A common refrain that trans people often hear from parents when they come out is “but there were no signs!” Somehow, many of our parents think that as children we never showed any signs of being trans. To give you an example of what I mean, consider my own case.

My egg fully cracked when I was 19, and that is when I came out to my parents and very hesitantly told them that I wanted to live as a woman. My mother responded with “but there were no signs”. Now, in point of fact, there had been many signs. Some of them were things that my parents didn’t see simply because they weren’t around when I did these things. Putting flowers in my hair when playing outside in the spring, for example, or dressing up as a cheerleader and pretending to be the girlfriend of my best friend, who was dressed as a football player. I can’t blame my parents for missing those things of course.

But now think on this one. When I was 12, my mother found a stash of women’s clothes I’d stolen from her extra things that were stored away in a back room, and some things from her extensive wardrobe. She asked me if I wanted to be a girl. I hesitantly told her I did. I literally told her that I wanted to be a girl! On top that, she then sent me to a psychiatrist for what today would be called conversion therapy.

“But there were no signs!”

Sadly, many of our parents simply go into denial about our gender while we are growing up because they don’t want to believe we are trans.