Like other families publicly fighting for their transgender kid and the greater trans community, we get a LOT of angry feedback. We get angry hate-filled messages and letters just about every way we can receive a message, so much so that I’m waiting for a carrier pigeon to drop off some hate mail next. Add in all the angry articles written in response to our family’s advocacy and we know quite well how this very loud portion of the population feels about our parenting and our child.
The messages say all sorts of things, but right now, I want to talk about one of the most common themes: outraged accusations of child abuse for supporting our transgender child. They tell us how our children should be taken away, and we should be prosecuted and put in jail. After a while, it became such a broken record that I went numb to it. These weren’t as bad as those messages threatening violence, so I just began to ignore them. I’d scroll on past the comments or click delete without a twinge of emotion… until New Jersey’s Division of Child Protection and Permanency knocked on my door because someone had reported us.