'My transgender daughter should not have to use the men's restroom'

Clearly. I assumed that's why you started the thread.

 

Let's ask Jamie Lee Curtis.

 

And, honest question: Is this settled now? Is the righteous side the side that feels that 6-year-olds can be trans-gendered? I don't mean to trivialize this, but I can't get my kid to pick out a pair of shoes, let alone this.

I get it. Gender is a social construct. And I'm all for shaking shit up. But I remain uneasy with this. Maybe I'm in the minority.

 

How about we support that a kid wants to wear/like/strive to be whatever without placing gendered labels on that behavior? This kid wants to wear a dress and play with princesses. That's great. But why do we accept that those are those inherently girl activities, any more than wanting to play with dinosaurs an inherently boy one? Can't a boy want to play with princesses and a girl want to dig in the dirt?

FWIW, I support a person's right to be called a pronoun of their choosing and express themselves in whatever manner they want. I have no business deciding that for them. But I find it troubling that we are in effect reinforcing gender stereotypes by labeling behavior and preferences as evidence of being one gender or the other.

 

I agree that 6 is too young to determine that your son really identifies as a girl rather than prefers to play with dolls and likes the color pink.

It's funny, though, that a girl can be a "tomboy," and that is considered positive or at least not necessarily negative.

There is no similar positive or neutral designation for a boy who likes to play with dolls and dress up.

 

I just wonder how the dad of a six-year-old knows or feels confident about such a thing. What was that conversation like?

 

I'm not saying there's anything wrong with being uneasy about it. And I'm not going to presume to speak to righteousness. What I've come to believe, based on my life experience dealing with transgender crime victims in the courthouse and transgender homeless people at my church, is that gender is much more like sexuality than not, and transgender people realize at a very, very young age that they don't identify with their assigned gender.

I'm fine with giving people in general - and kids in particular - space to figure that out before forcing them to conform and risk the really great harms that can come with conformity in a pretty short order. Transgender teens are at high risk for suicide and homelessness. They're also much more likely to engage in dangerous behaviors. Letting that continue is worse, to me, than a few young kids experimenting with wearing dresses or use the other restroom and being supportive while they figure it out.

I think an overwhelming majority are going to end up right where their genitalia suggest they should. I don't think those kids are harmed by letting them come to it naturally.

 

I suspect our views are more similar than different Smash. But from what I understand, many, many kids go through phases where they like to do the things you're describing. Transgender kids never come out of that phase. Apparently it's pretty obvious. And I agree that a lot of these activities shouldn't be gender specific anyway. That's a different, although somewhat related, issue from a child who fully identifies with the sex opposite to what they were born with.

 

I'm somewhat surprised that it always comes down to one preconceived gender notion or the other:

"I was born with A, but I feel like B." or "I was born with B, but I feel like A."

Are there any to whom, "I was born with A and don't really feel like A. But I sure as hell don't feel like B, either" fits?

 

Someone's never been on Tumblr before!

 

I read an NYT Magazine piece involving a kid who considered himself agender. The kid wore skirts with button down shirt and bow ties. The kid's parents didn't use 'he' or 'she' to refer to the kid and changed the kids name to a gender neutral one. I think everyone used the terms 'them' and 'they.'