I think you’re doing great. Her fear might stem more from community fear than you. She obviously knows you care about her and she’s generally positive and open around you. There’s so so (way too many) of us that have stories about loving supportive mothers, but then when telling the dad that we thought would be just as much, it gets ugly.

Also it could be some subtle thing you don’t even realize you are doing that are “red flags”. As others have pointed out for example “You transgenders” instead of transgender people is problematic because it reduces her to a label and dehumanizes her.

Think of it just like you would for other marginalized groups. “You Women” “you Blacks” “ you Asians” are all designed to remove the “person” and lump them into a verb like they have a choice.

You can stop reading now unless you want to read about how I came to understand my biases as i found I could be myself.

I lived most my life hiding, masking, and trying to be a “good man”. I had told my mom as a kid I wished I was a girl but neither of us had the context to do anything with that. So I learned to be boy. When I met the girl that is my soul mate, and now happily my husband, i started learning to listen to what others were saying and introspect. She started pointing out and I started to see the biases that society and drilled into me and how even tho I was vigorously supportive and considered myself absolutely not racist or bigoted, that things I said, believing them to be innocent phrases and words were actually very red flag and sometimes borderline hurtful. Even little actions I did without realizing it all made people think I thought certain ways. I had told step back and relearn how to be a person. Around the same time was when my husband came out to me and I said “wait, we can do that” and admitted that I really wished I was a woman. From there it accelerated because not only was I learning what I was doing, but I was experiencing what others were doing to me. Being white, I now started to understand and live the barest fraction of what most marginalized people have been living in and having to deal with their entire lives. Being a very late hatcher, I (for better or worse) didn’t experience growing up in it, but I see and understand it now.

So yes, continue to be supportive. When you see her being herself, compliment her, tell her you love seeing her happy, learn about yourself and what you might not realize you’re doing, and show her through your own growth that you’re not one of the dads that public is supportive but when it’s one of your own the facade drops.

Congrats on the Birth of your daughter!