Friday's Guest: Ashley Musselwhite, "Out of the Red and Into the Blue"

I have the pleasure in this life of raising a gay, gender non-conforming teen (pronouns: she/them) in a very red, southern state. At least, that’s the predominant image of Kentucky for people who’ve likely never even visited. We’re known for racehorses, bourbon, and, colloquially, a lack of footwear and a fondness for first cousins. We are not well-known for progressive politics—which can be said for most of the south outside of a few cities here and there. Louisville is not one of those cities.

For most of my child’s life, we resided in Louisville proper. Right now we live on the outskirts of Louisville, surrounded by horse farms and McMansions—the “we” here consisting of my 15-year-old daughter, myself (mid-40s, single mother), and two cats. I work remotely, which means I work from home, and often catch myself gazing off at the horses running outside my office window instead of paying attention to the meetings on the screen in front of me. Most weekdays, I drive 20+ miles into Louisville proper to pick-up or drop-off my kid, who still attends school in the city. It may seem inconvenient, I know. But country life has its advantages.

Two years ago, prior to moving away from Louisville, my child and I had been through a series of events that left both of us feeling as if the ground had vanished below our feet: family tragedies that included losing a beloved cousin – who was, notably trans -- who chose to end his life; my decision to end an abusive 10-year relationship with my ex; pulling the plug on some old friendships; and, finally, changing jobs and changing schools. A real tower moment, as a tarot reader might say. Moving to the country was, I now realize, exactly what we needed at the time, both in practical and metaphorical ways.

I can see how it may feel counterintuitive to take a gay teen from the city and move them to the country. Especially in a state that’s become hostile to gay and trans kids. But the stereotypes feel pervasive whether we’re talking about Kentucky in particular or rural country in general.

One of the most important things I learned about my child back during Covid-times was to keep a fairly hands-off approach to my child and her schoolwork. As the doors of schools were closing across the world, everyone scrambling to figure out how to educate in online environments, it became clear very quickly that my kid, in particular, did their best work when they were just given the assignments and left to their own devices.

I didn’t concern myself with whether they were reading the passages for social studies or swinging in the hammock chairs in the back yard. I also had work to focus on, after all. This resulted in long stretches of time where we were circling each other’s physical vicinities without exchanging words, available to each other without interaction, lots of comfortable quiet. Ample headspace.

I talk a lot about needing ample headspace, and I’m not referring to the headspace in my Subaru, but rather the capacity to think in an unstructured, maybe aimless fashion. To just think and ponder and process. My child had spent the previous years miserable in public middle school, plagued by the common problems of teachers misgendering them, learning the ins and outs of petty cliquishness.

So, for their 8^th grade year, I pulled them out of public school, opting to homeschool instead. And I feel incredibly lucky to have made it work, though looking back I’m not even sure how I did.

At the time of our tower moment and subsequent move, my kid identified as gender fluid and was getting hormone blockers through the pediatric gender clinic at Louisville’s main children’s hospital. Toward the end of that school year, we had a routine appointment at the clinic for my child’s hormone injection. We drove the road that runs along the river into the city, singing Carly Simon in the car and cracking jokes. We parked, went into the hospital, up the elevator to the clinic, and waited to be called back to the nurse’s station. We had been going for injections for a year by then, first monthly, then every three months, and were familiar with most of the staff. The nurse who saw us that day was one we’d seen many times before. She opened the conversation by joking about preferred injection sites (thigh or arm) and my teen said in the most nonchalant manner, “I don’t think I want to take blockers anymore.”

We all looked at each other for a moment, surprised. “You couldn’t have told me before we left the house,” I asked them; “Are you sure?” And that was basically that.

The nurse reiterated that the injections would stay in the office until they expired, in case we changed our minds, but that was our last visit.

Over the following months, I made it a point to ask my kid how they felt in their body, especially with all the changes of puberty returning, and though they didn’t always view the hormone homecoming as welcome, they didn’t change their mind on it again.

My point here is that we all need the space to explore our thoughts and discover our selves. And we don’t need anyone else to do it for us. Through exploring the nuances of gender and knowing they would be supported, whatever decision they made, my daughter came to her own conclusions. Our trust in teens to make such decisions on their own is vital for their mental health and crucial for their identity formation. In short, no one can tell you who you are: you have to find out yourself.

In the time between my teen making their decision to not receive puberty blockers and the moment of writing this, Kentucky passed a ban on gender-affirming care for trans youth.

It’s almost impossible to say how depressing this is to me, that options available to us just a year ago are no longer on the table. We know multiple families who regularly travel out of state to access care they could have received in their home city only recently. But I don’t feel in any way surprised at these turns of events, following as they do the same legislative patterns practiced across the bible belt—first, chipping away at women’s reproductive rights, then moving targets onto LGBTQ+ children.

I no longer homeschool my daughter. As ninth grade approached, their mental health much improved since we moved to the country; they were ready to return to the classroom. I should note that I had to do a lot of legwork when choosing my daughter’s new school, given how legislative mandates would have indirectly resulted in her being bullied for being nonconforming and queer. The truth is, I’ve had to hustle several jobs at once in order to afford tuition for a private school where I know she is safe.

I’ve heard many people describe our current moment in time as a historical backswing, a reactionary attempt to quell social progress, but one that will eventually right itself in the appropriate direction. Setting aside any semantics on which direction is appropriate or the definitions and judgements of progress, the fact remains that our abilities to decide our own and our children’s lives, to make decisions of profound importance, are rapidly being taken away.

Growing up, I lived in many places before my family settled in Louisville. Despite that, Louisville is my home. It’s important for people in blue states to understand there are just as many queer and gender nonconforming people in southern states as there are in yours. And that, yes, we are suffering due to hateful anti-trans legislation. To the extent that we are forced to consider leaving our home, which is, in itself, incredibly painful.

But for now, I’m staying put. Living in the country has its advantages, my favorite of which is how the openness of the landscape is reflected by an openness in thought.

I hope that we can all find ample headspace, that comfortable quiet in which we are spared from the noise, so that we might be reminded of our own self-direction and determination.

*. *. *

Ashley Musselwhite is a writer, activist, and mother who resides in the outskirts of Louisville, Kentucky, with her daughter.