My 14-Year-Old Called Me Transphobic

So you just like… parts??!?

My favorite place to talk to my teen is the car

It’s late afternoon, it’s sunny, and I’m driving across town with my then 14-year-old.

She’s picking the tunes (Mitski and Taylor Swift, our favorites) and we’re rocking out. She loves DJing on long drives.

I love it too. Because driving time is the very best time to connect with my teens. I mean…

• We’re trapped together. For the duration, they can’t retreat to their rooms or dash out with friends.
• We can’t make eye contact. Driving means my eyes are on the road and my child sits beside me. So, we’re perfectly in earshot, but with no eye contact. I don’t know about your teens, but mine find eye contact deeply awkward. Driving is the perfect spatial set-up for a meaningful but not intimidating conversation.
• We’re in motion. Even as the relative position of our bodies remains the same, the act of moving through space at 60MPH somehow makes for easier conversations. It makes no sense and yet, it is.

So onward we drive, chit-chatting up a storm over her playlist.

And our conversation turns to boys.

When the coolest boy at school is a trans boy

Specifically we talk about Chris, a boy she had a crush on in 6th grade who she doesn’t talk to much anymore. According to my child, this is because Chris is not cool.

My cooler-than-thou child sets a super high bar (and puts a bit too much emphasis) on coolness. At times I might challenge this assumption, but not today. Today I want tea.

So I ask her: “If Chris isn’t cool, then who is?”

“Niles is cool,” she replies.

“Oh yeah,” I ask, “who else?”

“Just Niles,” she answers. “No other 8th grade boys are cool.”

Now, Niles was named Audrey when I last saw him, pre-COVID, and he was a part of her friend group back then too. So it’s unsurprising my child finds him cool as a friend—other than the name and pronoun change, Niles remains the same as they ever were to her.

Still, this conversation is curious to me.

In 8th grade, I certainly had a list — albeit a short one — of cool boys. Cool as in, the ones I wanted to date. (Aside to Michael Blum — whatever happened to you??)

I probe the situation, gently. “It’s kinda strange that the only cool boy you know is a trans boy.”

“So???” she answers, indignant and righteous as only a 14-year-old talking to her mother can be. “What’s the difference?”

That’s a good question, kid.

What is the difference to her, I wonder, as she teeters on the edge of her own sexual awareness?

Trans boys are boys. Yes, and…

My child is very mature for 14 and quite self-aware. When all of her friends and her sibling changed their names and pronouns, she remained steadfast as the only girl in the group. And she’s such a girl. Hyper-femme and rather gorgeous, she attracts a lot of attention with her striking sense of style and chronically exposed midriff.

If she’s attracted to someone, she’s gonna know it and be bold about it.

She and her cohort all seem to be late bloomers — what with the COVID gap in 6th and 7th grade, it’s not surprising — but I suspect mine will be one of the first to make up for lost time.

Knowing all this, I ask her as carefully yet directly as I can: “Is there really no difference at all to you?”

“None,” she answers without hesitation.

“Like, would you date a trans boy?” I ask.

My child sounds borderline offended. “Yes MOM, of course I would. There’s no difference!”

I’m torn. I want to keep this conversation going but tread carefully, especially as her teen rage — so easily triggered — is flaring.

But before I can respond, she flips the questioning onto me.

“Would you date a trans man?” she asks.

I answer her truthfully. “I don’t think so.”

Now she’s agitated. “So you just like… parts??” she sputters, horrified by my preference.

Oh, my virgin child, I think. The audacity of you, schooling me on my own hard-won sexuality.

I sigh inwardly, and decide to dive in. There’s no way out but through this conversation and for once it’s me who’s glad for the lack of eye contact and interruptions.

“You know, it’s okay to have a preference for certain parts,” I reply.

“Does that mean you’d date a trans woman with the right parts?” she counters.

“No, I don’t think I would.”

At this point, she’s full-on irate. “SO YOU’RE TRANSPHOBIC!!!” she shouts.

Well, this conversation just went to 11

I’m not always the best at impromptu emotional conversations, and even less so with heated arguments. I don’t want to fight. I want to learn from her, and impart wisdom of my own. So I need to process and speak quickly, all while I diffuse my indignant teen.

I think about how much I adore how inclusive GenZ is. I think their sense of fairness and equity will undoubtedly build a kinder world for all of us. I’ve raised my children to have integrity, to be allies, and to speak their minds.

(Clearly my 14-year-old is acing that last one.)

But here’s what gives me pause. I have two femme children on the cusp of adulthood. What I want them to understand is: there’s one place where you don’t need to be inclusive at all, and that’s with your body.

What I mean by that is…

• Yes, you should question your biases when it comes to sexual attraction.
• Yes, you should be respectful of other people’s bodies, as well as their decisions around gender and sexuality.
• Yes, you can be an LGBTQ+ ally and also, not want to have sex with queer or trans people.

You don’t need to forfeit your personal preferences and desires in the interest of equity. Quite the opposite — I want my children to feel empowered to be extremely exclusive when it comes to their own sexuality and consent.

So this is how I respond…

I tell her: I’m not sexually or romantically attracted to 99+% of humans. The number of people in this world who I’d consider having sex with is super-duper small. That’s by design. It’s part of who I am.

You have the right to be as picky — or as open — as you want to be with your own choices, as you come of age and make them.

But no one has the right to tell you your sexual preferences are wrong, no matter what they are. You only wanna date curly-haired Estonian men over 6'5" who yodel? Godspeed, my child.

Go find what does it for you.

I’ve been sexually active for decades.

I don’t state this outright to my daughter, lest I disgust her and stop the conversation right there.

But I do tell her, I’ve learned a few things about myself and who I’m attracted to along the way. Then I paraphrase the following…

• I’m annoyingly heterosexual. At times, I wish I weren’t. I’d sure have a lot more options if I could consider women as sexual/romantic partners. But nope. That’s not how I’m wired. So a trans man or woman is a non-starter for a romantic or sexual relationship, for me. Everyone else gets to like whomever they like — and I’m 100% in support.
• I’m kinda demisexual. While I don’t identify with newer niche labels, demisexuality resonates, because I’m only sexually attracted to men after I get to know them. This can happen pretty quickly. But without it, no matter how gorgeous the man may be — it would be like lusting after a work of art. I just don’t feel attraction till I feel connection. I don’t consider this a sexuality, however, which is why I don’t use the label. I just think it’s a nuance of how I date.
• I have a type. I don’t always date my type. But generally my preference is for somewhat androgynous beanpoles, kind, brainy and arty introverts. (I’m often single, surprise!)

It’s so empowering, I tell her, knowing who I am romantically and sexually. I won’t ever be shamed into dating or having sex with someone I’m not into in the name of inclusivity (or anything else)— not even by my own child.

Getting access to my body is a deeply exclusive privilege.

And besides, how unfair would it be to a potential lover, to take them on not out of desire but as a shown of equity and inclusion? No one wants that.

We all deserve partners who want us for the entirety of who we are — parts and all.

This is what I want for her — and her sibling, and all her friends (who I love nearly like they’re my own).

I stop talking.

I think my teen has heard me. Sideways glances in her direction indicate her affect has softened; she no longer appears to be fuming about her intolerant, transphobic mother.

She doesn’t say much though.

“Does any of this make sense?” I ask.

She does that sort of shrug thing that to me says it probably does.

“You know I’m completely fine if you date a trans boy or girl, right?” I ask.

“MOM!” she exclaims again, but this time I hear amusement alongside the annoyance in her voice.

She sticks her head back into her iPhone Spotify list and starts searching for a new tune to play.

She picks another Taylor Swift song, and turns the volume up loud. The conversation part of the drive is done — but hopefully, not forgotten.

We keep driving and singing, side by side.

Here’s hoping she’ll remember this moment — that I listened, what I said, and all the songs we sang together — all too well.

Greetings!

I’m All My Little Words, a GenX word nerd living in the Pacific Northwest with a whole lot of little words to share. I write about career, music, feminism and perimenopause, cooking, ambition, fun, parenting, and more, with an offbeat perspective on how and why the world works (or doesn’t).