She Didn't Choose This!

Well hello there! I hope everyone's April is off to as good of a start as our has been. I have had a lot of people asking for updates on Callie, because face it she is the reason we started this blog. The passed month and a half has been pretty uneventful for her to be honest, after her suicide attempt months ago she really hasn't done much. The only thing we've had an issue with is people thinking she chose her gender. This seems to be a very common misconception when it comes to transgender people, but hearing it more and more often is honestly aggravating. Let's just go back in time, you are about three years old and know your gender. How do you know it? Were you told? Were you pushed into gender roles? If you answered "Yes" to those, I am sad for you. To know that you really don't know your own life and are just living by what is expected by you, that's sad to me. Let me also ask you this, how old were you when you realized you were the gender you are? I know I was three, I knew I was a girl because I liked everything pink, I liked baby dolls, I liked boys(at three yes!), I was just fully a girl and knew it. My child is the same way, she knew at a very young age that she was a little girl, she realized she likes all the "girl" things and she was more like girls than she was boys, she didn't just decide "I'm going to be a girl today". She knew that she was different than the other little boys at preschool and that was perfectly fine with us. I didn't choose my gender, Jason didn't choose his, and we know that Callie didn't choose hers either. That's not how this transgender thing works and it's time to break the stigma of thinking it's okay to say things like this. Face it, even if someone did choose their gender rather than the one they were assigned at birth, that's none of your concern. If you aren't feeding, financing, or the other "f" someone, you don't get a say in how that person lives their life. At the end of the day we are all human and want the same thing, to be loved. I dream of a day where it is okay for a transgender person to live their life without fear or embarrassment or any other feeling my five year old daughter has felt because of people out there. I stand with transgender youth and will do anything to protect them, I'm hoping you will too.