Trisha Goddard admits having a non-binary child is a ‘learning process’

metro.co.uk:

Trisha Goddard has spoken of her ‘learning process’ after her child came out as non-binary. The TV presenter, 64, has two children from a previous relationship – her daughter Billie and her youngest child Madi, who is non-binary.Non-binary is an umbrella term applied to people with gender identities that fall outside of the traditional gender binary of man and woman.

Speaking to Kaye Adams’ podcast How to Be 60, Trisha told listeners what she said when Madi came out to her.‘”You are my baby, you are Madi,”‘ she said. ‘”I will always talk to you, and address you, as Madi, what you want to be called, I’ll do my best.”‘‘I could understand gay’, she told the podcast. ‘I could understand I had a gay daughter – a queer daughter as they call it now.’‘[And] then I had to learn the “I don’t feel male, I don’t feel female” kind of thing.

I had to wrap my head around it.’Trisha then remarked that people of her generation either fight the future or learn to accept ‘newness’, before placing herself in the latter category. ‘Younger generations are coming up, they’ve got different issues, they’ve got different attitudes,’ she continued. ‘I have to get on board, I have to try and understand, I have to keep the communication channels open.’‘I think a lot of people who’ve been used to being empowered find it very difficult to say, “You know what, I probably don’t know everything about everything”.’ The TV star said rejecting topics like learning new gender language can often be rooted in fear.‘It’s fear of loss of control and power,’ she said. ‘It tends to be older, white, middle-aged men, who’ve traditionally had the power for centuries and centuries.’‘And I think I’m not saying it’s all along male and female lines.