Let Trans Kids Access Every Emotion
Too often, trans kids are expected to only feel either misery or euphoria when accessing gender affirming care.
Someting that frustrates me (even in myself!) around how gender-affirming care is talked about, especially for trans kids, is how little room people leave for nuance.
Most often, trans kids are expected to *feel* certain ways about gender-affirming care, and those feelings are almost always at opposing ends of the spectrum: misery or euphoria.
Some of that is the fault of the medical system and how the medical system categorizes gender-affirming care. For trans kids to access care, even gender clinics are still functioning under the model where they must prove pathology.
Many gender clinics use a kind of a wink and a nod, where they acknowledge trans kids have more complicated feelings but still need pathology recorded for insurance purposes.
Now, however, this same idea around pathology has trickled down to how most people frame gender-affirming care: Life-saving. A way for a kid who is depressed and anxious to find relief and stay alive.
I talk about this care in this way all the time.
And I do so because it's true. Gender-affirming care is life-saving and essential and oftentimes pursued because a child is in distress.
But, ... that is not the whole story.
Not even close.
I find that kids like Ben are often not given access to the whole range of emotions, especially around care they receive. Instead, they're boxed in, told how to feel (directly and indirectly), left no room for much beyond distress/relief, dysphoria/euphoria.
Ben's first look at his chest unbound came after his first post-op appointment, before he stepped into the shower after 10 days of recovery. When he came out, he looked ... unsettled, a little sad, maybe.
I didn't push. Slowly, he distilled his feelings to a succinct sentence he spoke with his back to me, sitting on the edge of the couch: "If I like the results, why don't I feel happy?"
I didn't have an answer for him.
A few crossed my mind: You've been in recovery for 10 days. You had surgery and haven't fully healed yet. You're returning to school and may be feeling a little anxious.
The truth is probably all those things and then some. He was looking at a body he wanted. He was seeing real and welcome changes. But, changes nonetheless, and not all as he immediately might have expected.
Because what outcome in anything ever wholly matches expectation?
Most people can voice neutrality or moments of disappointment or sadness or any number of feelings when that crack appears and is acknowledged—and they can do that openly and honestly.
Trans kids are too often caught in an impossible place: Any hesitation threatens future care, for themselves and other trans kids. Any sadness too often misinterpreted as regret, feeding the harmful mischaracterizations of gender-affirming care as forced upon trans kids or the dangerous misconceptions that trans kids are too young to participate in care decisions.
The truth is obvious but often forgotten: Trans kids are full human beings and should be allowed—and encouraged—to access the full range of emotions without their feelings being constantly dissected in order to either question surety or use as evidence of regret.
The capital T truth is:
1. My trans son having moments of sadness around gender-affirming care does not mean that care is not essential. Those feelings mean he's human.
2. My son not feeling instant euphoria around gender-affirming care does not mean he regrets that care. It means he's human.
3. Even moments of regret, which he hasn't voiced, do not mean gender-affirming care is not essential health care. It only means trans kids are human.
It's easy, even for me, to pigeonhole trans kids.
So many conversations around gender-affirming care center other people's expectations and what other people need to feel comfortable providing trans kids autonomy over their bodies: certainty, desperation, relief.
But we do a real disservice to trans kids when we let our own feelings disrupt how they process what's happening to them and to their own bodies.
When our own comfort demands instant and everlasting happiness to continue accessing care, we are, in maybe small but still harmful ways, dehumanizing trans kids.
When we can't allow trans kids access to the full range of human emotions but instead demand expression of only predetermined, socially acceptable feelings around gender-affirming care, we are dehumanizing trans kids.
My trans kids is a whole human.
Every trans kid is a whole human.
Let's make sure we all give them the space to live full lives.