Cynthia Nixon reflects on her trans son Samuel’s coming out, pronouns and journey with his gender identity
Cynthia Nixon has a trans son called Samuel. (Bryan Bedder/Getty)
Cynthia Nixon has opened up about how her son Samuel came out as trans while he was a university student.
The Sex and the City star told The Times that Samuel’s decision to come out as trans felt like it “came out of nowhere” – but the lesbian actress said she fully supports her son.
“It did seem in my view to come absolutely out of nowhere,” Nixon said.
“Sometimes I think it would be easier if you had a child who dressed more obviously like the opposite gender.”
She insisted that she fully supports Samuel – but admitted she struggled to adapt to using his correct pronouns.
“It’s very hard, I find, to do the pronoun transition,” Nixon said.
She revealed that her son used they/them pronouns for a while, before reverting to he/him.
However, she said over time using her son’s correct pronouns became “more natural”.
She continued: “There are many different kinds of trans people.
“I think the gulf between trans men and trans women is vast. And what I hear from a lot of trans men is that some of them genuinely feel masculine and want to be masculine, but I think for a lot of trans men, there is a desire to opt out of gender.”
Cynthia Nixon has previously spoken about how she came to understand trans identities by reading an article.
The A Quiet Passion actress, who lost a bid to be New York governor in 2018, told Alan Cumming and Chris Sweeney on the Homo Sapiens podcast in May how reading an article about trans identities before Samuel came out as trans helped her to understand his identity.
“Before I ever had an inkling my kid might be trans I read a really extensive article… [about] all of these parents of pre-pubescent kids who were really struggling with this,” said the actress, who has another son with her wife, the activist Christine Marinoni.
“There was one dad who said, ‘At a certain point, the decision seemed to me I could have a dead son or a live daughter,’ and it’s like, after you say that, what more is there to say?
“You can make all the arguments that you want… but the fact is, as a parent, as a human, you should listen to what people tell you about themselves.
“And if they want to make this really extreme change or move in that direction, people are not going to do this lightly.”
“It’s different but it’s the same as when you think about 30/40 years ago and more, the arguments given to gay people that ‘This is just a phase’, ‘You’re gonna grow out of this’,” she concluded.
