Kristal, Age 10, Missouri
KRISTAL: I don’t really know why they want to pass these laws. If the politicians were part of the LGBTQ community, they probably wouldn’t do this. Before I became a girl, people were hateful at school. When I was in first grade and I was playing basketball, somebody pushed me down a rocky hill and I got a gigantic scar on my back and I had to go to the nurse, and once one of my schoolmates pushed me down during gym and I got a wiggly tooth.
MOM: What she’s referring to are the years that she lived gender fluid, that’s when the bullying really started. She was living gender fluid and wearing feminine clothes, and the kids just couldn’t stand it. There were parents that would call the school literally screaming, saying ‘I can’t believe you’re letting a boy in the girls’ bathroom’ and the school secretary just had a form response that she would read. She’d say ‘there are girls in girls’ bathrooms, there are boys in boys’ bathrooms.’ She just repeated that, word for word. The school had our back.
KRISTAL: When people stood up for me in school, I felt really good. It helped me realize who I am. Maybe if people research what trans means and understand what it really is, they would change and stop being hateful. The politicians are being disrespectful, I think.
MOM: It’s terrifying. If for some reason our state turns red not only do we have to worry about our doctors, but we’d have to worry about so many other things. For example, her grandmother lives in Tennessee. Kristal can no longer safely visit her own grandmother because it is against the law now in Tennessee for her to use a girl’s bathroom in public. And that’s discouraging.
KRISTAL: At first my grandma didn’t accept me. She was calling me ‘it’ and ‘that child.’ And told me that I should change the way that I am, that I’m disrupting the environment around me.
MOM: Her grandmother, my mother, actually used the word ‘imposter.’ She posted a public status on her Facebook page saying that her grandson was dead and had been replaced by an imposter that she didn’t know and didn’t want to know. I didn’t talk to her for a year. I would choose my children over anybody, any day. I have lung tumors from my time in service, and my mother became very concerned as to what that would mean if I somehow got COVID, and she took that as an opportunity to start building a relationship with us again. Which is good because Kristal’s grandparents on the other side live in Europe and they don’t acknowledge her at all, she doesn’t exist to them, so this was the only grandparent that she has left.
KRISTAL: Our grandparents from our dad’s side don’t accept me. They don’t use my real name, they just call me K and they call my brother Liam, L. When I transitioned Liam just accepted me, and it took our older brother Nick a little while to understand but Liam understood instantly. We’re twins.
I think trans kids should just be who they are and try to come out to their friends or teachers or grandparents, and try to tell them a name that they want to be called and tell them who they really want to be even if they aren’t accepted by their parents. They can be called what they want to, and go to the girls’ bathroom if they want to, and use the right gender. I think being supported by at least someone would make them feel happier.
MOM: You sign a blank check when you become a parent. You don’t get to select who your kids become. You either need to embrace your child for who they are, or you shouldn’t have had kids. And I mean that sincerely. I didn’t have kids to create carbon copies of myself, I had kids because I wanted to be a mom and whoever they end up being, that’s a celebration of themselves. Parents need to stop grieving because your child never died. There’s nothing to grieve, there’s everything to celebrate - your child was brave enough to say who they are, and that’s more courage than I ever had at their age.