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would grow up to be a successful female executive who would have no trouble holding her own with the male power base!
    TC: Who was the hardest person to tell about S—’s transition?
    M—: It would have been my mother if she had still been alive, but all S—’s grandparents had passed away by then. I think my expectations of what she expected for me and my offspring would have made that difficult—how ridiculous these expectation things are, eh?
    If you’re lucky, your family accepts you; if you’re unlucky, your family bows to society’s norms, and there are probably examples of all permutations in between. That older generation (S—’s grandparents) would probably have reacted by saying he had gone too far.
    Telling our close family members was pretty easy, as everyone loved S—, and they are all pretty diverse and open-minded. I did sweat sending out a Christmas letter to all of our less close family and friends in England. My husband, C—, actually wrote the letter, as he is braver and more to the point than I am, then I added a few bits here and there. We sent it off and I worried, but we had severalpeople call us with support, and three people wrote lovely long letters/e-mails saying how it didn’t matter and how pleased they were that S— had found himself, he was still the lovely child they had all known. We never got any negative feedback and never lost any of our friends.
    TC: My parents told somebody they loved and trusted, who has known and loved them (and me) for years, and when he heard, he told them that I had gone too far, and that they were “too old for this shit” and should cut me out of their lives completely. What was the worst response you’ve gotten to sharing that you have a transgender son?
    M—: We are very fortunate we didn’t have any reaction like that—I would have felt devastated.
    TC: Looking back, did you “know” about S— when he was growing up? What did you “know”? What were the signs, so to speak?
    M—: I saw lots of signs, but never thought about his being transgender simply because that word or thought (or the fact that my child was going to be “abnormal” by society’s standards) never crossed my mind.
    I was always a bit of a tomboy growing up as I had two older brothers whom I played with and emulated, so I thought his boyish attitude was normal. I didn’t have expectations for a girly girl—in fact, I am not on the femme end of the spectrum myself, so I was quite happy to have a tomboy child. He was so much fun, curious,outgoing, and intelligent, I was not worried about him being different as a young child. In fact, I celebrated it.
    I was worried as he got a bit older—after the age of eight— when the differences became more obvious. For example, when we went away on vacation, he wanted us to call him S— [male name] and pretend he was a boy with the new acquaintances we met there. When we were on vacation at a European resort, he wanted to wear just surfer shorts so he could look like a boy and refused to wear a girl’s bathing suit. In Europe people are much more relaxed about children running around half naked, but it would have been a problem in the U.S. When we got back home and he was socializing at school again, he followed the boy-girl norms much more—I guess because of peer pressure—so I figured it would all work out and didn’t think anything more about it.
    TC: Do you ever feel like S—’s being trans is “your fault”? (I know some parents of transpeople report feeling some version of guilt.) Do you believe being transgender has a biological basis, you know, like Lady Gaga enlightened us, that he was “Born This Way”?
    M—: Well, yes, sometimes I do think that since I gave birth to him, I did play some part in how he is. Ha! I am aware of the various theories about what may contribute to being transgender—the difference in certain structures of the brain seems to make sense to me—but that’s a scientific