CJ KEMAL AND HIS JOURNEY TO BE A SINGLE BLACK TRANSGENDER DAD
There's no secret that we live in a polarizing world today. Politically, socially, economically it can sometimes feel like the world that we know, the United States, lives on opposite ends of the spectrum. One of the topics that drive us apart seems to be gender identity. We all remember the upheaval over restroom usage by transgender Americans in North Carolina and other cities (big shouts to the NBA for stepping up!). There still exists a concerning stigma as it relates to transgender identities in our country despite our freedom to decide who we want to be and how we want to live. When I woke up this morning and read a story of 58 murders in the city of Chicago in 3 days (many of young children and teens) and also listened to The Longest Shortest Time podcast, telling the story of CJ Kemal a proud and "aspiring" transgender father - I couldn't help but to get emotional. Here we are debating over what pronouns should be used when describing and identifying ourselves, yet we have parent-less children in the streets of our cities suffering fatal consequences. Troubling indeed.
We may not all be aware, but there are substantial numbers of transgender parents in the United States today. According to The Williams Institute, of 51 studies conducted, most found that anywhere from one quarter to one half of all transgender people reported themselves as being parents. And here's the beauty in it all...studies on the outcomes of children that are raised by transgender parents suggest that there are no detrimental differences in that child's upbringing than anyone else brought up in a binary household. Maybe this is why CJ - who is a 28 year old train driver living in South London - can inspire us all with his story of overcoming stigmas in his quest to become a single transgender black dad in London. It's a lot but we're proud of CJ for telling his story for us all to hear and hope you enjoy connecting to what seems like a beautiful human.
To learn more about the the state of transgender parenting in our world, I found this study by The Williams Institute to be quite enlightening. https://williamsinstitute.law.ucla.edu/wp-content/uploads/transgender-parenting-oct-2014.pdf
