It’s my hope that my daughter can grow up in an environment that’s accepting of gender fluidity, families that come in any form, and all the shades of gray on the sexual preference/gender spectrum. Much support to you and yours — your son is very lucky.

- Lucy

I’m not going to even start my ranting on gay marriage, since we obviously have the same views. Just suffice it to say that my uncle said something similar about the vote. He talked about how much it hurt that people were voting against him. it’s just freaking wrong.

I’m not happy with society either. now I’m going to go back to read some of your other posts. yay!

I’m sure someone told you, or you have noticed the flood of traffic from, about the link in the New York Times to our sites. I went from my average of 10-30 hits on a non-posting day, to 700.

Nobody left a comment of course. Hah.

The culture is changing so fast. We are part of that change, I’m sure of it. People who are not rejected by their families are not easy victims…hurt someone with a strong family, and you’ll have to always be looking over your shoulder.

On the education side, I think we move the decent but ignorant. On the darker, incurable side, I think we’re putting the haters on notice.

Thanks for the link; sorry about the delay linking back to you; and thanks for writing and being a great parent.

Different parents find different comfort levels. The question a parent really needs to ask themselves, is are they self-censoring, anonymizing, for their child’s sake—or their own.

Parents in accepting communities who blog about their children aren’t hurting them. I think. Of course, I’m doing it too a http://www.acceptingdad.com; under a pseudonym.

The other thing we are doing is trying to provide an alternative model to ‘born in the wrong body’ transgender as the only justification for gender non-conformity. There’s a lot of confusion on this issue, and an exclusive media focus on kids who are born in the wrong body, coupled with a revulsion for adult transexuals, is only making the whole situation more divisive.

Many gender-nonconforming children will one day identify as gay. And many gay men do in fact deny their gender variant past, as today’s gay male community is as femme phobic, or more so, ,than the general culture. So this whole endeavor is not without risk.

But the risk is there wheher you blog or not; our kids wear their hearts on their sleeves. They couldn’t hide very well if you forced them too. In every gesture, every word, they reveal themselves.

We are trying to combat the self-hatred built into the culture; that self hatred comes from somewhere. It’s the culture at large which poisions are children. Which can make them take their own lives, which can inspire others to kill them.

We are working on that. Individually, each parent doing this won’t help their own child, perhaps. Collectively, if every parent does it, our children be much much safer.

Be the change you want to see in the world.

Parents in supportive communities can do this. It’s good for everyone. Relaxing gender stereotypes helps everyone. We take your point that it isn’t risk free.

Those of us in this community live with this risk every day. Some of us have to choose not to live our lives in fear. Some support us. Some don’t. We live with that too.