#Growing up trans manual#

Not only were gender roles so seemingly sharply defined, it was never assumed that anyone would grow up and do anything other than grow up, enter a heterosexual marriage and have a large family. Though things have improved vastly in the last decade or so, during my youth the North East was still very much rooted in the norms decades of industry had shaped. Hairdressing, nail technicians, and childcare were popular choices.

Young girls were encouraged to take similarly vocational paths into courses deemed more appropriate. It was not expected that young lads would do anything other than finish school at 16 and take an apprenticeship to become perhaps a bricklayer, a joiner, a mechanic. It was not expected that children would do A-Levels or go to university.

#Growing up trans manual#

I had a happy childhood all told, surrounded by friends and loved by my family – but growing up in an area so heavily rooted in working-class tradition undoubtably impacted my journey as a young LGBTQ+ person.ĭuring my childhood, the predominant mindset throughout the North East was still very much one of traditional manual labour and its resulting cultural expectations. It was the quintessential working class northern life. My friends and I would play among the abandoned shipyards along the river Wear, and school trips took us down mines that had been operational only twenty years before, and miner’s slang remained common jargon for us all. I grew up in a small town in the North East of England. For me, one of the biggest factors in my journey was where that journey was taking place. Growing up LGBTQ+ is not an experience you can homogenise to the whole community. I’m sharing my truth as a working class, trans young person so the future can be different. It’s also a time to reflect on how different things could be. Because while the battle for LGBT rights has generally been a long, slow slog to win over hearts and minds, if the researchers here make inroads regarding the latter, it’s the kids, and their friends, who ultimately hold the key to the former.This Trans Day of Remembrance is a time to remember those we’ve lost. Given the prevailing image of transgender youth being abused, bullied and subject to inordinately high suicide rates - one of the kids, 13-year-old Kyle Catrambone, talks openly about having gotten “very, very close” to acting on those impulses - the documentary also shows these kids interacting with friends who are completely accepting and nurturing.įrankly those scenes, as much as the medical and pharmaceutical breakthroughs, offer the greatest hope about the topic being far less taboo in the years to come.

“Growing Up Trans” offers an opportunity to see kids today at that delicate threshold, and lets their testimonials powerfully deliver the message - still ridiculed in certain circles - that this is an innate part of who they are, not a learned one.įeaturing children in association with any controversial material requires delicacy, and filmmakers Miri Navasky and Karen O’Connor exhibit considerable sensitivity. In her Diane Sawyer interview, Caitlyn Jenner spoke about feelings of being different at an early age, and that event has helped tilt the debate in a significant way. Courtney Finlayson, a pediatric endocrinologist. “This generation of kids … they’re pioneers,” says Dr. Yet given the questions that linger about kids being, as one parent puts it, “tested and controlled and dosed,” their concern is almost palpable, and it’s difficult to judge anyone too harshly, with the adults expressing a desire to do what’s best for their kids while simultaneously fearing the unknown. The kids’ parents respond in different ways, with some fully accepting their children, others having essentially resigned themselves to it, and a few resisting.