Well put, ziggy. But isn't that true of all our children in some sense?
At some point, they announce who they really are and we mourn the death of whatever dreams we invented for them.
Our culture is obsessed with rigid ideas of gender, so of course a gender change is huge, to the individual and his/her loved ones. But our children never turn out exactly as we imagined they would. Nor should they, if they were raised well.
In a sense, yes, however even when you have that vision of the 10 year old little girl who messed up her nail polish the first time and then you see her when she's going off to college, you still see much of the same girl, even though you've lost the sweet little 10 year old forever. Seeing a man would yield little of the memory of the girl. Much harder. And giving up our images of what our children might become is hard, yes, but you want their lives to be good and for them to be happy and sometimes that is the epitomy of love - selfless. Hard as it will be, I'm sure Cher will always love him and support him.
I don't think we're gender obsessed. I just think that the majority of men and women, boys and girls are different and that their gender is the reason. We see very boy traits in most boys no matter how many dolls we have them play with when they are young. They still pick up a stick and pretend it's a gun.
Nature and humanity are
mostly very gender specific. Have you ever tried to manually fertilize a blossom to bear a fruit? There's a male part and a female part, both absolutely necessary. I don't think we just dream up these natural differences. Everyone hates the idea of "normal" because it is not PC, but there is such a thing.
I think you mean to say that we put too much emphasis on what I'm calling normal and that when something is other than, it's bad. We should not label something as bad because it is different.
In cases where people don't fit into one or the other, we don't tolerate it because we don't "get it". I really do feel for these people and know in my heart they aren't doing this on a whim.
Understanding what it takes to get to this point is important. We may never "get it" but we can certainly accept that they must have this need and be kind.
Now be nice, because I'm pretty sure I'm a drag queen trapped inside a woman's body