The Signs

"But you never showed any signs!"

This is often the first refrain trans people hear from those nearest and dearest to us who want to invalidate our truth and prevent our transition.  This statement closely dovetails into the idea that only those who were strongly aligned to their actual gender from an early age and loudly and persistently clung to that assertion despite any influence to stay our birth assigned sex are allowed to transition.  It says, that if we never were seen making any assertions, or even acting with any gender divergent behaviors, then we really can't be transgender.  

I have already spoken about how there is no one narrative, or one way to be transgender, and told much of my own story.  I am now going to delve more into the insidious problem of the the so-called-signs.

The foremost problem with this idea is the fact of confirmation bias.  Most people fail to see facts that don't fit into the worldview they have built for themselves.  When you don't want to see your daughter as the boy he actually is, there is always a ready excuse you can formulate that explains it away.  She is just imitating her brothers/friends.  She is just a tomboy and that is totally not gender divergent.  

There are a plethora of rationalizations that can, and do, get made.  

Then, as time goes on, the child gets no traction in finding support for their gender assertions, decides it's 'wrong' to be questioning and hides it away.  Keeps it hidden away until finally, sometime later in life, the dysphoria has gotten so bad that they cannot stand it anymore and begins transition.

Cue the refrain of, "but there were no signs!"

Some children do feel their gender divergence but then actually don't show signs of it.  In this case, they have already internalized transphobia.  They have learned that their culture or their religion or their parents will never accept them for who they are and therefore will ruthlessly crush down any possible behavior that may out them.  They often over exaggerate their assigned gender to shield themselves from any questions about their gender.  The end result is very much often the same; at some time the dysphoria gets too much and all that remains is transition.

Unless it isn't.  It is when we are unable to find acceptance and aid that causes our terribly high suicide rate, because if you can't be yourself, it is hard to continue to be at all.

Lastly, are the kids that just actually don't have any signs for themselves or for others to see.  They just live a life where their birth assignment is fine to them until something much later in life starts them to questioning.  This is just as valid, and should not be a sign for or against them being transgender.  It is just their path.

The evil mirror twin to this belief that there must be signs is the opposite assertion that when kids do assert their gender strongly and early, they must be protected from transition 'until they are adults'.  What?  So we can't transition when it would be best for our health and future productivity, but if we accept that delay, when we get to be adult and make our own choices we are resisted because we 'didn't show signs' or didn't assert ourselves strongly enough. Bullshit!

I am not advocating giving HRT or even blockers to any child that wears a gender divergent outfit once or twice.  What I am advocating for is listening to children, seriously, and allowing them the space to assert their identity.  Then, (as the standards of care lay out) if their assertion of their gender identity is insistent, consistent and persistent, then get them the care that they deserve.  But, you can only tell this if you listen to them and let them be themselves.  Don't use them as ornaments to your life, don't use them as status symbols, just be their parents!

All that said, I must again relate this to me and my journey.  I have to say that I am very lucky.. if you want to call it that.  I never got this exact phrase used on me by my mother, because, as I have stated in my narrative, I explored my gender through crossdressing and my mother caught me a few times doing that.  She could not rationalize away my gender divergence, so when I came out to her, it wasn't a huge surprise.  

However, that is not to say that she saw everything, and did give me a variation of this phrase.

I was talking to my mother a little post coming out and talking about how happy I was with transition.  We had gotten onto the topic of what surgeries were possible and which ones I would be pursuing.  It was very early, so I had a lot of  "I don't know" to offer her, but I definitely was (and still am) personally anti voice feminization surgery.  One of the things I had noticed was that I had rediscovered my love for music and especially for singing, and I related that there was an unacceptable chance of complications that would destroy whatever singing voice I may have.

My mother then looked at me and said, "like you ever sing." 

I admit I boggled at her briefly.  I used to love to sing.  I sang whenever I could.  I wrote a song with an older cousin and performed it for my family one summer, and I took chorus in middle school.  She has often recalled that she did not attend my chorus recital because my younger sister had an event the same day.  She knew I liked music, but since dysphoria made me unable to be comfortable doing something so 'feminine', I began to avoid it.  At first just quitting chorus and saying I joined only because 'there were no papers to write, unlike music class'.  Then it was stopping singing whenever people were around.  Eventually it became rare that I would sing, even alone.  

For me, dysphoria sucked the fun out of things I enjoyed as I dissociated more and more.  This took singing from me.  Transition brought it all back, slowly and still ongoing, but it is getting there.  

This happens to lots of us from the stories I have read.  Dysphoria leads us to not do the things we love to do, especially if there is any cultural gendering of those actions and the gender indicated is not our assignment at birth. For me, music is emotionally expressive, and in the town and peer group I grew up in,  that kind of expression was for girls only.  I didn't consciously believe that (and don't believe that in any way now) but it was steeped into my psyche and enforced by my fear of discovery.

Now, I am not saying my mom was a horrible parent.  She did notice my gender variance when I was growing up and she sought aid in how to navigate that with my pediatrician, but the times in which I was a trans youth were even worse for us than they are now.  She didn't know what to do about it, the professional told her to take a 'wait and see' attitude, and my fear of being rejected kept me from reaching out for support.  But, even as good as she was, she still failed to see something that in at least retrospect should have been obvious.  A kid who sang along to any music playing in the house at any time suddenly would not even sing Christmas carols with family in adolescence should have been noticeable.  

And that is somewhat par for the course for transgender kids.

Hopefully, stories like these will change that 'normal', and make it instead normal to be supportive of any variance from the 'norm'.  It is in only this way that we can give transgender folks the tools they need to have life outcomes that equal everyone else.