Parents and Trans Children.

I tweeted last night about a Buzzfeed article with a video showing a very emotional moment of young trans girl finding her first dose of hormones. And it got me thinking about the importance of supporting children experiencing gender variance and dysphoria and the societal gender norms that pressure so many to conform.

This makes me so unbelievably happy ❤🌈 http://t.co/ek5dehER2z

— charlie (@contagiousqueer) September 29, 2015

Gender, particularly the gender binary, is socially constructed, learned at a very young age, and assigned at birth based on what doctors see between your legs. (And if they can’t really tell? Doctors will preform surgery on intersex newborns to make sure every one conforms – something that has been gaining controversy, especially with intersex activists.) So often we as a society see gender and sexuality as a binary system, where you are either male or female and that determines a lot about who you will become before you can even begin to understand yourself.

Seeing the rise in trans youth and the parents who accept them unconditionally and respect their autonomy makes me so unbelievably happy. The support that Erica Maison gives her trans daughter Corey is so amazing because there’s always the unfortunate possibility that LGBTQ+ children  and youth might be thrown out and experience homelessness.

Maison isn’t the only person who has been supportive of their trans or gender nonconforming children. Frida Berrigan wrote about how her son loves to wear dresses and how we need to let children have options and fluidity with gender. Tasha Sanders wrote about how she’s been navigating gender norms with her transgender daughter and how there’s still so much more work to be done to make society more accepting.