Boys and girls experience gender variance in very different ways.
It is perhaps the only way in which being female is easier than being male. A young girl reaching outside her gender stereotype is encouraged. Sports? Yes! Science and math? Of course! Pants? Short hair? Sure. Oh, there’s a price to pay if she gets too boyish—especially as puberty approaches. She’ll get stuck into a category—tomboy. But even that is seen as transitory—nothing to worry about. Puberty will straighten her out!
If a boy who reaches out for feminine things is ‘encouraged’ social services is notified. Nobody calls social services about a short haired girl in pants.
So parents of children born as girls slip through the early years with only a vague sense of unease. No, the gender non-conforming girl, who may in fact be a young transman, doesn’t show up on the radar until she (or he) freaks out as puberty approaches. Perhaps this child has been granted the trappings of masculinity, allowed the hair, the clothes, the scholastic endeavors, the athleticism—and now, it isn’t enough. The child needs the name, the pronoun, the social role, is horrified at the thought of breasts, of menstruation…
We can see clear distinctions here; not a tomboy, then. Something else. A struggle for identity—after a childhood that more or less worked.
For boys it’s different. Supression is instant and automatic. While the girl cuts her hair short, the boy aches for long hair. While the girl wears pants, (and freaks out when forced into dresses or skirts for formal occasions) the boy must live full time incognito. The skirt, the dress, is the red-line. A lot of parents compromise there, buying shirts and pants from the girls department for their non-conforming boys. But wearing a skirt, a dress, (and female shoes) is Dress Up. It’s play. It’s an indoor activity. Perhaps with the shades down. Sibling exposure, whether their friends are allowed to see the spectacle, has to be negotiated.
The girl skips down the street in a baseball cap in tattered jeans. In broad daylight. Tomboy!
Sarah Hoffman’s family and my own are trying to allow for the existence of the male tomboy. The tomgirl! Look at him! Isn’t he cute! He’ll probably grow out of it, but my, isn’t he pretty! Adorable. Give him time to figure it out. You know, sometimes, they’re trans. I heard that. Well, give him time, give him time. Does the child like to be called he or she? He’s OK with either pronoun, as long as you’re not teasing him? He prefers he? OK then.
(I hear someone screaming, BATHROOMS! WHAT ABOUT THE BATHROOMS!—another post. Don’t worry. We’ll get to the all-important bathroom soon enough.)
That’s the world we want to create. A world in which very young boys and girls do not need to ’socially transition’ because they are granted freedom of gender expression. At puberty there’s a rubicon; a battle rages between those who feel that puberty in a gender causing dysphoria should be delayed and bypassed, and those who feel that puberty is necessary for the child to fully understand themselves. This is a serious question, and it may be answered differently for different children.
But for the little ones, could we just let them be?
We are fortunate to live in two of the most enlightened cities in the country on either coast; doesn’t mean we don’t sometimes catch hell, but on the whole, our kids have been free to be Tomgirls. Pink boys, Sarah calls them. We need a name. Things with names are normal! Things without names, things with only clinical names, are weird and horrible. Lovecraftian. The Thing Without a Name!
People confuse the word ‘transgender’ with ‘transexual,’ not understanding it to be an umbrella term encompasing different kinds of people. So when you say ‘transkid’, people think you’re performing SRS on a toddler. People should know better; we could teach people better, but at a certain point, you give up on a label and go around the landmine. It’s hard to be against a progressive; easy to pillory and mock a Liberal.
Tomboys and tomgirls. It’s gender freedom. Freedom of expression.
You got a problem with freedom? Why do you hate freedom?
What are you, Al Qaeda?
POSTSCRIPT: Social transition complete with pronouns, living in stealth, may well be necessary for many children in many places. I don’t have a kid like that or live in a place like that, but I respect parents who do. What Sarah and I are trying to do, trying to advocate, is to hold open as many options for our kids as possible for as long as possible, to give them time to understand themselves. We’re lucky. We have nothing but sympathy and admiration for those in tougher places. Our hopes are with you.
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Right along with you and Sarah on this journey…you explain things so eloquently here, I need to do a direct link to this page. A summary of the mission, if you will…
Thanks! There was a time when I thought that the ‘holding open options’ thing was a cop out for people too weak to accept the reality of ‘born in the wrong body.’ But as I listened to parents on the various list serves I belong to, and met some kids in transition, I began to see that my son wasn’t exactly like some of these other kids. Gender variant kids may be gender variant for a variety of reasons, it would seem. Sometimes the boy in a dress is a boy in a dress; sometimes she’s a girl in a dress on a body that needs some tweaking. Sometimes, perhaps most of the time, the boy in the dress will one day identify as gay. But not all the time! So; the boy in the dress may be trans or cisgendered (normative); gay or straight.
Gender variance means something, but we cannot know what it means immediately. We wait and see.
Human beings are very bad at this wait and see thing. They need support in this situation. Which I why I urge parents of gender variant kids to seek out communities to share their feelings with. These communities, by the way, are very non-judgemental. The ones I belong to are supportive of parents decisions, across the spectrum. The only thing we all have in common in our parenting is the knowledge that these feelings are deep, important, no one’s fault, and that we must struggle to find the best way to help our kids make their way safely through their childhoods. Different kids, different environments, different cultures, demand different responses. But we can all help each other. At the core, we accept. Then we work out the best compromise our situation allows.
As an adult who struggled with the very things your children are going through, I can tell you that there is another term that has entered the arena for the adults, and that is gender-queer. I am in the beginning stages of researching it, but I can tell you that I believe this is where I identify as are some friends of mine who grew up, always being the tomboy. It was never that I felt I was born in the wrong body, because I absolutely identify with being a female in body, but I definately walk the line internally, embodying both male and female attributes, preferring to dress in boys clothing, etc. I commend you and labelsareforjars for allowing your children to be themselves without being judged or treated differently. I can only hope that I am able to be half the parent to my children that you are to yours. I’m glad that you both got some press in a recent NYtimes article, and I hope to continue following the journey.
I am so grateful that we are progressing as a society and moving towards acceptance (albeit slowly). I can’t help but wonder how much easier my childhood would have been to have been accepted and not shunned for being “different”.
Thank you for sharling your lives so openly.
Thank you for commenting. I’ve heard of the term genderqueer, and met a few people who identify that way. I was thinking that the term was somehow reserved for adults, in the way that gay and lesbian are properly reserved for sexually active adults, but I see now that genderqueer doesn’t speak to sexual preference at all, and like transgender, it can be used on to describe a child without sexualizing the child. Somehow it sounds sort of grown-up, though! We’re so careful when using words around kids; trying not to bind them with labels and at the same time acknowledging their identities. We lack a language for all this. Thank you for pointing out something I should have understood better.
You are the first, that I’ve read, who actually addresses this issue in an un-biased manor and presents both sides well. The fact that you offer your children, without judging them in any way, the opportunity to explore if they so choose, speaks highly of you. Any parent who truly loves their children, should do this.
Today’s society seems to have opened the doors for girls and women, giving them the freedom to dress, act, and present themselves in a truly feminine fashion, or taking on more masculine characteristics. Boys and men, however, are reluctant to show any interest in this area because of the potential backlash from society. This stereotype of how men SHOULD be, in my opinion, presents a double standard. The tightrope men are walking needs to change, taking the pressure off them – young and old – and allowing them to explore the feminine side. The true impact that this may have is unknown, but if you suppress it what will happen in the long run?
You know, I’m torn… because I totally agree with this in so, so many ways and I know that “sissies” are excoriated in a way tomboys are so, so not. I don’t want to say that isn’t true. I really don’t.
But… sometimes it’s not so easy. Sometimes the short hair gets you comments every day from your family. Sometimes going to the Hair Cuttery means thirty-minute fights.
Sometimes your family buys you perfume and lipstick for your birthday, exasperated with giving subtle hints.
Sometimes everyone around you calls you “sonny” and uses “he” and your family doesn’t understand why in the world you’re indignant, because wanting people to respect both your gender and your expression at the same time is asking far too much.
Sometimes you’re walking around in a muscle shirt showing off and your mom has to stop you and tell you you look strong and feminine, turning a moment of pride into a long lecture about how it’s okay to accept yourself, as long as you call yourself the right words while you’re doing it. And you picked the wrong ones, because you never said you wanted to be a boy, even if you never told anyone you were kind of mad you weren’t born one, sometimes.
Because if you said that, they’d either have a heart attack or start calling you “he,” and even if they did that second one, then you’d have to get annoyed at them all over again… when they’re trying.
Sometimes people think it’s awesome that you’re muscular but can’t share your pride when you use a heavier weight, because that will make you bulky, and muscular women are supposed to be lean, and you can always just do more reps with the little pink ones. Don’t you want to do that? Be reasonable, here.
Sometimes even the hair that supposedly no one things anything of is bought with screaming and cursing and tears. Sometimes people know that what you’re doing isn’t “tomboy,” because “tomboy” is something they can shrug off, and this they can’t, and it bothers the heck out of them for some reason you’ve never understood.
I guess what I’m saying is… all of us bump into “NOT ALLOWED” at some point. Femme boys and young transgirls bump into it sooner and that’s awful and I hate it. But the idea that being a tomboy means you can do anything isn’t true. You can do anything as long as it’s cute and fits the stereotype in someone’s head of the tomboy.
And even there… it seems to me she’s roguish, rather than actually big and strong. She gets into scrapes. To me that means she gets into trouble for how she is, and her getting into trouble is endearing, somehow. Even the stereotype doesn’t quite let her be masculine and confident. It says she’s scrappy — a fighter who dukes it out for every scrap of recognition she gets.
Also, she’s a kid. I’ve never heard of the tomboy stereotype becoming the executive wearing a suit and tie in the boardroom.
You’re right, and I’m sorry I trivialized the plight of gender non-conforming people born in female bodies. Thank you for your comments; I’d like to build a post around them in the main galley of the blog; let me know if that is alright and how you’d like it to be attributed.
Bedford,
Please feel free! Just call me Alexa there.