Oct 26th, 2005
Interview on Helen Boyd’s Blog
Helen Boyd is the author of My Husband Betty. Her blog about gender and trans issues, (en)gender has a regular feature “Five Questions with…”
Today’s five questions are with….me.
Excerpt:
Are the children of T-people becoming more visible, in your opinion? How are their issues the same/different from those who have GLB parents?
I think there are added challenges for kids of T parents because many T-parents can and/or want to live stealth. A child being out about having a T parent, necessarily outs the parent as being trans. Passing is a huge issue of contention for the kids who are forced to be “closeted” to protect their parent’s privacy, at the cost of feeling isolated and unable to reach out to kids with similar background.
Conversely, some kids don’t want to always be explaining their family, but the parent wants to be very out. Closeting a transparent can be very painful for the parent, because it usually involves fabrications that deny their parent-child relationship, such as saying that a T-parent is a long lost aunt or a “family friend.”