I Know Who I Am; I Know You Do
Listening to what my trans child is telling me.
My child’s body hasn’t been their own for a very long time. I wonder if they can consciously recall the feeling of true body autonomy. I doubt it.
The sideways glances of strangers, the intrusive questions and sometimes openly hostile confrontations always send a clear and consistent, if at times subtle, message: I know you don’t belong here. Or, I know you aren’t who you say you are. Always the negative to their positive, circling their truth and shoving it away like a shameful secret. Their version of gender the motherland; Bean’s sense of self the invader.
Then, there’s their own sense of dissonance, a corpus at odds with their internal true north. I purposely avoid using the word conflict because that seems to again shade their truth with antagonism when what I want to do is highlight the beauty in their authenticity.
Now on the cusp of medical intervention, doubt again taps lightly at the door and asks for evidence. Even among the believers, I think to myself, the burden of proof falls at my child’s feet.
I’ve said the same thing in a thousand different ways: Bean lives in their body and knows themselves in a way more pure, for lack of a better word, than anyone I’ve ever known. There is no magic to their insight; they know themselves because they have the courage to grapple honestly—whether by choice or necessity—with their personhood, in all its confusion and contradiction, joy and hope, sorrow and cruelty. Sitting in your self (not yourself) is hard and messy work, but required if we truly want to stake our claim on our own hearts.
And yet …
Bearing witness to the relentless refusal of your child’s own experience of their own existence is as mystifying as it is maddening.
They were sunk into a bean bag chair when he pulled a copy of the DSM from a book shelf. He was slightly bent, Bean face-to-face with the cover as he described a single entry: gender dysphoria. The contrast of childhood and weighty decisions felt stark and immediate. “We can’t give you medicine unless you have something that needs to be treated,” he explained.
I crawled to the edge of my seat, uncomfortable. In the years I’ve been reading about gender, Julia Serano describing exceptional gender expressions as “naturally occurring examples of human variation” was a light bulb moment for me. This simple sentence changed everything, brought a clarity and understanding that seemed to sit on my skin and then sink, deep and nourishing, straight to my bones.
I do not want my child pathologized.
I tell them as much, making clear for Bean that their feelings aren’t symptoms. Their being isn’t a diagnosis. These same sorts of variations occur across several species, and would likely be more pronounced in humans if we didn’t so tightly script gender. “Yep, yep,” her therapist agrees in his now familiar shorthand.
I want to be clear that I like Bean’s therapist; I know him to be a strong advocate for the medical needs of trans*/non-binary/gender nonconforming kids. He is doing his job, and his job is a somewhat complicated combination of ensuring kids get the care they need while also appeasing a larger medical environment—and most specifically an insurance industry—that hasn’t caught up to them yet.
I understand and believe in the need for informed consent and readiness assessments. But I also know much of Bean’s life has been a readiness assessment, and they’ve been denied at every turn. A moral outrage for many, a simple shake of the head for some.
The gatekeeping of medical care just seems like the latest.
I know you aren’t who you say you are.
A few months ago, I rewatched the movie Defending Your Life. I can’t say why I like the movie so much, but something about reviewing pivotal life moments, some that may even seem ordinary, appeals to me. I like accountability; I like the idea of not letting yourself off the hook so easily, of forcing a reckoning of sorts.
Raising Bean has been my personal Defending Your Life. I’ve turned so much of myself over and over, like tilling old soil hoping for more fertile ground. The most surprising discovery is the amount of unconscious bias I find on my own shadowy edges, obscured, ignored even, but established and hardy nonetheless. Holding them in silence, I see the roots for what they plainly are: fear.
Now when we get denials from insurance companies or someone comments on how Bean is an abomination or how there are only two genders, I imagine sitting them down and playing scenes not from their own life, but from Bean’s.
We can start with the day one of their preschool teachers wouldn’t step in and help Bean navigate the constant questions they were getting about gender. There I’d be at the end, sitting across from the teacher at a child-sized table wondering why they weren’t asking some of Bean’s peers to take more responsibility for better understanding them. “They’re always answering questions about whether they’re a boy or a girl from the same kids,” I’d ask from on-screen. Then, a pivot back to Bean from the teacher: “Well, if she gets enough peer pressure, she’ll change.”
I know you aren’t who you say you are.
Next, let’s move to Fenway, opening on Bean sitting at a table with her family waiting to meet a player from her favorite ball club. A quick trip to the bathroom after lunch; an adult swooping into the frame. “You belong over there!” the stranger yells, pointing to the boy’s restroom. Cut to a short time later where this same stranger is behind us as we finish the tour of the stadium, pointing at Bean and whispering behind her hand to her husband.
I know you aren’t who you say you are.
Staying on theme, we’ll move to the park district to watch Bean going into the bathroom before baseball practice. “That’s the girls! That’s the girls! That’s the girls!” a stranger will shout, chasing us in through the doorway. When I assure her we know, she squeaks out a confused “Oh” and starts laughing hysterically.
I know you aren’t who you say you are.
Same park district, same bathroom—a custodian shoos Bean down the hall with a “The boy’s room is down there,” his mouth dropping open and an elongated “Reeaallyyy” escaping as Bean continues in and I let him know we’re fine, they know where they belong.
I know you aren’t who you say you are.
Finally, we’ll close in a hallway in Bean’s school outside the makeshift gym. In line, Bean asks another student why they always seem to have a bad attitude. The instruction was mine; I’d told them to reach out to a peer they said always seemed upset, though I might have chosen different words. We’ll pull in close to the student’s face as she responds: “Why do you act like a boy when you’re really a girl?”
I know you aren’t who you say you are.
Their therapist draws a crude version of the brain on his whiteboard. “Puberty starts in the pituitary gland,” he explains. “This gland sends out hormones to the gonads — ovaries if you’re born female and testicles if you’re born male — that tell them to start producing estrogen or testosterone.” He tells Bean the names of the hormones (FSH and LH) and talks briefly about germ cells.
“Puberty blockers work right at the pituitary gland,” he continues, drawing an arrow to the imagined gland. “They stop these hormones from being sent out.”
He pauses to test Bean on what he knows they should have learned from their endocrinologist. “What are the ways you can take puberty blockers?” he asks. Shot or implant, Bean answers. “And where do they place the implant?” Bean points to just above the inside of their elbow. “How long do they last?” This one, Bean can’t remember.
The whiteboard gets erased and he asks them to teach us what they learned. Bean freezes, though finally scrawls a circle for the brain and stem for the pituitary gland, stuttering “Uh, uh, um, um” to remember the hormones, though the names never do come in that moment.
The therapist tells Bean it’s OK, we’ll go over the information again, and moves on to some of the larger consequences of using puberty blockers.
The main one for Bean is that should they decide to never go through an estrogen puberty, they won’t be able to have biological kids. “I need you to think about four questions for me,” he tells them. “1. What does family mean to me? 2. What family would I like? 3. Do I want kids? 4. Do I want kids that are biologically related to me?”
There’s no way to get around the fact that these are difficult conversations, substantial and far-reaching considerations. How can an 11-year-old even begin to answer these things for themselves? I’ve heard that, I’ve thought that, more times than I can count.
But then I remember what’s been demanded of Bean throughout most of their life, and how often those demands are far heavier and more treacherous than thinking about if they want kids that are biologically related to them at an age when most of their peers are picking out training bras or searching their faces for that first pimple.
I know you aren’t who you say you are.
My parenting Achilles’ heel has always been my compulsion to start from a strong defense. I torch the woodlands instead of wondering how I might use the timber to build bridges instead. Love is at the center, I tell myself, but there’s a good amount of fear, too, when I’m honest.
I think back to my imagined Defending Your Life-style attempt at underscoring Bean’s assuredness by emphasizing their ability to withstand, to protect and live their truth against a world that so often gets them wrong.
But endurance is not their essence.
So, I imagine sitting them down again, not to offer a defense or show of strength, but to showcase the undeniable beauty of steadfast self-awareness.
We’ll open in the shoe aisle at Target. Bean’s corkscrew curls hang to their shoulders, bouncing as they skip past all the glitter and pull a box of Spiderman shoes from the shelf. Off come their own shoes and I hear the scratch of the Velcro, and then they’re up, running to a mirror to admire their feet. “Are those the ones you want?” I ask. “Yes,” they answer without missing a beat.
I know who I am.
Same Target, different day. We’re in the boy’s department getting some shorts and T-shirts when Bean spies a suit coat. Their love is immediate. One arm in, then the other. I watch a smile crack their face in half. I’m not even sure they’re aware of how wide open their face is with joy. That’s the hallmark of genuine happiness, I think, when elation is a reflex, not something you have to summon.
I know who I am.
Next, we’re in their room. It’s picture day at school and they’re carefully laying out a button down and tie, trying to decide between red and gray. The gray matches the plaid pattern of their shirt better, so they flip the collar, circle the tie over their head and pull the knot to their neck. “You don’t have to wear it so tight,” I tell them. “That’s the way I like it,” they answer.
I know who I am.
For a long time, our morning routine included brushing their hair back in a ponytail they’d tuck up into their baseball cap. But now, we’re standing in front of the bathroom mirror. “I want a hair cut,” they say. Bean’s on a booster seat in a chair in a salon, long curls scattered across the floor. They look up at me, beaming, and I snap a quick photo.
I know who I am.
Finally, we’ll close in the hallway of Bean’s school outside the makeshift gym. At the urging of their mother, they’ll ask a classmate why they always seem upset, though those aren’t the words they’ll choose. This time, we’ll pull in close to Bean’s face as “Why do you act like a boy when you’re really a girl?” snakes its way into their ear, up, up, up, to finally register. “Because I can,” they respond.
I know who I am.
I know you do.
I know who I am.
I know you do.
I know who I am.