For those with Kids who Don't Know

[gillian1968]

Hi There,

I was posting and got thinking about a topic, and I'm curious how others deal with it.

For those of you with Kids who don't know about your female persona, teen and younger, how do you compete with the terrible attitudes towards crossdressing and transgenderism encouraged by the media and peers?

Every once in a while, one of them will make a comment and my wife or I will talk to them guiding them towards acceptance. They also read Manga, which often has characters where the lines of gender are blurred and male characters are often rendered in a feminine style. Despite this, their view of gender seems to remain black and white.

So along with comments like "Why should that character look like a boy if he doesn't want to?" how do you help your kids develop a healthy and accepting attitude towards this world without outing yourself.

-tasha

[LisaElizabeth]

We have always tried to teach acceptance! That is different from teaching tolerance!!!
Neither of my sons know about Lisa, the topic never came up. My wife and I have decided that if it does, I will NOT lie to them! They will find out about Lisa.
It will probably be scary, but I try very hard not to lie to my kids, even though they are now 28 and 24.
I'm certain it will be interesting.
Like said, we tried to teach acceptance, I think our oldest learned, but our 24 yr. old is still rather upset by anything other than the black and white you talk about.
Only time will tell,
Lisa Elizabeth

[Bonnie D]

We have always talked to our kids about being open-minded and don't let others control the way you think. Anytime something in the news comes up or if they say one of their friends said this or that then we discussed it with them. That is why we had insisted on having dinner together each evening. Now that they are older and have their own agendas dinners together are less frequent. Anyway, the gay and lesbian topics were often the discussed issues because of their friends/friends' parents homophobic attitudes. The murders of prostitutes also often came up and so the sex trade would be discussed. Transgender topics came up from time to time as a result of movies my wife and I had watched such as Transamerica, To Wong Foo, Boys Don't Cry and many others. My daughter was going to a karaoke with her boyfriend and his family and occasionally two crossdressers would be there to sing and have fun. She thought they were great but her boyfriend and his father were repulsed. We sided with my daughter's viewpoint and talked about how wrong it was to think like her boyfriend and his father.

All these topics and instilling an open-mindedness into our two children was before my wife knew of my transgender issues. After the shock wore off and many long talks about it I decided to leave to live on my own. We definitely could have worked through the crossdressing but can't work out the sexual issue of my gender dysphoria. We will not be telling them about my crossdressing and gender dysphoria. We feel it will do more harm than good.

Bonnie

[Annie D]

Teenagers today are not so much anti anything whether it be about gender or politics or really anything else for that matter but they do want to be a part of the group norm. Indivually teenagers are non-commital but within a group,they hop on the bandwagon and join the chorus of voices whether they support what is being shouted or not. My two teenagers are the same as their friends in their general apathy and lack of passion. Kids may be passionate about one thing but generally speaking they just want to accepted by their classmates. Many of you may disagree with what I have said but I base my statements upon what I see in my work.

I am a high school teacher and I see as much PDA (public display of affection) between same sex as I do between opposite sex. Rarely do I see males but it is pretty prevelant among females and no one, except teachers, says a word. In my opinion, females are more accepting of an alternate lifestyle. Most of us realize this because as males we know the "locker room" and "redneck" thinking that goes on in our society. I am constantly counseling male students about their comments about gender by saying that someday they may find out that a brother, a best friend or even a son may not be as "straight" as they are.

How many of you have come out to your own kids and the daughter accepts and the son rejects?

No, I have not come out to my kids. Although I teach tolerance and understanding to them, I do not think that they are mature enough to handle something that I do yet. They do not yet understand their own gender identity, how can I expect them to understand mine? I think that coming out to my son would make him doubt his own masculinity and hate me for giving him the same genes or perhaps behavior.

I think that we all teach acceptance and tolerance to our own children and provide personal information based upon their age and maturity level and hopefully what we have tought them will allow us to be accepted by the ones we love.

[AmandaM]

We see stuff like "Derek" on America's Got Talent, and my wife and I act like it's no big deal and say stuff like, "heck, he's pretty good at being Britney Spears". The kid's absorb it eventually. We do the same with race, etc. My kid's have no concept of race. When one of them talks about a friend, it is "y'know, the one with the dark skin", instead of "my black friend".

[Annie D]

I do not want you to think that my two teenagers are "deadbeat" kids or that the kids in our schools are necessarily bad. Our schools are filled with bright, articulate and caring individuals, no matter what their sexual orientation might be. I know that most of us think that each generation of kids is worse than the one before it but if you could see the number of responsibilities and distractions our kids have today, you would be astounded. Our kids have adult bodies, adult hormones and immature minds. The amount of information and knowledge that they have to know is what we had to learn plus another 20-25 years of technology and history that we have lived.

When I say that my two teenagers are typical I mean to say that each is in National Honor Society, Varsity Athletes, volunteer tutors at school and at church and don't clean their room as often as their mother and I would like!

[Bev06 GG]

To be honest I haven't really had to try that hard on that score with my kids. All four of them are teenagers and true to the age group, are heavily influenced by their peers and whats going on around them. My eldest daughter is 15 and she regularly dresses her boyfriend in borderline femme stuff and is always making him up because they are slightly Goth.
They really dont appear to have any hang ups about sexuality or gender issues whatsoever because nowadays most things are acceptable. I personally think its the older generation who struggle.
Now what they'de think if they knew that my partner Cross dressed I really dont know because according to my Kids older people dont have sex any more they just sit and watch TV and do the gardening and I dont suppose its even dawned on them that they might just do it dressed as a woman.
Bev

[Karren H]

Well both my kids have grown up with multi-cultural friends and since both were in theater... and have friends of all sexual persuations so acceptance around our house has never been an issue...

That is, full exceptance of non-traditional people as long as he's not your husband... Aka my wife...

[Nicole Erin]

My kid knows but has not seen Erin fully dressed.
Lucky for me, he doesn't seem to have these black and white views of gender.

I think the best thing is to teach them early on about gender acceptance. I never formally "taught" him but he has seen and heard about it and just doesn't seem bothered.

If he came into the room and saw me fully dressed, I imagine he would ask, "Dad, do you know where mom put my books I got at the library today?"
IOW, he could care less.

Teach them as early as possible to be accepting.

[tricia_uktv]

Tasha, not sure the question is just about cd's. I think all you can do is try to teach them tolerence;that everybody has a right to be what they want to be. My kids now know, fortunately I have brought them up with that - because that's what I believed myself. So they are gradually accepting what I am - can't do it in my home town though!