NPR - transgender children

[wordplay]

Last night on All Things Considered there was what I thought was a very interesting story about transgendered children and therapeutic approaches to helping them; it's the first part of a two-part series, and the second part will air tonight.

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was terrified that he was going to be deaf. It was the late 90s and I was spending a lot of time with Deaf people and sign linguists and there was a lot of discussion of the way that hearing parents' decisions to pursue cochlear implant technology for their deaf children was decimating and completely changing the Deaf community and culture. As my pregnancy neurosis of choice, I worried about how I would handle this, how I'd hold it together. It was daunting as hell to consider what it would be like to give birth to a deaf child and have to decide his place in the world very very early, to decide for him whether he would be a part of a subculture in which I had no place, no voice, no stake or understanding. I worried about what people I cared about would think of me based on the decision. It was this whole entire nexus of anxiety, so many things that scared me coming together in one thing I could lie in bed and worry about when my son's kicking kept me awake late into the night.

If I were having a baby right now, I think gender identity might be my neurosis of choice, for many of the same reasons. Just from listening to that show, I honestly can't tell you how I would respond - my gut tells me I'd be more likely to react like Jonah's parents, but when you think seriously about what it means to help your child embrace a life in which he will constantly be a difficult fit, in which there will be painful puberty and possible medical procedures and... yeah.

Parenting is so hard core, man. It's hearts and flowers and breakfast-in-bed season in America, but my own experience has been so much more intense than all that soft focus kitsch and claptrap.

Comments

[malnpudl.livejournal.com]

FWIW (possibly very little): You're describing me as a kid. I was completely uninterested in anything girly, resented dresses, vastly preferred my older brother's hand-me-down clothes, chose short haircuts when allowed to, and was pleased to be mistaken for a boy by people who didn't know me.

Then the hormones hit, and I was suddenly, definitively, entirely female. And straight. And before long came around to being quite pleased with the whole situation (though still uninterested in most of the trappings of girlyness).

[mofic.livejournal.com]

That was me, too. And I grew up to be a lesbian who felt kind of too femmy for lesbian subculture when I came out (prefer dresses, love to cook and entertain) and now hate the whole butch/femme resurgence because I don't want to be pegged as either.

I think that there are all sorts of circumstances and personalities that lead to gender-nonconformist behavior. I think having an older brother I wanted to emulate was probably what pushed me that way as a small child, rather than incipient lesbianism, but who knows?