My Older Child’s Coming Out as a Transgender Boy

In the summer of 2016, our older child came out as a transgender boy. And it was a huge surprise and shock for all of us.

No Atypical Development
Our older kid, assigned female at birth, had shown no signs of atypical development before puberty. We thought he was a girl, and his behavior, hobbies, and friends were what we considered normal for girls. For birthdays, he invited almost only girls. He wore long hair, painted his nails, and liked to use lipstick and eyeshadow. And I allowed it–even when he was only in elementary school. He painted many pictures, did many handicrafts, took ballet lessons, and sang in the choir.

He also wanted to have pierced earlobes for earrings when he was in elementary school. At first, I objected to his idea. This is something permanent, and I’d have preferred that he didn’t do irreversible damage to his body while he was still a child. But he begged so hard that I gave in eventually.

Although he had some dolls, he never did role-playing with them. And at the age of eleven years, he had a group of boys with whom he met frequently.

When he was eleven years old, he wanted to have short hair. With the new haircut, people started to treat him as a boy often. But at that time, it used to irritate him.

Later, he told me that he had already started thinking about being trans since he was eleven years old. It took him two years to find inner clarity and then come out to the family.

In September 2015, he had an exaggerated cute phase. He bought a wig with blonde and pastel-colored long hair and started to buy super cute and feminine kawaii-style hairclips. He wore that wig at school when the new school year started even though it must have been very warm under the wig.

Early Signs of Trans
Around the spring of 2016 when he was thirteen years old, the signs of trans started dripping in slowly. He made some remarks that sounded suspicious and could have alerted me. For example, he asked me whether it would be possible to change the gender later on an ID card or passport. Or he said that if ballroom dancing classes started in the fall of 2016, he would want to dress as a man for the ball. And later, he mentioned that he would also want to learn the dance steps of the guys and not the girls. He also wanted me to order a chest binder online. I wondered why he would want to wear something as uncomfortable as that. But I ordered it anyway.

I listened to this and just wondered where it came from. But there were no signs at all that he felt more like a boy. I thought of the recent super feminine Kawaii phase and thought that it was odd that he wanted to dress as a man now. In hindsight, I saw that there were lots of clues, but I didn’t get them.

Coming Out in the Family
In August 2016, at the beginning of our annual summer family vacation at the Baltic Sea, he told me, “I am a boy. Call me Finn and use the pronoun ‘he’. And, no, it is not a phase.”

We had named him Finja at birth thinking that our child was a girl, and Finn was a boy’s name derived from his former girl’s name (note: Finja/Finn are not his real names).

However, I still assumed that it was a just phase and that I just needed to keep calm and wait and see. I thought of the recent Kawaii phase and all the other phases he had been through with using make-up, lipstick, and nail polish. Probably, this would pass as well.

He also wasn’t very vocal after the initial coming out. He didn’t explain to me why he felt that way and since when. And if I had asked him, he would have reacted with annoyed resistance and defensiveness as he usually did at that time. Just the normal communication style of a teenager. So, to avoid this clash, I made sure to be careful when I asked him. But I didn’t get any more explanations. It was as if the short and firm statement of his coming out had taken up all his courage, and now there was no energy left for a Q&A session.

During the vacation, our house at the sea had no internet (yep, two weeks without online access; hard to imagine now). So, I couldn’t search anything online. And when I asked him later at home what that meant that he was a boy and how he would explain it and whether I could learn more, he just said, “Google is your friend.” He seemed very uncomfortable to give me further explanations.

The remainder of August and also September 2016 were fairly quiet with regard to the trans topic. Finn didn’t bring up the topic of the new name and new pronoun anymore. But I understood that he somehow wanted to wear masculine clothing. I agreed to that, and he bought a long-sleeved men’s shirt with a collar at the local supermarket. I remember how proud he looked when he wore it.

I didn’t really get why he needed to change his name and his pronoun. I still thought that my older child was a girl. And girls could have short hair and wear masculine clothing, too, and do all the things boys were allowed to do. No need to change the gender for that, I thought. As I have shared in my previous blog posts, in my own life I had demonstrated how to become a self-confident woman who just was who she wanted to be without giving a damn about other people’s opinions. Why couldn’t my child do the same?
My ignorance towards Finn being trans during that phase was partly due to the following things

• My own feminist path in life
• Finn’s childhood without any warning signs of trans
• My assumption that it was just another one of these phases
• My lack of knowledge about the transgender phenomenon

Coming Out at School
The event that eventually shook me awake happened around October 2016 around two months after the initial coming out. I was sitting on my bed when Finn came in, sat down next to me, and said: “Mom, now I have told our principal at school that I am trans and that I want him to use the new name and new pronoun. And in the next two weeks, I am going to have one-on-one talks with each of my other teachers. And I will let all of them know that they have to use the new name and pronoun.” He looked very determined and also very confident that after two weeks matters would be settled at school and that he would be accepted there as a boy.

This was the moment when I finally got it. He was serious about it. If this were just some teenage brain fart, then he wouldn’t have gone through the effort of telling his principal and all his teachers in one-on-one talks that he was trans.

He was thirteen years old at that time. What a courageous act for someone of that age! He wasn’t shy, and he did it alone. He didn’t ask me to coordinate this or speak up on his behalf.

Joy
I remember that the emotion I felt at that time when he told me about his coming out at school was strong joy. I noticed the joy and thought, How weird, why do I feel joy? Isn’t that inappropriate? (Also, an odd thought, right? Why can’t I just notice the emotion? Why do I have to judge whether it is appropriate or normal or whatever?) The joy was about the fact that my son had found out who he was and was courageous enough to stand up for himself.

Then I congratulated him. “I’m happy for you that you found this out for yourself. And that it happened already at such a young age.” I thought if he was really trans, then it was better to transition now than later at the age of forty-five years, for example, when the fall-out would be much larger if a partner and kids were involved.

From that time on, I tried to use his new name and pronoun.

The Struggles Were About to Start
From Finn’s point of view, his big inner struggle of the two years of pondering, doubt, and uncertainty was over now that he had come out of the closet. But the struggle with the outer world was just about to begin.

In the previous blog posts, I have shared the obstacles I encountered on my way growing up into a woman. In the following posts, I will share how the topic of just being who you are despite the expectations of other people played out during my son’s transgender journey.

***

This post is part of an online book about my journey with feminism and my son’s transgender journey. You can access the table of contents with links to each chapter here: TOC.