Why Can’t I Call My Trans Child by His New Name?
By: Anthony Aycock
Tags: Love, Children, Sexuality, Transgender, Parenting

The change, for me, should be easy. It’s only words, after all. I had a girl; now I have a boy. Her name was X; now it’s Y.

I don’t struggle with other name changes. I don’t slip up and call Caitlyn Jenner “Bruce,” Daniel Ortberg “Mallory,” or Russia “the Soviet Union.” Just flip the switch, right? Jace himself has implied this, as has his girlfriend, who in her occasional texts to me refers to the daughter I’ve always known — and the girl she met years ago — as “he” and “him.”

(If I’m tired, or have had a bad day, I swear it feels like she’s trolling me.)

Transitioning from one gender to another is a complete overhaul, a total transformation. “Old things are passed away,” in the words of the Apostle Paul; “behold, all things are become new.”

Plus it’s risky. According to a 2015 survey, 46 percent of transgender people had been verbally harassed. Thirty percent had been homeless, and another thirty percent reported workplace discrimination. Almost ten percent had been assaulted.

Jace seems unselfconscious about all this. He discusses transitioning casually, as though upgrading an iPhone.

For my generation, gender was immutable, except by surgery, which was a desperate act undertaken by someone disturbed (like Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, about whom Lecter says, “I wouldn’t be surprised if Billy had applied for sex reassignment . . . and been rejected”).

Millennials, on the other hand, see gender as this supple, whatever-y thing. We met one trans woman recently at a literary event, and when my son asked her which pronouns she uses, the woman said, “Oh, it depends. She/her, they/them. It varies.”

Transitioning from one gender to another is a complete overhaul, a total transformation. “Old things are passed away,” in the words of the Apostle Paul; “behold, all things are become new.”

I’m not ashamed to have a transgender child. Discussing it with people, however, feels awkward.

Suppose I’m on a date, and the woman asks me if I have kids. Do I say I have a son? A daughter? A son who used to be a daughter?

I could reply “I have a son” and leave it at that, but suppose the woman and I keep dating. She meets my son, who still looks like a daughter, and is surprised.

People my age don’t want dating surprises. They don’t want “drama,” which for twentysomethings means upheavals — fights with parents, workplace conflict, dubious baby daddies, can’t-take-a-hint exes. For my contemporaries, it’s anything that exposes the artifice of dating.

(At our age, we’re supposed to be celebrating china anniversaries, not hitting up randos on Tinder, and we’re a little prickly about it.)

Why don’t I explain things right away? When my date asks if I have kids, why don’t I follow the script I’ve been given: “I have a transgender son who is pre-transition”? The words don’t trip off the tongue, but they aren’t inscrutable.

A few reasons:

I don’t like follow-up questions. I’m wary of blowing my line (Wonderland language, remember?). I may not get a second date. I know, I know: I shouldn’t care about this. Anyone who would dump me on the basis of my child’s transition isn’t someone I should want to date. Unfortunately, that stance is the luxury of a person with options. Someone wealthy, good-looking. Someone without three ex-wives hanging around like the weird sisters from Macbeth.

Then there’s the existential argument. Three ex-wives, a transgender child, and dating in my mid-40s are not how I imagined my life shaking out.

I am the son of a Baptist pastor. My parents have been married half a century. Growing up, I knew no one who smoked or drank, except alcoholics my father counseled. Adults didn’t curse around me. None of my friends had divorced parents. I thought all moms were stay-at-home moms. Sex, in my imagination (I certainly didn’t do it as a teenager), was a transcendental experience.

Life has opened my eyes. I was raised conservatively but not in an echo chamber. My parents taught me to think for myself. I’m not afraid of new ideas, which makes my hesitation to use my child’s new name and pronouns indefensible.

Thank God he accepts my effort, if not my results.