In my most recently completed novel, Leaving Wonderland, one of my main characters is a male-to-female transgendered Mossad Officer - (it's an espionage thriller with an unconventional love story). I'd always wanted to include a trans character in a piece, and did so in my short story Royal & Rene, and I enjoyed the love story between the pair so much I used them for Leaving Wonderland. I even included a couple steamy love scenes that needed to be there to drive the story forward.
There still exists so much ignorance about the T in LGBTQ, that I want to do my part to support them. As a mental health therapist I have worked with transgendered adolescents and found them to be no different than others in their particular gender basket. But don't take my word for it ...
Research
Since the advent of the Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine, neuroscience has expanded its scope of understanding. By stimulating the brain with sights, sounds, and tactical experiences during a fMRI scan, researches can watch in realtime how the brain functions. What they discovered was there are subtle differences between male and female brains, not just in their function, but in their structure as well. Researchers at facilities around the world got so good at this they can look at an fMRI scan and tell you if the patient is male or female.
A few years ago, some of these research facilities started to look at the brains of transgendered people and what they discovered was what trans people have been trying to tell us for years; it is the brain that determines gender, NOT the genitals.
My own observations about transgendered children and youth is that the emergence of their gender identity begins shortly after they achieve theory of mind. Typically at five years old, trans children will begin to tell their parents and others they are a girl or a boy, NOT the gender assigned to them at birth. At that age thoughts of sexuality can be excluded, so we are left with a child speaking of their identity.
Be Accepting and Kind
Imagine living in a world that rejects and vilifies you simply for being who you are. Being surrounded by people who mock the core of your identity, and label your very existence as 'wrong'.
The suicide statistics amongst unsupported transgendered adolescents are shocking; 19% of trans teens had seriously considered suicide, 15% had made a plan to commit suicide, 8% had attempted suicide and 2.5% had been injured by a suicide attempt. Amongst transgendered adolescents these rates drop by 40% if they are accepted and supported by a single adult and drop exponentially the more they are surrounded by caring adults.
We have never lived in a totally binary world and it's time to accept and embrace that. I urge my fellow authors to include transgendered characters in their stories. Its pretty simple; just write them the way you'd write any other male or female character.
If we make this our normal, the world will follow.
Aaron D McClelland
Penticton, BC
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