Читать книгу My Trans Parent - Heather Bryant - Страница 47

Chapter 3

The
Transition

Electrolysis. Hormone treatments. Surgery. Clothes. You might notice that, for the first time ever, your parent looks comfortable in their skin. You might have some initial feelings of discomfort. It can feel like getting to know a new person, a new identity. For me, the changes in my parent’s dress and hair, the hormones, and electrolysis didn’t impact me as much as the surgery. Dana still felt like my same parent pre-surgery. For you, it might be a change in clothes or voice that marks the shift. It’s different for everyone.

The transition is not a process with a definite start and finish. No one says, “This is what you must do.” Each person defines it for themselves. It can begin and end with a name change or shift in gender expression. It can involve some surgeries or none. For you, it will mean some change to your parent, one that makes them more comfortable in their skin. For you, it’s a process of understanding your parent, your family, and yourself.

Back in 1988 when my dad transitioned, there was a clear path based on binary principles: You must live for a full year in your chosen gender identity before you can have the surgery. This was to ensure that the person could integrate into the world in this new identity. It also reduced the number of people who might want it reversed. As a child, I saw the end result as our goal. Everything in between was a dress rehearsal. The surgery felt like the grand finale.

Some parents don’t have surgery and others wait for years, amassing the resources and support to do so. For my dad, surgery happened just a couple of years after she started the hormones. When she first started electrolysis, she told my mother once that her face looked like a billiard ball. The swelling and irritation lasted for days. For anyone who questions whether being transgender is a choice, they can look at the hoops that must be crossed, at the sometimes arduous and painful physical changes that must take place.

At the same time, the transition doesn’t always start with these physical changes. It can start before that or later. If your parent identifies as non-binary or gender fluid, or even if they don’t, each transition will follow its own unique pattern. It will be different for you, too, because you’re also part of this transition.

WHEN DOES THE TRANSITION START?

The transition can start with the telling. It can start with the name change, with asking for different pronouns. It can start with a change in dress. There’s no one starting point. And in the same way, there’s no finish line. When Dana transitioned, I thought the surgery was the big finish line. That was when she would be who she wanted to be inside and out, but it didn’t happen like that. The truth was more complicated. There’s no one way to be trans, and likewise, no one way to transition.

For you, the transition starts wherever you are and follows you through the changes in your family.

CHANGES IN GENDER EXPRESSION

“Whether she’s wearing wingtips or high heels, she’s my dad. I love the person in that body.”

—COLLEEN M., AGE 44

On days when Dana went for electrolysis, she lay on the couch with a beard of aloe on her face. Her skin turned red and puffy. It took so long to zap the hair from growing at its roots. She told me about a guy who looked like Tony Danza who went every week to get his uni-brow zapped. I pictured the actor in the waiting room at the electrolysist’s office. Anything was possible, I figured then. Anything could happen.

Hormones made her softer, her whole body growing a new layer. She wore her hair swept back and pinned to the sides. On her chest, two tiny buds appeared—the start of breasts. Still, as my parent, she was in the background, off to the side. There, but not all the time. I ran in to see her if I needed to know a word or ask a question. I didn’t call out her new name the way I used to call out “Dad,” but I still went to her with all of my questions and looked to her to explain the world.

You might be used to seeing your parent in a certain way, and this new way of expressing their gender can feel like an unexpected shift.

As a child, I paired people off: boy–girl, boy–girl, boy–girl. I grew up watching Disney princess tales where the prince came along to rescue the princess just in time. I thought of the world in boy–girl pairs. In the same way that I thought of couples only as boys and girls, I thought of dads only as men. As soon as my dad started wearing skirts, he couldn’t be my “dad” to the outside world. All the button-down shirts and skinny jeans got boxed up, along with the topsiders and blue-striped sneakers. These were all things my mother might have worn, but for now, they were off-limits in Dana’s wardrobe. To me, as soon as the dress changed, the shift felt absolute. This wasn’t a temporary change. This was who my dad would be from then on.

Noelle H.’s dad had been gruff and boring to her, so this new aspect of her parent didn’t quite fit. “I didn’t know how to process the women’s clothes part of it,” she said. “I had pop culture references for it, and they were all kind of cartoony. In the Tootsie vein or, at the time, the Phil Donohue Show—daytime talk shows and movies that felt over the top.” In ’80s talk shows and movies, people who crossed the gender lines were often shown in exaggerated contrast with a fake moustache or lipstick and heels. As she tried to reconcile the person she had known as her dad for 15 years with the new person emerging, she also started to see that this was about more than clothes. “The way it was presented initially, was like, ‘Your dad likes to wear women’s clothes sometimes. Not in front of you, but just sometimes.’ It became clear to me after the first year or two that this wasn’t just ‘I like to dress as a woman.’”

Your parents will probably try to talk to you and explain what’s going on, but you’ll see through the stories. Your own observations and experiences will fill in the missing gaps.

For years, Danielle C. watched her stepdad go to work dressed in an almost uniform of sorts. “She worked for the federal government, and every single day wore a short-sleeved, starched white button-down and slacks.” Seeing her stepdad dressed like that all the time made her gender seem fixed. Danielle didn’t expect at all that her stepdad was planning to change, in part because she’d watched her go to work each day in that almost uniform. In their first conversation about the change, her stepdad had talked about the dream of choosing what to wear, of deciding between a peach skirt suit and a black and white dress. As she told Danielle about the dream, it dawned on her what her stepdad was saying. All those years going to work in those slacks and short-sleeved shirts, she wanted something else.

Jennifer’s parent wore skirts and dresses around the house for years before she decided to transition. For her, the clothes weren’t a big part of the change or shift. They were already a part of who her parent was.

For Morgan, it was similar. Her parent already dressed according to his chosen identity well before the change. “There were physical changes that I observed in my dad gradually over time. His dress didn’t change significantly. His way of speaking and relating to other people didn’t seem to change a whole lot.”

Even described growing up with a parent who was outwardly very manly. His father was “a really macho man with big muscles, and he even had a beard—he was dressing up as a woman with a beard, but that was at a point in time when he was trying to sort of suppress it in a way.” Over time, his dad changed more, and that gender expression shifted until his dad was “a very subtle woman—more like a house mother in a way.”

When Amy’s parent wanted to go for a makeover together, Amy didn’t know what to say. This wasn’t something they’d done together in the past, and Amy had no interest or knowledge about make-up at all. “She asked for me to go with her to get a makeover and I said that I wasn’t comfortable with it because I don’t wear makeup—I don’t care about clothes, shoes, makeup—I’m not that person.” When Amy expressed her discomfort, her parent got emotional. “She cried, and I was just like, ‘I don’t know what to do.’” Amy didn’t want to share in the makeover, which came across to her parent as a kind of rejection or sense of discomfort with the change. A conversation later helped them both understand the other’s perspective.

If you can, be open and talk about these changes. Of course, that might be easier said than done. It’s not always easy to open up about these things, and we might not even know exactly what we feel.