It’s been 5 years since I came out as genderqueer.
Alongside my newly acquired knowledge of gender (this was even before they taught us Sex Ed, which for us was relatively trans-inclusive), I learned of transitioning. I decided to cut my hair and made conscious efforts to “dress androgynously”, while my mom stood by my side. I fully came out at school at the beginning of 8th grade, my last year of middle school (although I knew of my transness for a year or so prior).
When I asked for a binder, my mom lied to cover up her unwillingness: “the order got lost in shipment!”
I got my first binder from a friend’s trans mom.
My mom pretended to be okay with this, and would often go on monologues about how she “knew” I would be nonbinary (“I decorated your nursery with yellow and green, rather than pink or blue”). At the same time, she would downplay my own knowledge of my identity and needs.
When I first mentioned medical transition, I was at that precious sweet spot: the beginning of unwanted puberty. I was one of the lucky few to realize what was “different” just as the unwanted changes began- I could have been saved.
My parents told me puberty blockers were “too risky”, despite their continued use over the past century. I developed a chest and “feminine” fat pattern while staring helplessly in the mirror.
During my middle school years, I was in a few abusive relationships, one of which resulted in me developing PTSD. I began self-harming badly at around age 12, and my mom was understandably concerned. I went to a therapist, and spent about two years working out my issues- partly motivated by the therapist and my mom’s assertions that once I stopped self harming, they’d support my medical transition.
They did not. When I stopped having PTSD attacks, I stopped going to therapy without a T letter. My therapist and mom pretended as if they had always said “no”.
Somewhere around that time, I talked to my primary care doctor asking for a gender clinic or at least pediatric endocrinologist referral. He agreed, and I never heard from him or the clinic after that. My mom, angry at me for asking the doctor, didn’t take me to another appointment for a few months. (The next time I saw one, it was a different doctor, and she tried referring me to the same unresponsive clinic).
After months of suffering, feeling lied to and worthless, I found myself a gender therapist. My mom took me to two appointments, during which we discussed my peer-related trauma as well as my “gender history”. When I described my dysphoria, the gender therapist agreed that it was indeed dysphoria and suggested I go on low-dose testosterone (since, at this point, I was well into estrogen-driven puberty; past the prime time for hormone blockers).
My mom never let me see her again.
More months of depression ensued. I continued weighing suicide and slipped back into self-harm.
During the beginning of my sophomore year in high school, I reached another breaking point which culminated in one of the heaviest decisions of my life. It was accompanied by the epiphany that I could - and sometimes need to - value my own health and happiness over my parents’. This, even now, sounds selfish, but as I said before my options were genuinely 1) medical transition or 2) die. I believe having a happy kid who has secondary sex characteristics and pronouns you hate is better than having a dead one.
After exhausting every alternative (local gender clinics, community centers, and planned parenthood), I started black market testosterone.
I wanted it to be as safe as possible since I’m a big believer in harm/risk reduction (and the point of this was to stop harming myself), so I told my general practitioner (in the hopes she would help me monitor my levels). I was led to believe that this would be safe, as the planned parenthood staff was completely understanding and sympathetic.
My general practitioner promised not to tell my mom, agreeing it would be unsafe- then left the room and promptly told my mom.
She believed my mother would hear the extremes I was willing to go to feel comfortable in my own skin and agree to support my medical transition through legitimate avenues. My mom took the testosterone away and forbade me from the doctor’s office once again.
Another period of self-harm and extreme distress followed. This was when I attempted suicide by overdose (on my evidently hard-and-painful-to-overdose-on pills) and never told my parents.
My mom can understand transness as a cultural concept — she will use they/them pronouns and my name — but refuses to accept that some trans people need more. Some of us require a medical transition.
Just a few days ago, following another two years of sadness and lack of faith, my dad agreed to help me access testosterone. I was cautiously optimistic and for good reason. My mom played it cool at first. She just said she wondered what made my dad change his mind and that she wondered what my therapist would think. My therapist wholeheartedly agreed that T is and would be beneficial for my health and wellbeing, which was evidently not what my mom wanted to hear. It opened the floodgates:
“I want you to do what’s right for you, not what [a friend I’ve known since 5th grade] wants you to do, not what’s trendy”
“You need to work on why you hate yourself so much! This is just another form of self-harm, cutting parts off yourself!”
I have explained to her how and why these things are false (having supportive friends did not “make” me trans, transitioning is STOPPING self harm, not more of it) for the past 5 years. She’s always made it about her- I’m “not respecting” her, “not listening”, she says no one is thinking long term (including my supportive therapist).
She scoffs at this, but without a medical transition, I have no long term.
It’s dramatic, but it’s been proven true. During the few months I was on T without my parents' knowledge, I was so happy, so much freer — even my parents noticed!
Every time I have been turned away from a supported transition, I’ve gained scars, physical and mental.
Transitioning is not what I need because it’s “trendy” (it’s not at all trendy- what’s really “trendy” is getting the right hormones from birth), it’s what I need simply because I was born with the wrong ones. That doesn’t make me binary, nor conformist- I’ve told her I’d feel more comfortable expressing femininity when on hormones. She laughed at that: “why do you need an Adam’s apple to wear a dress?”
My mother has told me for five years to think of her, to view it from her perspective, to think of her. She’s been telling me how much she tries, and how ungrateful I’ve been. But I do think of her. Every time I’ve gone behind her back for an appointment or to buy hormones, I felt crushingly guilty. I didn’t want to hurt her or to have to lie. I simply needed to survive.
I wish she’d think of me.