Setting my daughter free meant more
than I'd imagined.
My husband, James, and I have two sons. Alex,
who just turned fourteen, is a classical
musician and computer whiz. Steve just turned
eleven. His life revolves around rocketry,
soccer, and improvising stand-up comedy routines
in the kitchen. He's in denial about puberty
being just around the corner. As his parents,
we're concerned about the changes puberty will
bring, because we know how distressing it will
be for him to begin to develop breasts in middle
school. And we're sure that, unless something is
done to postpone or stop it, he will develop
breasts and begin to menstruate, because this
child--who feels and behaves in every way like
an ordinary boy--has a normal female body.
During the first year of life, the baby we
named Sarah ate, slept, and watched the world in
silence from my arms. Then she began to speak
and run. It was hard to keep up with this
toddler who would climb to the top of anything
with handholds and, later, the preschooler who
loved to jump from the tallest branch of our
backyard tree down to the roof of the
garage.
We were very proud of Sarah. I had always
hoped for a daughter who would define herself,
who would grow to be a strong, intelligent, and
independent woman. This lively, fierce,
thoughtful little girl gave me great joy. As her
mother, I wanted to create a safe, warm nest
where I could nurture her, then set her free to
fly.
Sarah tested my resolve to set her free in a
way I had never imagined. On her third birthday,
she tore the wrapping paper from one of her
grandmother's gifts and discovered a pink velvet
dress trimmed in ribbons and white lace. I knew
she wouldn't want to wear it--she hadn't
voluntarily put on anything but pants since
turning two, and this dress was totally
impractical for playing the way Sarah played.
Nevertheless, I was surprised by her
reaction.
She looked up, not unhappy, but puzzled and
confused, and asked, "Why is Grandma giving me a
dress? Doesn't she know I'm not the kind of girl
who wears dresses?" Then, with an air of great
satisfaction at finding the solution to a
problem, she said, "Just tell Grandma I'm a
boy."
Initially I assumed Sarah's announcement was
simply an attempt to communicate a clothing
preference in language she thought grownups
would understand. Then, shortly after her
birthday, Sarah said she wanted us to call her
"Steve." We thought this an odd request, but
tried to remember to say "Steve" from time to
time. A few weeks later we received a call from
the Sunday school teacher who taught the
three-year-olds at our church. She told us our
daughter had asked to have the name "Sarah" on
her nametag crossed out and replaced with
"Steve." We realized then that the name "Steve"
must be very important to Sarah, so we told the
teacher it would be all right to call her
"Steve" for the time being.
At home, we talked to Sarah about the
difference between a nickname like "Steve" and
her real name. But in our neighbourhood and on
the playground at the park, Sarah began to
introduce herself only as Steve. Within our
family, she became more insistent that she was a
boy. She never said, "I want to be a boy," or,
"I wish I were a boy," but always, "I am a boy."
She demanded we use masculine pronouns when
referring to her. When we forgot or refused, her
face would screw up in fury and exasperation,
and the offending parent was likely to be
pinched or kicked by this usually loving child.
I stopped using pronouns altogether when Sarah
was within earshot.
The teacher at Montessori preschool wasn't as
flexible as the Sunday school teacher. The
children were learning to write their names, and
"Sarah" was evidently the only name the teacher
was willing to teach. This became an issue as
Christmas approached. Four-year-old Sarah came
home one day and asked how to spell "Steve" so
she could sign her letter to Santa. When I
cautioned that Santa might not be able to find
our house if the name on the letter wasn't
correct, she looked at me with scorn. "Santa
knows where I live, Mommy. He knows my name is
Steve."
I decided it was time to seek professional
help. I had no idea why Sarah was convinced it
was better to be a boy. Surely someone could
tell me what I was doing wrong. And it must be
something I was doing, or failing to do, because
the children were in my care twenty-four hours a
day. No one else had nearly as many
opportunities to influence them. My husband was
pursuing a corporate career that required his
attention eleven or twelve hours a day, and
I--very much by choice after fifteen years of
work and academia--was a full-time mom.
My first call for help was to our state
university's human development department. When
I described my child and our family's situation,
the "human development specialist" who took the
call laughed reassuringly and said, "Don't worry
about a thing. Your child has a great
imagination. Lots of bright, creative kids try
out different roles at this age. She'll grow out
of it."
With relief, I took that advice, stopped
worrying, and waited for Sarah to grow out of
it. For the next couple of years, I supported my
child's wish to be called Steve. I no longer
made her unhappy by insisting, "You're a girl."
Instead I said, "You have a girl's body, though
Mommy and Daddy know you feel like a boy."
But I still felt responsible for my second
child's inability to accept that she was a girl,
and I set out to correct whatever
misapprehensions she might have about becoming a
woman. Because being a mother was such a joy for
me, I told Sarah the most wonderful thing about
being a girl is that girls can grow up and have
babies of their own. Hearing this, Sarah's face
darkened. She shuddered and said, "I don't want
to talk about that." She asked if everyone had
to get married and have babies when they grew
up. When told no, of course not, she relaxed and
said she was always going to live in our house
with Alex.
By age five, Sarah had given all her dresses
to a neighbor girl of the same age. She wouldn't
put on any item of clothing without first asking
if it had been made for a boy or a girl. Only
boys' clothes would do. I found myself
confessing to sales clerks in boys' departments
that I was buying these socks and pants and
jackets for my daughter who evidently thought it
would be better to be a boy. I felt I owed
perfect strangers an explanation of something I
couldn't explain to myself.
Still relying on the academic advice we had
received when our child was four years old, I
believed that Steve would eventually yield to
"reality" and find a way to accept growing into
a woman. The possibility that my child might be
transsexual crossed my mind, but seemed so rare
as to be extremely unlikely. The most difficult
thing for me at that time was trying to keep all
the options open--the ambiguity of not knowing
for sure where Sarah/Steve belonged on the
gender spectrum. As a woman, I hoped my child
would learn that she was unique and that she had
the right to define the kind of woman she would
become. As a mother, my greatest concern was
that my child feel wholly accepted and
loved.
James and I searched for information about
how and why a child's sense of gender can
contradict his or her biological sex. There were
very few studies available and none of them were
well-designed, in my opinion, because they
tended to rely solely on adult impressions and
observations of children who were deemed "too
masculine" as girls or "too feminine" as boys.
It struck me as unhelpful and even harmful to
judge children's dress and play as appropriate
or inappropriate depending on how closely they
approximated sex-role stereotypes from the
1950s. According to the studies, very few of
these "masculine girls" or "feminine boys" grew
up to be transsexual. Of those adults who did
later identify as transsexual or transgendered,
nothing had been noted about them as children
that differentiated them from the others in the
studies.
Those early researchers did not ask the
children what they thought or felt about their
own gender--whether they believed themselves to
be boys or girls despite the contrary shapes of
their bodies. The researchers' failure to ask
that question clearly limits the value of their
work. More recent medical research indicates
that gender identity is every person's internal,
brain-embedded awareness of being male or female
(or somewhere in between). Gender identity
determines whether a person feels male or
female, not how masculine or feminine that
person may appear to others.
What was our child's true gender identity? I
didn't want to cause Steve more anguish at his
young age by pushing him in either direction.
Steve was a very bright, sensitive child who was
troubled and confused about having a girl's
body. He couldn't understand or explain why he
had this body, although he continued to state
unequivocally that he was a boy. He told me he
knew there was nothing a boy could do that a
girl couldn't do, but he was a boy. I wanted to
give this child plenty of un-pressured time to
come to terms with being whoever he was.
After a painful kindergarten year during
which our child was officially known as "Sarah,"
we asked the first-grade teacher to use the name
"Steve" and to let Steve handle it if other
children wondered whether Steve was a boy or a
girl. Because we knew this situation was unusual
and would very likely cause stress for the
teachers, we offered to pay for a clinical
psychologist specializing in gender issues to
meet with the school staff. We wanted to provide
an experienced resource to answer their
questions about gender identity and help them
develop strategies for dealing with a
gender-variant child in their classrooms.
The school principal accepted our offer.
However, one week before the staff gender
training was scheduled to occur, the principal
called to say she was disturbed because she had
overheard children asking whether Steve was a
boy or a girl. She perceived this as
"harassment" of Steve, and she wasn't going to
allow it to continue. Without waiting for input
from the professional gender therapist, she had
decided to call an all- school assembly meeting
for the purpose of announcing to the entire
student body at once that Steve was a girl, and
to tell them that no one was ever to mention it
again.
Nothing would more terrify my child. The
single most important concern of Steve's life
was to be seen as a boy. His girl's body was a
source of deep shame to him. He was so fearful
of anyone else finding out about it that he
insisted on wearing three layers of clothing to
bed at night.
Before the school year began, we had asked
permission for Steve to use the unisex staff
rest room because the girls' and boys' rooms are
the only places in school where children are
routinely identified by sex. The principal had
refused our request. Because he saw himself as a
boy and knew that boys didn't use the girls'
room, our six-year-old was in agony from trying
not to go to the bathroom at all until he got
home at the end of the day.
When the principal told me her plan to make
the all-school announcement, I was stunned. I
felt powerless to protect my child. I've since
learned that parents have considerable rights
when protecting their children's welfare in the
public schools, but at that moment all I could
manage to say was that her decision would be
devastating to Steve. The principal was firm,
but offered to take Steve for a walk and
"explain it to her."
Later, the principal called back to report
what had happened. She had asked Steve if he
would like the questions from the other children
to stop. Steve said he would. Then the principal
told him she was going to make the questions
stop by telling everyone that Steve was a
girl.
Steve looked up at her and said, "Why don't
you tell them I'm a boy?"
To her credit, the principal listened to him.
Startled by this first-grader's logic and
assertiveness, she decided to wait until after
the visit from the gender specialist to put her
plan into action.
The public announcement never happened. The
psychologist who conducted the gender training
made it clear to the school staff that gender
identity is innate, that it is established at a
very early age, that it can differ from an
individual's biological sex, and that it's
neither appropriate nor possible for teachers to
try to change a student's gender identity.
Today, Steve is known as a boy by his
classmates. He's been elected president of the
fifth grade and holds school records for
push-ups and pull-ups. He has changed from a
frightened, clingy child who had to be pushed
kicking and screaming onto the school bus in
first grade into a happy, confident boy who
cockily practices muscle-man poses in the
mirror.
Steve is the only expert on his own
experience. He has never doubted his identity.
And, although his parents and older brother find
it helpful to use the term "transgendered" to
describe him, he doesn't refer to himself that
way. As far as Steve is concerned, he's just a
boy.
— Florence
Dillon, US
