Young, scared and feared

It was the winter of 2012, and I was sitting in my car in a parking lot - I find if you sit in a parking lot without a car you attract suspicion waiting for my daughter to emerge from a swim meet after-party. I flipped on NPR (National Public Radio) and spent the next hour listening, dumbfounded, to transgender kids and their parents tell stories from what seemed to be the first-ever gathering of those who shared their unique journey. I certainly already knew there were transgender people, but I'm equally certain I didn't know there were trans kids of single-digit age, and the stories from this conference - where clearly some of them realised for the first time they weren't alone in this were gut-wrenching.

- JONATHAN KRONSTADT

A couple of years later, our daughter asked if her friend Kye could stay with us over summer, and being the cool parents we are, we said of course. Kye had recently undergone sex reassignment surgery, and while clearly a delightful human, was understandably shy during his stay with us. I remember going to clean his bathroom and seeing an astonishing lineup of prescription bottles and the epiphany this provoked.

I have throughout my life been plagued with self-doubt on most human stuff, but two things I never really questioned were my gender and sexuality. How utterly unmooring it would be to not know if you were born the "correct" gender (at the time, I didn't realise non-binary was a thing) or, perhaps even worse, to know you'd been born the wrong one. I like to think I went even further out of my way than normal to be nice to Kye after that, but the memory is too dim to be conclusive.