An addition worth thinking about
A great comment below to pull out. Kay asked: “How will you handle it if your child grows up to be transgender? How can we let children know that their gender identity - however strong and however trans - is accepted?”
Truth be told? I have no idea.
I was once reading a academic feminist attachment parenting board for left-handed identifying as women email list (Ok I’m lying about the left-handed part) and people were talking about gender identity. A couple of women were saying that they specifically buy their (for example) boy-children clothes from the girls’ section of Gap. And they let their boys’ hair grow long and put them in ribbons or bows. Now this wasn’t because the boys asked for this, it was because they wanted to raise their children gender-free, kinda like Baby X. (The book is mentioned in this interesting article.)
Baby X was a character from the “Stories for Free Children” that I read in Ms. Magazine. It was a child who was neither a boy nor a girl — it was an X. The moral of the story was that Baby X was free and happy but when I read it (at eight, maybe?) I was horrified. I thought they weren’t being fair to X.
I still feel challenged by that.
It’s one thing to challenge social constructs — that’s a party game around here — but it’s another to defy them just because they’re there. I wouldn’t have a problem with Noah cross-dressing (or Madison either although for a girl, it’s easier to pass as a tomboy than to try to get by as a “sissy”) but I do have a problem cross-dressing him for the sake of politics. And would that be necessary? Should we raise our children as X’s?
Mostly I think that Noah does these things and Madison does those things because he is Noah and she is Madison. For example, Madison cradles her baby dolls and Noah didn’t cradle his dolls much at this age. (When he was a little older, he would nurse them but he would also nurse his trucks.) It could be her biological “femininity” coming out or it may be (as I suspect) that she’s more social and she likes toys with faces. But mostly it doesn’t matter why she does it as long as we give her room to do it and we don’t force Noah to do it just because he isn’t.
We’ve talked about drag some but that’s not the same thing as transgenderism — it’s a place to explore gender but I find transgenderism specifically challenging because it “proves” that there are stereotypical differences between male/female hearts and minds. In other words, I don’t have a problem with a boy playing like a girl or even wanting to be a girl. But I start feeling challenged when a boy says that he feels he is a girl because of these girlish interests.
When I read personal accounts about transgenderism, I think that ultimately it’s impossible to convey what it means to be transgendered and I think a short-cut to talking about it involves these kind of “I liked earrings and make-up although I was a man.” You know? It’s not that this is the sum of being female but it’s more that our social restrictions sprang out of (I believe) some real biological differences. So when Boylan talks about ordering salads, this doesn’t mean that liking salads is what made her female, she’s using that to try to convey how deeply female she felt. (Or at least this is what I believe.) It’s pretty obvious to me that Jenny Boylan didn’t undergo drastic surgery and life upset just to eat salads while wearing lipstick but I read her book and left feeling like I still could never really understand how deeply core our gender-identity is. But I trust Jenny when she says she was always female even when she was living in a male body. I would trust my children, too, but I would feel sorry that nature screwed up so much and was making their lives that much harder. Likely though I would handle it less well than I think because I imagine that it would bring up stuff I didn’t know I was harboring. I hope I would just get my ass to a nice, knowledgable counselor however and not visit any of that on my already-struggling children.
I don’t really know if we lived in a gender-free society if we would no longer have people who felt transgendered. I don’t know if Baby X wouldn’t grow up and want to remove his penis or add a penis or what. I don’t know if it’s possible to be gender-free.
The problem seems to be that our society is so rigid. I think it’s likely that many of us have loosey-goosey gender lines but are mostly this or that and so we are fairly comfortable in the world.
What do you guys think? Let’s chat.
There is a family whose kids were involved in activities with my kids for years, their youngest daughter is transgender. We live in an accepting/alternative sort of area, and she had older parents who were pretty calm. She identified as male from the time she was a toddler, and her parents let her choose her own hair and clothing styles–she has two older (very feminine-styled) sisters and an older brother. She would never respond to her feminine first name, preferring a more gender-neutral nickname, although she didn’t seem to object to people calling her by female pronouns. (So, not exactly raised as Baby X.)
I haven’t seen her for a couple of years and hope she is well and happy. She was a very happy, watchful, self-assured, strong-willed little kid. (Would now be in her mid teens.)
I would wonder whether, in an accepting environment, being transgender will normally show up in a child at a much earlier age than in a more traditional/conservative environment? And whether, in children who are accepted as the gender they self-identify as, rather than the gender they “are” biologically, how many will feel the need to take that surgical final step?
Hannah and I were in a toddler gymastics class (I know) at the town rec center with a little boy who had very long, beautiful blond hair. His mom got a lot of comments about how pretty her little girl was (he was dressed in, IIRC, a red shirt and denim shorts), and the next week he came to the class with a “boy” haircut.
I don’t know what to add, you’ve already said it so well.
I know three transgendered people. All three were born female (unusual, to know so many–80% of transgendered are born male).
One (S) when I first met her was a fairly average lesbian with long hair, clearly identifying as female. She broke up with her long term girlfriend (also her first), cut her hair, began getting tattoos and piercings. Eventually she got into scarification. Then, rather suddenly, she decided she wanted to be a man. Her breasts were removed the following week. Yes, in a week. She had no counseling.
The second (C) was a boy-dyke (her own words). She also got lots of tattoos. She also self-mutilated; her compulsion to cut herself was so strong that she sometimes did it in public. She once told me, “I’d never actually be a man, I’d be a mutilated woman.” She suddenly changed her mind and got on hormones within a week.
The third (G) went to a liberal women’s college. She spent years studying and investigating transgenderism. She spent years in counseling. She spent several years changing her identity, adding hormones, etc before her surgery. No, he works as a counselor to other transgendered people.
The first two, I have to wonder, may have had the surgery as an extenstion of their desire to self-mutilate. They both had extensive histories of abuse–including sexual abuse–and spent many years in the foster system.
However, G, I believe, was truly transgendered. The energy around her (before) was male, not female (if that makes sense). He’s happy as could be now, in a long term relationship with a woman, working in the field. The last time I saw him, he felt right.
Anyway. I would hope that my child, should he/she be transgendered, would not have other things (like abuse) clouding the picture, and be able to make the decision as carefully as G did, instead of rushing into it like S and C did.
Btw, if you’d like to speak with G on this subject, I know he’d be happy to help you. I can pass on his email if you like.
This is why we insisted on choosing a gender-neutral name. Natasha isn’t gender-neutral and neither is Nathan, but Nat could switch if she grew up and wanted to.
Because my partner identifies as gender-queer (as a butch lesbian) and has always felt masculine (since early childhood), we have done a lot of overt thinking about it.
I’m glad we had a girl, because cross-dressing her won’t be as big a deal as cross-dressing a boy would be. She wears a lot of girlie stuff now, but if she should decide she hates dresses when she’s three, I will never force her to wear them. Likewise, if she loves them, that’s fine too.
In short, we try very hard and will continue to try very hard to let our child’s gender unfold as it will (as much as possible within this very gendered culture with its strict gender rules).
By the way the X thing is not considered desirable by any gender activists I know of–at least not unless a person willfully chooses X as a gender. The Intersex Society of North America has a clear statement about how even though intersex babies should be left alone to grow into their unique genders, they should be socially “assigned” a gender as children so they can take part in social norms.
Genderless people aren’t seen as truly human. (Judith Butler is good on this theme.)
For popular gender stuff I love, love, love Kate Bornstien’s Gender Workbook. It’s something an adult could read and adapt to doing some of the exercises with a child, I think.
Excellent discussion as always, Dawn!!!
Wilder has gone through stages of insisting pretty strongly that he wants to grow up to be a girl. He insisted on taking the name of one of the girls up the street for several weeks. He asks us to buy him dresses. Right up until the moment he started mastrubating in public at the slightest provocation , Wilder insisted he would really rather have labia. As in, one day I recorded in my journal a serious conversation we had about how he wanted labia, and this is what it would look like if he did (as he pushed his penis up against his scrotum) and then the next day, he’s playing with his penis 24/7.
And as much as I read that it’s typical for preschoolers to believe that they can grow up to be the opposite sex, and as … indifferent? does that sound too passively involved? to say “I’m fine” implies that I’m more involved in the kids’ sexual orientation than I am … well, as good as I feel about my kids being gay or lesbian or straight, I confess, I grapple with an irrational fear of transgenderism. I have this sense of: how could this happen, that my child would hate his or her body so much, feel so alienated from the physical STUFF of his or her being?
So there’s that lurking fear. Which I try not to impose on Wilder, but know is out there.
We just decorated the kids’ new, separate bedrooms. And I didn’t offer the girls the “boy” quilt choices, nor did I offer Wilder the “girl” quilt choices. And unlike the bedding and decor of their first four years, which was pleasantly and deliberately ungendered (red, blue, and yellow, with jungle accents), I sort of surrendered to my “drag” impulses and picked out girly and boy-ey options for them to select amongst. And then I wondered if this was healthy. And then I decided to give myself a break. And then I read this post and started second-guessing myself again.
Wilder has dresses. He asks, we give them. He can’t wear them to church or shopping, but everywhere else is fine. And he has short hair, and just TODAY in the locker room after swimming, it came up: “Boys have short hair.” I said, no, boys can have very long hair and girls can have very short hair. You have short hair because Daddy does.
But it’s interesting to come home and read this post.
At some point, I have to trust that whatever will be, will be, and that my job is for my kids to love themselves, whoever those selves are, and to love their own unique journeys of self-discovery. I think it’s easier to embrace that letting-go in regards to the girls. Tomboys can go undetected, can “cross dress” pretty invisibly, in ways that “sissies” just cannot. So I have this fear for Wilder, that he’ll grow up uncomfortable in his own body. That would be hard for me, in a way that “I like boys” wouldn’t be hard for me at all.
I never thought of identifying as trans as essentializing gender stereotypes, it’s something I’d like to explore more.
My ex-boyfriend, J, is trans. When we first started dating, he didn’t identify as as a man, but it was always clear to him that he didn’t fully identify as a woman. He spent several years identifying as a butch lesbian before coming to terms with his identity.
J’s struggle to live his identity and my job as an LGBT liaison in University Housing really opened my eyes to gender issues. Working with hundreds of eighteen year-olds, many from rural areas and/or homophobic familes has been telling. I think many of my homophobic students have a much greater fear of transgender folks than gay men/lesbians, but aren’t able to differentiate the segments of the LGBT community.
Back to gender stereotypes: I agree that they are extremely damaging. One of my halls tried to have a drag show this year. Fine by me, until I learned who was doing it- mostly young men whose routines ridiculed supposedly feminine behavior and clothing. This isn’t okay for anyone in the halls, not my trans residents, not my female residents, not any of my residents.
J was a wonderful person with whom to spend the years I did. Having lived in lesbian culture for his adolescence, he was acutely aware of negative stereotypes of women and was always very respectful of women. Fighting transphobia is something that society in general (including GLB folks) need to do, because it’s not just a problem for straight people.
This comment has been pretty incoherent, but I also wanted to tack on my outrage at the appalling lack of media coverage of murders of trans women of color. When these women’s tragic deaths are noted, they are so frequently depicted as “asking for it.”
Raising children to be strong allies of trans people is a lot like being an ally to other communities. It requires recognizing your privilege and working from there. I do a “What’s under the Trans Umbrella?” workshop with my freshman/sophomores that asks them to look at their lives for privilege in a Peggy McIntosh sort of way: do their student IDs have the names they prefer to be called? can they safely use public restrooms? live safely with their dorm roomies? use university health without being demoralized for “wrongly” accessing women’s health services?
We have a long way to go in so many areas, but I’m happy that families are taking action to educate their kids before they get to college- it’s a lot harder for me to work with kids with 18 years of latent transphobia than those whose parents actually discussed diversity.
THis is a very interesting discussion. I find it a bit difficult to wrap my brain around because my children have very secure gender identities. I was never a frilly froofroo girlie girl and as a result, hadn’t dressed my daughters as such. yet at 18 months, my oldest daughter loudly proclaimed “no mommy, i want the pink one!” as soon as she could express a preference for what she wanted to be when she grows up, it has been “I want to be a mommy.”
I really don’t believe a genderfree society is realistic or even desirable. what would happen to those who had strong urges to express their given genders. I do not believe gender is culturally driven, but inherently biological.
Jody,
I am so impressed by your sensitive treatment of Wilder’s gender explorations. He’s a lucky kid to have parents brave enough to give him a dress if he really wants one. Most parents–even very good and quite lefty parents–would balk at that. I wish more were like you.
Have you read the story (in the book by the same title) “A Blind Man Could See How Much I Love You” by Amy Bloom? It’s about a mom who rasies a daughter who becomes a man later. I am not a big Amy Bloom fan, but that story is really beautiful.
I’m going to tell you a story that broke my heart. I used to work at McBarfy’s (I just quit a couple of months ago) and tried my damndest to teach the new kids to say the names of the toy choices (ie:Barbie or G.I. Joe) instead of “boy or girl”. Some of them got this sort of light of understanding in their eyes when I explained why to them, but most of them would not listen to me no matter what I said. Sure enough one day I was wearing a headset up front while Kim took orders in back and she asked if they wanted a boy or girl toy for their crappy meal. The orderer said “boy” and the little boy in back protested and said he wanted the Polly Pocket toy instead. The woman snapped at him “you can’t have the girl toy!”
I was so mad at both that woman and Kim. The worst part is that Kim still didn’t stop saying “boy or girl”.
Transgenerism is something I intellectually have no problems with, but on a deep, personal level, where it counts, I’m not so sure. I couldn’t be in a relationship with a man who’d once been a woman, and I’d be pissed if I dated a transgender man who didn’t tell me - and once I knew, the “romantic” part of the relationship would be over.
I’m sure this says something about my own latent homophobia and that I believe “gender” is something biological, after all, despite the window dressing. I don’t know. It’s something to think about.
So many smart, interesting people show up to read at Dawn’s.
Dan Savage did a story once about noticing how most personal ads for men-seeking-men in the newspaper he worked for would request “straight-acting” partners. And how, even in the gay community, “sissy” kind of guys were discriminated against.
And when I read that, I remember thinking–well, you know, I don’t even like being around very femmy women. Zsa-Zsa Gabor, Joan Collins or “southern belle” types really irk me. Maybe it is a midwestern thing, or maybe the remnants of my toddler jealousy at being usurped by younger sibs takes over, but whenever anyone is drawing too much attention to themselves–making a scene, acting too much the princess–I am turned off. Overly-dramatic people always sort of tire me out, in this sinking-pit-of-my-stomach way, so I tend to avoid them. (An issue for therapy, maybe?)
And when I thought about it more, I know I have always also avoided very tough, macho-acting men. First, for the completely obvious reasons, but they also give me that same sort of unbalanced feeling. (I have a couple of sports-bar type neighbors I never know how to talk to.) What does attract me in men are their softer ways–creative, thoughtful, patient guys.
None of the feminine gay men or masculine lesbians I’ve known have been in those extreme categories that I have trouble with, though. It’s always straight, poofy-haired, make-up & jewelry-covered women and their beer-guzzling, car-polishing men that I shy away from.
Cheryl, the McBarfy’s story is really sad.
What a thoughtful discussion. I also have the reaction that much of the explanations people give about how they knew they were the “wrong” gender seem to reify gender stereotypes. I read Boylan’s book, and I still don’t get it. But I do believe that she loves her family and knows that her transition hurt them badly and wouldn’t have done it if there had been any way she could have continued to live as a man.
My son D came home from preschool one day asking for lipstick because one of his classmates had some. He was saying it had to be flavored, so I wimped out and bought him cherry flavored but clear chapstick, and he was thrilled. (So much that when they discussed for mothers day what their mommies do for them, his answer was “she buys me lipstick.”) He showed it to everyone he met, and when one little girl said “boys don’t wear lipstick” his answer was “but I’m a boy.” But when I told him he looked “mahvelous dahling” he said that only girls could be “darling.”
I’m a lesbian myself but I don’t think sexuality or gender are inherent or biologically driven. Neither do I think they are a simple, conscious choice. I think sexual orientation and gender are complex social and psychological states and involve processes of identification. So when Wilder says he wants to be a girl and wants to wear dresses, it could mean just that he doesn’t want to be the odd one out and/or doesn’t want to have to be in a seperate group with Dad or any number of reasons - not that it’s necessarily some deepseated drive within him to actually be a girl. It always amazes me how in discussions of gender, no one seems to take account of negative reactions as much as positive reaction - people are always saying ‘well, we model equality’ or ‘we give our boy dolls’ but there is always the contrary impulse, isn’t there, wherein even very young children can react against what we want for them and that can work any number of ways eg the daughter of lesbians who will only wear pink dresses or the son of feminists who is ultra-boysie.
Oh wow…this is so interesting. Because of my reluctance to accept that too much is hard-wired, transgenderism has always challenged me, as you say. I think the fact that the majority are born male is very telling. If gender roles in Western societies were not so restrictive–particularly male roles–would transgenderism be as much of an issue? And it seems like it really depends on the mind/body split so characteristic of Western thinking, and that’s where I start getting tripped up…in my mind, we only have these bodies with which to perceive and interact with the world. Transgenderism requires mind and body to be more separate than I can fully wrap my head around, I suppose. But since we can’t understand anything out of context, I just wonder how things would be if gender roles were much more fluid…if we could all dress and act however we liked irrespective of our sex or gender.
sorry my first comment around here is a half-asleep ramble at 2 am!
This might be kind of blunt, but why is transgenderism such an issue anyway? I can see why parents of sexualy non- or not yet oriented children get confused, but these childeren will probably form a minority held up against the loads of people that are victim off all kinds of misery in the society they live in, becoming that much disorientated that they get to doubt their own sexuality, out of pure existential poverty. Act like you are, and people will respect you for that, no matter what your preferences are… and if everybody did so, there would probably be a lot less reason to doubt your gender or sexuality. Offcourse i am talking now about ‘grown-up’ adults who feel the need to change their sexual orientation or their fysiscal state. Sorry for the moralism and the crappy english, i’m not from a native english/american