A Psychotherapist’s Reaction to My Son’s Coming Out as Transgender

In February 2017, I met with a woman I knew privately and who happened to be a  psychotherapist (with a background in systemic family therapy and depth psychology).

We didn’t meet because of my trans son but because we happened to be in the same town and hadn’t seen each other for many years. After we had talked for a while about how life was going, she asked me about my transgender son, and I told her the story and made it clear that I supported him.

At that time, Finn’s coming out had been about six months ago, and he didn’t even have the medical certificate yet for the new name at school. We were in the early stages of his transition, checking out various psychotherapists.

After the meeting, she asked me via email whether I would like to have some thought-provoking nudges from her.

I wrote back, yes, why not? I needed help with my own situation. How could I handle feeling overwhelmed by the sudden onslaught of appointments? How could I handle my son when I needed to talk to him about the next steps, but he was resistant and defensive and in his typical teenage mode of behavior? I would welcome self-help strategies. Or did she have anything else in mind?

As it turned out, she did have something completely different in mind. She wrote me a long email detailing her view of the transgender phenomenon and how to deal with it, which I summarize as follows:

She thought that the wish to cut off one’s breasts was highly autoaggressive.

According to her theory, being trans was just a body dysmorphic disorder, like anorexia, for example. And the root cause of those dysmorphias was inner tension, anxiety, sadness, and disorientation in life. In order to alleviate the feelings of unbearable inner tension, the children could choose symptoms like anorexia or something else like being trans to feel powerful and in control and have some orientation in their lives.

Then she proceeded with some questions that seemed to come from her background in systemic family therapy and depth psychology. What unresolved issues in our family caused my child to have symptoms of being trans? And what were the early childhood causes for being trans–looking at everything like the pregnancy and birth; my rheumatoid arthritis;  whether I felt guilty because I couldn’t take care of my child that well due to the RA; considering that RA was an autoimmune disease and that meant autoaggressive, had there been autoaggressive traits in the family which manifested in my case as RA and in my child’s case as trans? She asked whether I had been too lenient and didn’t set enough boundaries, thus causing my child to grow up without orientation in life which in turn caused tension and then being trans. How was my child traumatized in childhood or maybe even from generations before?

She also had some suggestions for how to deal with the transgender symptom. According to her, we should not give in to our child’s wish to transition and use a new name and pronoun. As a result of these boundaries, of course, the child would feel sad. Her recommended approach was to deal with the resulting sadness. The child should describe the sadness. Learn to accept the sadness. As a mother, I should find support to help my child deal with the sadness. The process of grieving could lead to healing and help my child through puberty. That was what she suggested.

She tried to encourage me by saying that I didn’t need to position myself as a mother by supporting my child in his transition. I could just as well position myself as a mother by setting boundaries and thus giving my child orientation and stability. (-WTF? As if I only helped my child because I needed to position myself as a mother? Heck, I was worn out from the marathon through all the psychotherapists at that time. I did it to help my son and not to “position myself.” That was an implicit allegation, and I felt angry about it.)

My first, spontaneous inner reaction to her long letter was, Whoa! What an elaborate, utter $%&@, What an interesting point of view!

How was I going to answer that email? How detailed should I respond? Was it worth debating with her? And was it my job to try to educate her? How could I answer without letting my anger flare up?

Of course, there can be cases where transidentity or gender dysphoria was a symptom to cover up some deeper issues, and of course, these cases should be found out before major irreversible steps (like surgery) have been taken. But her assumption that gender dysphoria in general was highly autoaggressive and could be treated like anorexia was just completely wrong.

I tried to think that the entire encounter must have been good for something. Maybe I needed to be shown how the mind and its intricate reasonings worked in the case of a psychoanalyst.

Being trans is not something like anorexia. Therefore, it cannot be treated with the same set of tools that would be used for anorexia.

Being trans is more something like being left-handed or being homosexual. A bit unusual. A bit impractical maybe. But not an illness that can be treated.

Left-handedness is not treated by working on childhood trauma, suppressing the use of the left hand, then learning to accept the discomfort and sadness of having to use the right hand, or setting more boundaries for the child. And neither is transidentity treated by that.

I guess it is like in the saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer, then everything looks like a nail. When the only tool psychotherapists (especially those with a background of depth psychology and psychoanalysis) have is their approach of looking for unresolved traumas in the past, then every patient looks like a case of unresolved traumas to them.

I managed to write a polite reply to the psychotherapist, thanking her for her effort and that I knew she only meant well, and she only tried to help and fix us, but I also stated firmly that transidentity was not an illness.

She only meant well. And she probably hasn’t learned anything about gender dysphoria in her studies at the university and not taken any classes about it since. The phenomenon of transidentity was rare back then and doctors didn’t know how to treat it.

A year after this encounter with the psychotherapist, the World Health Organization announced in 2018 that Gender Incongruence was no longer classified as a mental disorder (https://www.mentalhealthjournal.org/articles/gender-incongruence-is-no-longer-a-mental-disorder.html).

And in 2020, Germany passed a new law which stated that it is illegal  to try to “cure” homosexual and transgender people who were younger than eighteen years old with conversion therapy.

The progress in society is slow, but it does exist.

***

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.

Coming Out to Family and Society: Reactions

In the fall of 2016, Finn also came out in family and society. The reactions were mixed.

Supportive Reactions
On the one hand, there was a lot of support. My brother congratulated Finn on his coming out and sent us a link to the PBS documentary  Growing Up Trans (https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/frontline/documentary/growing-up-trans/).

My father just took note of the announcement and remained neutral, which I appreciated a lot. No hostile remarks. No reproaches towards me. Just a neutral acknowledgment of the situation.

One of Finn’s female friends from school said, “How exciting! Now you become a boy.”

Our neighbors stayed up late to record a documentary about transgender on TV and gave us a CD with the recording. I was very grateful and moved by their kindness.

The Dancing School
The dancing school where Finn was about to take beginner’s ballroom dancing lessons called us on the phone and said, “Do you know that your child wants to dance as a boy and learn the men’s steps? Do you allow that?”

“Yes, we allow that,” I said.

“But how do we go about communicating that? If we announce it to the other dance students, then maybe nobody wants to dance with your child anymore?”

“Don’t worry. Most of them are at his school and already know that he is trans.”

Finn’s dancing lessons turned out fine. He is a passionate and talented dancer and never had trouble finding a dance partner.

The High School Social Worker
After the prom of the dancing school, I coincidentally met Finn’s high school social worker, and she said she had seen some pictures on the internet of him on the prom, “I saw that she was there as a boy. It was so good to see how happy she smiled on these pictures. How wonderful if kids have a hobby like this!”

I saw that the social worker was genuinely happy for Finn and wanted to express that. However, I cringed about her way of expressing it with which she misgendered my son. In the beginning, I had done that, too, misgendered my son when I talked about him to others. Should I let her know the proper way to say it? “She” is not there “as a boy”. My child is a boy and he participated as who he is. The lady was the school social worker and should be educated about these matters. But I thought it was not necessarily my job to educate her. So, I chickened out and just nodded a polite uh-huh and bye-bye.

My Husband
My husband got very angry and agitated and said to our son that he shouldn’t be trans. He should think about his future and how he would get a job later. Maybe some employers would not employ transgender people? In his opinion, it was better not to be trans.

My Mom
My mom said something along these lines: “It is just a phase. You should be a bit stricter with her. She is just testing her boundaries. You cannot always be so permissive and allow everything.”

My Mother in Law
Right after my son’s coming out, my MIL said to my husband, “Can’t you threaten her (meaning Finn) with  sending her away to a boarding school if she doesn’t stop that nonsense?”

In the fall of 2016 when Finn visited my MIL for several days, she said: “You will have to dress up nicely and wear this feminine blouse when we go to visit my friend’s party. Otherwise I won’t let you join the party.”

During that week, she also said, “Wait until you fall in love with a boy. Then you will certainly want to be a girl again.”

However, there seemed to be some progress later. For Christmas 2016, she bought Finn the autobiography of a German transgender man (Blaue Augen bleiben blau (Blue Eyes Stay Blue), by Balian Buschbaum, only available in German). I thought that was very kind of her and a sign that she had made peace with the situation.

But in 2017, her weird comments continued. “Finn’s cousin had the same phase. She wanted to be a boy. But this passed. Now she wears skirts again.”

In the fall of 2017 my MIL said to me, “You made a mistake when you allowed her to use the new name and pronoun. Now she cannot go back if she decides that she wants to be a girl again. You really shouldn’t have done that.”

I rejected her reproach politely but firmly.

A few months later she added, “I tell you one thing. If there hadn’t been the internet, then the girl wouldn’t be trans.”

Around Christmas of 2017, about 1.5 years  after my son’s coming out, my MIL still hadn’t found peace with it.

Then she told me that she had always wished to have a daughter. But she got only two sons and was disappointed.  When I gave birth to what appeared to be her granddaughter, she was overjoyed. Finally, her wish seemed to have come true. And now this granddaughter was a boy. How disappointing again! It was almost too much for her to bear.

At this point, my indignation about her comments switched into compassion for her situation. Her life’s dreams about raising a girl had crumbled to dust and she was desperately trying to do something about it. Trying to keep the hope that the situation was going away. Or trying to make things revert back to normal. Or trying to find a scapegoat.

Even though the initial reactions the the coming out were wild, a few years later, people in my family had mostly made peace with Finn being transgender, or at least they had found some acceptance for the situation.

***

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.

Coming Out at School: The Letter

In October 2016, after my son had told his principal at school and each one of his teachers in a one-on-one talk that he wanted to be called with the new name Finn and the pronoun ‘he’, he probably assumed that the struggle was over and it would be like a fairytale ending of “and he lived happily ever after.”  Far from it! The struggles with the outer world had just started.

The school set up a meeting with Finn, my husband and me, the principal, Finn’s classroom teacher, and a social worker. And then the teachers decided in a conference later that they needed a statement from a medical doctor /psychiatrist that my child needed to be called with the new name and pronoun because it was important for his health and wellbeing. That was a big hurdle. But fortunately, the principal gave us the address of a psychiatrist who would treat Finn later.

Due to circumstances and events which were more my son’s and my fault than the fault of the psychiatrist–we did a convoluted journey contacting several other psychotherapists rather than going to the one recommended by the school–, we ended up getting the medical certificate with some delay in the spring of 2017 from the psychiatrist who was recommended to us by the principal in the first place.

During that time from October 2016 to spring of 2017, my son suffered at school. He told me that he would not raise his hand in class and added, “Because most of the teachers use my old name. And that is like a punch in the stomach each time. I always need too long to recover from that.” So, he didn’t raise his hand to answer questions, and his grades dropped.

As a side note, I want to mention that Finn was not the first transgender child at his school. There was a transgender girl who was one year older than Finn and had already gone through all the procedures of name change and hormone prescription. And the principal had known several cases of transgender people. But those were all older. They came back to contact the school principal as adults to change their names on their high school diplomas. Finn was the first case at that school to come out at thirteen years of age.

The Letter
My son wanted to announce officially also to his classmates that he was trans. But he wasn’t allowed to. Many of them knew already because he had told them during recess. And they were okay with it. But he also wanted to tell it officially to everyone in his class during a classroom lesson.

But the teachers kept him waiting with stalling tactics. They would always promise that, yes, he could announce this next week. But when my son turned up full of hope and ready that he could now tell his classmates,  then the teachers  withdrew their promise. Repeatedly.

When that happened, my son would come home each time  totally frustrated, looking defeated and depressed. It was painful for me to watch his suffering. I think the teachers kept him waiting because he didn’t have the medical certificate yet.

I suggested to Finn that he didn’t need to depend on the goodwill of the teachers. And that there must be another way. We just needed to find it.

After thinking back and forth through various options, we came up with the idea that he could write a handwritten letter to his classmates, make thirty photocopies, and then distribute the letter by placing it on each desk before the first school lesson in the morning was to start. The teachers didn’t need to be asked for permission or even to be informed. So, that’s what he did, and it worked well.

The story with the letter to his classmates was one of the many battles that we fought and won during this journey.

The children at school were all cool with it. There was no bullying or so.  It was only adults who tended to have a problem with Finn’s transidentity.

***

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.

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.

Looking Back

I was born privileged in the western part of Germany into a middle-class family. A good education was encouraged. No money worries. No disabilities. No family turmoil of things like abusive behavior, divorce, drugs, or mental illness. But rather good starting conditions.

Up to the time of my marriage and having kids, I had grown up into woman who had self-confidence.

But I was also confronted with gender stereotypes about how women have to dress and to behave and what kind of jobs they can have and how much work they are expected to put into taking care of the family. Looking back at all these stories I shared, I still find it incredible how retarded the population is–even in places where I thought that people would be more developed.

These stories happened in Europe, the US, and Japan around the turn of the millennium. This wasn’t back in the medieval dark ages. And it wasn’t in some bad misogynist society like Afghanistan after the Taliban took over in 2021. I assumed that during these times and in the Western world a woman should be free to be as she wants to be. Okay, for a woman, being oneself in Germany around the turn of the millennium is not nearly as dangerous as in Afghanistan after 2021. But still, there is this underlying everyday sexism, and one has to endure comments and develop a thick skin.

The misogyny here was not enforced by law, but it was more subtle. It pervaded the minds of almost everyone I met. Standards that people held in their minds voluntarily. Invisible standards. Unwritten rules. Which only erupted every now and then in sudden statements like “And does Karin also clean the staircase?” or “You can buy sports length nails and glue them on.”

And the mindset is still retarded. In June 2023, I heard of a study which said that one third of all young men in Germany think that it is justifiable to use physical violence towards their partner if they want to get respect (https://www.dw.com/en/1-in-3-german-men-find-violence-against-women-acceptable-survey/a-65884531). Additionally, more than half of the men think that women’s task is to take care of the household and the men’s task is to earn money. Old stereotypes die hard.

The huge flare up of the anger which I experienced around 1990 about unfair treatment of women had settled down by 1993 since I knew I could not do anything about it. It was not my main focus anymore. But it had gone underground into a slow boil, ranging from a constant mild annoyance to occasional flare-ups when I was triggered. And I was just focused on being myself and doing what I wanted to do regarding job and having a family.

Around after 2000, there was a colleague at my job in the corporate world who would make frequent sexist remarks. These were the only incidents that triggered the topic of gender stereotypes and the anger about injustice in regular intervals. Other than that, it was pretty much quiet.

Little did I know that the topic of gender stereotypes and all these questions of what makes girls grow up as girls and boys grow up as boys complying with the respective gender stereotypes would come up totally unexpectedly more than a decade after the birth of my first child.

***

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.

Shared Income and Shared Duties

Shared Income
My husband and I shared the income. After I had seen the disadvantages of how my parents had handled their financial responsibilities in an unclear manner, I wanted to handle this in a better way. So, we agreed that we would put our two incomes together into one bucket, then split it. Everyone gets half of the sum. And then we would split all the costs of living also so that everyone would pay their share.

We still each have our own bank accounts for our salary. The process of putting it into one bucket, splitting it, and then calculating who has to pay how much happens with the help of software my husband wrote.

This felt like a fair deal. We earned a similar salary when we started. But when one of us would go part-time in order to take care of the kids, the income would be lower, of course.

Part-Time Work and Shared Duties
When I later talked to women colleagues about how my husband and I worked both part-time, they would usually say something like, “Oh, my husband would never do that!” Their husband would work 100% and they as the wife would work 50% and take care of kids and do the household chores alone. This would lead to stress for the women, usually.

And it would also lead to a lack of understanding on the side of the husband because he would not know how exhausting it could be to take care of the kids with changing diapers and supervising homework, do the shopping, cleaning, cooking, and laundry. Some husbands thought that their wives were not at work which meant they have each afternoon off. Which meant that they should be pretty relaxed and they should not complain because they had an easy life while he, the husband, was off to work and earned the money.

I was glad that my husband also got to know how exhausting it could be to take care of the kids and cook lunch at the same time in a hurry after work.

I found work at the office to be much more relaxing that staying at home with little kids. Sitting in a meeting for two hours and not having to say anything if I didn’t feel like it. What a luxury! Having lunch served at our cafeteria. Being able to have a conversation with other adults during lunch. All these were things I valued when I escaped home and went to work part time in the office of my corporate job.

I didn’t reach as highly in career as my husband. While I earned more than he did in the earlier years of our relationship, that changed over time. He reached a higher career level than I did. This can only partly be attributed to the fact that I took more time with the kids later. (At first, he took more time off for the kids at home). My “failure” (compared to my husband) in career was more due to the story about my anger at work because of too little recognition. There was not really a functional career, only a project lead career even though the management would not admit that. I have talked to other men from my department who also felt the same issue that they didn’t get enough recognition for their work because it wasn’t project management. It is an issue which is particular to our department and not a gender issue.

***

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.

Pregnancy and Progesterone

I wanted two kids. A girl and a boy. From being the older sister myself, I thought it was good when the girl was the older one and got some self-confidence from that constellation.
So, I thought, Let’s have the girl two years older than the boy, please. And that’s what I got–very close birthdays in the same month, almost exactly two years apart. (Note to self: Always be careful what you wish for; two children’s birthdays in the same week can be exhausting.)

Apart from the wish for girl first, boy second, please, I wanted a strong, tall, and smart daughter. A daughter who would not be subjected to gender stereotypes of women which would undermine her self-confidence as I had experienced them.

Unfortunately, I had trouble becoming pregnant before the first pregnancy and needed a little medical boost of infertility treatment. After I successfully became pregnant, the gyn prescribed progesterone gel to make sure the child stayed with me. But she warned me that the side effects could be that if the child was a girl that she could have some masculine interests. I thought, never mind. I have no issues with a girl with masculine interests.

But when my child came out as trans during puberty, I thought, oh no, was it the influence of the progesterone gel?

***

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.

No Name Change After Marriage

Biological Clock
I wanted to get married and have children. That was one of the big goals in my life. And women have a biological clock. My gyn told me it would be best to start having kids before the age of 35. That affected my dating behavior. When it became apparent that my second boyfriend did not have marriage and children on his bucket list, then that was one of the reasons why I decided to end the relationship.

A few months after I left my former boyfriend, I met my future husband at the end of 1998.

By that time, I had given up thinking about the unfairness between men and women and where it all came from. I could not solve the problem. I could just do what made me happy and learn to not give a damn about anyone else’s opinion. The huge sense of anger about the ever-present sexism I had felt a couple of years ago had shrunk into a dim glow into the background.

So, I just went ahead with my life, basically getting settled into my job in the corporate world and planning to have a family later.

When I dated my future husband and when it became clear that this relationship would be more serious, I let him know that it was important for me that we shared the responsibilities for both work and children later. That meant not only I would work part time, but he would, too, when we had children to take care of. And he agreed to that.

No Name Change After Marriage
In 1994, Germany passed a new law that stated that each person could still keep their former surnames in a marriage.

When I got married in 2001, I didn’t change my last name and my husband kept his surname, too. I didn’t take on a double-barreled name either. I just kept my maiden name. At that time at the turn of the millennium, that was not very common yet in Germany even though we had this new law for 7 years which would have allowed it. Most people still wanted to have a common family name.

We named the children after my husband’s surname (simply because I thought that his last name sounded better than ‘Finger’.)

Sure, there have been incidents when people used the wrong last name for me. At pre-school or when we went to the doctor, they didn’t know any better and addressed me with my children’s last name. Never mind. I don’t regret having kept my surname.

Changing a name takes a lot of paperwork effort as I would see later when we did the legal name and gender change process with my trans child. I’m glad I had to do this process only once.

***

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.

Positive Aspects I Experienced Growing Up as a Woman

In the past posts, I have talked about all the bad stuff of being a woman. All the little misogynistic incidents, all the everyday sexism. But when I share what it has meant to me to grow up as a girl and woman, there are also some more neutral or positive aspects to be mentioned.

Mom’s Encouragement
Despite some discouraging things  my mom did that held me back, I want to mention that she told me, “If you really want to achieve something, you can do it.”

That statement was very important for my self-confidence, and when life became tough, I remembered what my mom had told me.

Gender-Specific Learning
My mom was very much into handicrafts of all kinds and she taught me a lot. And I was eager to learn sewing, knitting, crocheting, and much more. She also taught me a bit about cooking, baking, and about how to cut someone’s hair.

When I was older, my mom taught me how to sew. And I made many dresses for myself. I liked the fact that I could make the dresses or shirts exactly as I wanted them. I could choose the pattern, the fabric, and the colors. I wasn’t stuck with the options that were available in shops, but I had much more influence on the style. If I had set my mind on having an emerald-green shirt with batwing sleeves in a fabric that didn’t need to be ironed, such a shirt was probably difficult to find in the shops. But I could always sew it myself if I could find the fabric.

But when my bike had a flat tire, this was my dad’s job. He didn’t teach me how to do it, but he would just fix it himself. But I also wasn’t as interested in learning how to fix my bike as I was in how to fix a hole in my t-shirt.

So, I grew up with a skillset with the typical gender bias. That can be seen as an advantage or a disadvantage. I see it as neutral. It happened, and there are certain consequences. But I am okay with the result. I can fix holes in my shirts and don’t need to throw them away. And if I don’t know how to fix my bike, I go to the local bike shop and pay them to do it.

Clothing
Not everything was bad about being a woman. I liked being able to wear pretty dresses, jewelry, and fancy, braided hairstyles when I was younger.

When I was in elementary school, I played violin in an orchestra from the music school. And on several Sundays, we gave concerts. I remember that my mom sewed me a new dress for almost every concert because she liked to sew, and she was so proud of me and wanted me to look pretty.

I also saw the advantage that sometimes women’s clothing was much more practical at times. Sure, we didn’t have as many pockets on the pants as the men did. But I remember one hot summer during our high school trip to Rome in Italy when I wore a (self-made) loose cotton spaghetti strap dress and how wonderful that was during the heat. The boys and especially the male teacher were envious that they could not wear something light like that.

Social Interactions with Other Women
I enjoyed friendships with other women and that we could talk about deep personal stuff. I can’t say for sure how this is between men, of course, because I lack the experience, but I think that often between them it is not so deeply personal and open.  My guess is that their talk is more about impersonal stuff and that they keep each other at arm’s length and have more need to state their independence.

Also, the communication style is different. At work, I’ve often observed the interaction between men at lunch conversations. Among men, it is more accepted to make jokes about each other, some playful insults, as if that was a means of establishing contact. Among women, that would be unusual behavior. When I saw that behavior among the guys, I wouldn’t want to be a target of their playful insults, and I was glad that I was not a man.

No Compulsory Military Service
When I was younger, the guys had to do compulsory military service after they graduated from school whereas the women didn’t. In Germany, the compulsory military service was suspended with a new law in 2011. I thought I was lucky that I wasn’t drafted.

Restrooms
In public restrooms, the queues for the women’s restroom is usually longer. But I was really grateful that we got to pee in privacy behind a closed door. The men had to get used to relieving themselves with other guys present. Unthinkable for me.

Dancing in the Follower Role
When I was younger, I did a lot of competition dancing, ballroom and Latin. Dancing in the follower role is different than in the role of the leader.

A couple of times, when not enough men were present at an event, I danced in the leader role. That felt unfamiliar and involved being a lot more active in the mind because I had to plan in advance which steps to dance next. However, in the follower role, I could relax, be receptive, and wait for the lead of my partner. I enjoyed that much more.

So, each role teaches certain skills, and these skills are different. Men who have to dance in the role of the follower, are not trained to be in this receptive waiting state, catching the clues of the next lead.

Acceptance of Parental Leave
My boss readily accepted when I reduced my work hours after I got my first child. He probably would also have accepted it had I stayed home entirely for 1-3 years. But when I talked to a male coworker who also wanted to stay home for about a year after his child was born, he told me that our boss reacted a bit more surprised and also somewhat resistant to that idea.

Taking parental leave is accepted for women but not so much for men even though we have a new law in Germany since 2007 which encourages this for both parents (https://www.dw.com/en/german-family-minister-calls-new-parental-leave-law-a-success/a-3005391).

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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.

Extended Breastfeeding

Even though I had to wean my first child prematurely (and unnecessarily) due to the RA meds, fortunately, the breastfeeding wasn’t over for him. When I got my second son, I breastfed him, too. And then my older son (2 years old) also wanted to drink again. I let him, sometimes feeding both kids at the same time in football hold. We continued to breastfeed in addition to normal meals until my younger child was 3 years old and my older kid was 5. Then we stopped.

That may seem long for Western societies. But the WHO says, “From the age of 6 months, children should begin eating safe and adequate complementary foods while continuing to breastfeed for up to two years of age or beyond.”  (https://www.who.int/health-topics/breastfeeding#tab=tab_2)

A study in Pediatrics Child Health says: “Natural weaning occurs as the infant begins to accept increasing amounts and types of complementary feedings while still breastfeeding on demand. When natural weaning is practiced, complete weaning usually takes place between two and four years of age […].“ (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2720507/)

Mealtime had always not only meant nourishment to my kids but also physical closeness. And maybe that was due to the prolonged breastfeeding phase. And so, after every lunch, my kids used to both crawl up on my lap, one kid on each of my legs, and cuddle. This behavior lasted until they reached puberty. They were territorial while doing this and wanted to make sure their sibling didn’t overstep the line to their side of mommy. I joked that now I knew what the zipper of my jacket was for. It served as the line of demarcation between the left and right side of my body.

I got some resistance from my parents to my extended breastfeeding. My mom didn’t like it and tried to talk me out of it. One day when my parents visited us, my toddler-age kids wanted to breastfeed. I sat down on the sofa in our living room and started to feed both at the same time. However, when my mom saw this, she said, I should stop. Because my dad wouldn’t want to see “that kind of nakedness”.
What? I was surprised. Nudity was never an issue in our family. We were raised being comfortable with it. Then why couldn’t I just sit down in my own living room and nurse my kids when my parents were present?

I found it not only remarkable that my mom was opposed to it. It was also remarkable that she assumed my dad would not like it–he hadn’t said yet that he was bothered by it–and, in an act of anticipatory obedience, she tried to make him comfortable by admonishing me to change my behavior.

Apart from the whole breastfeeding thing, that is also a behavior of some women that they want to make sure their partner is comfortable and doesn’t go into some choleric fit of rage. Walking in front of him, paving the way, and make sure not a single pebble on the street would make him stub his toe and cause him to go into an angry outburst. Some sort of extended people-pleasing behavior that makes sure not only the woman herself behaves in a pleasing way but everyone else, too.

Or maybe this incident was just extended child-rearing. Like moms would admonish their kids to behave well when daddy comes home from work, she admonished me to not breastfeed when dad was in the same room–even though I was already about thirty-six years old.

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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.