I'm beginning to think deeply about how best to come out to my family... for those reading, you have been warned as I said "deeply" I mean deeply.
First on a topic I feel is sometimes baffling to people just starting to go through the coming out phase of their transition. "Why is everyone mourning my loss?! I'm not dead! If anything you should be happy for me as I am finally dealing with something that has been bothering me (although subconsciously) all my life." I started searching for information and found that these are quite common feelings of those coming out to others. It's hard from that perspective to understand why close family and friends go through this even if there are no underlying social or personal prejudice at play. After lots of research and reflection, I now tend to relate this all back to the idea of how the human mind perceives reality. Our brains do not actually view reality as it physically exists outside our head, only a simulation of reality that exists exclusively in our own mind. The mind constantly generates simulations of people, objects and situations and uses past experience to apply properties to those simulations in order to understand how they might react to our actions or the actions of others. As you meet a new person and get to know them, you are constantly revising your model of that person so that you can better predict their reactions to situations and better interact with them on an interpersonal level. One of the first things that humans do when generating this simulation is attribute a gender. In general gender brings with it many other accurate expectations (Many times these expectations are based on stereotypical gender norms though, but I think that is a topic for another time) on how a person will react to situations and actions. This becomes a core property of your understanding of that person. The longer you've known a person as that gender, the more foundational that becomes in how you see that person. This can also be used to understand the trouble that many people have in interacting with androgyny. If a person is inherently complicated to assign gender, it becomes hard for others to predict their actions as most humans lack simulations that are without gender. The mind must start grasping for the unknown which can frequently provoke hostility and defensive behavior.
This is why people close to coming out trans* people go through such grief. They are in effect tearing the foundation out of the simulation they have built up to represent the person they see. With the foundation removed the rest of the structure crumbles and in order to move on, they must mourn a loss regardless of the fact that nothing physical has actually been removed. Our own image of ourselves can evolve at many levels far more readily than that which others possess, as they have no insight as to the actual inner workings of our thought process, only the action taken by the shell we inhabit. We may see only gradual alterations in our own personality, but they see it as a sudden and profound change in everything that once made up their son/daughter/brother/sister/friend...
Now I apply this towards coming out, in my case specifically to my mother. A mother generally is the person who has known you as your birth gender the longest. Through changing diapers and baths she has deeply ingrained visual evidence to back that up. She has based her image of her growing child on this central fact. In order for me to best come out as being transgender, I in effect have to do everything I can to help her to rebuild her image of me as a person from foundation up. In thinking somewhat constantly about how I'm going to go about doing this, I realize that is seems there are two separate tracts of how I have to come across. First, I have done huge amounts of research into how to outline human gender and sexuality as a massive multidimensional probability matrix with the traditional 2 starting points of XY and XX towards opposite ends of the field (this is neglecting to mention where intersex conditions fit in). Each axis representing some facet of gender or sexuality of which there's some statistical distribution centered on some baseline XY and XX average. Innate gender, gender presentation, masculinity/femininity personality, attraction to masculine/feminine personality, attraction to masculine/feminine gender presentation. All the above, and more than I have neglected to mention, have their own axis in this probability space and the fact that you were born with a Y chromosome or not merely sets which distribution they are a member of. Some points in this matrix are more likely than others but that in no way implies that any other point is any less valid, simply more or less unique. I can then relate where I see myself within this space. In my case, I am probably neutral with respect to my personality and those I am attracted to as far as masculinity/femininity. I am neither macho nor am I girly, and I am not really attracted to personality traits traditionally possessed by those far on either side of the spectrum. As far as physical traits, I am both attracted to and would like to see myself possessing a feminine body. So in effect, I identify most as a slightly butch lesbian.
So now I can probably now talk for hours on this from an academic standpoint going over some of the various studies done with post mortem autopsies and how brain features in trans* people are statistically in the same distribution as their chosen gender identity, but there is the far more important emotional side that has to be tackled when coming out. All that grief that comes with the feeling of loss must be dealt with in order to move on. So I have attempted to classify tactics that I can take in easing others through each stage of loss.
I think the one I struggle with the most is denial, as I suffer from it myself still. Why can't I just cope with being depressed and move on with my life, they make medication for that. I think for this I generally have to fall back upon stories of others in similar situations. My understanding of gender dysphoria is that things get worse with time. Sometimes it takes longer for someone to come to terms with their issues which is why you see people going through their transitions starting at 30, 40, 50, and years beyond. Some may have known about their issue and chosen to not do anything about it due to various concerns. Social acceptance, employment, family, children, and any number of other concerns play into this but the end result seems that depression remains and generally results in either deteriorating health or mental state. I don't want to suffer when there is a treatment that results in a 95% reported positive outcome. No other mental condition has such a success rate as using gender transition for transgender patients. Add on the fact that making the transition later in life also tends to bring with it further health complications and reduces the degree of expected feminization or masculinization that can be expected through HRT and I have what I feel are two potent reasons to help with denial in myself and others. The question of "why now?" will probably come up as well. I think the best I can do here is try and place her in my shoes. I am not feminine, I don't hate my penis, and I like girls, guess I'm not trans as the only portrayal the media allowed me to experience is either the badly passing crossdressing sex worker. Those that do pass can blend in as feminine women who lure straight men into bed to act out some sense of revenge. This isn't the only option though as there are many transwomen who are like me and are now living full and happy lives and it took me until several years ago to find the other option.
Anger/blame is probably going to be tough with my mother. She doesn't care for my wife, she doesn't care for the fact that I moved out of state and have been distant, and she absolutely hates my father. All of these will probably collect some sense of her blame as causal factors in me putting her through this. The best I can do here is site that even though it took me forever to come to terms with why I have always felt different, it has been a persistent issue throughout my life. Blame should be assigned to society as a whole for badly representing transgender issues and applying such a stigma on those who attempt to alter their presentation to reflect their reality, but there is no single person nor collection of factors in my own life that can be blamed.
Bargaining is easy, nothing she can do here. Followed by depression... Best I can do here is keep in frequent contact so that she knows that this path is making me happy (assuming that it will which I still have no clue about). I feel that anyone I talk to about this will never truly be able to enter into acceptance until viewing me as a happy functioning adult in whatever final form I end up. It is hard to accept something of this magnitude without having the ability to see it in reality. I can't see my final reality in any sense, how do I expect others to do so either. The best I think I can hope for from anyone at this point is empathy and support. I fear that acceptance is something I have to first find for myself before I can find it in anyone else, but I hope some people surprise me
