EPISODE 54–Just the FAQs–Moms of Trans Minors
In this episode of In the Den, Jen joins two mothers of young transgender children to answer a handful of frequently asked questions regarding actively parenting an underage trans child in today’s political climate. Because it isn’t currently safe to be a transgender child, and because we don’t wish to put trans children or their families at increased risk, we will be using pseudonyms and changing identifying information for this episode’s guests to protect their anonymity so that we can discuss these important topics without putting a target on families’ backs.
Links from the show:
Mama Dragons website: www.mamadragons.org
Mama Dragons on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mamadragons
Mama Dragons on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themamadragons/
The Family Acceptance Project: https://lgbtqfamilyacceptance.org/
In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at mamadragons.org.
Connect with Mama Dragons:
Website
Instagram
Facebook
Donate to this podcast
EPISODE 54–Just the FAQs–Moms of Trans Minors
In this episode of In the Den, Jen joins two mothers of young transgender children to answer a handful of frequently asked questions regarding actively parenting an underage trans child in today’s political climate. Because it isn’t currently safe to be a transgender child, and because we don’t wish to put trans children or their families at increased risk, we will be using pseudonyms and changing identifying information for this episode’s guests to protect their anonymity so that we can discuss these important topics without putting a target on families’ backs.
Links from the show:
Mama Dragons website: www.mamadragons.org
Mama Dragons on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/mamadragons
Mama Dragons on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/themamadragons/
The Family Acceptance Project: https://lgbtqfamilyacceptance.org/
In the Den is made possible by generous donors like you. Help us continue to deliver quality content by becoming a donor today at mamadragons.org.
Connect with Mama Dragons:
Website
Instagram
Facebook
Donate to this podcast
JEN: Hello and welcome to In the Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created to walk and talk with you through the journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. Thanks for listening. We’re glad you’re here.
Right now, there is a national conversation about young transgender people. The conversation is loud and ugly and often very angry. And the children are the ones primarily getting hit by these arrows. Politicians are using this culture war to solidify their positions with constituents. There is a lot of confusion about what is real and what is true, in this world where misinformation and lies are spread freely.
I am assuming if you are listening to this podcast, you’re interested in accurate information. I’m assuming that you want to join the efforts to best protect these children. So, today, I invited two moms of transgender minors to come and talk with us. We’re going to talk about the questions that people seem to have most frequently.
And this is where I would normally introduce our guests to you. But it is not currently safe to be a transgender person, particularly a transgender child. And none of us is interested in putting these children or their families at risk. So I will not be introducing them. In fact, we will be using false names and other identifying information so we can discuss the topic without putting a target on families that are already vulnerable.
So, instead I’m going to introduce you to Nancy who is a mother to a 13-year-old girl named Clara. And Carrie who is a mother to a 6-year-old girl named Skye. So welcome to both of you and thank you so much for your willingness to take a risk and help us educate our friends and neighbors who want to help but aren’t really sure how this all works.
CARRIE: Thanks for having us.
JEN: So when did your child first start talking to you about gender and their gender? What did those early conversations look like?
NANCY: My child in fifth grade was struggling with depression and as we started delving into that with them and with the therapist, we started realizing that there was gender questioning involved in that depression. And so, in fifth grade, about spring break is when we really, with the guidance of the therapist who said, “Hey, maybe you let them be themselves and see what happens.” And so my husband and I decided for spring break to, “Hey, I’ll take you shopping, get you some clothes and you can be yourself.” And the change was so remarkable to my husband and I that we knew at that point that it wasn’t really gender questioning, that they were dealing with gender dysphoria.
JEN: How about you, Carrie?
CARRIE: For me, looking back the first thing I can remember was so early that it’s just really surprising. We were in a thrift store, Kids Again, and she was about 15 months old. And we were going to get her this little blue scooter. And she wasn’t even speaking in full sentences yet. But she was just adamant that she needed the pink princess scooter. And we kept picking her up and putting her back on the blue one. And she kept screaming and getting off and getting back on the pink one. And so that was really the first sign. And then probably at two and a half, she started saying, “No. I’m a girl.” And that’s when we just started having conversations just to kind of say, “Well, you have a boy body.” And I was really shocked to be hearing these things from such a young kid. And my initial reaction was that a kid this young can’t possibly know that. And so I would say, “Well, your body is built with boy body parts.” And she would say, “Well, I can’t be a boy.” And I would say, “Well, why not?” And she would say, “Because I’m a girl.” And it was just as clear cut as that. And that’s when I really started just going online and researching and getting more information for myself.
JEN: That’s so interesting because even as adults as we try to talk about these things or explain these things and we have access to language and books and research, it’s kind of hard to articulate sometimes. So I imagine this little toddler, right, who barely has a grasp of language in the first place is like, “I can’t because I’m not.” And that’s really like the whole gist of it, right, “I can’t do it because I’m not it.” So, how did you guys respond to these? You talked about it a little bit, Carrie? But how did you respond to these conversations? Did you kind of try to keep it “in the house” as much as possible?
CARRIE: I mean, my husband and I started talking about it because it just became more and more urgent for this toddler to express to us that we were wrong about who she was. She just was so adamant that she was a girl. We couldn’t get her dressed in boys’ clothes. It was like a battle. We would put something on her and she would rip it off. She wouldn’t wear shoes unless they were pink. She wouldn’t wear a shirt unless it was pink. At one point, I found a BSU football jersey for toddlers that was this super shiny blue and, to her, that was feminine because it was so shiny. And so I had this one football jersey that I would put her in almost every day because it still felt okay to take her out of the house without getting judged for taking your child in the wrong gender clothing. And she was okay with it. She wouldn’t rip it off.
JEN: How about you guys, Nancy?
NANCY: I was trying to create a safe space for my child to come out as gay because I had so many gay family members.
JEN: Was this kind of because you were noticing more feminine mannerisms or just like this big open window of, “It’s okay with us if you are.”
NANCY: It’s okay with us. I had seen other family members living secretly. Some of them were never able to come out, and so it was really important to me to create this sense of safe space, that “You're loveable for who you are whoever you are.” And, in having conversations about that and about Pride – it was Pride month – it really became apparent that they were genderqueer. It wasn’t a sexual orientation. It was a gender orientation. I wasn’t prepared for that. That wasn’t what I had been expecting. Luckily, my husband was really aligned with me, with being, “Yes. Of course, we love them for whoever they are. Who are they?” And so it was just a chance to really begin having conversations with them to kind of get more insight to who they are. It was our privilege to be able to work with them and have them trust us with that information. I think, for me, and for my husband, it was just so important to us that they knew that living authentically was a priority for us. That, as adults who had spent so much time trying to learn that lesson, that we wanted them to know it early. “Don’t be somebody for somebody else. Be who you are for you. And that will bring you joy.”
JEN: So was there a specific point – for either of you or both of you and include your husbands in this if you know – but where you were like, “Oh, it’s real. This is not going away. There’s no reason to fight back anymore. This is it.” And did anything in your behavior change at that point or were you flexible? How did that work?
CARRIE: Definitely for me, in the research I had been doing there had been the questions, “Does your child say she is a girl or she wants to be a girl?” And just every time she would say, “I am a girl.” So that was kind of the first clue that this was really a real thing. And it was consistent and persistent. And then, one day, she was about four and a half and I was sitting in her room and she said, “Mom, there’s the girls’ line over here.” And she motioned to her left. “And there’s the boys’ line over here.” And I just said, “Well, what line are you going to get in?” And she said, “I’m sitting here in the middle.” And then she said, “Mom. I’m different and that’s okay.” And that’s when I called a counselor so that my husband and I could start getting therapy and figuring out what we need to do.
JEN: I love that she was like, “It’s OK.” And you’re like, “I’m not quite there yet, but I’m coming now.”
CARRIE: No. I mean, I thought it is okay to be different. Absolutely. I definitely believe that.
JEN: My heart just hurts for this little person who’s like, “I know what I am but I know you guys want me to go over there. And so I’m frozen. I’m stuck in between.”
NANCY: I think for my husband and I, it was that spring break, our kiddo was getting to wear the clothes that they picked out from the girls’ section. And we had a lot of fun shopping for the clothes.
JEN: Did you do like a wardrobe, or you got two outfits?
NANCY: A couple outfits, yeah.
JEN: That was kind of experiment-y still.
NANCY: Yeah. And my husband was nervous about letting her out of the house in her outfits. And I totally understand that. We live in a conservative area and he was primarily worried about safety. And one day we decided, “Well, let’s take the dog for a walk.” And our kiddo was in her girl stuff and we left the house and went walking down the street. And it was just a couple steps out of the house, you could see the difference in the way that she moved her body. She had, oh, it was just a lightness about her. And she was skipping and her hair was kind of flowing. And it was like this joyful moment for her. And my husband and I both looked at each other and went, “Yep. This is real.” And, at that point, we began talking about how to make it safe for her to be who she was outside of the house because we saw how important it was to her wellbeing, and so we knew that we couldn’t continue to be like, “Okay. You can only do your girlness at home.” She was still attending, she went back after spring break back to fifth grade and just struggled. Came back and said, “I feel like I’m living a lie.” And that’s when we started having conversations about that this is going to be a tough thing, right?
JEN: Yeah.
NANCY: Either you live a lie so that you fit in and you’re safe. Or you tell the truth to those around you and maybe face isolation and rejection. Which hard thing do you want to do? And we went back and forth on that for a while. We talked about waiting until seventh grade to transition so that maybe go to a different school away from her friends so that she could transition quietly, stealth. Ultimately, we decided as a family that that was too far away. And so we really started talking about, “Do we transition openly with the people we know or do we transition stealth?” But we did, ultimately, socially transition the day after fifth grade let out, like, immediately.
JEN: “Yay, school’s out. You can wear a dress!”
NANCY: And I sent out an email to our close circle and I titled it, “Free to be.” Because my kiddo was finally able to just be who she was and it was a joyful moment for all of us to really get to see her just revel in that.
JEN: That’s awesome. So, with your kids, I know it’s different for every kid. If yours are the same, if they match, I don’t want any listeners to think this is how it always is. But for your kids, what did that first step of transition look like?
CARRIE: It looked like going out and getting the dresses that she so desperately wanted to wear. We kind of experienced the same thing where there was just this gender euphoria where getting to wear the clothes that felt right for her just made her elated. And you could just see her glowing in it. So it looked like that. And then she was in daycare at the time. So my husband just told the teachers at daycare, “I’d like for you to announce that our daughter is now using this name and is a female.” And they did. And the children had absolutely no problem with it. I think already a lot of the kids saw her as a girl. It’s amazing how kids do that without even being told. They can just kind of see the identity of other kids. And so then in addition to that, we called some close family members to let them know that that was the way we were going.
JEN: So, transition-wise. We’re looking at clothes and a name and pronouns as first step.
CARRIE: Yes. Exactly.
JEN: Did you start growing hair, longer hair or was that already a thing?
CARRIE: She already would absolutely completely break down if we tried to cut her hair. So she already had kind of like a bob-length hair cut. Of course, now it’s Rapunzel length down to her waist. So that wasn’t really a change, it was just, “Okay. We’re still not cutting your hair.”
JEN: And how about Clara?
NANCY: She had a wild mop of hair. She already had long hair and she would hide behind big hoodies. For her, the transition was primarily clothing and pronouns and feminization of her name. And I remember the first time that she was gendered correctly by a stranger. We were picking up Chinese food and the guy said something, I can’t even remember what it was like, “Sweetheart” or “Her,” I don’t even remember what it was. But we walked out and we both looked at each other and I was like, “How did that make you feel?” And she was like, “Oh, I feel so good!” So that was pretty awesome.
JEN: Unless you’ve witnessed, like if you’ve been with someone experiencing that gender dysphoria, it’s almost impossible to explain. But it is like the faces and stuff when you picture when a kid learns they’re going to Disneyland right that second. It’s like joy and excitement that rushes in.
NANCY: They feel seen. They feel like, “Oh, they get me.” And they feel accepted in that moment.
JEN: It’s so fun to watch. So, transition-wise, didn’t have to do hair. We did some name alterations, some pronouns, and some clothes. Anything else come after that?
CARRIE: Well, the whole legal process, because living in Idaho I had this worry that the laws might change. And so, if I didn’t get her documents changed, I would regret it later if they later prevented us from changing her birth certificate.
JEN: Okay. So you did some legal transition shortly thereafter. What about you guys, Nancy? Did you guys go that route, start some legal transition?
NANCY: We haven’t yet. We go back and forth on it. I think we probably will. I think part of our concern was getting on a list. Right now it feels like we could kind of hide if we needed to. But, once we make that change, it’s like we’re in a database.
CARRIE: That’s interesting. I kind of had the same feeling but the opposite way because my child hadn’t started kindergarten yet. So I felt like “I have to change this before she gets in a database.”
NANCY: Yes. Yes.
CARRIE: And if I do it before that, then we’ll safely be already legally transitioned.
NANCY: And I probably would’ve felt very similar to you if we weren’t already in the school system.
CARRIE: Yeah.
NANCY: We are very lucky, though, in our school district that there really isn’t a lot of difficulty in changing your name. It doesn’t have to be based on your legal documents as far as in her records it still has all of her historical context. But not many people within the school or the district have access to those records. So, in the computer system that they use every day, they see her chosen name and her affirmed gender. So, starting seventh grade, unless the teachers knew from a different situation, whether they were in the social circle with us or whatever, they would not know what’s still on their birth certificate.
JEN: I hope that that changes. I expect to see more states this year require legal names in schools. I’m hoping that’s not true. Do you guys have ideas in your head, have you had conversations with your kids – obviously, your kid’s a good six years ahead of where Carrie’s at – but do you have ideas for the future about their plans for transitioning? For sure it can change. Nothing’s set in stone. But what do you think it looks like in the future?
NANCY: Clara tells me all the time that they’re ready for hormones. They’re ready for feminizing hormones. We’re not in an age where that’s really accessible to her.
JEN: So I just want to back up and just loudly announce a reminder, your kid’s 13.
NANCY: Yes, thirteen.
JEN: And hormones haven’t happened yet.
NANCY: No. Hormones haven’t happened. In the state where we currently live, you can’t before the age of 16. In some other states I’ve heard that maybe as young as 14. She is using puberty blockers and that has been a godsend. Because, even with the puberty blockers, she is still very anxious about puberty. And once those kinds of hormones kick into place and we start dealing with physical changes related to her sex, it’s really much more of an intervention in the future. It’s so hard to remove all that masculine hair. Shaving an adam’s apple sounds horrible to me. So my husband and I both felt that puberty blockers were a gift because it allowed her a moment to pause and really spend some time figuring out who she is and whether this was the right path for her. And whenever she brings up this conversation about hormones, I keep telling her, “Hey. You’re getting too far ahead. Go ahead and do research and everything. But we’re not there yet. Let’s not focus on that. Let’s focus on the present.” And she also talks about surgery. She’s very certain about it. And I, personally, have feelings about that. As a mom, you never really like the thought of your child going through any kind of surgery, right? And so I get some time to consider that and what it means for my child and to research and to help her find qualified physicians and care. But she cannot access surgery until she’s 18. So, right now, it’s puberty blockers. Sometime in the future I expect we will do hormones. And in the distant future, she can choose as an adult to do surgery. And I’m just on pause on how I feel about that. I have time to catch up.
JEN: I understand what you’re saying, though. Even life saving surgery, your kids appendix ruptures, you’re not going to be like, “Yay. Surgery.”
NANCY: Yeah. Yeah.
JEN: Because nobody wants their kid to go under.
NANCY: Exactly. It’s the idea of a knife cutting into your child. You’re just like, “No. I love my baby.”
JEN: I can see that.
NANCY: But as an adult, that is her choice and I will totally be there for her whenever she decides. And I know my husband agrees. That doesn’t mean that it’s easy for us. It just means that we love her enough that we want to support her in the future she wants. And she is not interested in having kids. And so all this conversation about whether she is going to be sterile or not, it doesn’t really apply here. And people can say, “Oh, she’s too young to make that decision.” I don’t think that’s true. And I do believe that, should she not be able – if in the future she’s not able to have children biologically – she can adopt. There’s other options for parenting should she change her mind. But there are plenty of people who don’t have children who live a fulfilling life. And so that is not a priority to me or my child.
JEN: And plenty of cisgender people who aren’t able to conceive if they want to.
NANCY: Right.
JEN: How about you guys, Carrie? What are you seeing in the future? You’ve got a long walk ahead.
CARRIE: Yeah. Exactly. So we have several years before we would even consider puberty blockers. So, at this point, we’ve found an affirming primary care doctor for her. And we’re looking at getting counseling for her so that she can begin to feel comfortable discussing it with someone other than her parents. And just get that information so that when we do get to that age, we’ll all be better informed. So for right now, we’re just really looking at counseling for our kiddo.
JEN: I want to hear how this has been socially as a family and your child specifically even within your family, but your neighbors and stuff. How has it been to enter this world?
CARRIE: It’s a little bit awkward. My family recently, because of some laws that were passed, we moved to a different state. And in doing so, I wanted to keep my job. And so there’s just a lot of questions about, “Well, why are you moving?” And I think that’s been really hard for me deciding when it’s a safe space to actually be honest about why we moved or just making up some random reason for moving. I know where we did live it was awkward with some neighbors that we knew didn’t approve of the change that they were seeing. And then, also we had just a little bit of difficulty with family members that we’ve since gotten past. But it’s a difficult thing for people to accept. You can’t understand what it’s like to have a transgender child until you realize that you do know transgender people.
JEN: How about you guys, Nancy?
NANCY: I can really relate to Carrie. I think that, until you meet a transgender person and spend time with them, they’re just kind of an “other.” And that’s kind of what we were – when we decided to come out, actually my kiddo calls it letting people in – when we decided to do that for sixth grade to socially transition and return to sixth grade at their school, we were relying upon the fact that the school knew us, whether it was the students or the parents or the teachers, that we had a really strong community and we were relying on their knowledge and affinity for us. To allow them to kind of deal with that mental discord of like, “Oh, what’s happening?” We thought, “OK, they do like us. They do think we’re good parents.” So when this happens, they’ll be like, “Oh, well, I don’t know if I understand this, but they’re good parents. I can hang out and get used to it.” We were really surprised at how much love and affirmation we all got. Lots of people saying, “Thank you for trusting us with your story. Thank you for letting us in.” At their school there was complete acceptance. Granted, they were sixth graders, so they weren’t really at the age for bullying, right? All these kids that they’ve been in school with all this time, have now transitioned to junior high with them. And I was a little afraid of my kiddo wanted to kind of go in stealth. She didn’t want to be a transgender girl. She’s a girl. She wanted to go to school as a girl, not a transgender girl. And we had conversations about, “Well, it’s possible that some of the people that you know from your elementary school might share their knowledge with others. And just be prepared for that.” And in junior high, we’re finding that there is some misgendering. But we always stop and question, “Does it feel malicious? Does it feel intentional?” And it hasn’t so far. It doesn’t feel rejecting or malicious. It really feels like it’s just accidental. And she just says, “I’m a girl.” She doesn’t get deep into it. She’s like, “I’m a girl.” And I would say that with my family it’s been kind of mixed and there are some family members that I still haven’t told but that’s because they live far away and they don’t even have to know right now. But it has kind of made me understand more of the whole concept of “chosen family.” And there’s a beauty in it. There’s a beauty of just surrounding yourself with your chosen family and not having to deal with kind of the nature of family members that don’t want to allow you to be yourself. You can just let go of them. And I know that that causes some pain and loss to some people in the LGBTQ community. But there is some beauty in it as well to just kind of let go of people that don’t support you.
JEN: I want to pivot a little bit, just a little bit and talk politics. Specifically I want to hear from you guys how the political conversations across the nation and current legislation is impacting your family?
CARRIE: Well, for us, I guess last year was a big change in legislation. We lived in Idaho and everybody got focused on the transgender medical ban. And I was focused on that too. But with my child at the time, was 5, and so we really thought we had years still before any of that would be affecting us. And Skye was in kindergarten at the time. She was attending kindergarten as a female student and, of course, using the little girls’ bathroom. And so while I was so focused on this medical ban, kind of this law just came out that I wasn’t even really watching where suddenly they said, “Now your kid is not going to be able to use the girls’ bathroom in her school.” And not only that, but on top of that, the law would reward other children who were in the bathroom at the same time as my child by giving their family $5,000 per time that the other kid was in the bathroom with my kid. Now this is, because we’ve already gone through the legal transition, the only way to prove it would be to physically assault my kid. So what it felt like is “Here’s a financial gain for other kids to assault my kid.” And when that law just kind of suddenly took me by surprise, and when I heard that, that was the day we really decided we needed to move from this state.
JEN: How about you guys, Nancy?
NANCY: We are waiting to hear what’s going to happen with the gender affirming care ban in our state. Waiting to learn whether we’re going to uproot our fourth generation child, move them to a different state away from their grandparents and leave jobs that we love, leave a community that has been embracing and supportive. There’s a lot of fear in change, right? Picking up and moving is nerve wracking. Especially when you look at the financial aspect of it. There’s a lot of unknowns. We continually check in with each other about, “Where are you at? On a scale of one to ten, move or stay?” And it’s balancing a desire to fight back against what feels unfair, unjust, and to not allow it to migrate out of our state lines. Really trying to hold the line, balancing that against my child’s mental health, because the gains that she got from transitioning, I see slowly ebbing because of the weight of the laws and the hate that is coming out of the state house. And it is so frustrating because what is coming out of the state house is not reflecting what I am hearing our community say that they want. And so it really feels out of touch and wrong. So we’re constantly trying to figure that out. And, at this point, we know we’re going to let her finish the end of her school year. We don’t want to uproot her during the school year. We don’t want to move during winter. But what that means is, we are most likely going to be accessing out of state care in the new year. And I really worry about what comes next. Will the mean-spirited people in the state house decide that they’re now going to outlaw my ability as a parent to take my child out of state for care? That seems plausible. I would much rather be focused on being a parent to a teenager and helping her through her teenage angst than be spending all this time and energy fighting back against the far right in my state. They’re taking away my time and energy from parenting my child to fight for their rights and it’s exhausting.
JEN: I wonder if people understand how unsettling it is to not know for a year at a time the future of your kid. I always relate the idea of cancer. Like if suddenly my kid was diagnosed with cancer and suddenly there were big conversations about how they couldn’t get treatment and the doctors were all wrong and I couldn’t do anything. And then I’m just waiting for a year totally powerless to decide what our best move is. Moving is expensive, financially and socially and emotionally for a family. It’s hard for me to relate to people who are kind of blowing these things off and not realizing all of these beautiful families like yours who are basically deciding whether or not to become refugees.
I would like to take a chance to dispel some common rumors with our last 20 minutes that we have. So I hope these aren’t worded badly. I don’t want to trigger parents. I don’t want to trigger listeners. But the misconceptions and the rumors are kind of painful and I want to address them head on.
A common myth I hear right on legislative floors is that parents are somehow pushing or encouraging this. And the government needs to step in and stop parents so that they’re protecting the child from the parent’s agenda. Can we start with that rumor or myth?
CARRIE: I have struggled so much with that, just the judgment that I am pushing this onto my child. and it’s absolutely absurd because when you know that your child is transgender, you just have this deep worry that now their life is going to be more difficult because they’re on a path where a large portion of society isn’t going to accept them just for who they are. And for a parent to choose, I’m going to encourage my child to struggle in society. I’m going to encourage them to struggle to fit in to have all these questions about whether they can have children or not. For a child who’s not transgender, of course, that’s making their life way harder. But when your kid is transgender and you see that as a parent, you can see that that’s actually the easier path for them is being who they are and still having to struggle with all these additional things that are going to come with that life.
NANCY: I really hate that myth because I feel like, in a way, I can’t win. In a sense of, I am going to love and affirm my child for who they are. Cis or Transgender, it’s very important to me to raise a child that feels loved and affirmed and is not making their decisions based on fear. Internally, I have a lot of fear for their future as a transgender person. But we don’t want to raise our child with a bunch of fear and anxiety, right? So what she knows is that we love her and that we’ve got her. But just by doing that, just by being a loving and supportive parent, to those people that disagree or don’t understand gender diversity, they feel as though I’m forcing my agenda on my child. I don’t have an agenda. I just want them to be loved. I want them to have a full life, a fulfilling life. And I don’t want it all to be based on fear. So that’s really hard because I do feel scrutinized as a parent, even by my own family sometimes in my parenting just because my child is transgender.
JEN: I’ve heard a bunch of times that puberty blockers are going to cause permanent sterility or damage to children and they’re putting kids on it who are five and six years old and it’s destroying their fertility. Let’s talk about that one.
NANCY: Puberty blockers are used for cis children. So if they’re safe for cis children, how come they’re not safe for transgender children? And, as I kind of mentioned earlier, our main concern isn’t about fertility. Our main concern is about our child surviving. They deal with some self harm and they have a family history with some mental illness and suicide. So we know, my husband and I know, how real that is. So it’s very important to us to support them, and puberty blockers are reversible. They are not prescribed without extensive consideration. There’s a lot of literature you have to read in the doctor's office before they will consider it. The child goes through therapy. Puberty blockers are not prescribed without a length of time in therapy. I don’t know what it is everywhere. I don’t know if it’s consistent. But definitely, our child was in therapy for about a year before we considered that option.
JEN: It’s interesting to me that people, when I’m hearing the conversation I’m hearing, these old – my age – people in suits with degrees who are talking about laws and they’re a little bit obsessed with who’s going to have babies in the future. They kind of make me uncomfortable.
NANCY: It’s really gross. It is really gross that they seem to define your worth based on whether you can have children or not.
JEN: Do you have anything to add to that conversation about puberty blockers, Carrie? I know you guys aren’t there yet.
CARRIE: Nobody is considering puberty blockers for a child who is six or seven. It’s just not even a consideration. And of course, counseling comes first and we have a lot of research to do before we even decide if that’s right for our child.
NANCY: And they won’t prescribe the puberty blockers if you’re not at the right development stage.
JEN: It’s TannSer tage 2, I believe, right, for blockers.
NANCY: It’s Tanner Stage 2, so there is a physical examination that occurs to determine your stage. And if you’re a Tanner Stage 2 it will be considered, along with therapy, mental health services.
JEN: Alright. So I want to talk about the big one, the scary one, the one that makes me the most angry. I don’t even have a transgender kid. And it’s the one that makes me the most angry, the big word, or big term that gets thrown around the most: GENITAL MUTILATION. “They are mutilating the genitals of our babies!” Not really babies, but they’re talking about elementary kids, middle school kids. What’s the reality about these genital surgeries?
CARRIE: I think absolutely this is used as a fear tactic to scare people so that they can group it into the same category with puberty blockers. Because, of course, nobody wants a child to have a surgery at this age. And they try to make it seem like this is being done on a regular basis. It’s just the idea that you can use the fear of having a genital surgery so that you can group in puberty blockers into the same medical ban and get everything banned all at the same time by using that fear.
NANCY: And it’s the basis of a lot of the legislation that’s being put forward. And it’s so rare. It’s really not the norm. Most gender affirming surgeries happen after the age of 18. I know that there are some top surgeries that might happen younger. But it's interesting because they don’t seem to mind gender affirming care for cis people in the sense that you can make your breasts as large as you want them to be or as large as you think society wants them to be, right? But as soon as there’s a consideration to remove them, then suddenly they want to become involved in making those decisions for you. I really feel it’s all about body autonomy. And having autonomy over your own body is certainly at the heart of freedom and liberty in my mind. I’m not okay with genital mutilation the way that they describe it.
JEN: Nobody is.
NANCY: Right. It really is. It’s just a way to excite people to get them to phone in and be like, “Oh my gosh. How can you let this happen to our children?” It’s not happening to our children in the state that I am in. It’s just not happening. And, yet, it was the primary basis for the law that was passed. And, frankly, I don’t think it’s the business of legislators. I think it’s for the parents, the doctors, the child – the child being in most cases an adult by that point – to make those decisions. I don’t trust legislators to understand the complexity of my child’s life.
JEN: So let’s touch on bathrooms. But the myths here are really wild, in school bathrooms particularly. The idea that people will pretend to be transgender to access another bathroom. Or I hear weird ideas about people walking around, showing their genitals to other kids in the bathrooms or the locker rooms. What’s the reality with trans kids and bathrooms?
CARRIE: The reality is that a trans kid is way more private in the bathroom. That is the last thing that they want to do is have anyone see them use the restroom. And I think that people get the wrong idea of what’s going to happen. But if you stop and think about my little six-year-old in a dress going into the men’s bathroom. That is going to make the men in there way more uncomfortable than this little girl in a dress going into the little girl’s bathroom.
NANCY: In the bathrooms, there are stalls for privacy.
JEN: We could have better privacy in our stalls here in America.
NANCY: Yeah. Certainly. Yes.
JEN: That’s not the trans kids fault.
NANCY: No it’s not. And I think, what I notice as these bathroom bans occur around the states, is that you see a lot of articles of trans people going in the bathroom that they’re forced to use by these horrible laws and facing violence there. Because they look like their gender. They’re living their lives as their gender. So a woman walking into a men’s room, feels uncomfortable. A man walking into the girl’s room feels uncomfortable. But that’s because they’re being forced to do that by the bans. And I remember seeing a story about a person who works interstate. They have to travel for work. And they’re like, “I never know where I’m supposed to be in any given place because it’s a patchwork.” And so suddenly you have a group of people that have to study local laws before they travel for work.
JEN: I think, statistically too in the states that have passed these laws, the majority of people getting harassed are actually cisgender people who aren’t super feminine or super masculine. So this idea that we’re going to control the trans population and nobody else is going to be impacted, is just factually incorrect.
NANCY: Well, and imagine that as a teenager in junior high, right? You’re already feeling super awkward and your body’s doing all this really weird stuff. And you go to the bathroom and somebody questions whether you’re in the right bathroom or not. Whether you’re cis or trans, that’s going to be really upsetting. When you look at the amount of mental health issues that our youth are facing right now, they don’t need that. They don’t need to be questioned when they go into the bathroom. And the law that Carrie mentioned – it’s like that whole money for being in a bathroom with a trans person – it creates a bounty. And so if a child is transgender or not, if they’re just thought that they may be, people are going to follow them around, right? They’re going to be like, “I can get some money.”
JEN: And not a little. $5,000 is a significant chunk of money. It’s not like somebody’s offering like $10 if you can suss out the trans kid in the bathroom. The whole system is very, very flawed.
This probably doesn’t need to be said, but I want to hear both of you say it anyway. When it comes to decisions about your child and their lives and their medical issues and their mental health issues, where are you looking for guidance? Who’s the boss here?
CARRIE: The medical community, absolutely. The legislators aren’t medically trained and they don’t know what they’re talking about. And so it is ridiculous that they think they should be in charge of medical decisions for my child who they have never met when they have no medical training. It’s just absurd.
NANCY: Yes.
JEN: Very small government of them.
NANCY: I agree, medical community, mental health as well as pediatrician, endocrinologist. We are living in the house with my child. We get to see the complexity of their life. And we’re more concerned about their wellbeing than anyone else. And we’re just trying to raise a happy, adjusted child. And we need to be trusted to make those decisions for our child.
JEN: Before I let you guys go, is there anything else that you really want listeners to understand about being transgender or being a transgender child or raising a transgender child? What do you need from the listening audience?
NANCY: I need folks in the blue states, whether you have a transgender child or you know of a transgender child – or maybe you don’t know or have them but you just live in a blue state – those of us in the red states, really need you to become engaged. When it can be hard to figure out how to do that in another state, but a lot of the stuff seems to be moving up to the federal level. And we really need you engaged, to be fighting for human rights, civil rights, civil liberties. We need you to be standing along with us.
CARRIE: I would like to say something similar to those in more the red states is that transgender children exist. And we need people to believe that these transgender children really do exist. This is not something, an agenda that’s being pushed on them. And I think that there’s this idea that we need to protect kids that might be confused that they’re transgender. And while that may be true, at the same time, we also need to acknowledge that there are real transgender children and that they need to be protected as well.
NANCY: That’s true, Carrie. I think puberty blockers was our opportunity to let our child have that time to determine, “Are they confused or is this real for them?” They deserve that opportunity to explore that.
JEN: There aren’t enough trans people to fight the battle alone. There aren’t enough families with trans kids to fight the battle alone. So the rest of us need to show up whether we’re just sitting in solidarity, whether we’re writing letters, whatever way we can engage. And we have lots of political episodes so people can learn how to better engage. But meeting people like you guys in a safe situation can help motivate people to want to do those things, to understand why it’s important. So I want to thank you both so much for your efforts and your example and what it looks like to support your children. And thank you for helping us to know and understand how to help you do that. So thank you so much for coming today and participating.
CARRIE: Definitely. Thank you.
NANCY: Thank you for having me.
JEN: Thanks for joining us here IN THE DEN. If you enjoyed this episode, please tell your friends, and take a minute to leave a positive rating or review wherever you listen. Good reviews make us more visible and help us reach more folks who could benefit from listening. And if you’d like to help Mama Dragons in our mission to support, educate, and empower the parents of LGBTQ children, please donate at mamadragons.org or click the donate link in the show notes. For more information on Mama Dragons and the podcast, you can follow us on Instagram or Facebook or visit our website at mamadragons.org.