On gender

I was a lonely child. When I was in 4th grade, I carried around a little journal that I
wrote in constantly in very tiny writing. Many thoughts, from why I thought Melissa S.
(Popular Girl #1) wasn’t very pretty, how scared I was when my mom and sister would
fight so hard upstairs above my bedroom and would stomp the ground so hard that the
light fixture in my ceiling came crashing down nearly on top of me, and how I felt when
I discovered that my mom kept a packed suitcase in a downstairs closet and how this
shed new light when she would respond “If I’m here when you get back” when I would
say, “Goodbye, mom, see you this afternoon!” when I left for the school bus. This
continued until 6th grade when one of my classmates found the book I’d carelessly left
in the open and told everyone that I had a crush on Chris R. and that I thought Melissa
S. had eyes entirely too wide set for her face. After that, I wrote poetry that was vague
enough to be about anyone.

I distinctly remember one journal entry in which I postulated that it was entirely better
for parents to have a girl and then a boy rather than a boy followed by a girl. In my ten-
year-old mind, “society” (or in this case other ten-year-olds) were harder on girls who
had boyish characteristics than they were on boys who had girlish characteristics. Let me
state that I realize that is completely untrue and maybe even the opposite of truth, but as
a tomboy who had not yet been called a dyke much less a fag, that was my perception at
the time.

My point in sharing this story is that gender and gender roles, have always been on my
mind. I am not transgendered in that I definitely feel like a woman, womanhood is how
I was meant to be, but I have always felt closer to the “male” portion of the “normal”
spectrum than to the “female” portion. (See the “How Male is Your Brain” quizzes; I
rate clearly in the male side). I have always had more male friends than female friends,
I have always enjoyed “boy” activities more than girl activities (i.e. I never played with
dolls as a child but I adored climbing trees and playing sports), and I even went on to
pursue a male-dominated career (engineering). I felt like an outcast largely for this as
a child, and my journal entry shows that. I can only imagine how a non-transgendered
heterosexual boy who is more empathetic and nurturing than the average boy, perhaps
slightly more effeminate in nature, is tormented daily throughout childhood.

This article has made the internet rounds lately, and a lot of people have a lot to say about
it on both sides. I’m not sure I can add much to the discussion, but I will say it’s kind
of strange looking at these issues as a parent. At this point, my daughter seems closer
to the tomboy side than the princess side of things. She’s very rough-and-tumble. She
climbs, she loves sports, she loves to wrestle (even as an infant I would spend time every
night “wrestling” with her and enjoy a fit of tintinnabulation in her giggles), etc. She also
is very nurturing, carrying her “babies” around with her wherever she goes, feeding them,
rocking them, putting them to “bed” under blankets and things. She is showing what
seems to be real empathy (versus rote or mimicking behavior) before her time. In other
words, she is the PERFECT child for Alan and me. Alan is very nurturing for a man, has
more female friends, etc, in the same way that I was more physical and had more male

friends than most girls. So Char is a wonderful blend of both qualities.

BUT, how do we approach society’s expectations with her? So far we’ve mostly taken
the “ignore it and hope it goes away” approach lol, though I’m somewhat convinced
that old-school views on sex and gender at least partially color my step-father-in-law’s
exasperating over protectiveness of Charlotte. I can honestly say that if Charlotte
continues to eschew social norms and be a tomboy, I will be 100% comfortable with that.
And if she turns out to be a true tutu-loving princess, I will be 99% comfortable with that
(lol).

But, I still dress her, for the most part, as a girl. She has a few very boyish t-shirts (a
couple were definitely bought in the boy aisles), but when she wears them I usually pair
them with a skirt rather than shorts or jeans, or at least put her in pigtails so she’s more
obviously seen as a girl to others. It used to bother me when people would call her a boy
when she was an infant, and I’m not sure why it did. It really makes no difference in
the world whether the random stranger who says “How old is he?” knows she’s a girl or
not. She was too young to know the difference, and it should have no effect on ME. (I
suppose the one good thing about the hype over the genderless child is that it’s gotten me
to think a little harder about this). And, should Charlotte be truly transgendered and want
to pursue biological changes, I would support her in that just as I would support her if
she is a homosexual or if she decides she likes Barbies. (Not Bratz, though; I will never
support Bratz lol). So why does it matter what clothes she wears and whether a stranger
can tell their sex correctly?

And the other big internal question is whether all of this would apply in reverse if I had
a boy? Sure, if he were interested in dolls, I would let him play with them. But would I
buy him a baby doll or encourage him to play with stuffed animals instead? If he were
interested in pink frilly tutus, would I have the guts to let him wear them? I have a friend
who does not make cosmetic changes to her toddler son’s appearance, including cutting
his hair; his hair is about shoulder length now and will keep getting longer until he asks
to have it cut. While I totally respect this philosophy, I would probably have gotten his
hair cut by now if I had a son with longish, thickish hair (i.e. more hair than Charlotte).
Is that wrong? I’m not sure. I’m not sure where the line is, really. Supporting your
child’s interests, even if they go against the “norm”, seems right to me, even mostly
natural. But dressing your child in a way that identifies their sex seems right to me, too,
at least until they start to show interest in these things on their own. Is this the right line
to draw? What do you think?