LGBTQ @ Venable welcomed Amber Briggle to its Washington, DC office for an event in honor of Pride Month. More than 30 people attended in person, and many more lawyers, business professionals, and clients joined remotely.
From the moment Amber's son could talk, he told her that he was a boy. Assigned female at birth, as a toddler he vehemently resisted wearing dresses or having his hair brushed into pigtails. Amber thought she had a tomboy on her hands, but as her child grew older, it was clear that was not the case.
"When he was about four years old, he asked me if scientists could turn him into a boy," she told Venable employees and guests.
Not fully understanding what he was asking and trying to be supportive, Amber explained that there are all kinds of girls—sporty girls, science girls. And he could be whatever he wanted to be, but he'd always be a girl.
"Here I am with a child that I think is a tomboy, trying to teach him about feminism and how there's lots of different ways to be a girl, when all he was trying to do was tell me he was a boy," she said regretfully.
Amber's son is now a teenager. She frequently travels the country to share his story, encouraging people to join the fight for transgender equality and helping them understand the meaning of words like "transgender," "cisgender," "gender identity," and "gender expression."
"I didn't understand the difference between gender expression and gender identity… tomboys know that they're girls, and that's their gender identity, but they might present in a more masculine way. Trans boys are boys. There's a difference."
Amber also stressed to attendees that gender identity is not a choice.
"No one's ever questioned a cisgender child on their gender identity, regardless of how old they are. But somehow the whole world thinks it's okay to question my 16-year-old son," she said.
"A Steep Learning Curve"
When Amber's son was six, he began to act up in class and lose weight. His pediatrician had no answers, so rather than fighting with him, they let him dress how he wanted—in Spider-Man t-shirts and basketball shorts. When strangers called him a boy, she instinctively corrected them.
"After a while, I began to see it wasn't the strangers who were misgendering him; it was really me," she said. "I was the one who needed to change."
One night as she was tucking him into bed in their Dallas home, she asked him if he wanted her to call him her son instead of her daughter. He nodded yes. That moment changed everything for her family.
"I knew that if I was going to support him, this was a steep learning curve that I absolutely had to overcome in order to help him thrive," she said. She educated herself on LGBTQ issues, like why it's incorrect to describe a transgender person as "born in the wrong body" or "born a girl."
"My son was not born in the wrong body," she said. "His body is amazing. The dude can, like, bench press his own weight… He also wasn't born a girl. He was assigned female at birth. He's always been a boy… We the grownups made an assumption based on what we thought was the evidence at the time. We were then proven wrong, so we the grownups, we correct ourselves."
"Plot Twist"
Amber told the gathered crowd that people often laugh when she tells them she is from Texas and Greg Abbott is her governor.
"Living in Texas is not a blue state joke," she said. "One of my kids is transgender… that single fact makes his very existence and my love for him some sort of radical political act, but it's really nothing more than a mom just loving her kids unconditionally."
That unconditional love got her and her husband into legal trouble in February of 2022, when Texas State Attorney General Ken Paxton issued a nonbinding legal opinion equating gender-affirming care with child abuse. A few days later, Abbott instructed the Texas Department of Family and Protective Services (DFPS) to investigate the parents of transgender children. Days later, Amber was contacted by a DFPS caseworker, and a few days after that, the caseworker was in her home, interrogating her children and accusing her and her husband of child abuse.
This was not the first interaction between Paxton and the Briggle family.
"Plot twist," she said as she revealed a 2016 photo of Paxton sitting at her dinner table. "He came to my home six years prior to that nonbinding opinion specifically to meet my transgender son… he came to my home, engaged with my children, broke bread at my table. Six years later, he claimed that families like mine should not exist."
She and her husband spent months and thousands of dollars in legal bills to fight the child abuse charges. Amber said the caseworker "implied that my husband was abusive, asked sensitive and invasive questions about my son's private medical care, and threatened to remove my children from their home, away from their loving parents, and put them in a broken foster care system."
More than half of all state legislatures have either passed or proposed bills targeting the transgender community this year, and some criminalize doctors and parents for providing medical care that studies have shown can save their children's lives. Even the bills that don't pass still inflict a great deal of pain on the community, as evidenced by large spikes in calls to the Trevor Project, a LGBTQ suicide prevention group, in states when legislation is introduced.
Being a Better Ally
Amber ended her presentation by sharing five takeaways on supporting the transgender community.
- Make noise. She suggested that everyone think about what they do well, whether it be practicing the law, writing op-eds, or any number of skills, and do that in support of trans kids
- Hold people accountable. Amber pointed out that attacks on the transgender community didn't happen overnight, but they will continue to happen until people speak up. She stressed the importance of correcting people when they misgender or deadname a trans colleague or friend
- Vote in every election. School boards have the power to ban books, and the city council can overturn non-discrimination ordinances
- Get politically involved. There are many ways to volunteer and help candidates that you support
- Believe trans people when they tell you who they are
Amber concluded the event stating, "I'm here today, 1300 miles away from home, standing in front of a room of people that I can't wait to get to know… because I would rather change the entire world than change my perfect son."
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