It’s the Transgender Day of Visibility, so here’s a roundup of stories about transgender parents (and one important piece about how we tell the stories of transgender kids).
An estimated 700,000 adults in the U.S. identify as transgender, which means that between 175,000 and 350,000 transgender adults are parents, according to UCLA’s Williams Institute. Not surprisingly, kids of transgender parents are doing well.
Canadian filmmaker Rémy Huberdeau raises the voices of Transgender Parents in a documentary “about love, life and kids after a gender transition.”
For transgender adults who want to pursue parenthood through pregnancy, a recent article in a major medical journal points out the obstacles they may encounter and offers some guidelines for removing them.
Want to explain to your kids what it means to be transgender? Here’s one trans man’s answer. (Other good resources for explaining reproduction and gender in inclusive ways are What Makes a Baby?
Worth a read, too, is Harper Keenan’s recent piece at The Feminist Wire, “The Spectacle of the Transgender Child.” Kennan, who is trans, observes a pattern among the increasing number of videos that show trans children. “The opening shot is of a conventionally cute kid engaging in highly gendered behavior,” he notes. “The video then cuts to an interview with at least one parent, who is heterosexual, attractive, and gender-normative.”
What we don’t see in the videos, however, is “the child describing their own gender identity” or “reflection by any adults on their own genders (because their genders are ‘normal’)…. We don’t see any footage showing the child actually defying traditional gender roles — instead, we see them moving from one set of gender norms and expectations to another.”
On this day of visibility, then, it seems wise to remember what author Chimamanda Adichie called “the danger of a single story.”
Make no mistake, though: trans stories need to be told. Transgender people are on the front lines of discrimination and violence in the U.S. Stories alone are not the full solution, but they help lay a foundation for understanding and change.
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This looks like an interesting collection of posts. Thanks for sharing.