What Would We Even Do About It?
My gender nonconforming child asks some big questions.
NOTE: This post was originally written in 2017 and uses my child’s birth name and she/her pronouns, both of which are no longer acceptable. I am sharing here for parents who may be at the start of their own work with their kid, not as an invitation to use this name or these pronouns for my kid.
I keep a small, purple soapstone heart in the pocket of my jacket. Every time I’m walking—to the car, to work, at the store, waiting for the dogs, the bus,—I find myself reaching in and running my thumb across the smooth surface.
Back and forth. Back and forth. Back and forth. The very same way I rub, have always rubbed, the top of Sabine’s hand when she slips hers inside mine, which is increasingly rare these days, but still happens.
Over time, I’ve come to recognize this ritual for what it truly is: A way to let go of my worry.
The problem was easy enough to solve: She didn’t want the gift she’d gotten during her class’s gift exchange. Despite the suggestions she’d written down, the classmate who’d gotten her name gave her a hot pink scrapbook kit. Jammed in her locker before winter break, she now wondered what she should do with it. “Bring it home,” I told her. “ I am sure one of the neighbor girls will like it.”
“It doesn’t fit in my backpack,” she said.
“Then carry it,” I answered, confused she hadn’t thought of this solution herself.
Standing in the doorway to my room, math homework dangling from one hand, her eyes lower and then quickly come back up to look at me. “I don’t want to be seen with it,” she said.
Looking at pictures spanning her life to date, I can trace her growth into the person she is today. Before she could choose for herself, dresses and sandals, pinks and purples, orange and yellow. Cap sleeves and clips trying to tame her unruly curls.
When she started to assert herself (rightfully), girlish fell away, slowly at first, until finally not one (visible, public) speck remained. She did not consciously reject girl; rather, something far more simple and honest happened. She was told to buy what she liked and, well, what she liked—what made her feel most herself, most comfortable—was always on the other side of the aisle.
A toe first dipped into the pool of neutrality became, by measures, a deep soak in nonconformity.
There are so many other spaces where nonconformity is celebrated. We constantly hold up our trailblazers as symbols of innovation, as inspired examples of our promise and potential when we unchain ourselves from the weight of expectation. Dare to be different, we say. Follow your heart, we implore. Set yourself apart.
… But, not too far apart.
Because when you stray beyond what often feels like an arbitrary, constantly moving but seemingly collectively agreed upon line, celebration turns to suspicion, and suddenly the revered idea of self-determination is thrown in shackles and the punishment for boldness is, at times, complete exile.
I sometimes imagine her crossing that boundary. Conjure a physical representation in my mind. Early footsteps advancing then retreating, straddling two places, one contented but ill-fitting, the other genuine but bleak. Then, a deliberate push beyond comfort and acceptance into a landscape too often marked by judgement and shame. I try to think if she ever looked back with longing. Did she ever wish her feet would turn around and march her toward safety, toward the protection and security offered by a willingness to belong, in the socially constructed ways we’ve come to determine what belonging means, that is?
I always answer no.
Still, I’ve watched the years bend her head forward. Eyes at the floor, running past people, gauging the mistrust, assuming she’s not welcome or, at minimum, deserving of being closely watched.
All the time she’s spent in this space where what echoed back to her was denial of her truth. You know you are in the presence of bravery when, at every turn, a person’s self is continually discounted and yet they maintain a constant, true picture of who they are.
There were moments, are moments, I myself have wished she’d turn around. We’d walk back, hand in hand, to the ease of but not too far. There’s a constant hum of anxiety, a perpetual lump in my throat. I know the terrain is brutal. “I’m scared,” I think to myself, not obsessively but often, trying so hard to reflect her strength.
She never wavers.
“Why don’t you want to be seen with it?” I ask.
“I just don’t,” she answers.
The reason, I know, is because it’s pink. I remind her that pink is just a color, then dive slightly deeper. “You know, just because you don’t like a lot of typical girl things doesn’t mean you have to …” I struggle for the right words. She understands, and is adamant.
“I know,” she cuts me off. “I just don’t want to be seen with it.”
I can count on one hand the times I’ve asked her the next question: “Are you comfortable being a girl?” It’s not a trick. My reason is always the same. I want to check in. I want to give her the space to talk, explore, feel confused, feel certain, … feel whatever she’s feeling.
“Yeah,” she says. That’s what she always tells me. I won’t lie, there is a comfort in that answer I can’t fully explain. The closest I can come perhaps is this: I will always love my child unconditionally; the world, this world, won’t. In that won’t are people who refer to children like Sabine as “it,” denying them even the illusion of humanity. Or, those who believe being transgender or gender nonconforming is a mental illness. Less generous folks want her dead. So, tucked in that “Yeah” is the deceptive reassurance that we aren’t really that far from not too far. If we crane our necks we can still see acceptance.
Then there’s this thought, too, which I only allow for brief, shameful moments, scolding myself, face hot with self-contempt, at the exact instant I let the feeling rise through my consciousness: I would miss my girl. I do, sometimes, though not really. These feelings are complicated by knowing she will always be who she is, the person I know, the person I love.
Parenting her has exposed how well our acceptance of social norms grooms us to be wary. I’ve spent most my life swimming downstream. She’s spent all of hers swimming up. I wonder at her strength sometimes, fault my own weakness. I don’t deserve her, I know.
She looks at me again. “What would we even do about it?”
My heart pounds. Words catch in my throat and I clear them. Why am I caught so off guard? We talk plainly about how for some people, their gender identity doesn’t match their sex. “There are a lot of things we can do,” I tell her. She recalls a 60 Minutes episode she watched. “Oh, I know,” she remembers. “Surgery.”
“Well,” I say, “that doesn’t happen until later. Doctors want to make sure …”
“That you really want to be the opposite?” she finishes my sentence. I nod, don’t tell her it’s a little more nuanced than simply wanting to be the opposite. She describes a friend who told her about an anime character who is a “mysterious gender.” Her smile hints that maybe that rings true for her. Perhaps that’s how she’s always felt? Neither, both, too big for such a small word, such an unforgiving binary. I never cared much for the term gender expansive, but now I see its beauty.
So much feels rushed. Conversations we wouldn’t necessarily have to have now feel urgent. Over dinner a couple of days later, I ask her how she feels about the changes her body will one day experience — sooner than seems possible. She frowns, makes a face. She is 10, after all.
But she’s not … distressed.
Experts who work with transgender kids often use the phrase “consistent, insistent, persistent” to describe the difference among children who are transgender and children who are nonconforming or gender variant. One therapist put it this way: Transgender kids often say I am a boy/girl. Gender nonconforming or gender variant kids will often say I feel like a boy/girl.
I think back. For almost as long as I can remember, she’s been consistently nonconforming but has never voiced a knowing that she is a boy. More than anything, I think she feels betrayed by her biology. Why would she feel allegiance to a body—a sex—that has caused her such anguish, let self-doubt take root alongside her self-confidence?
In this context, disowning girlhood, making a complete break with the feminine, seems natural to me. They’ve been her punishers for years.
I ask her directly. I don’t want to lead her, I just want to give her the language she might need to talk about her feelings. More than anything, I want her to feel that in this house, with me, any answer is OK. Even those I might not wholly be prepared for.
“Not … really,” she tells me, a small pause separating those two words. Space to figure things out.
I think a lot about about her question. What would we even do about it? Especially in this time, where the gains made in acceptance and equality for most every marginalized group feel threatened in very real ways, answering broadly feels important, mainly because I worry how she’ll internalize these next four years. What messages about who she is — whether decidedly transgender or nonconforming or … —will ring most loudly in her ears?
Some things, I know, she’ll have to answer for herself.
For my part, I promise to always love her. I promise to always listen. I promise to never stop working for a world where acceptance and equality are the rule not the exception. I promise to never stop raising my voice against hate while also lifting up her voice and the voices of countless others who speak their truth and experience so much better than their allies.
I promise, even on the hardest days, to never lose hope that we all will find our better selves.