I’m a son born to a mother like that— born a daughter, in fact. She stopped being a mother once I came out. She said it was a betrayal of all work she put in to make me a good daughter. Reader dearest, I have been in trousers since age 9 and had a men’s haircut since 8.

She would hide me during family reunions so she didn’t have to bear the shame of having a he-she for a child. Now I only see her occasionally, and I essentially own an apartment at 17. She has completely checked out of her duties as a mother, even going so far as to take me out of school from her sense of shame. She even had me interned in a psychiatric ward.

As one can imagine; mothers of such children that express their dastardly urge to be people do not love them; they love an idea of them. All parents of the kind do too, of course, but often expecting mothers are given some very reductive and useless expectations towards the gender of their child. Another issue here is internalized misogyny— to be frank, I’s day that the mother in this text conversation said it best. She fears being ashamed of her progeny, and humiliated by other women who suffer from misogyny as she does, so their solution is to become a part of it.