To Listen, To Learn, and To Love

When my brother came out as, well, my brother, I didn't find out from him. Instead, I found out from my mother. He had come out to the parents first, and it didn't go very well then, especially with her. I had come home from my first semester of my freshman year, and one day she's venting to me about my brother, and him having come out to her is just kind of casually thrown into it. He and I never had a big discussion about it, he just sort of gradually realized that I knew. He's told me that he never thought I wouldn't take it well, but that he was so focused on how to come out to the parents that the idea of coming out to me just hadn't crossed his mind. Over the past few years, he's learned that he can trust me to not freak out about it. I had no real idea what being trans meant at the time, but I could tell that this mattered to him, and how the parents had reacted to it was causing him real distress. So I was willing to listen, and to learn.

And to be a shoulder to cry on, that one's happened pretty often. There are nights when I wish I could confront my parents about it, tell them that they're doing lasting damage by not recognizing him for who he is. I wish I could make them change their behavior, because doing so would make their relationship with my brother substantially better, and having this issue off the table, at least in the home, would set him up for better success as an adult. But I can't. I cannot make people change their behavior because I do not have the power. And knowing that they genuinely think they're doing the right thing, that the last thing they'd want to do is hurt him on purpose, that makes it harder. But it is not the case that with no power comes no responsibility. What I can do is be there to listen, and to learn, and to love.

Since he started college last year, my brother has found a queer community there, and having peers of his own kind has helped him somewhat. Community matters; knowing that you're not alone, that other people have gone through what you've gone through, and come out okay on the other side. He was out to some friends in high school, some of them eventually came out to him as well, but nothing like what he's found since heading to college.

I had been fine with gay people for a long time, but before I found out about my brother, I had very little understanding of what being trans meant. I hadn't even encountered the term until well into high school, and even then it was only by occasionally hearing about flashpoints in the news. And I can honestly say that if not for my brother, either I wouldn't care about trans issues or it at least would have taken me a lot longer to come around. But when it's family, you don't get to choose whether or not to care.