Monday, August 25, 2014

Dear Amy

A couple of days ago there was a letter from an aunt about her trans-niece and Amy puts her in her place…
DEAR AMY: I'm a wife and mom of five sons under the age of eight.
My nephew is in his 20s. He has always been easily influenced and has gone through the punk stage, the Goth stage, the androgynous stage, the thinking-he-was-gay stage and now he is going through the cross-dressing stage.

When we get together with my sister and her family for weddings, graduations, funerals, school events, etc., "Steve" is now "Stephanie," with wigs, full (overdone) makeup, six-inch high heel shoes, micro-mini dresses, fur coats in the winter, and crop tops and short shorts in the summer.

He is a man. My boys know he is a man. They never let him forget it.
The last sentence tells it all, the aunt sets the tone for her family, and the kids learned their behavior from her. If the aunt is disrespectful and so will her kids.

Amy replies…
DEAR AUNT: I'm going to suggest a way for you to frame this so you will stop being so angry with someone who no doubt has no desire to hurt you or your kids.
[…]
The lesson for your kids is that they should treat everyone kindly and with respect. At this juncture, it would be easiest for you to explain to the kids, "Stephanie used to call herself 'Steve,' but now she feels like she is a woman, and so we're going to call her Stephanie. She's still the same person on the inside and still loves you like always."
[…]
Please work harder to patiently accept this person as he/she is. Nothing that is happening here is about you.
I believe in family values, it is the way we teach our children, if we respect other people’s differences our children learn respect. If we mock and are disrespectful of other our children will learn our behavior. We don’t know if her niece is going through a “phase” but what we do know is that she is going through process of learning about herself and is discarding those identities that do not fit her. Only time will tell if she is transgender and to what degree that she is trans.

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