The Transgender Issue: An Argument for Justice

by Shon Faye

As the couple read up on the subject, they came across hundreds of accounts of families with a young child identifying as a gender different from the one they were assigned at birth. They were surprised to find how close these accounts were to their own experience. ‘It can be spookily similar, even with quite diverse stories, among the kids who feel really, really strongly and are able to vocalize it at that young age.’ Kate points out that these similarities between the various accounts of parents with trans children attract criticism from those commentators who argue that trans children do not exist or should not be affirmed in their gender. ‘That’s why some of the haters don’t believe it,’ she says, because they think families are following ‘the script’, whereas we know we experienced it long before we’d read it in anyone else’s account. And now I’ve read it and I’ve talked to tons of people and the story is similar! This gender identity that just seems to be there with a three-year-old as the thing that matters to her more than anything else.