I’m working on some longer pieces of writing. I’m trying to tell the story of our family, but I’m struggling. How do I tell our whole story without messing up Lee’s pronouns? These stories go back in time, to moments when I experienced this child as a girl.
Have you seen him lately? He’s not a girl. I was wrong. So how can I look back and use the wrong pronouns? Wasn’t it Maya Angelou who said, ‘When you know better, do better?” Well, I know better now.
Early on in his transition, my husband and I fell into this habit of switching pronouns. We were okay in the present… but how do you talk about the past? There was a point where it felt like two different kids; the girl-child and the boy-child. So we spoke about them differently.
In the first few months, there were also times when we did a cost/benefit analysis. I’m a little ashamed to say that there were times when I used the wrong pronouns because it was just easier. A customer or a former neighbor or an old acquaintance from high school would ask, “How’s your daughter?” I would mentally calculate. Should I explain? Is it worth it? In the grocery store aisle or at the gas station or in passing at a party? “She’s fine,” I sometimes replied, to save myself the time or the aggravation or the emotional investment of an explanation.
But over time, that little white lie, that dismissal of my child, that choice of convenience over honesty became more than I could handle. The little white lie felt bigger and bigger. It wasn’t okay to negate my child’s identity for my own comfort and convenience. And that’s what you do when you knowingly use the wrong pronouns. I couldn’t do it anymore. It felt wrong.
I got to the point where I could quickly correct people. “Actually, it’s Lee now. HE’s transgender.” It happened at the bank and at PTO meetings and at backyard barbecues. The more comfortable I became with my child’s transition, the easier it was for me to smile, state the facts, and move on.
You know what else? The more I learned, the more I researched and talked to other parents and doctors and therapists, the more confident I became. I knew better, so I could do better. I worried less and less about how people would respond, because, quite frankly, I didn’t care.
My job… my first priority… is to love my kid. Misgendering him for convenience or comfort? That’s not love. That’s betrayal. My son will get enough betrayal out there in the world. He’s going to deal with a lot of tough stuff. There will be a lot of people making weak excuses for their poor behavior and treating him like his existence is an inconvenience.
I’m not going to be one of them.
There’s something else that has changed since those early days of struggling with pronouns. It’s a little hard to explain if you haven’t been through it, but I liken it to learning a new language. At first, when you learn new vocabulary, you think the word in your native language first. Mentally, you translate. There is a brief pause between the thought and the speech as it passes through a mental filter. When Lee first changed his pronouns, my speech slowed. Every time I was about to say the words ‘she’ or ‘her,’ there was a tiny pause. Is this the right word? Nope. Adjust.
During those early months, I messed up pronouns everywhere. My brain was adjusting to this new filter. I misgendered my dogs and sisters and my students, because my brain was SO hesitant to use female pronouns. I couldn’t trust myself to automatically use the right word, so I overcorrected.
It happened slowly, so I can’t pinpoint the moment… but I no longer do that. My THOUGHTS are happening in the new language. Mentally, I’ve categorized Lee as ‘male.’ I THINK of him as male, so the pronouns come automatically.
Lee has been living as a boy for more than four years now. He LOOKS like a boy. He ACTS like a boy. His friends are boys. If you met him in town, you’d never know.
Yet, he still gets misgendered.
Of course, he gets misgendered by peers; the ones who mock him or harass him or intentionally exclude him. That’s a separate issue, and one that we (unfortunately) have to deal with.
He also gets misgendered by family. That is accidental. Nobody does it on purpose. But the family members who make mistakes are the ones who don’t see him that often. They probably have more memories and associations with a female version of this kid… and so they slip. I know it’s not intentional. I know they’re trying. They just haven’t yet gotten to the point where they actually think of him as male. They’re still translating.
He sometimes gets misgendered by teachers. There’s this one teacher who sometimes slips and uses the wrong pronouns. He’s not malicious toward my kid. He corrects himself. But what’s fascinating about this is that this teacher NEVER KNEW a female version of my kid. So why the mistakes? It makes me wonder what he really thinks about trans people. In his mind, is Lee a girl pretending to be a boy? Is he still mentally translating, because he actually, deeply believes that Lee is female?
I hate that I have to wonder about these things.
And, so, back to the original question. What do I do about the pronouns? The ones that tell the stories of our past? I guess I’ve known the answer all along. I’m not sure why I’m asking all of YOU. What I need to do is simply ask Lee. Because after all, it’s HIS story.