“In a way, I think of it like being Spider-Man, you know? Like he’s so strong and brave, but he can’t really identify as Spider-Man because he knows it will hurt everyone he loves. And I think I war between that. You know, like a part of me wants to be, you know, the person, that my mom wants me to be, but then I realize that I’m a greater person when I’m not the person she wants me to be. So it’s kind of like a war between myself. ‘Cause I know if I don’t go through with the hormones and the surgery, I know I would just be miserable. But my mom and my family would be happy. You know, it’s just kind of like a war…” (Sadowski, 2008, p.139)
It is a touching story. When Matt, a female-to-male transgender youth, (by 2004, he was still biologically female) told her mom that she wanted to become a guy by doing hormone surgery, her mom’s first reaction was shocking, then angry, and finally turned to be very sad. She tried all kinds of methods to stop Matt from doing the surgery. She even said that Matt was too selfish that she made her family sad. In order to make her mom happy, Matt postponed her surgery plan but subsequently she became very depressed. Matt said that she was not that selfish to make her family sad; instead, she was just brave enough to stand out as a herald of transgender group.
Like Matt, the most serious pain a lot of LGBT people suffer when they come out might not be the discrimination from outside their family, but the sadness, disappointment and even shame they see from their family members, especially from their parents. When parents learn the fact that their own kid is a gay, lesbian, or transgender person, their first action usually is to persuade their child to give up that idea. If the child does not listen, some of them may stop accepting him/her as their child or even just simply cut off the relationship with their child.
It makes me think that sometimes it is not the kids who are too selfish to make their parents happy; on the contrary, it is the parents who are too selfish to give their kids unconditional love. If they loved their kids before the kids come out, why can’t they continue to love them when they just have a different sexuality or new identity? Yes, having a different sexuality is still something untraditional and not easily accepted even though same-sex marriage has been legalized in many places, but being refused by their own parents after they took a lot of gut and experienced huge pain to make the decision of coming out may make them feel hopeless.
But in Matt’s case, I don’t think that her mom was just worried about having a transgender kid would make her lose face; actually, as a mom, her reaction was a natural one because she knew her daughter would suffer more during and after the surgery both physically and mentally. But if the surgery was the only way that could make Matt happy, why didn’t she just accept the fact and being a spiritual support for Matt?
References
Sadowski, M. (2008). Lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender students in U.S. schools. In M. Sadowski (Ed.), Adolescents at School: Perspectives on Youth, Identity, and Education (2nd Ed., pp. 117-146). Cambridge: Harvard Education Press.