My Daughter or My Trans Daughter: Activism, Identity, Medical Issue?
I wrote this very long post but then decided not to bore everyone to death. 😂 So, a semi long post. No. Ok. It’s a long post now!
Basically, I am a cis straight woman who grew up with lots of gay friends and thought of being trans similarly in the sense that I was a strong and vocal advocate for gay rights and now trans rights.
My daughter, who is now a young adult, transitioned as a mid teenager. And she is not at all interested in identity or activism or deconstructing the gender binary or anything like that. She doesn’t even like Pride. She doesn’t seek out trans friends.
She’s not Blair White or a Republican or anything. She’s very liberal. And she would never label herself a transmedicalist. But honestly that’s how she lives her life. Like being trans was a medical problem she has largely fixed.
She got mad at me a few months ago because she said I made everything about being trans with her. And I realized she was right. I think there were a few reasons for this, including all the bad things on the news, but also because I was not just seeing her as my daughter. I was always seeing her as my trans daughter. And I think she picked up on that because I would want to discuss things that were happening or if I saw something funny from a trans comic or just things like that.
But I realized it’s been 4 years and she lives her life as the woman she is. And what she wanted and what I wanted for her happened. She isn’t misgendered. Being trans isn’t the main thing in her life. And that is good because that’s what she wanted and I need to just see her as my daughter.
But I admit that’s hard when I know she is trans and I know how much our government wants to take away this happiness she has and that so many people are not as lucky as she was.
I don’t feel like being trans is bad. And my gay (guy) best friend ALWAYS talks about being gay. So to me these conversations felt normal. But I realized that it’s not the same. My BFF likes being gay. My daughter doesn’t like being trans. (She is also gay and that doesn’t upset her.)
But then all these messages from the trans “community” that this is somehow bad. That she should have pride about being trans. But she was suffering and that’s why we supported her transition. I don’t know. I’m just feeling confused. I resolved to not talk about it with her as much as possible but the mixed messages are confusing when I was trying to do everything “right.”