Transgender Kids

By Susan Esther Barnes

CNN recently published a story called Transgender kids: Painful quest to be who they are. It’s about kids who insist, at an early age, that they are the opposite gender from the gender of their anatomy. These aren’t kids with malformed or unusual anatomy – they are just boys who insist they are girls, or girls who refer to themselves as a boy.

As the article explains, on the one hand, there is anatomy, and on the other hand, there are cultural things attached to gender, such as clothing (skirts or pants), toys (dolls or trucks), color preferences (pink or blue), etc.

This article caught my attention for two reasons. First, I know a couple with four kids. Three of them identify with the gender that matches their anatomy, and one does not. I’m not going to use names here, to protect their privacy. The one child, who insists he is male, is known to his friends and schoolmates as male, and I’m certainly not going to “out” him.

This couple has had to navigate a unique path, as they try to accept reality at the same time that they try to support their transgender child’s feelings. At times, they have had to deal with people who have not been helpful, such as when one of the child’s siblings said to his friends, “He’s not a boy. He’s really a girl.” Fortunately, in this case the friends thought this was just normal sibling teasing, and they didn’t believe it.

Then, there are others that are too helpful. For instance, someone changed the transgender child’s medical records to read “male” instead of “female.” The child’s mother insisted they change it back. Unless and until the boy has surgery to become male anatomically, having “male” on his medical records could cause problems.

For instance, what if the child is rushed to the emergency room, and his medical records say “male” but he is anatomically a female? The hospital will think they have the wrong child, and won’t know whose parents to notify. Similarly, what if he goes to the school nurse complaining of abdominal pain, and they’re thinking appendicitis, when maybe it’s actually just cramping because of a first monthly cycle?

The other reason this story caught my eye is that, although I have always identified myself as a female, and have never wanted to be a male, I show a lot of male tendencies. In elementary school, I didn’t want to wear a dress. I started wearing pants as soon as I was allowed, and instead of playing with the girls, I played kickball with the boys.

In high school and college, at the annual Super Bowl party I attended, I went outside and played touch football with the boys while the girls stayed inside at halftime. I cared so little about fashion that I won “Most casually dressed” in my high school yearbook. I’ve been told I run like a guy, give directions like a guy, and even to this day I prefer video games that are mostly played by men.

So what differentiates me from transgender people? Why is it that my tendencies skew strongly toward the culturally male, yet I am confident in my identity as a female? To me, the difference feels like a razor’s edge. There but for the grace of God go I, and my heart aches for the struggle of those who feel they have somehow been assigned the wrong body.

At the end of the CNN piece a transgender kid named Mario is quoted as saying, “Just be you and be happy.” If only life were that simple.