Diane Ehrensaft - The Gender Creative Child

I stayed calm. And I explained to them the best I could that there is no correlation between kids’ cross-dressing and being gay. And if he is gay, it’s not because of anything I did. It’s because he’s gay. And maybe it’s a stage. And maybe it’s not. But either way, I don’t want him to ever feel like he wasn’t able to express himself because his parents didn’t support him.

Some of his friends still gave him grief, yet many were supportive. When people on the street would assume Asher was a girl and compliment him on his appearance, they would smile when corrected by Seth (“He’s my son”), express appreciation for Asher, but then apologize for confusing Asher’s gender. Seth’s response: “Don’t apologize. He’s in a purple dress with sparkly shoes. How would you know?” And I think to myself, yes, how can any of us know? The old ground rules of boys will be boys and girls will be girls have been rightly challenged, primarily by the children themselves. A dress no longer equals girl; a buzz cut no longer equals boy. As one gender-nonconforming eight-year-old patient of mine said to me in exasperation about his own pink tops: “Don’t people get it? They’re not girls’ shirts. They’re just people shirts.”

As an addendum, Seth followed in Nils Pickert’s shoes. When his children suggested he wear a dress, too, he raided his wife’s closet, found one loose enough to fit, and strolled down the street with his son and daughter, all in dresses. Along with laughing, the only comment to Seth from his wife as she pulled up to the house and saw Seth in her dress was: “Make sure you don’t rip it.” [6] Seth Menachem, “My Son Wears Dresses, and That’s OK with Me,” Huffington Post , July 14, 2014, huffingtonpost.com.

Going back to my eight-year-old patient in his pink tops, my wish for this book is that by the last sentence in the last chapter we will get it, even more than we think we do now. I invite you as the readers to be in a dialogue with me, understanding that I, too, will be learning as I write, and you may have some things to teach me as you read, underlining how much the progression toward gender creativity and gender expansiveness is an evolving journey with infinite pathways where the expert becomes the student and the student becomes the teacher. And in the end, every town and village will hopefully be a place where sons and fathers can stroll in their dresses… and mothers and daughters in tuxedos and bow ties, if that is what suits their gender fancy.

Lest you think that the road is clear of ruts and obstacles in reaching that end, let me say a little about the hurdles we still have to jump to get to a gender-expansive world. Laura Ingraham, a conservative commentator, was hired in April 2014 as a radio talk show host for ABC. In the recent past she has taken it upon herself to hold forth, on the air, on the lives of gender-nonconforming children and their families. She has said some remarkable things:

On how putting kids on hormone blockers might have “long-term effects” that children will “regret”: The concern… that, look, these are children, right? They can’t give informed consent for hormone-blocking drugs that are now being given to children as young as, in California, this famous case from last fall, an eleven-year-old child of, I guess it was lesbian parents who decided to give this little boy hormone-blocking drugs that prevents him from going into puberty. These are children we wouldn’t trust to pick what they want to eat for the day… we as parents guide them according to our own moral convictions about what’s right and what’s wrong. [7] The O’Reilly Factor , May 24, 2012.

On how supporting transgender youth “push[es] kids into a box”: It’s got to be confusing for kids…. We are always pushing, pushing, pushing. And kids really can’t be kids any longer. They have to be sexual beings at age six—five even…. And I am not saying some of these kids don’t end up sexually in different places; I don’t know. But I know when they’re kids, their brains have not developed. You don’t have your—your sexual being even if you can have sex, your sexual being, from everything I have read from all the accomplished psychotherapists and everyone who has examined this, your sexual, quote, identity is really not solidified until much later on. [8] Laura Ingraham Show , May 30, 2013.

On how providing children with hormone therapy is “child abuse”: These people are all about natural living and organic living, and “oh, I want organic food,” are all too willing to shoot themselves up or their children up with hormone therapy before the child has even gone through puberty. Let the child go through puberty for goodness sakes…. Your child is suffering. I’m sure there are other strategies, other ways to work on this without at least shooting your kids up with hormones. [9] Laura Ingraham Show , August 8, 2014.

On transgender kids’ “wanting attention”: Maybe some of them want, yeah, some of them want attention, I think, probably as well. I’m just guessing, I have no idea. But I would imagine, kids act out for a whole bunch of different ways and these are little children. These are children. Let children be children. [10] Laura Ingraham Show , August 6, 2014.

These are just a sampling of the remarks she has made over a two-year period, 2012 to 2014. And it hasn’t gotten better since then, so no sea change for Laura Ingraham when it comes to gender sensibilities. When I was asked by Luke Blinder of Media Matters to review and comment on what she has said, in an effort to censor her remarks and counteract their toxic effect on the listening public, I could not get to the computer fast enough to write the following:

When one speaks from ignorance, there is a good chance that they will say ignorant things. This could be no more true than for Laura Ingraham. The only informed statement she made is, “I have no idea.” She does not. So to help her out, a 101 lesson on gender-nonconforming children. Sex and gender are two different developmental tracks. They may cross, but how I know myself as male, female, or other is completely separate from my sexual identity—who I will find myself attracted to. Many children explore and experiment with gender over time, but among them is a small group of children who are insistent, persistent, and consistent from a very early age that the gender they know themselves to be does not match the sex listed on their birth certificate. And there are other children where it is not so clear until later in their childhood, but once it becomes clear, it is vibrantly apparent. If we do nothing for these children, just let them be children, as Ingraham suggests, we are actually doing something, and that something is not good: We put them at risk for anxiety, depression, poor school performance, and later drug abuse, self-harm, sexual acting out, and suicidal thoughts, attempts, or completions. If we listen to them when they tell us something very profound about their core being—“Hey, you’ve all got it wrong; I’m not the gender you think I am, and if you keep policing me on that I may go under”—those youth stand a good chance of coming out whole and healthy. Especially if they have the support of their families and highly skilled professional gender specialists, along with the reeducation of misinformed citizens like Ingraham who in their ill-informed, off-the-cuff remarks add to the transphobic environment that makes it so hard for our gender creative youth to have a good go of it in their lives. Ingraham repeats what so many in my own field, mental health, have done to significantly harm gender-nonconforming youth: dismiss what they are trying to tell us, blame the parents who are trying to support them, and deny them adequate care in one fell swoop. Yes, attention is an important variable: These children are not attention-seeking; they are merely trying to get our attention so we can begin to be smart enough to start listening to what they are saying. As for medical interventions, puberty blockers are a completely reversible intervention, with no documented medical risks, when administered and monitored carefully by a trained medical professional. Their use is two-fold: By temporarily turning off the biological spigot that gets puberty going when it starts releasing adult hormones into the body, a youth and the youth’s parents are allotted more time to carefully explore what that child’s authentic gender identity is before permanent body changes set in; secondly, the use of puberty blockers gives youths the chance to ward off unwanted physical body changes that can be quite traumatic to youths who know they are not the gender that would go along with those bodily changes. For some youth who are already clear about their gender identity (as being different from what’s on their birth certificate, of which there are an increasing number of children, once we give them the chance to speak up), denying them this intervention, rather than offering it to them, is the action with the higher and very significant risk: that the child will be so despairing of ever being the person they know themselves to be with a harmony between body and mind that they would want to end their life, in the worst case scenario. We might even consider the denial of the service a form of child abuse—there’s a life jacket right there, we’re watching, and we’re letting the child drown. What parent would want that for their child when they can offer them something better—an intervention that gives their child the opportunity for a better life?