Note: Drafts of posts are in the wiki for this repository on github, if you would like to submit changes or prs that is totally fine and welcome.
I am creating this repository and wiki to collect and share information useful to parents with children that are gender non-conforming in some way. Including, but not limited to, transgender, non-binary, genderfluid, and young adults that identify their sexuality as bi-sexual, same-sex or queer in some other way.
I am using the term quids
to refer to our children that have a queer identity, gender performance, or sexuality. I would have registered quids.lgbtq
but that top-level domain is not established.
I'm a parent that wants to be the best I can be for my children and to learn from others. We tend to try to help each other learn how to be best parent, ally, and advocate that we can be. I suspect my fellow parents that were born after 1970 have almost certainly had friends, family members and colleagues that come out as non-binary or transgender late in life after living 30-40 years as their sex they were assigned at birth. We are indebted to these pioneers. They are probably the bravest people you will ever meet. They’re also the people preparing the world around us to better understand our children. They’ve been fighting to be treated with respect and dignity for decades and you should be with them as an ally not just because of your quids and grandquids, but because it’s the moral and ethical thing to do.
You may have some things you wish you did differently in your life (I absolutely do). But in the spirit of reconciliation, it’s never too late, and you don’t have to wait. I’m a white cis male parent that has learned a lot in the last 20 years of my life and I’m far from perfect, but I think you don’t need to be perfect, you just need to care. This is important enough to get it right.