Accept trans children for who they are or lose them
Originally for this piece, I planned to address common misconceptions about gender-affirming health care for transgender kids. I changed direction after a discussion with my wife, a licensed psychologist who helps parents and educators work with trans and gender non-conforming kids. Before we can have a meaningful discussion about those issues, we must address a fundamental problem at the heart of so much resistance to gender-affirming health care for kids: the pervasive belief that trans kids do not exist as trans kids.
So, I will share a deeply personal moment in my life. Please rewind 44 years and travel with me to rural conservative Texas.
I am 3 to 4 years old and splashing about in an old free-standing bathtub. My mother sits next to the tub with a washcloth, awkwardly explaining the difference between boys and girls. “Boys have boy parts,” she says, “girls have girl parts.” I ask where my boy parts are, scanning the bath water as though said parts will suddenly appear from the soapy depths.
“You don’t have boy parts. You’re a girl.”
I frown at her. “I’m a boy.”
“No, you’re a girl.”
Rinse, wash, repeat.
I was a precocious kid, but I didn’t have the language to articulate the frustration and violation I felt. She was fundamentally wrong; I was a boy. Eventually I stopped arguing and grew quiet, dark foreshadowing for the next 25 to 30 years of my life. Despite my constant resistance, I was socialized — violently and against my will — as female.
Forcing me to “be a girl” didn’t work. It caused a lot of trauma and resulted in permanent family fractures, but it never made me less male.
When I share this moment, inevitably someone tosses a version of this specious chestnut: “Well, I ate dirt at 4. Kids do stupid things.” To be fair, I ate dirt at least once. I also leapt out of a tree at age 6 because I was Batman. Neither of those behaviors have the slightest connection with gender identity development, except that my ill-fated Batman fiasco came naturally and Batgirl felt alien.
The “kids don’t know” reasoning erroneously posits that trans children are incapable of refutingthe gender assigned to them. We never question cis-gendered children who have no qualms with the regularly scheduled program, so the issue is not about children knowing their gender. It’s about trans kids knowing their gender. We fail to see them as autonomous beings capable of this most basic sense of self.
Trans kids exist as whole persons: not damaged, not “mentally ill,” not “deviant,” not “groomed,” not “too young to know,” not any other hyperbolic harmful stereotype conjured up to demonize them. Peer-reviewed research accepted by all major psychological, medical and pediatric organizations indicates that gender identity among trans and cis kids develops in several possible stages, the earliest around ages 2 to 5. Not all trans kids know at that earliest stage. Many trans kids simply develop awareness or come out later, for a multitude of reasons ranging from normal developmental processes to transphobia in the world around them.
There is no insidious “social contagion” turning our children trans (language straight from the gay panic of the 1970s). More trans kids may be open about themselves, but those are trans kids coming out, not cis kids “turning trans.” In fact, roughly 98% of trans kids still identify as trans or nonbinary five years after socially transitioning. They know who they are.
It’s OK for trans (and queer) kids to be who they are and to develop when they develop. Emotional handwringing, fearmongering, book banning and forced socialization into the wrong gender will not stop trans kids from being trans. They’ve been around long before current terminology existed to describe them (read “Histories of The Transgender Child” by professor Jules Gill-Peterson).
Experts in sex determination, endocrinology and neuroscience understand that sex and gender are incredibly complex, and it is time the general population grasps this. One doesn’t need to understand the intricacies of it all to accept the existence of trans kids and empathize with their struggles in a cis-normative world. Trans kids face extreme rates of suicide, depression, homelessness and substance abuse because a transphobic culture routinely denies their existence and agency.
We can either accept trans children for who they are or lose them entirely. They will still be trans kids.
Ty Warren is a senior instructor at the University of Oregon and an active proponent for trans rights and regular contributor to The Register-Guard. He lives in Eugene.
This article originally appeared on Register-Guard: Accept trans children for who they are or lose them
