I commend you for this. One thing I think that cis people tend to forget, is that most trans people are fully aware of the reality of their situation, and are not delusional about what their bodies look like.

For example, I had some well-meaning friends who actually made me feel worse about myself with their comments. One friend was always calling me “big guy” when she jokingly flirted with me, knowing that I had issues with being so short. Another friend made some joke about me “being afraid my balls would fall off” or liking big weapons in games as “compensation.” It’s like they are all pretending I was a biological male with the body I wanted, but I’m not an idiot… I know I’m not big and don’t have a dick. You don’t need to rub it in. And you don’t have to “play along with my delusions”. I don’t HAVE any.

“By this I mean born female, living male; some body parts changed, or all, or none; intimate relationships that require knowing his shade of gray; living stealth or not or something in between. He knows this, but this is the hardest part for him.”

I take it you’re saying that he is having a hard time deciding to transition hormonally/surgically, because he is afraid of living in a grey area or having discomfort with relationships? At one time, this was the hardest part for me also. But your son needs to realize that he is already living in that grey area whether he transitions or not. If he is passing as male he is always going to have to explain his history to a potential date. So he should focus on whether the effects of T or the results of surgery are something he would like, rather than if those paths would put him in a “shade of grey”. He is already there.

Do your legal research. Check what the requirements are for changing his birth certificate in the state he was born in. Figure out what he has to do to get his drivers license gender matched up to his presentation. Like it or not, legal markers like these are currency now more than ever. He has a chance, during college, to make sure all of his documents match up prior to graduation.

He also has the opportunity to rack up work and internship experience under the name and identity he wants to go by for the rest of his life. I don’t know if either of you understand right now how valuable that really is. Many of us lose years, even decades of work experience during transition that really set us back and can take a long time to recover from.

It’s understandable for him to want to be certain of himself, and figure out if there are shades of grey he wants to blend in. College tends to give trans folks that kind of flexibility these days. But he cannot lose sight of reality in pursuit of the ideal.

The outside world waits, with their cis-supremacist oppressive legal and social requirements that no one but trans people are required to strictly live up to. Your son’s mental, social, and emotional well being depends on being able to navigate that world without losing himself, or losing at the job of building a full and healthy life. It is a precious balance, and one that we lose far too many people too each year.

I also recommend you read this post about how cis-supremacy influences how well meaning cis people can view transition:

http://cisnormativity.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/maybe-you-should-never-transition/

Hang in there!

Best,

Colle

Robyn
74 yo postop MTF

“And yet no matter how much the world changes, and he changes, as a trans man he will always be caught in some shade of gray. By this I mean born female, living male; some body parts changed, or all, or none; intimate relationships that require knowing his shade of gray; living stealth or not or something in between. He knows this, but this is the hardest part for him.”

*”He knows this, but it’s the hardest part for him.”*

So, this is the knowledge in question. Which he has, and without her pointing it out to him. And which is painful for him to think about. And her question was, “Should I keep pointing it out to him? Is it helping him?”

Very simple answer. No. All the information I needed for my reply was right there in the post.

I stick by my “huge generalization” that a trans person will always know better than a not-trans person what it’s like to live in the “greyness” of being trans. Unless the parent is a therapist who helps trans people and their child is newly out – no way they’d have the specialized knowledge necessary to come up with new things that hasn’t occurred to their trans child, and if that were the case, I don’t think they’d be needing to write to Matt about how to handle it.

I think one of the best things you can do for right now is to educate yourself about trans issues. Find some of the books for trans people and written by trans people and read them. Know as much as you possibly can, so that you can have good conversations with him. If you haven’t already done so, talking to him about getting a therapist that is good with gender issues would help. That is someone who would know all of the ropes of the physical process of transition and could help him along with his decision. Gender can be a really confusing thing, especially when your body doesn’t match your brain. In addition, some places require a therapist’s letter in order to start hormones, so that would be a good first step anyway.

His identity isn’t a shade of grey, and if he wants he can absolutely slip into the role waiting for him. He will have something a little different, but every human being does. It is possible to totally disappear into society, conforming significantly closer to the gendered norm than the majority of cis people do. (This is where uncanny valley effects can come into play.) Those shades of gray may be very threatening right now.

The shades of gray are not about him. They aren’t even about trans* individuals. The shades of grey surround gender itself, our disperate internal definitions, the quiet subversions of or cohesions to the norms, whether we be cis* or trans*.

As an engineer, my first instinct was to cease upon the clarity of black-and-white, and the people I hurt most were the cis people I confined to their little boxes, expecting not human complexity but instead simple, understandable stereotype. It wasn’t until I was faces with other people’s experiences that broke my mental model that I went back and reevaluated. Your son might get to that place eventually, but it may never happen.

I wish I could offer some advice on how to bring that nuance forward, but I don’t know. For me, it was connecting with the hurt-filed experiences of cis* men, experiencing their variety and humanity and similarity to the women I have know. Seeing the ways gender circumscribes and pains the most privileged among us, was what finally led me to let go of black-and-white thinking.