It took one Texas teen three years to come out to his mother as trans. Now, under a new directive from Gov. Greg Abbott, the state is investigating his mom for child abuse.
It took Max three years and one letter, written with shaky hands, to tell his mother the truth.
The family spoke to The Texas Tribune on the condition of anonymity and are identified in this story with pseudonyms because they fear harassment. They are one of at least nine families facing child abuse investigations for providing gender-affirming care to their transgender children in the wake of a recent directive from Gov.
But as he got closer to puberty, he started to wonder if everyone felt the same panic and revulsion that he did when he looked at his changing body. Researching online, he found the term “gender dysphoria,” the discomfort and distress someone can feel when their gender identity doesn’t match the sex they were assigned at birth.
He was increasingly uncomfortable identifying as a girl. The nonbinary identity didn’t quite sit right with him. But he resisted the other option for a long time. “So, that was another one or two months,” he remembers. He spent days writing in his journal, “Hi, my name is …” again and again, trying out different monikers, until he landed on the one that felt right.
Toward the end of eighth grade, he poured all of this into a letter and watched, his heart in his throat, as his mother read it. And he felt the overwhelming relief when she wrapped him in her arms, embracing her son just as she had her daughter. “I could not stop the tears,” Amy said. “I said to him, ‘Look, I’m really sorry about this. I don’t mean to make you feel bad. But I cannot stop crying.’”
But as Max moved further into puberty, the dissonance between his body and his identity only grew. In public, he’d hide behind his mother, equally worried that someone would misgender him as a girl or identify him as a trans boy. Just before the beginning of his freshman year of high school, with his mother’s buy-in, Max talked to his doctor about beginning hormone therapy, which would more closely align his physical presentation with his gender identity.
“I’ve been able to talk to people more easily, like not having to worry about what they think of me [or] how I’m presenting,” he said. “Like, is it too obvious? Am I gonna endanger myself?” “I can’t remember a time I’ve been happier than this,” he said. “People don’t look at me as trans. They just see the person.”After spending his whole freshman year in virtual classes due to COVID, Max returned to school for sophomore year as just one of the guys. The school and his close friends are aware that he is trans, but many of the other students have no idea.
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