FWIW, Bruce Jenner is listed as the winner of the 1976 Decathlon, and Cassius Clay as the winner of the 1960 Light Heavyweight title in Boxing.
Like I said, even before this and of course now, I would say I am an “ally” for LGBT acceptance. But it’s still true that what is personal is different from what is abstract.
It’s often applauded as courageous and seminal when Muhammad Ali took the stance upon his conversion to Islam to have not just current coverage of him as a boxer, but also references to his earlier accomplishments be done with that name, because “Cassius Clay was my slave name”. .
I never stopped to wonder what his father thought of that, being as he was named Cassius Clay, Jr. by his father after himself, and which father was still alive when he made that famous pronouncement. (And never mind the fact that the name was actually in honor of a fervent 19th Century abolitionist, not a slaveholder).
No.
Not being a parent I can not, of course, know these on as visceral a level as you do. I do know that having your child turn out differently than you had hoped, your child have traits you were unaware of, didn’t expect, or likewise turning into a surprise is by no means limited to just the parents of trans people.
Perhaps you yourself might benefit from speaking to a professional as this is clearly causing you distress and, as you point out, your child has enough to deal with right now.
I have heard what the parents go through is like a period of mourning - you’re losing the child you knew from your past and it is a real loss even if that person is still alive and in your life.
This is a very major change. Of course it’s disruptive, upsetting, and difficult. I do wish you and your child the best.
I gather he’s saying something different than “turned out differently than hoped.” He’s talking about actual experiences in the moment in which that person was his daughter. Yes, that person now might be his son, but the question is whether it’s right to ask him to edit his memories to change them from being about a daughter to being about a son. Because in that moment, that person wasn’t a son.
I am a parent. One of my children changed his name from the name we gave him to something completely different. I mostly try to use the current name even when referring to things he did as a child, when he went by the name I gave him.
That’s obviously less disruptive than changing your public gender…
But in the moment, that person was his child. Those experiences were real. The child had stuff about him that the parent didn’t know (like that he identified as a boy, not a girl) but it was still a child delighting in his parent singing a song just for him, using his name.
I have a weaker sense of gender in general than most people. I’ve had a lot of friends transition, and while I sometimes have trouble remembering everyone’s current name and such, I have never felt “this is a different person. The past experiences I had with this person weren’t fake.” In most cases, I felt the person’s gender was not completely as advertised before they transitioned. Even if I didn’t, their gender wasn’t central to our mutual experiences.
I don’t want to minimize the pain robardin feels. But I don’t really “get” it. And I agree that robardin might benefit from some counseling, if only to help think through these matters with a supportive person at his side.
Edited to correct were to weren’t
I do think that the term “deadname” doesn’t help. It does seem to imply that the person before the transition does not exist anymore.
For what it’s worth, I also use the Spivak pronouns “e/em/emself” etc. But at the same time, I recognize that, in actual usage by the majority of people, singular “they” is winning the competition for that grammatical niche.
And regardless of what name it’s appropriate to use for the past tense, can we at least agree that “Elliot Page comes out as trans” is a poorly-written headline? The headline needs to be able to convey people who don’t yet know the story.
Wait, your telling a person who clearly has trouble dealing with the childs decision (and rightly so) to "go see a doctor "? You see a doctor if your sick.
They are not sick.
What are you expecting of them seeing a counselor?
Looks to me like the suggestion was “speaking to a professional,” which can include therapists or counselors or some other qualified person to help robardin find a way to come to terms with their child’s transition. I don’t think it’s a bad idea, although I’m no parent myself.
This is the third or fourth time in the thread that you’ve taken a very surprised or disbelieving tone, but then from the other things you’ve said it seems pretty clear that you do understand what’s being talked about.
It seems like it’s probably the case that you aren’t confused, you just disagree, right? You don’t think these are real things? Because it’s sort of unfair for you to keep asking for explanations for things that you already understand.
It seems to me that you just don’t think being transgender is a “real” thing. The problem for you in this situation is that popular sentiment, and science, and lots and lots of actual human experience, says that you are mistaken in that belief. But don’t you think it’s sort of a waste of everybody’s time to keep pretending, like Columbo or something, that you just can’t make sense of the subject?
They had a nice tribute to her on NPR’s Weekend Edition last week. I was going to mention her but you ninja’d me.
Yes. People often see a therapist to help them deal with issues. That doesn’t mean they are “sick”, it means they have difficult emotional issues and might use some help. For instance, people who have a child who abuses drugs often find therapy helpful. People who lose a parent prematurely often find therapy helpful. I have several gay friend who see a therapist to help them cope with their parents. Other people see therapists because the issues they are dealing with stem from their own biology, sure (like manic depressives) but that’s hardly the only reason.
People also consult lawyers when they have complicated legal matters to cope with, and architects when they have complicated housing matters to cope with. Seeing a professional in a field where you need to deal with something complex is often helpful.
As somebody who flinches every time I hear someone use “whom” for “who” (although I’ve got used to people using “who” for “whom”), I sympathize with your reaction on a gut level. But I don’t think it’s going to, or should, affect the widespread acceptance of singular “they”.
The English language has always needed a non-gender-specific singular pronoun, and over the course of centuries has organically evolved singular “they” to serve that purpose. I don’t think we’re going to devise any easier or more popular alternative, so I say let’s embrace the one we’ve got.
[Moderating]
That’ll be an official Warning for trolling, @urbanredneck2. I am further directing you not to post any more in this thread.
I’m 100% OK with using singular “they” to replace “he or she” when referring to a non-specific individual of unknown gender. I find that it can be a bit confusing when referring to a specific person, especially if you don’t know that the pronoun is being used because they identify as non-binary.
As a non-parent, I don’t emotionally “get” it either, but one thing I have been reminded of when talking to parents of kids who’ve transitioned is the depth and passion of a parent’s desire to do right by a child.
Any form of telling a parent “things weren’t entirely how you thought they were, there was some dissatisfaction or unhappiness or wrongness in my childhood that you didn’t know about” is gonna hit a loving parent right in their core. Because so much of their life and focus was about making the child happy and fulfilled, and how the hell did they miss that particular bit?
It’s not selfish per se, it’s not about the parent thinking “Oh noes I thought I had a 98% on my Parenting Success Record and now this revelation of unsuspected childhood gender dysphoria is going to invalidate my high score!”. No. It’s a fundamental feeling of loss and disconnect because of the sorrow of perceiving oneself as having inadvertently failed one’s child in some way.
Completely unwarranted from a logical viewpoint, of course, because how can a parent know or foresee or predict everything about how a child is eventually going to look back on their childhood? But parents are not logical when it comes to their expectations of their own parenting and the depth of their identification with the person(s) they parented.
Or at least that’s how I see it from the outside from conversations with parents of trans kids. I could be completely misinterpreting the whole situation right out of my ass, for all I know.
Which is just another reason for a parent struggling with these issues to take the opportunity of talking to a professional about them, which I emphatically concur does not mean they’re “sick” or malfunctioning in any way. Because professionals tend to know a lot more about such struggles than anonymous randos on a messageboard.
This is exactly right. Singular they for a completely generic person is fine, (and has been used for centuries). Singular they for a specific known individual is new and is horrible.
Well it’s not all that new, IIRC we’ve been using it right here on these boards for fifteen years or so at least to refer to specific known posters whose gender identity we don’t know or have forgotten.
And “horrible” is an opinion. I admit, it sounds weird to me and I find myself confused periodically when my kid refers to “them” and I realize he’s talking about the person standing next to him. But my kid has no trouble with it at all. It’s not difficult or confusing or horrible. So I can either adapt, or be the dinosaur telling him or her to get off my lawn.
It’s new and it feels uncomfortable to me. But it’s what all the kids are doing these days. And language evolves. I’m working on getting used to it.
(But I confess that I often use the name of a friend rather than their pronouns if their chosen pronoun is “they”.)