Four years ago I received seismic news from my youngest child, then aged 11.
After an extremely difficult start– meningitis at 10 days old, and months of hospital treatment afterward, he was a child of pure sunshine, delighting in everything, up for anything, and in the style of all youngest children, ever striving to keep up with his big sister and brother.
But at the age of around 10 he became increasingly melancholy and often unbearably distressed. There were months of us trying to understand what was wrong and him not being able to tell us.
Eventually one day, after many attempts to explain, all became clear – he’s not a girl, as we’d all thought, he’s a boy.
I reacted the opposite way a parent should. I said something along the lines of, ‘I know you think that’s true, but don’t tell anyone because you might get bullied at school and you might change your mind.’
I was frightened about how his peers would react. (I discovered later he’d told his friends first, who hadn’t given a damn and accepted him immediately – my everlasting respect to the youth of east London, who know what friendship means.)
Since then, my son has socially transitioned and now lives his truth, as a boy.
This was not an easy journey for our family. His gender was not immediately accepted by all – I appreciate why and so does he.
This is an incredibly confronting issue and if you’re not forced to come to terms with it by a person you love, you might conclude it’s too difficult and so – understandably – decide to keep your distance.
I’m writing this to ask you not to do that – because trans people all over the world are suffering appalling discrimination and need decent, honourable people to stand with them and say enough.
That doesn’t mean you need to chain yourself to a fence in protest, but it does mean you need to look out for trans people in your workplace, school, church, mosque, synagogue, temple, pub, football team, book club, AA meeting or block of flats.
Wherever you are and whoever you are, you can make a difference to the life of a trans person by not being a quiet bystander when someone makes a joke at their expense, and by being compassionate if someone tells you they are trans and need support.
Many trans people are rejected by their family, and so friends become family, and that could mean you.
Being trans is a fact, not a choice
One of the many wonderful lessons my son has taught me is that people know the truth of themselves. I do not know better than you whether you are gay or straight, whether you should love this person or that person – you know best, about yourself. And the same applies to trans people.
It has taken me a lot of reading, a lot of listening, a great deal of humility, and an acceptance that I don’t know everything about a reality that is not mine, to understand that the transgender identity is a non-negotiable truth.
Transgender people no more choose to be trans than you chose where to be born.
Being trans is a fact, not a choice, and it can be wonderful; but it can be terrible too – because of the prejudice and hostility directed at transgender people – often by rich, powerful, political people.
25 November marked the first day of 16 days of international activism for the elimination of violence against women. I am a feminist. I recognise and rage, oh do I rage, against the patriarchal structures that enable gender based violence.
I stand with every woman who has ever experienced it – and that, of course, includes every trans woman who has ever experienced it.
This year alone, 350 trans people have been murdered because they are trans, according to Transrespect versus Transphobia Worldwide. The figure is likely to be higher, because not everyone has their gender accurately recorded.
Of that 350, 98% are transgender women or trans feminine people, and 79% of those killed in the US were trans women of colour. Those who murder them act with violence and brutality. I won’t recount the heartrending, de-humanising details because those women are far greater than the way they died – that they lived, as themselves, is testament to their strength.
A poisonous debate about trans people is taking place in British politics at the moment, about whether trans people are real, or some kind of culture war construct designed to bash people for being insufficiently politically correct or ‘woke.’
I cannot tell you how horrifying it is for my family to be in the midst of that debate – the crude language used about the body parts of trans people, the mockery of the idea that a trans man may have a cervix.
The fact is that we cannot be relaxed at home about turning on the radio, or the television, because there are any number of famous people who may be live on air, questioning the truth of our family, casting trans people as pernicious, risky, predatory.
This all adds up to a social context that turns a blind eye to bullying, violent, abusive treatment of trans people – as though they are lesser, as though they can’t read, can’t hear, can’t feel.
It has to stop.
Do you have story you’d like to share?
Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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