Hi guys! I really need some help. I'm a transgender dude, still in the closet. The only person I've told is my older brother, and he's great so it wasn't a problem. But I have a really hard time trying to figure out how to tell my parents. They are not transphobic or anything, but they don't understand it either. And they really love their little girl... So what should I do?
Don't you think they haven't noticed already that you are rather "boyish"? What do they think about it? Maybe you should try engage them in a conversation about transgender in general and explain a little bit how this works. Maybe they will get the hint and if not, it might be a good moment to come out to them. If they are generally supportive and not transphobic, they most likely will love you the way you are and support you. You jst have to do quite a lot of explaining to them, I guess. Maybe literature or documentaries might help as well.
If you'd rather talk about it, like art3mis said, you could open by talking about trans stuff in general and finding out their feelings on the matter. Otherwise, I'd say a letter is your best bet. You can basically say your piece without the chance of being interrupted or forgetting what you wanted to say. You could also link your parents to some resources or documentaries about trans people. That way they can have something available to look up if they want to learn more about it. Personally I prefer the letter route, since I'm terrible at talking about my feelings but a marginally decent writer. I ended up writing my mom a letter that basically said "Hey, I think I'm actually a boy. It's called being transgender. Let's talk about it sometime." I left the letter for her while I went to school, and after class we talked about it. In the end she still doesn't understand a lot, but, she still loves me and wants me to be happy. I figure that's OK for now... I feel like the hardest part is over and I have a while to help her actually understand. I had written a little bit about times in the past (coughpubertycough) that I'd expressed I wasn't comfortable being female.... And it turned out she remembered a lot of that, which I think helped. I'm going to follow up at some point with more of the same, just explaining how I've felt in the past and a little bit of how I came to the conclusion that I'm trans.