Strangers unite over their transgender children

Trevon Milliard | Reno Gazette-Journal

RENO —When Jessi Arroyo was four years old, her mother taught her to pray.

"Pray to God and he will listen," said her mother, Elvira Diaz. "Ask for whatever you want."

"Mom, I want to pray to God and wake up in the morning with a penis," her daughter said.

Diaz dug up her basic anatomy drawings for children and re-explained the differences. "This is you. You can't be a boy. You're a girl."

"You don't know anything," her daughter said. "I'm a boy."

Diaz didn't know what to do. She'd never heard of this.

"I didn't tell anybody," Diaz said.

Courtney Rodarte's experience with her child was similar — out of the blue.

"When I grow up, I'm going to be a girl," said her 5-year-old son one day, elaborating when asked by his parents. "I don't know how I know. I just know."

"There's no parenting manual on this," thought Rodarte, also raising an older and younger child with her husband.

Strangers to each other, Diaz and Rodarte were about to struggle through the same steps in the same place but seemingly alone, like two travelers taking different roads to the same destination.

That destination: Realizing their children are transgender, born into one gender's body but believing they belong in the other.

'I SEE A LOT OF FEAR'

Family therapist and sexologist Mary Minten seeks out transgender children and their families, making it her specialty nine years ago when she started practicing in Reno, Nev. She found the group more unserved and unguided than any other in the area.

"I see a lot of fear. Everybody's taught they have a boy or girl, period," Minten said.

Her transgender clientele has grown to numbers larger than she can handle – including the Rodarte family whom she handed off to a colleague – as this community just east of Lake Tahoe begins to acknowledge the presence of transgender people.

The Washoe County School District adopted regulations in February requiring equal treatment of these students and formally acknowledging their existence for the first time.

Medical professionals and therapists are increasingly accepting of transgender people, updating their manual in 2012 to no longer call transgender a mental "disorder," but rather, a condition.

In making the update, the American Psychiatric Association explained the importance of standing up for the transgender community, marking a national shift toward acceptance among medical professionals that extends to the public.

In 2013, the California Legislature cemented transgender-student protections in state law. An increasing number of local school districts have done the same across the country, not to mention state education departments like Massachusetts.

Transgender is on its way to being recognized as a medical condition of the body, not the mind, Minten said.

THE RISK: SUICIDE

That doesn't make life much simpler or safer for these children, said Minten. She's heard from transgender youth being bullied, physically assaulted, refused service or attempting suicide, which occurs at a 41% rate for transgender people.

Families make all the difference, Minten said. They can stand between a transgender person and the edge, or push them over it.

She's heard it from the mouths of her clients, children to young adults.

"My dad and mom don't love me," patients tell Minten when their parents force them to repress their transgender identity or don't accept it. "Families don't realize their impact, what it is for a parent to refuse a core part of their child."

Suicide is attempted by more than one of every two transgender people alienated by their families, according to national surveys conducted by the University of California, Los Angeles last year.

Home is where children feel accepted, no matter what, even when they grow up, Minten said. Unconditional love. Losing that feeling can cost everything.

It's a realization that Diaz and Rodarte soon learned.

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'MY NAME IS CHRISTIAN NOW'

Diaz found the term transgender, and the pieces fell into place.

It explained her daughter's refusal to play with Barbies, her fondness for superheroes and LEGOs, wanting to be called Jessi instead of her full name soon after she could speak.

"We can do this two ways. We can deny or accept it," realized Diaz, who was divorced and free to make the decision but struggled to do it. She refused to let her daughter cut her long hair.

Rodarte and her husband faced a similar revelation with their son Isaiah midway through kindergarten. Transgender explained their son wearing T-shirts on his head like a wig, preferring all things pink and sparkly, and much more.

But they didn't let anything change at school throughout the rest of fall semester. He stayed Isaiah.

Rodarte questioned it.

"Well, we have been telling our kids, 'You can be whatever you want,'" she said.

Both families soon realized what that message meant.

Diaz gave into her daughter's pleas for short hair, taking her 4-year-old daughter to a hair salon and asking the stylist for a gender-neutral haircut. Seeing how her daughter sauntered into the room, the stylist looked at Diaz and said "OK. I got it."

"I remember that moment. Oh my God. Am I doing the right thing?" Diaz thought.

Then the mother and child walked out of the salon together.

"I've never seen my kid smile, ever. It was a real smile. Not a fake smile," said Diaz. "The more I did, the happier my kid was."

Soon came Jessi's fifth birthday party. Jessi had a surprise message.

"Today is my birthday," Jessi told everyone, children and adults, family and friends. "My name is Christian now. Please don't call me Jessi anymore."

Afterward, Diaz asked why Christian.

"Because of Jesus Christ, Mom," her son replied.

From then on, Jessi has been no more. Diaz boxed all of Jessi's things, keeping them in a storage unit.

"It's my baby I lost. It's for me," said Diaz, only realizing later that she had to mourn the loss of Jessi before accepting Christian. "Regardless of what I feel, I have to put his needs before mine."

At that same age — which is a common time period for transgender children to self identify, according to Minten — Isaiah became Izzy.

Rodarte and her husband accepted it, buying Izzy a purple and blue gown from the Disney movie "Frozen" for Christmas. Izzy wore it every night of the holiday break.

"That was the kicker for my husband," Rodarte said.