TERFed out

In strict confidence for my paid subscribers. I'm processing.

It's a cardinal rule that you don't write when you're upset - or it should be, at least. But that's how I started this piece on Saturday night, on location in Invercargill; in a pub, to be specific, nursing a pint and a grievance. Through the window, the pub looked warm and only half full. I went in, found a table off to the side, and pulled my laptop from my bag. I figured it was a better option than walking flat grey streets in scattered showers and 12°c.

I hadn't seen my mum for a while because I have a way of finding excuses. But I also have a sense that my time for excuse-finding may be running out. When a parent's older and in poor health, you just never know. After weeks of faffing, of almost willing the flights to sell out before I could get one, I finally booked. Last Wednesday, I arrived down south to find mum waiting for me at the airport, breathless from the short walk from her car.

My wider family isn't renowned for its great relationships. Even so, I believe the final part of any person's life has a sacredness. As a well-intentioned sporadic fuck-up, I know that when I reach my mum's age, I'll have things I want to mend. I'll want the folks around me to let me try. That means I need to be prepared to give others the same grace.

I think something of this sort is on my mum's mind too. She's seen the year I've had, culminating in a barrage of harassment and a court process, and she wanted to look after me. She loves me, but she's not really the looking-after-me type - and while there was a time I might've needed that from her, it's passed. I tried to accept her gesture in the spirit it was offered, but wore it awkwardly, like a boy made to dress as a girl. I said I'd come down and visit, even though I wouldn't let her pay for my airfare.

It's difficult to explain, because she's certainly not stupid - but my mum has a type of personality you probably recognise.

It's a type that finds comfort in the centre of a weird Venn diagram. Rigid thinking sits in one circle, and a love of challenging orthodoxy sits in the other. In the place the circles overlap is my mum - and whatever hill she's determined to die on that day. Her hill will sometimes be perfectly reasonable, but just as often, utterly batshit. Either way, her confidence in her own reasoning is unshakeable, to the point she pities the people she calls conspiracy theorists - the mugs who can't tell fact from fiction.

She was always on her hill, from the time I was a kid - and I guess I was always on mine, probably being a bit annoying. She took her beliefs from right-wing Catholicism, with its punitive zeal, and I took mine from anywhere but. Beliefs like hers trouble me, but just as troubling is what lies beneath them: the disregard for evidence, the willingness to argue black is white. Maybe more troubling is the willingness to argue black is white until there's no one left to argue with. It's not that my relationship with my mum dwindled, but that it never entirely got started.

In fairness, mum's context affected her beliefs, and she's retreated from many of them - something that takes courage. But other, equally worrying beliefs have replaced her old ones. Oligarchs and their algorithms offer her the certainty that priests once did. And YouTube is free to anyone with wifi, affordable for a pensioner whose health limits what else she can do each day. YouTube seems like a benign and generous companion, attentively predicting for mum what she might like to see next.

From my own hill, I'm still not blameless. I research a lot, and I know I'm only ever one citation away from being frickin insufferable. I remind myself that 'live and let live' means more than holding my tongue, which I'm OK at, but also reserving judgement, which I'm still working on. When my mum suggested treating my long COVID with Ivermectin, I was a teeny bit relieved. To that point, she'd been convinced I don't have long COVID at all, but only ill effects from vaccination. And I didn’t flinch at her remarks about Muslims. I've had since 9/11 to get used to those. But my heart sank when I glanced at her shelf and a book caught my eye.

I have a trans son, her grandchild. He's been a boy for about ten years. I'd thought she had come to accept him. I realised acceptance was against the odds, given what I know of mum, but that's still what I'd thought - because I guess I'm as capable as anyone of choosing belief over evidence when I need to. The book on the shelf was called Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, by a 'gender critical feminist' named Helen Joyce. I knew what was coming.

The crazy thing is I'm not all that dogmatic. I'm vocal about being the mum of a trans kid, but I'm vocal in a specific way. I celebrate my kid, telling stories that remind people our trans friends and whānau are loved and loveable, funny and fallible, just everyday humans.

I don't get into shit fights about things like women's-only spaces or gender in sport. That's partly because issues like these aren't clearcut for me, and I haven't worked through the evidence, although I'll always seek the pathway to inclusion. But it's mostly because making people feel foolish, belittled or attacked is the worst tactic ever. If you don't understand trans issues, or questions or anxieties, I want you to feel like you can talk to me. That's because I want you as my friend, in my corner.

As we sat in her lounge, Mum abruptly turned the conversation to my boy.

I know what you're meant to do in situations like this. You listen for the question or anxiety underneath the belief. You try to find common values - often, your shared love for somebody. And I know what you're not supposed to do: get judgemental or snippy, or fling around facts like a smartarse. I tried to do what you're meant to. Mum simply went on and on.

Children are being preyed on with permanent puberty blockers. Which aren't permanent, but the surgeries are. OK, so not children getting surgeries: adults. Young adults. Well, adult adults, then. But they still go on to have regrets. The evidence says so. Although it doesn't say so; but that's because there's not enough evidence. And that's because these surgeries are too new. Other surgeries are also new, but that's different: they're accepted surgeries. And these people don't need surgeries. They need to learn to love themselves for actually being gay, although they don't really know what it is they are. They're confused because the real story is suppressed; but the suppressed story is all over YouTube, and if everyone's talking about it, it can't be wrong.

I found myself becoming emotional, and I said the most vulnerable thing I've ever said to my mum: This conversation is hard for me. I told her just how unsafe the world is for trans people right now, and how my fear of violence sometimes makes me feel physically sick. I had that strangled feeling in my voice, and the words came out plaintively, like a plea, with my hand involuntarily on my heart, because my kid is inside there - my hand on my heart, as if protecting that part of me could also protect him. Mum kept at it. I understood then that she actually couldn't stop herself. I said, I'm going for a walk.

I was flustered and starting to cry as I got to my feet and gathered my things. Mum didn't notice. She went back to YouTube and her cup of tea.

I'm home now, in Upper Hutt.

My kids don't understand why I get emotional sometimes, and message them without much to say, or over-the-top hug them out of the blue, as if they were small again. I can't really explain it without sounding morbid, but I just know that what is never broken won't need to be mended.

Kids have a way of making things OK again. On my return, shouldering my bag as I pushed through the front door, I found my younger son making two-minute noodles. He looked at me wryly and did his comedy squirming act as I put my arms around him. I texted my older, trans son, who has a high tolerance for my most disgraceful jokes: I think Nana's given you some Xmas money, so maybe send her a thank you message but don't spend it on a dick.

And I found mum had put money for my airfare in my account, even though I'd told her not to. She loves me, and maybe it's better to let things lie than to visit again. It's not the way I want to leave it, but I can't figure out another.