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.

The Binder

Enough time has passed since I wrote the following piece that I'm certain nobody can figure out who the boy in the story is. Extra credit question: To what, or whom, does the title refer?
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By Susan Esther Barnes

There was a period of time last year when I repeatedly asked God, “What do you want me to do?” and the answer I kept getting was, “Pay attention.” I kept trying to pay attention, but it seemed God might never give me the answer to my question. It took a while, but eventually it dawned on me that God wasn’t saying, “If you pay attention, I will tell you what I want you to do.” Rather, God was saying, “What I want you to do is to pay attention.”


Yesterday morning I was greeting people at the synagogue entrance when Rabbi Lezak asked if I was planning to stay for services. I told him I was, and he said, “There are a lot of boys here today. They are very excited…” I responded, “Maybe I should sit behind them, and if they make trouble, I should smack them on the back of the head?” He just smiled and walked into the sanctuary.

Often, when a lot of kids come for a Bar Mitzvah, they sit toward the back of the sanctuary. For some reason, these kids chose to sit in the front, to one side. Consequently, I couldn’t sit behind them, but I was able to find a chair beside them, in a place where I wouldn’t normally sit.

When I looked for a prayer book, I noticed a thin binder sitting in the seat back in front of me. Sometimes classes or meetings are held in the sanctuary, so I assumed the binder contained notes someone had left there earlier in the week. But something about the binder was bugging me, so I picked it up and turned it over. On the front was a label with someone’s name, and some doodles. I thought, “Yes, I was right, it’s some kid’s class notes,” and I put the binder back.

Then, I suddenly thought, “That name sounds vaguely familiar…Is it the name of the kid having the Bar Mitzvah right now?” A part of my mind told me, “Stop with the binder already. You’re supposed to be praying,” but I just couldn’t let the thought go. I gave into my compulsion and picked up the binder again. This time I opened it. Inside I found some handwritten pages, and in the pocket on the left was a typewritten sheet headed by the word, “Drash.”

“Okay,” I thought, this is the Bar Mitzvah boy’s binder, but maybe this is just an extra copy of his Drash.” I thought about waiting to see whether he needed the binder, and running up with it if he did, but as I pictured him standing there and starting to panic if he thought it was lost, waiting didn’t seem like the best option. By this point, the Bar Mitzvah boy was starting to walk the Torah through the congregation, so I took the opportunity to take the binder up to the front of the sanctuary, where I handed it to Rabbi Lezak, saying, “In case he needs this.”

When the Bar Mitzvah boy returned to the bimah, he set down the Torah, looked around, and then turned to his parents, making a gesture that looked like he was holding up a binder. Just as he was starting to look concerned, Rabbi Lezak handed him the binder. He looked relieved, opened the binder, took out his Drash, and began to read.

Maybe the boy won’t remember this small event, since everything turned out fine. But maybe, somewhere in his subconscious, there is the thought, “On one of the most important days of my life, when for a moment it looked like everything was about to go horribly wrong, the rabbi stepped in and saved the day.” Down the road, where might a thought like that lead? God only knows.

In the Still and the Flurry

By Susan Esther Barnes

It is 7:45 in the morning. I’m alone in the synagogue. There are no clergy here yet, and the only staff member at work this early is directing traffic outside. It’s cloudy out there. The only illumination in the sanctuary is what little natural light filters through the stained glass overhead, plus the flickering from the ner tamid (eternal light) over the ark. The room is silent.

As I step into the sanctuary, I know I have stepped into a special place. Immediately I experience a strong feeling of power and of serenity. I walk to the front of the room and sit down. I love to be in this room when it is full of people; I love to be in this room when I am alone. Normally I would sit here and soak it in, but this is not my place to be at this time.

I stand back up, and walk to the entrance of the synagogue. I stand just outside the door, in the place where I have stood so many times before. The street across the parking lot from me is a frenzy of activity. Cars are driving back and forth, in and out of the parking lot across the street, where parents are dropping off their kids at the public elementary school. A much smaller number of cars are turning into the parking lot directly in front of me, dropping off their kids at the religious school.

As the cars drive to and fro, in and out of the parking lots, like flurries of snow tossed by the wind, it is almost eerily silent. From time to time, I hear children or their parents, or a car door closing, or a wheeled backpack being pulled across the pavement. But mostly I just hear the gentle whoosh of the tires of the many cars on the street as they dance their ballet to a music I cannot quite make out.

And it occurs to me, as I stand here on the threshold between the still sanctuary at my back and the busy street before me, that I should be contemplating the experience of standing on the threshold between two very distinct worlds. Yet it is clear these are not two different worlds at all. The power and the serenity that greets me in the sanctuary is the same power and serenity that permeates the dance of the cars and the parents and the kids. It is all one. And I am grateful to be given this chance to see it.