One of my children is questioning their gender, and they seem at ease with non-binary. I found this out yesterday, so I’m approaching this gently, though I feel ill-prepared. I want to be who they need.
I’m curious about the experiences of other parents, or stories about your parents learning to adjust if you came out to them.
Follow-up: Thank you all so much for your stories and your feedback!
If you have kids, please read a book about gender. If you don’t, please also read one.
That’s really not the point. If someone steps on your foot, it still hurts, even if it was unintentional.
The entire notion of gender at this point means less than nothing… “sex” used to be the word and category we used and, since it still has some physical, objective feel to it, it’s less used in current Western conversation. But if you’re willing to recommend a book that says something and isn’t just “aspirational” and based on nothing but wind and wishes, I’m open to it.
And I understand, of course this conversation will hurt at least one group of people because it puts into question their ideology, upon which they probably have built a whole identity and even taken some irreversible physical steps towards becoming who they feel they are… I didn’t say it to “cover my ass” because I know how I feel, I said it to inform the LGBTQ+ folks here that they don’t need to feel like yet another person hates them.