Coming out letter to parents
Here’s the coming-out letter that, with slight modifications, went out to the parents of my highschool class, the board of directors, and the rest of the teaching staff:
To the parents of [the class],
We want to make you aware one of our instructors had a conversation with [the class] members today where she explained she identifies as transgender. In general, transgender means people whose physical genders do not align with how they see themselves. Specifically, this means that R, who previously used the name J, identifies as a woman, not as a man. In addition, she is transitioning, which means she is moving from presenting herself and interacting with the world as a man to doing so as a woman.
R has been with the Workshop for almost fifteen years, first as a student and more recently as part of our faculty. She has our complete support in her decisions and her identity. We hope you will join us, as part of the Workshop family, in wishing her well on the difficult journey she is making.
If you have any questions about what it means to be trans, or about transitioning, R has suggested the following resource as a good place to start is the article on Transgender at Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender.
Should you have any additional questions, please do not hesitate to call the Artistic Director, or the Director of Educational Programming.
Thank you.
The Workshop
Themocracy