Having grown up in California with a mom who was lesbian, I thought I was one of the most open-minded people around. I was liberal, well-educated, informed on social justice issues and accepting of all people. I had helped fight the long fight for gay marriage. Naturally, I raised my daughter, Claire, to listen to her true self. She was an odd kid, unusually intelligent from a young age and socially awkward, sometimes lacking empathy and always coming at things from a different way than her peers. I had made it my practice as her mother to allow and defend her unique way of being in the world.
But when she announced she was a man at age 15, she had gone too far even for this open-minded mom: this I could not support. Convinced that this was an impulsive teenage phase with no regard for the long and serious fight for the rights of her LGBT predecessors, I greeted her announcement with denial, anger, stonewalling and scorn. Before I even had a chance to catch my breath, she flagrantly announced her new identity to the world on social media, receiving heart emojis and congratulations from her friends, to my utter and panicked consternation.
She discarded the name I had given her at birth like she stuffed the dresses from her closet into garbage bags. She told me her new name was “Luca,” the Italian version of “Luke.” And she insisted that she was to be referred to, without fail, as “he” or “him.” Suddenly the words and nicknames that had lovingly slipped off my tongue so easily in our home for years were contraband: “Clairabelle,” “supergirl,” “girls,” “daughters,” “she,” “her.” I had been slapped in the face by something I never thought was possible. As she repeatedly rebuked me for using the wrong vocabulary, I became the “mom who didn’t get it,” and Luca, the pioneering vanguard. It felt as if a UFO had landed in our backyard. My unusual child was now embarking on a process that was mind-bendingly alien. I wasn’t sure I was capable of accommodating this one.
