A few months back my mum got an email from my godfather saying that I was probably gay and she should accept that. This was based on a few things I’d said to him which had indicated that I wasn’t straight. I’m not gay, I’m pan, and I didn’t come out to him officially. I sort of came out to my mum and brother by telling them I like people because they’re people, but I was still in the final stages of questioning at the time. I firmly denied that I was gay. Anyway, a few days before she told me she’d got this email, Mum was talking about the way schoolgirls sometimes draw little bubbles or hearts above their I’s instead of dots and asked me if I ever did that. I replied that I didn’t, or maybe only experimentally to see what it felt like, but I definitely didn’t ever do it as a routine. She replied, “If you had, then I may have believed you were trans. You see, boys are fundamentally lazy and couldn’t be bothered to do that.” I didn’t really know what to say to that. Firstly, it seemed like a weird “out of the blue” thing to say, and secondly by virtue of my fluidity I am trans, though not out to my family, and as time has gone on I’ve started to spend more time getting to know people in the LGBT community and going to talks and things around LGBT issues. There’s going to come a point fairly soon where I’m not going to be able to avoid talking about it to my family as we are fairly close-knit. I will have to come out. At the moment I don’t really know what to do about that. Mum’s apparent lack of acceptance that someone can be trans unless they conform to the opposite gender’s stereotypes really puts me off. It basically means that I’m only allowed to be a boy because that is the way I tend to express myself and I don’t have many stereotypically female habits or a “girl brain”…at least as far as she knows. The reality, of course, is that it’s not as simple as that and in some ways I’m actually naturally really girly, it’s just that I’ve suppressed that somewhat because of compulsory heterosexuality and cisnormativity and internalised homophobia and transphobia. Taking off the handbrake when I feel female, though, can be quite difficult sometimes. So I suppose the question is, do I continue hiding the fact I’m trans from my Mum, and if not, how do I go about convincing her that sometimes I feel female inside and that it’s different from just feeling feminine? I suspect my brother and his fianceé won’t believe me either, but my supposition is that it will be easier to convince them if I can convince my mum.
If I were in your position ... I would go to a counselor and explain my situation to them and then I would probably have them suggest ways I could go about it or better yet..have my counselor arrange a meeting between myself and the family members I want to be there and have my counselor serve as my mediator. Just a suggestion...
Your mum's comment doesn't sound unaccepting to me, maybe rather ignorant or based upon some stereotypes. Has she ever made any statements about LGBT people more negative than that, like "it's disgusting" or "it's unnatural"? Anything like that? Sometimes our fears can twist our perceptions and cause us to find things just because we're looking for them.
The problem is whether she is "ignorant" or "willfully ignorant". To bring up i dots out of all things to argue against someone is very..odd isn't it? I mean the number of girls that actually do that is low because it really takes up time that you will miss out on writing stuff. Analyzing someone's behavior and rebuking them because of it before any of the important talking even happened can sometimes also be a refusal to accept this topic if brought up ever again. I think the problem is less that her mother doesn't accept her as a girl but doesn't even want her to identify as one in the first place. Then the non- b identity comes in...which makes stuff even harder because most people don't know it or see it as attention seeking. The above are possibilities based on your text. It's nothing I'm too sure about since i don't know your mother and wasn't there. If your mother really doesn't want you to be trans talking to her will be hard and your only way is probably the" but I'm still your child that you know and love" one. If she is as others assumed simply hung up on gender roles then try to explain things to her step by step from the basics. ...hope this post isn't discouraging.
