Gender Defiant in the New Yorker

The reasons I started Gender Defiant are the same reasons why Sam Wolson’s animated photo essay in the New Yorker, A Mother and Her Trans Teen Decide to Leave the U.S., is so urgent. The piece, with illustrations by Lilli Carré, tells the story of JJ and me deciding to move to Mexico. But it’s not just a story about us. It’s an American story.

Every parent in the U.S. with a trans kid right now leads a double life: one as an ordinary person making dinner and waving to you while walking the dog, the other with her hair on fire, planning for unpredictable, threatening circumstances amid chaos.

We are the parents in your group chats talking about school trips, and we are the parents in the other group chats—the ones you aren’t part of—helping each other find doctors as health systems shut us out one by one; sharing information on countries accepting of trans people; and holding each other up when one of our students or friends or kids dies of suicide.

Zero of our group chats have no stories of suicide.

We don’t bring this stuff up outside our chats. If we say we’re thinking of leaving the country, we’re afraid you’ll think we’re overreacting. If we tell you how bad things are getting, we worry we’ll sound crazy. Even revealing that we have a trans or genderfluid kid is a risk to our safety.

We’re afraid you'll think we’re overreacting. We worry we’ll sound crazy. Even revealing that we have a trans kid is a risk to our safety.

Sam told our story, one story of a family, so people will see what’s happening. And I started Gender Defiant to make it ordinary, not extraordinary, to talk about being the parent of a trans kid and being trans.

Will you help us by sharing the New Yorker piece and sharing Gender Defiant with your group chat?

Thank you,
Tina (and JJ)