I've been working on this one for a few months now, but with no luck. I want to be out to my parents. However, my mother doesn't understand what it means to be transgendered - all she knows of are drag queens and the bit of Jenna Talakova that made it into the news here - and I'm at a complete loss as to how to even start explaining it to her. She's very stubborn, quite conservative, and raised Catholic. She doesn't mind homosexuality and the like, though she views it as "a very hard life" and pities the LGBT community. Any ideas, no matter how outlandish?
From the sounds of it if you just explain to her why you feel you are a man and the pain that it causes you to have been born in the wrong body then she'll probably be able to know what's going on. I won't say she'll understand exactly it but if she knows that changing gender is something you have to do she'll probably be there for you to some extent.
Well, see, a while back I brought up the subject because there's an issue about enforcement of mismatched gender for airplanes (between presentation and official marker), and her position was that you are what you are born, end of story :/
Obviously I'm not an expert on this, but I think the best course of action is to actually explain what it feels like to be trans to her. I don't know who good my advice is, maybe you could PM some other trans members this thread for some better advice?
