This week, I went on vacation to Disney World with my family. Unlike countless family vacations in the past, my dad didn’t come with us on this trip.

This time, my second mom came with us.

For the first time in her life, my MTF trans-parent was able to live as a woman, full-time, with the full acceptance of her family.

For the first time, Snow White greeted her as Princess instead of Prince.

For the first time, she could openly wear a skirt and pretty sandals to dinner with us.

For the first time, Goofy tried to bow to her instead of offering her a fist-bump.

For the first time, she could freely use the ladies’ restroom without fear of someone freaking out.

For the first time, she could go to the pool in a pretty skirted swimsuit instead of trunks or a Speedo.

For the first time, people at the park addressed us as “ladies” instead of “ladies and gentleman” and called her “Ma’am.”

For the first time, they offered her Minnie ears instead of Mickey ears.

For the first time, she could wear jewelry openly every day.

For the first time, she could gush over the pretty purses in the Japanese Pavilion at Epcot with us.

For the first time, she could just… be a girl. Without fear, she could just be herself, a woman spending a fun vacation with her family. A girl having fun in Disney World. Not a girl trying to hide the fact that she had a beard and a penis and chest hair, just… a girl.

It has meant so much to her to have this time. The strain of waiting to present fully and permanently as a woman, for the emotional comfort of her family, has been huge. Some days she got to the point of almost not caring what the world thought and going all out. Not being able to just be a girl has been very, very hard.

As for the rest of us, it has been hardest on my mother. Except for the initial shock, it was almost a non-event for me. “Oh, ok. Cool. What can I do to help?” Has been the gist of my response. My sister has been having some trouble with the constant switching back and forth between Mama Marie* and Daddy, and implied for months, very strongly, that she wanted Mama Marie to just stay Daddy. She’s dealt with our parent just being Mama Marie full time much better, because the strain of remembering what to call her in front of whom is gone.

Mom has been having a tough time of it, but she, too, is finding it easier now that Mama Marie isn’t trying to present as both Mama and Dad… at the same time. We all felt a little awkward when she was dressing and acting as Dad, but wearing a piece of jewelry, or lipstick, or one other Mama Marie bit. It’s just more comfortable when she’s all Mama Marie, and she’s obviously more comfortable and happy.

I’m not sure what will happen when we go home. We’d planned on talking to some of our friends individually to let them know about Mama Marie, giving them some time to get used to the idea and be firmly on our side by the time Dad became Mama Marie for good. We’d planned on testing the waters carefully, finding out where we would and would not be accepted – workplace, church, schools, neighborhood.

After this week of freedom, I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know if my trans-parent will be able to force herself to continue being Dad. I don’t know if she’ll be able to go back to living the lie. I don’t know if she’ll be able to live as if she didn’t go home and put on a blouse and skirt and makeup for the evening.

I don’t know how much time we have before she can’t take it anymore and starts living the truth full-time, leaving us to mend the fences and bridges she may have to crack in the process. But if that is what she needs, then hand me the mortar and invest in building supplies companies, because that’s what family’s for – to make sure life goes on through a transition, to support come hell or high water.

*Names have been changed

I have a confession to make. I almost didn’t submit this post. I was afraid of you, all of you. I was afraid I would be met with the same response I’ve always gotten: “Shut up, stop whining, you weren’t really sexually assaulted, anything that happened was your own fault, so stop being such a drama queen trying for attention.” Just because someone wasn’t violently forced to do something doesn’t mean they aren’t a victim, doesn’t mean they weren’t hurt. Much smaller violations can horribly warp a person’s ability to trust, to enjoy life, to have healthy, stable relationships.

What is sexual assault? It’s such an important issue, but what is it? I’ve heard the definition of “any unwanted sexual interaction” used, but what does that really mean? Where do you draw the line between what is and what isn’t sexual assault? Can you even draw such a line? At the slippery edge of things, how do you differentiate between a consensual act that one party later regretted, an act that one party was unsure of, was pressured into, but enjoyed and was happy to have gone through with, and an act that one party was not ok with, but silently went along with because they felt pressured to do so?

The answer is in the experience. If you experience it as a violation, as something you don’t want, that was done without your consent or against your will, it’s sexual assault. By these criteria, the third example above was definitely assault; the first and second are still impossible to set into one category or another. It all seems to come down to whether or not the person feels that they have been assaulted. All well and good, but what if the education isn’t in place? What if you don’t know that this bad experience you had to endure has a name? What if you don’t know that it was assault? How can you speak up and speak out if you don’t know? What if it’s one of those gray areas where most people will criticize you for speaking up, say you’re looking for attention, tell you to stop playing the victim? What if the only response you get is anger and distrust for speaking up? What then?

For me, it was years before I realized that what had happened to me might be sexual assault. Before, I had thought that it was normal, that there was something wrong with me for not enjoying the experience. I thought it was my fault that it felt like something was wrong. I thought it meant there was something wrong with me. To this day I’m not sure if what happened to me was assault. The lines are so gray, the memories faded by love for a guy who didn’t know how much he was hurting me.

The world I grew up in had never taught me that you always, always, ALWAYS have the right to say “No.” The world had told me that intimacy was a slippery slope – when you do A, you give up the right to say no to A again, and also can’t say no to B, which is very close to A but goes a bit farther. Then, once you’ve done B, you give up the right to balk at C… and so forth. Basically, once you did more than innocent kissing, you would be pressured to go farther and farther, all the way to sex. If at any time you stopped, if you said “no,” you were at best a tease, at worst a frigid bitch to be taunted for your failings publicly. Your partner might not even be the one pressuring you; the whole damn culture was pressuring you into sex.

The schools never told us we could say no, and every day our peers drummed it into our heads that you could not say no. Is it any wonder I stayed silent when my relationship with a more experienced guy went much faster than I was comfortable with? He tried to talk me into something; I was very uncomfortable with it, but after not giving him an answer for a while, after pushing his hands gently away a few times, I would give up, turn passive and let him do what he wanted. I didn’t know I had a choice. Every time we pushed past what I was ready for, I felt dirty, violated. I wanted to scrub it all away, but it wasn’t something soap could deal with. I felt terrible, and I didn’t know how to deal with it. And, of course, if I hadn’t enjoyed having my nipples sucked or being almost naked with a guy, no matter how young I was, then there was something wrong with me. Any girl, virgin or not, should want those things; besides, you’ve gone so far, what do you think gives you the right to turn back now? And later, you decided you liked the activity; therefore, it was never a problem in the first place, you were just a late bloomer.

It was a few months before my boyfriend caught me almost throwing up in the bathroom after something he did. All this time, he had never known he was hurting me. When I got very uncomfortable, I would try to move his hands away from whatever he was doing a few times, then give up and go passive. I never said anything, but my body language changed; he assumed that meant I wasn’t sure what to do, that he had to teach me. He would never have done those things if he had known; he never again pushed me beyond what I was ok with. He became fanatical after that about checking in, learning my body language and asking me a thousand times “Is everything ok? Are you ok?”

To this day, it still haunts me. It still makes me feel guilty about my sensuality. It’s given me deep, enduring trust and intimacy issues. I’m really not sure if what happened to me was assault or not. I didn’t say no out loud, but I didn’t know I could. But then again, it can be rape even if a victim isn’t struggling and screaming. I often tried to stop him gently, non-verbally. Does that count as saying no? If you go along with things because you’ve been taught that you have to, does it still count as assault?

I may never know whether what happened to me falls under the umbrella of sexual assault or not. I was never raped. I was never violently assaulted. I was just deeply hurt by sexual contact I didn’t want, and never was able to talk about it after being told “nothing’s wrong, it’s all your fault” too many times.

Whether or not what happened was sexual assault, the blame for it doesn’t fall with the boyfriend who thought he was doing what I wanted, who thought he was being gentle and considerate. It doesn’t fall with this guy who was torn to pieces when he realized how badly he’d been hurting me for so long. If blame falls anywhere, it belongs to the culture. It belongs to society. It belongs to the schools that never really taught kids that you always have the right to say “No,” or didn’t start teaching it early enough. (Here’s a clue – senior year of high school is far too late) It belongs to the parents who never taught their kids to always respect your partner’s boundaries. It belongs to the teachers and coaches and churches and guardians who brush reports off with comments like “boys will be boys,” or “well, what did you do to invite it?” It belongs to the society that perpetuates the idea of the slippery slope of permissions, and the lies of “No means yes!” and “They all secretly want it. You just have to show them and get them to admit it. They’ll thank you later.” It belongs to the society that insists on blaming the victim, so that they don’t have to face their own blame.

What is sexual assault? I’m not even really sure anymore where to draw that line. But there’s always more than enough blame to go around; it takes a village to raise the child who goes out and sexually assaults someone.

Given a sufficient level of arousal and stimulation, I can orgasm on command. When he says “Come for me!” I can often mentally throw myself into an orgasm. These orgasms can be incredibly intense, especially if I have been waiting for permission to orgasm. Sometimes when he has me restrained, he withholds my orgasm and then demands it, withholds it and demands it. Other times, he’ll ask while we’re having good old vanilla sex. Once in a while, when I’ve got him tied down, I’ll make him beg for permission to order my orgasm. (Oh yes, I’m that twisted) We both love being able to throw me over the edge at a word. It was only recently that we discovered that he, too, can orgasm on command. And for him, the whole thing feels much kinkier than it does when I do it. For me, it’s not about kink (or at least that’s how it feels in the crazy place that is my mind). For me, “kinky” is anything that feels, at a gut level, to be different from the vanilla (but wonderful) sex we usually have. Bondage is kinky. Role playing is kinky. Heck, using a vibrator during sex is at the gentlest edge of kinky. Me having an orgasm on command? Just doesn’t feel like it should go in the same category. It feels like it fits in the same class as “Hey, let’s try shifting position a bit to get a better angle…” I guess it’s part of the way I’m hardwired. While power exchange can get me all hot and bothered, I don’t primarily get off on the potential power-exchange aspect of orgasming on command. That can be an element, if we’re doing it as part of a scene, but it’s not the main thing for me. The fact that it’s not “the way it’s usually done” doesn’t turn me on. It’s not about how it can be taboo to let someone else choose to start the orgasm. For me, there’s nothing all that remarkable about it, compared to other ways of reaching orgasm. I just happen to get off on the thought of someone else really, really wanting me to be incapacitated by pleasure, right now! That incredible focus of another person on my pleasure is very hot. I guess it’s not the order that causes the orgasm, but the intent behind it that sends me over the edge. What can I say? I’m a very mental person. For him, it’s a whole different story. For him, it’s all about the power exchange, the taboo, the difference and naughtiness of it. For him, it is most definitely kinky. The first time I tried it on him, we were having a quickie, and I was teasing him about taking so long that we would be discovered. I started to taunt him about how maybe I should just take the decision out of his hands and order him to orgasm. He suddenly got a look on his face that I usually only see when I’m playing Domme. On a whim, I decided to try. I leaned over and kissed him, then whispered in his ear: “Come for me. Now!” Five seconds. That’s how long it took him to reach orgasm after those words left my lips. Five seconds. I might have been ever so slightly bruised by his enthusiasm, but I was as elated as a kid with a new toy. A really, really cool new toy. I couldn’t resist the temptation to push my multi-orgasmic man’s buttons over. And over. And over that morning before we finally finished our not-so-quickie. When I asked him about it later, he told me that he really gets off on the psychological aspect of it. After years of practice, he can orgasm multiple times before he actually ejaculates. This takes a huge amount of control. Handing over control of his orgasms, (dry and wet), does powerful things to his headspace. He loses any performance anxiety, because when we end isn’t his choice. He can completely focus on the sensations washing over him, because he isn’t pushing toward orgasm. That’s my job. He gets to enter a thoughtless state where planning doesn’t exist and he doesn’t have to worry about the orgasm, because he knows that when I ask for it, it’ll come roaring in. There’s a lot of trust involved in handing over the control of his orgasms. If he didn’t love and trust me, I could say “Come for me!” in my sexiest voice until the end of time, and he’d just get hard. It wouldn’t actually elicit an orgasm all by itself. Because he loves and trusts me, he has let me that much further inside his head and heart. It’s something really, really special and intimate for us when I make him orgasm on command. Having that kind of power over his pleasure is humbling and touching. I don’t order his orgasms very often. I don’t want it to lose its allure of the forbidden, its novelty, its “special-ness.” We’re dabblers in the world of BDSM, so discovering a new kinky way to play is still exiting. While orgasms-to-order feels vanilla to me, for him it’s as kinky as flogging and bondage and pegging. Either way, it’s a lot of fun for both of us.

Someone on the outside can never really understand what a transition is like for a transgendered person. No matter how close you are to them, no matter how much you share, if you haven’t been there, you don’t know. In a way, even though I’m the child of a much beloved transitioning MTF parent, I’m an outsider. I can give my support, my love, and my empathy, I can do everything in my power to make the way easier, but I know that no matter how hard I try, I’ll never really understand what my parent is dealing with. I’m not going to stop trying, but I know that some of it will always remain a mystery.

When two people have been married for a few decades, an odd phenomenon sometimes springs up. After so many years of living intertwined lives, finishing each others sentences and anticipating each others needs and desires, it often begins to feel like you should be able to understand each other completely, and know on a gut level what your partner needs and is thinking. The idea of “becoming as one person” with your partner becomes an internalized ideal. In your average long-term relationship, this can help things run more smoothly, because your average day-to-day life can be fairly predictable. Unfortunately, when a huge upheaval like a transition comes along, it can lead to terrible misunderstandings.

The first can be the unexpectedness of the coming out. Many partners are completely blindsided by the revelation. It shakes the bedrock of one of the core assumptions of the relationship: I know who you are. While gender isn’t the essence of who we are, it’s taken so much for granted in our society that when we are forced to change this bit of data on the character sheet of a loved one, it can make us question everything we thought we knew about them. I thought I really knew this person, you may think, but if this wasn’t the way I thought it was, how much more do I not know? Or, why didn’t you trust me/love me/respect me enough to tell be before? What else are you hiding?

Many people have a hard time dealing with this, and find it very hard to come to terms with the fact that their partner is still the same person they know and love. It takes a lot of work and trust to overcome this, especially if the transitioning partner had been hiding the fact that they are transgendered from their partner for many years.

If the couple survives the coming out process, still more misunderstandings litter the road before them. Another breakdown of understanding and communication may cente around the speed with which a transition will progress. It’s a very personal decision, and a dynamic process, making communication essential. Unfortunately, if you’re used to being able to anticipate your partner, this can throw a real monkey wrench into your calculations. The most well-thought-out, detailed, discussed roadmaps get disordered by real life. For some families, the plan is for the transitioning partner to be able to present fully as their true gender as quickly and seamlessly as possible. For others, a gradual approach is planned, to introduce their families and communities to the idea slowly. Still others transition in secret, then move somewhere new and start over with a life as their true gender. Some choose to transition more slowly than they would like to lessen the shock to their loved ones and give them time to adjust, while others move as quickly as possible, to keep the chaos as short as possible, like ripping a bandage from the skin.

This is where my family comes in.

My mother and father almost seemed to live inside each others heads for years. They finished each others sentences. They divided chores around the house often without needing to discuss it. They anticipated each others needs and wants, they followed each others conversational leaps, they seemed to know what the other was thinking. Heck, sometimes they seemed to know what the other wanted or needed before they did themselves. While convenient, it meant that they weren’t really talking to each other all that much. They didn’t need to, and with our crazy, busy lives, communication fell to the wayside.

When my father told my mother that he was a woman, their lack of practice with communication came back to bite them. Hard. Mom thought she knew where things were going, and how fast her spouse wanted to take the transition. Dad thought Mom knew that it was a dynamic, changing thing, with days where he’d be willing to hold back to keep her comfortable, and others where he wouldn’t be able to contain the woman she was inside. Some days he’d be able to be a man, dress in a suit, and wear a compression shirt to hide the growing breasts. Other days, he’d be need so desperately to be she that the lacy bras and flowing blouses and flashy earrings would be worn, come heck or high water, whether she was puttering around the house or going to rehearse with the choir at church. Being forced to play the part of a man at work and in the community would begin to feel so invalidating that she couldn’t bear it.

Confused with the pronouns yet? Good. So are we. It’s a fact of life in many transitioning families.

The sudden, burning need to present as a woman is what threw my mom the worst. Her spouse had always been the one to hide powerful and negative emotions deeply to make everyone around him more comfortable. She never really knew how powerful those emotions could become when bottled up inside, and that sometimes it was only sheer willpower keeping them in place. She didn’t understand how one day, her spouse seemed just fine with pretending to be a man to the outside world when we went out to dinner, with only the flowing pony-tail hinting that all was not as it seemed, then the next day she couldn’t even go shopping with us because it hurt so badly not to be able to coo over dresses with my little sister and I. They didn’t talk about it, so she didn’t know how hard it was to not be able to be who she really was to the whole world. She didn’t know how having the world look at her spouse as a man was a terribly dehumanizing, invalidating experience, making her feel like a ghost, a lie.

But just talking about something doesn’t always bring understanding. It can lead to empathy, but there are some things that you have to experience to really get them. Long late-night heart-to-heart conversations (often prompted by a child asking “Why are you telling me this? It’s your spouse who needs to hear it!”) have made the way smoother. They’ve made it easier to deal with the changes, the uncertainty, the growing, burning need for my parent to be a woman, totally, to the whole world. Underneath it all, though, there’s always that layer of not really knowing. We support, we love, we adjust, we help in every way we can, but we know that there’s something there that we can’t really touch. We’ve never been in a body that was so totally mismatched to our gender, so the need to make it right is as foreign as starvation is to those who have never wanted for anything. All we can do is continue to love across the gap.

Last year, I found out that my father was transgendered. He* had already begun the transition to become a woman. My mother knew long before my sister and I did, and had wrestled through the decision to stay by her spouse, regardless of gender. We all decided to get through this together, as a family – the fact that Dad is transgendered doesn’t change the fact that we love him.

Over the next few months, we began to bring family into the circle of those in the know. First were my mother’s parents, because we knew that they were very tolerant people who would not judge or condemn. Then we slowly told the rest of Mom’s side of the family. My dad was in tears with joy, because none of them rejected him. They all accepted him, and continue to love him as if nothing had changed, because the most important things had not. The wonderful, loving, kind, fun person they love was still the same.

It meant so much to my father that Mom’s family accepted him for who he was. Thus far, no one had rejected him. Everyone we told had met it with love and understanding. It gave him the confidence he needed to start going out in public presenting as a woman once in a while, to buy his first real bra, to ask for a satin nightgown and a makeover for Christmas.

It also gave him the courage to tell his parents. His side of the family has always been rather conservative. His lesbian cousin has had no contact from them since she and her girlfriend moved to California to be married; they cut her off. Dad was scared they would do the same to him. To his face, they dealt with it pretty well. They said they could deal with things now, but they weren’t sure how they were going to react to “what’s going to come next” – the full transition.

Then, a week later, a letter came from my grandmother. It started with “we still love you,” and proceeded to shred him apart for telling his children about this, for telling Mom’s side of the family. She all but demanded that he never tell anyone outside the family, hinting broadly about shame. It ended with more “we still love you,” and she meant every word. It’s a complicated family. That letter hurt my father deeply. At once, his parents were both embracing him and flaying him, like a parent beating their child for terrible wrongdoing out of love, out of a desire for their child to have the best, happiest life possible. He couldn’t just reject what they said as hateful bigotry, because though bigotry it was, there was love.

It was weeks before he could bring himself to go out in public as her again, to put on makeup and earrings and a blouse. It was weeks before he began to recover from that blow. It will never really go away, even if someday they come to terms with their son-turning-daughter, even if they apologize and love her for who she is and will be. That gut reaction of shame from a mother is one of the hardest things in the world to stomach.

Seeing it in your baby girl is just as hard. We were going to go shopping together as a family: a teen girl, a young woman, and two middle aged women. It was going to be a quick trip to the mall, to get jeans for my sister (she was growing out of them every time we turned around). We all got ready to go, and Dad put on her makeup. Then, my little sister got cold feet. She started crying and said she wasn’t comfortable going out in public with Dad being a woman. We ended up with each of them in different rooms in tears, unable to look at each other. Dad was scared that this was the beginning of my sister rejecting him totally. She was scared that if people found out, she’d lose all her friends.

We managed to work it out, but since then Dad’s never gone out fully presenting as a woman with my sister around. Perhaps we’ll try again later, but for now neither of them mentions it. It hurt both of them, and it hurt Mom and me.

A transitioning family is so very fragile. Every little thing has the potential to wound. Every misunderstanding can be seen as a rejection. It’s a delicate balance, a tightrope walk, to keep the family from exploding in a thousand directions. It’s hard, and sometimes every single one of us, including my dad, has secretly, silently wished that none of this had happened, that we could just be a normal family. But none of us wants to force things back to the way they were. You can’t put a chick back into the egg. We’ll find a new balance, every step of the way.

*(At his request, I will be mainly referring to my father by male pronouns for now, both in writing and in life. At the time of writing, we generally only use female pronouns when my parent is presenting as a woman.)

I hate shopping for bras. I absolutely adore my boobs, but gals this big need support. Now, supportive bras for larger ladies aren’t too hard to find, if you’re willing to shop around. The problem is that American bra makers seem to be convinced that anyone with large breasts is large overall. The only slim girls with large boobs must have had implants, and of course everyone knows implants don’t need support. It’s rare to find a large cup-size bra under a 38” band size. Then, when you do, they’re usually just scaled up versions of smaller bras. News flash, but D+ breasts need completely different support from Bs and Cs.

I’m not a large lady. Yes, I have big boobs, but otherwise I’m a smaller girl; delicately built, even. At 40”-30”-40”, there’s no way I can use a 38” band bra! To be honest, when was the last time you saw a 32F bra in stores? On the rare occasions when you somehow, miraculously manage to find a small band size, large cup size bra, they cover half the torso and look like parachutes. I have no desire to use my bras to jump out of planes, thank you very much. I’d prefer my bras to at least look just boring, not these extremes of frumpy. Heck, I’d like to have just one pretty bra that actually fits, and gives me support.

Such bras do exist, but if you live in the US, you’re mostly restricted to imported bras and a very, very few American companies. While some American companies make bras that appear to fit the bill, most have very little support. In Europe, they believe that ladies can be slender, and still have big boobs. Unfortunately for those of us on tight budgets, good bras in this size range are expensive. To be bluntly honest, they’re a specialty item. You’re going to have to pay for the fact that they can’t sell as many of them as they can the “normal” sizes, and you’re going to have to pay for the reality that they had to completely redesign the bra to give our large breasts the support they need. On sale, from a reputable retailer, I’ve been lucky to find very basic bras for about $45 ($30-$35 online). Don’t even get me started on off-sale prices, and anything beyond basic bras. My wallet may begin to weep.

To add insult to injury, you must then find said bras. They aren’t too difficult to find over the internet, but for a non-standard size gal, ordering bras over the internet without having tried them on is like playing Russian Roulette… with Me, Myself, and I. To get a good fit, most women with this particular set of sizing problems need to try on a whole slew of styles and sizes and brands before they find those that really work for her. This is, of course, easier to do in a brick-and-mortar store than it is over the internet. Unfortunately, there aren’t many stores that carry good small band size/large cup size bras. It’s easier to find them in metropolitan areas, but they are still few and far between.

My little sister has recently graduated from training bras into real bras. At a fairly normal 32B, she has endless options. She has her choice of colors, patterns, designs, prints. She had her choice of no padding, light padding, super push-up. She has her choice of bra styles and fabrics, or frills and matching sets, and she’ll never have to pay over $20 for a comfortable, adequately supportive, attractive bra if she shops the sales. I’ll admit, as much as I love my sister, and as much as I love seeing her happy, I go green with envy when I have to go with her for bra shopping runs. I get jealous when my 34C cousin gushes about the gorgeous lingerie she got for her wedding night at a steal of a price. I get jealous when my mother can walk into a store and buy a bra off the rack.

And I see red when someone asks “Why don’t you just go down a cup size and up a band size?”

I’ve been surviving on this trick for several years. When you’re in the C-D range, it’s a manageable fix. A DD trying to pull this one is pushing it. Beyond that point, though, it’s often more pain and trouble than it’s worth. My breasts ache from lack of support. I get stabbed in the sides of my rib cage because my overflowing breasts jab the underwires into me. I get a quadraboob effect if the ladies are settled nicely against the bottom of the cup, or I squish out of the bottom and sides if I smooth out the silhouette up top. This whole situation can range from uncomfortable to rather painful.

On top of all the discomfort, to be honest, breasts just don’t look their best when the bra doesn’t fit right. They’re smooshed flat, they look saggy, they bulge, they crease, and if you try to move they bounce around like a troop of acrobats on meth. While you might like to watch the last one, it’s rather painful and embarrassing.

Having boobs of any size should be a joy – they should be fun, they should be comfortable, they should make you feel sexy. You shouldn’t have to go dread bra shopping because it makes you feel fat, saggy, abnormal, and unattractive. Boobs are beautiful!

Loving a Transgendered Parent

Having a transgendered parent isn’t all drama and emotional upheavals. There’s a lot of soul searching, a lot of questions, and a hundred little misunderstandings. But honestly? Sometimes it’s just plain hilarious.

After a few long talks, Mom was finally ready for Dad to start wearing women’s clothing around the house. It started with earrings and mascara, and then a satin nightgown. It was only a matter of time before Mom offered to let Dad try on some of her shirts. They’re similar in size: they’re within a few inches in height; their weights are pretty close; while her ribcage is smaller, once you add her boobs into the equation they’re about the same size around the chest.

Dad was so excited that not only was she finally ok with him wearing women’s clothing, but she was ok with him doing so around her. They spent half an hour one afternoon going through her closet, looking for just the right blouse. Some were the wrong colors for him; some needed more to fill the chest; some just wouldn’t meet across his stomach. Finally, they found one, and he went to change.

We were all surprised at the transformation when he came out to model it for us. A quiet, excited man had gone into the bathroom to change, but a shy, nervous woman came out to greet us. She was pretty, if a bit androgynous. One thing though was immediately, pointedly obvious: my transgendered parent needed a bra. Now.

My dad had been on hormonal treatments to begin the transition for a few weeks at this point. In his usual polo shirts and thick sweaters it hadn’t been noticeable, but his breasts had begun to develop, and quickly. It wasn’t long before running up and down the stairs became… uncomfortable. After years of laughing at my mom and me for crossing our arms across our chests to keep the girls from smacking us in the face as we ran, he understood. We all had a bit of a laugh, but were faced with a sudden problem: where could we take him bra shopping?! With a large band size and small breasts, he was outside the usual size range, and just taking measurements to order online is risky. There was no way he could just walk in and ask for a bra fitting, or pick up a bunch to try on by trial and error. If a guy takes a bra into the changing rooms of most stores, he’ll get kicked out. My Dad’s also the kind of person who will bend over backwards to make sure the people around him feel comfortable. Traumatizing the little old lady who does the bra fittings was out of the question.

We decided that the easiest would be to start with a sports bra. It would be easy to hide under his clothes, and it would pull things in so that his budding breasts wouldn’t be as visible under his suits. Also, basic sports bras are sold in simple sizes: Small, Medium, Large, and XL. We figured we could guestimate his size without him having to try them on in the store.

So, off we went to Target. Of course, my little sister was along for the trip. And she didn’t yet know that our dad was transgendered. I think you can see where this is going.

When we reached the sportswear section of the store, common sense suddenly started kicking in. We couldn’t just start holding up sports bras to my dad’s chest to check the size. Not without some awkward questions we were hoping to avoid for a little while longer.

“No, honey, these aren’t for Daddy… we’re, um, checking them on him because… so-and-so is about his size and we’re getting them for her?”

(Right. Sure. Of course, Mom. Sis, do you think it’s time to call the little men in white coats on Mom and Dad?) My sister may be a bit of a space cadet, but she isn’t that dense. We couldn’t just send her off to the toy section of the store, either. She’d know something was up, and then we’d never be rid of her.

It was time for drastic measures. If Mom and Dad could share shirts, maybe they were close enough in size they would be the same size in sports-bras? It was a big maybe; while they could share shirts, Dad had A-cups to Mom’s D’s. So there we stood in the store, stretching sports bras in every direction, holding them up to look at them, using our hands to try to see how they’d fit someone my dad’s size, and whispering back and forth. We probably looked rather odd, while Dad tried to pretend to be bored and my sister tried to pretend not to be bored. Then she started asking questions, like “Why don’t you just go try it on, Mom?”

Oh. Right. Because that’s what people usually do when they’re thinking about buying a bra. Instead of waving it around out there in the aisle like you’re testing it for use as a weapon.

I had no idea how to answer that question. Mom and I assumed the classic “deer-in-the-headlights” facial expression. The local Target was NOT our first choice of venues for explaining what “transgendered” meant. Luckily for us, Dad whipped up one of his famous crazy stories and saved the day. With a slightly maniacal expression, he began to explain to my sister that we were testing the tensile properties of the material for use in defense domes against the coming alien invasion. Because you can totally slingshot alien missiles back into space with a few dozen good sports bras.

True to form, my pre-teen sister rolled her eyes, muttered something about crazy parents, and went back to reading her book. We grabbed a few exercise bras in what we hoped was the right size, and headed for the cold food section, awkwardness narrowly averted.

It was only after we got the sports bras home that we realized that a bright pink bra was going to be visible under a white button down shirt. A word of experience: through a shirt, a white sports bra looks a lot like the top of an undershirt. A pink bra just looks like a pink bra.

Loving a Transgendered Parent

Transitioning from one gender to another is a hugely emotional process. It has its ups and downs, its gloriously beautiful moments and its crushing, terrifying moments. But I’m not just talking about what the transitioning person is dealing with: this is what the person’s family is going through, too.

Discovering that a close family member is transgendered is kind of a big deal. When it’s a cousin or distant aunt, it can be confusing, infuriating, or a non-event, depending on the family. When it’s a beloved parent or spouse, it can be world-shaking. In our culture, gender identity of any part of the spectrum is such a part of who we are, of who people perceive us to be, that seeing it seem to change can be a confusing, frustrating, even heartbreaking experience. The gut reaction is often to see this as a huge change to who a person is at the most fundamental level. When someone seems to change that much, when they seem to be changing such an integral part of who they are, is the person you’ve always loved going to disappear? Is this a stranger forcing their way into your life while your loved one transitions? Are you about to lose this person you love so much?

The simple answer: No! No, no, a thousand times no.

The not-so-simple answer: It’s complicated.

What many families don’t understand when they first find out is that it isn’t a complete change of gender identity. A man transitioning to become a woman has often been a woman inside for a very long time; the transition is to create a body that matches the internal gender identity. He didn’t decide to become a woman, he realized that he already was a woman, but had been born with a man’s body.

This is the emotional minefield my family is navigating. We had to accept that although we always believed that my father was a man, he* has always been a woman. Even when he was in the armed forces, he was a woman. Even as he placed the ring on my mother’s finger and said the vows, he was a woman. Even as he helped conceive my sister and me, the good ol’ fashioned way, he was a woman. Even in his work at our church, he was a woman. Even as he gives me away at my wedding, he will be a woman. He has always been a woman, so nothing about who he is will really change with the transition.

My mother had the hardest time of it when my father came out to her. She had been raised in a deeply religious Christian household, and had not left the religion of her childhood as so many do. However, unlike many devout Christians, she had not been raised to believe that homosexuality was an evil sin. She and her family believed that love is love, which is a gift of god regardless of your gender orientation.

It’s one thing to love your gay and lesbian friends else without judgment. It’s quite another to be suddenly faced with the fact that your long, loving marriage will become a lesbian relationship should you decide to stay.

I don’t know what went through my mother’s head in those first few months. I know she didn’t kick my dad out like he feared. I know that she decided to stay together, because she loved him more than anyone else in the world. I know she went to therapy for months to come to terms with the changes her husband was going through.

I also know that they still have a very happy, enthusiastic sex life. That does not involve a penis. I asked no more questions about this, because there are some things a girl just doesn’t need to know about her parents sex lives.

In the months since I found out, my mom has also used me as a sounding board, talking things through when she couldn’t see her therapist. We spent hours talking about how to tell my dad that things were moving to fast for her at one point. They had had a long conversation about how fast things were going to progress months before. Then, at the suggestion of this doctor, they had doubled his hormone dose, speeding up the hormonal part of the transition. This was presented to my mother as fait accompli, which made her angry and upset: things were moving too fast, and she felt like he was creeping around behind her back to do this, since they hadn’t discussed it first. I had to remind her that her husband couldn’t read minds, so if she didn’t talk to him about this he wouldn’t know why she was upset. A week later it had been smoothed out, and the transition continued.

Because of this incident and others like it, I have been told by some members of the transgendered community that my mother is selfish, and is holding my father back. I’ve been told that my dad should ditch her, that she isn’t good for him, that he needs to have only encouragement around him at this time in his life.

I say to these people that they are missing the point. My parents love each other deeply. My dad has told me flat out that his wife’s happiness means more to him even than his chance to transition; if finishing the transition would be too much for her, he would willingly drop it forever. It’s never come to that, and hopefully it never will, but unexpected changes have occasionally strained their relationship. When you remember that, for both of them, their love comes first, then slowing down and making sure they’re both comfortable with what’s happening becomes an act of love on both sides. She doesn’t want to hurt him, so she doesn’t stop him completely, and he doesn’t want to hurt her, so he doesn’t simply plow ahead over her objections and questions.

As I said before, it’s an emotional mine-field.

While I had an easier time coming to terms with the change than my mom, I still had some hang-ups of my own to work through. I was lucky: I already knew what transgendered meant, what transitioning was. I didn’t know what exactly my dad wanted, a hormonal transition or a full surgical transition, but I knew the spectrum. I made the conversation when I found out easier.

The whole thing was very calm, almost surreal. The only part that felt real was the hugs. My parents were surprised with how well I took it. I didn’t freak out. I didn’t get upset. I didn’t look at him like he was weird. I didn’t even appear off-balance or confused during the whole conversation. It spooked my parents, how calmly I took the whole thing.

When I went to bed that night, I cried for almost an hour. I was scared I was going to lose my Daddy. I’d heard and read some of the stories of transwomen whose personalities had radically changed during the transition, as they tried to distance themselves as far as they could from their hated lives as men. I didn’t want a stranger living in my house, married to my mother. The person I knew as Dad, but in a woman’s body? That I could deal with. But not losing him. Her. Whatever I was supposed to call the parent who’d contributed so much more to who I am than just a sperm.

It turned out that my fears were unfounded. My dad’s proved again and again that he’s still the same wonderful person he’s always been. He just has boobs, and wears earrings and mascara.

My little sister had the easiest time of it. It was almost a non-event when we told her. Our mother and I took her aside to tell her, explaining what it meant to be transgendered. We laid out what Dad had gone through, how he had been this way since he was a child. We gently explained that he had already begun transitioning, and would sometimes be wearing women’s clothing and jewelry around the house. She nodded calmly as we spoke, quietly listening. Finally, we asked her if she had any questions, if everything was alright. We reminded her that Dad still loves us, that he’s still the same person even as he becomes a woman. Her response was pure, loving, and full of the eloquence of childhood:

“It’s just who he is. Of course we still love him!”

Leave it to a child to distill it down, stripped of all of our worries and insecurities and hang-ups and doubts. Regardless of what is going on, of the changes he’s going through, of our worries, it’s just who he is. It’s who he’s always been. We loved him when we didn’t know, so why should we stop loving him now that we do?

Living with and loving a transitioning parent isn’t easy. The worries and questions never seem to end, and the biggest ones keep coming back to haunt us.

Is the person I love even there anymore?

Yes. You just have to learn to love them around their new boobs or balls.

*(At his request, I will be mainly referring to my father by male pronouns for now, both in writing and in life.)

(At his request, I will be mainly referring to my father by male pronouns for now, both in writing and in life.)

Living with and loving a transgendered parent is both easier, and harder than it sounds. It is easier because, every day, you get to see that they are still the person you’ve always known and loved. It’s harder because you watch your parent change in strange, beautiful, and sometimes incomprehensible ways. I offer you my story, as a window into the life of a family of a transitioning parent.

One of the hardest parts of the journey as a child of a transgendered person is the first step, when you first find out. Often, the family is blindsided, never seeing the revelation coming. I know that neither my family nor I ever suspected the truth.

My dear father isn’t, should have been, maybe someday will be, a woman.

I was never a Daddy’s girl when I was little, but we were still close. I would cook with my Mom, and learn about computers from my Dad. Mom would take me on hikes with our dog, and Dad would tell silly stories while we drank hot cocoa by the fireplace. When my sister was born, and Mom didn’t have much time for me, Dad taught me card games and magic tricks, and introduced me to the wonderful world of computer games. We were a close family, even after my little sister came along when I had almost finished my first decade.

Dad and I drifted apart a bit when I hit puberty with a vengeance. I was a bit of a late bloomer, but I made up for it in spades, exploding from an A cup to a C cup in under six months, then slowly growing an F cup by my senior year of college. I had always assumed that we had become more distant and didn’t hug as much because he was uncomfortable with having a daughter who was so obviously becoming a woman. I assumed that never having had a sister or any girl cousins near his age, he just wasn’t sure how to treat me. I gave him his space, and I still loved him, but we just didn’t talk as much.

When I went away to college, I started talking to my dad over IM every so often. It was so much easier to talk to him that way than face to face, and every so often evolved into long conversations three or four times a week. Once and a while, when joking around in the third person, he’d call himself “she” or say he was giggling instead of laughing. I thought it was just mistyping (he’s notorious for his typos) or joking around, so I laughed it off.

I was heavily involved in theater in high school; Dad had been, too, back in the day. It never occurred to me that his knowledge of makeup could have come from anything but theater. I mean, once you’re getting into more serious theater, even the guys have to wear at least pancake makeup and eyeliner. It’s just what you do, and those are skills you don’t forget completely. So finding out that he knew a few stage makeup tricks I’d never heard of didn’t phase me. It just meant that I had a super cool dad.

A few weeks before finals during my junior year of college, I found some of my dad’s doctor appointment reminder cards lying out. His desk was a bit of a mess, and they’ obviously fallen out of his medical records folder on the shelf above. Without thinking, I picked them up, to straighten out the pile and put them away for him.

The business card on top was for a counselor of transgender and transitioning persons and their families.

At first, I didn’t understand what it meant. Maybe it was a card he’d grabbed for a friend? Maybe it was about his cousin’s partner, since my parents had mentioned wondering if she… but no, my family wouldn’t be visiting a counselor if it was about a cousin’s relationship. Maybe it was… I fumbled for explanations as I turned over the card. On the back was Dad’s name, and an appointment time. Whatever was going on, it was about my family.

It was a long four hours until my parents came home from work. I started asking questions, but they wouldn’t answer me until my sister went to bed.

That answered one question. Whatever was going on, my little sister didn’t know. But Mom obviously did, and she and Dad were still hugging and kissing and holding hands as usual, so it couldn’t be as big as I thought, right?

When the time came to really talk about it, Dad couldn’t do it. He couldn’t tell me. He was too scared. In the end, Mom was the one who explained to me that my father was transgendered. She started to explain what that meant, and I told her I already knew. I had an acquaintance at school who had transitioned.

Dad finally found his voice again, and they passed the story back and forth between them, explaining that he’d known since he was a child; that he’d thought he was crazy until a “shrink,” as he put it, diagnosed him as being transgendered. For a while when they were first married, before I was born, my dad was dressing as a woman and wearing makeup when he went to visit his psychologist. He tried to come out to my mom at this point; they didn’t say what happened then, but somehow she had no memory of that discussion until he came out to her again over twenty years later.

It was almost a relief to know after all of the confusion. It was something I’d never have suspected if I hadn’t found the appointment card, but it didn’t hit me like a ton of bricks. It hit me like half a ton, or maybe only a third of a ton. The difference was that it was a load I could catch and run with, instead of knocking me down.

So many things fell into place that night, and in the days that followed. He *giggled* during online conversations because he was a she. He knew so much about makeup because he’d worn it often for a while. He had become uncomfortable and slightly awkward around me during and after puberty because he was jealous: I was getting to become a woman, and he was not.

If you can, imagine for a moment what it would be like to know deep down that you’re a woman, to desperately want to be the woman you are inside, but be thwarted by being born a man. Then imagine how it would feel to be forced to watch your first child begin to grow into womanhood. There is love, and pride, and protectiveness, but there is also jealousy. There is a deep desire to be able to go through the same process, to grow breasts and hips, to wear dresses and makeup, to become a woman. Add to this the intense, impossible longing to be able to carry and birth a child, and you will begin to see what my father went through as he watched first me, then my little sister start growing up.

My dad was raised in a very conservative family. He was raised with as few hints as possible that anything like homosexuality and transgender existed. They are wonderful people that we dearly love, but some of the things they do and say make us grieve. My dad’s family stopped talking to his cousin when she and her girlfriend moved in together. In all the years since, the only members of the family to speak to her are her baby sister and my parents, sister and me. If my dad told his family that not only is he supposed to be, will be a woman, but that he is a lesbian, he might never see his parents again.

Dad had been terrified for decades that Mom would kick him out when he came out to her; he was scared that he’d lose my sister and me, too. He’s lost none of us yet. My mom had the hardest time of it, but love conquered a lifetime of conditioning and she decided to do whatever it took to keep them together through this. Though we had to work through some things mentally and emotionally, it never occurred to my sister and me to abandon him. As she put it so well, “It’s just who he is. Of course we still love him!”

This was the beginning of a long, hard journey, for all of us. I can’t speak for the rest of my family, but for me that night changed everything, and it changed nothing. The way you look at the world changes when transgender becomes a person instead of a statistic. The way I love my dad didn’t change. The gender Dad presents at home has changed; the person he is has not. Even when his breasts began to grow, and he began wearing earrings and mascara and mother’s blouses at home, he was still the same person. I love my dad, and I will still love him when he’s my mom.

In the meantime, though, pronouns may get very confusing.