I Have Seen To Many Disowned Children

There are a number of adults that I know that were disowned by their parents when they came out and I just can’t understand how parents can do that to their children.

Did You Disown Your Trans Child?
Huffington Post Blog UK
By Lisa Severn
Posted: 27/12/2015

Have you been watching the news this last year and noticed that trans people are more visible and more accepted than ever before? Are you feeling guilty?

You called your child, now grown up, such horrible things and closed the door on them. They've not yet come crawling back?

The twitch of a neighbours curtain made you do it. Couldn't you bear the shame?

You'll never use their new name. Who do they think they are?

Silence.

They're out there you know, your transgender child. They're living their life with a vitality that you've never seen. Taking their new name, and maybe a changed body, out into the world. A world that's slowly changing for the better as the tolerant and the kind assert the truth that people are people, and we all deserve to be treated with respect. Its still a harsh world though and harsher still when you're on your own; what did they do to deserve this?

No, not all children are out there living their lives because they died. Whether because of violence, or because of a drug overdose, or of AIDS, or they might have just given up living, or maybe they just froze to death one night.

I've been lucky to have parents that could get over their discomfort at my transition but its cruel that in the 21st century, not every trans person can say that, leaving them without family support simply for trying to be happy. Its horribly common too, with the Scottish Transgender Alliance's 2012 Trans Mental Health study finding that almost 1 in 3 trans people had unsupportive parents. Society must try harder; there is nothing wrong with being trans, but there is something wrong with abandoning trans people. Help stop this, please.

Most parents await the birth of their child with excitement, perhaps preferring a boy or a girl, but usually hoping simply for a healthy child who will be loved regardless of their gender ... why should that change now?

One thing that reduces suicides by trans children is family acceptance, by having a supportive family the risk of self-harm drops down to the levels of non-trans children.

Transgender community marks anniversary of Leelah Alcorn's death, renews teen's call to fix society
Alcorn walked into traffic to end her life
WCPO
By Kristen Swilley, WCPO Staff
December 28, 2015

CINCINNATI - One year ago, 17-year-old Leelah Alcorn took her own life, bringing the fight for transgender teens – the fight to "fix society," as she put it - to the national forefront.

Now, other transgender persons have taken up the cause.

"We're still absolutely heartbroken," Callie Wright said Monday to open a gathering of transgender persons at the Woodward Theater. They weren't just marking the anniversary, though. They were picking up the torch.
[…]
Then there's the ban on conversion therapy , which seeks to prevent other trans teens from having the same troubling experience Leelah did before she took her life. It passed city council with sponsorship from council member Chris Seelbach.

I know a trans woman who was thrown out of her home by her parents when she was a teenager and she lived off the street, was beaten by the police when they found out she was trans and lived in homeless shelters from Virginia to Connecticut where she received Section 8 housing and managed to find a job.