing wrong with being trans, although it may require some kind of medical intervention to maximise the congruities between mind and body, and that that is what i am seeking to do by taking hormones. She asked me if that wasn't really only creating something artificially; i said that i felt it was no more so than the many other medical interventions we impose on our bodies in order to make them work a certain way (e.g. taking tablets for headaches, wearing glasses and/or contact lenses, going on hormone replacement therapy, etc.). She seemed to accept that.
Another issue for my parents was "What do we tell friends and relatives?", because not many of their friends and relatives would be particularly accepting of me being trans. i said that i didn't see any need for them to mention my trans stuff, since i hardly ever see either our relatives or their friends; and that i didn't expect them to change how they refer to me, either in terms of proper nouns or pronouns. The fact that i am now going by a different name - i've actually changed both my first name and my family name - upset them, which is understandable. Although i must say i would be happy to reconsider keeping my family name; but one of the reasons i changed it in the first place was to avoid the linking of this weirdo trans person to my family. If my parents aren't concerned about that, or are concerned but are more concerned about me keeping the family name, then i'll happily continue to use my original family name.
Still and all, i am most fortunate to have had such a relatively good response, compared to other trans coming-out stories i have heard . . . . i am very fortunate to have such loving, caring parents whose ultimate desire is for me to be happy.
1. In terms of why i am trans, i personally believe that my environment had at least something to do with it; the community in which i grew up in rural Victoria had pretty strict notions of 'masculinity', which i couldn't (and didn't really want to) adhere to. According to such notions, anything not 'masculine' is 'feminine'; and so i therefore took on the notion that i was more 'feminine'. But even prior to living in rural Victoria, i was just as happy to hang around with female friends as with male friends.
