A Letter From a “Concerned Stranger”
I got this email through an email anonymizing service today. I thought I’d print my response here, in case it’s helpful to others. If you don’t know the context, my oldest daughter identifies as a transgender girl, and both my wife (a parenting podcaster) and I (a comedy podcaster) have talked about it a bit on our shows. Neither of us cares particularly to be a crusader, we just love our kid and want her to know she’s supported.
Dear Jesse Thorn,
Because I know it’s going to be the assumption, let me get it out of the way: I’m not transphobic. I have a transgender friend. I’ve had my hair cut by a transgender barber. I’ve frequently interacted with transgendered people and didn’t really care. I’ve even went on a date with a transgender woman once. (I live in Thailand, so it’s really not difficult to come across transgender people.)
With that out of the way, I have for a long time been disturbed by your public declarations about his 5-year old child’s gender-non-conformity. Not because I am against trans people (see above), but because it’s simply bad parenting.
While it is entirely possible for a 5-year old child to actually be transgender and that person will permanently identify with a gender for his/her entire life, it is also entirely possible that it is simply a short-term phase that the child will grow out of. In either case, a 5-year old choosing to act like a different gender isn’t really a big deal and should be embraced and the child should be encouraged to identify with whatever gender they like.
Here’s the crux: the child ALSO needs the freedom and space to change his or her mind if the child so chooses in the future. And this is where my criticism comes in.
By tweeting publicly about your child’s gender identity, by discussing it in Slate Magazine, you have put immense pressure on your child. If your child later decides to no longer embrace their previous transgender identity, the child will hesitate to announce this. In short, the child will feel pressured to maintain the transgender identity that the father has made so incredibly public.
I understand your desire to be a part of the progressive left. I understand your elation at your ideological beliefs being represented in your own family. But you should ultimately realize that your biggest responsibility to your children is to give them the freedom to express themselves however they want–and that means feeling comfortable changing their minds if they so choose. By asserting to the world that your child IS transgender (without for a moment considering it might possibly be a phase that won’t last), you’ve put incredible pressure on the child to stick to a decision that was made far before the child hit puberty.
I don’t think it’s too late to fix this problem, and at the very least I hope you at least consider the possibility that this may have been a misjudgment. In reality, however, I expect to be told to fuck off or simply ignored. For the sake of your child, I hope you consider some self-reflection instead of the easier reflexive response.
Best wishes,
A concerned stranger
Dear concerned stranger,
Look: despite the patronizing tone of your anonymous email, I’m going to take a moment to offer you some education, because despite having a transgender hairdresser, you obviously don’t know much at all about how gender actually works in kids.
There is extensive research on gender identity and gender expression. Children with explicitly expressed gender non-conformity have extraordinarily stable gender identities. It is extraordinarily rare for children who clearly and explicitly express that their gender differs with that assigned at birth to reverse course. It is not a phase. Gender is expressed in all kinds of ways, and certainly there are boys who like to wear dresses and girls who like to play football and boys who say, “sometimes I feel like a girl” and vice-versa. Those feelings and experimentations are natural and to be expected and often transitory. Kids who say, “I am a girl” or “I am a boy” have clear, stable gender identities, no matter what age they are or what gender was assigned to them at birth. We talked about this in the Slate interview - perhaps you didn’t read it - but our daughter never particularly “acted like a girl.” She told us she was and is a girl. And has affirmed that many, many, many times.
We have of course repeatedly stated both privately with her and publicly (including in that Slate interview) that we will accommodate her gender no matter how it is expressed, but the odds it changes are very long. We’ve talked with medical and gender professionals about this extensively, read books and looked at research. I’m guessing you haven’t. Why have we talked about it publicly? Well, frankly, there are a few reasons. First, supporting our daughter’s gender identity was non-negotiable, throughout her life. School, at home, with family and in the world. My wife and I both have public lives, and so our choices were pretty simple. We could publicly support our kid, or we could try to hide our kid. We chose the former. We try not to talk about specifics of her (or any of our children’s) lives that might make her uncomfortable when she’s older, but we do talk about them in general terms, share funny stories from our lives and talk about our own experiences as they relate to our kids. Ultimately, whatever embarrassment our daughter my one day feel because we talked about her when she was little in our estimation paled in the face of the shame she would feel if she felt we were ashamed of who she was.
Furthermore, while this was not the reason we made the decision, we knew that as public people, we might be able to offer guidance, support and an example to folks who found themselves in similar situations, particularly those who didn’t have the community support and education opportunities we did. Both my wife and I have heard from other parents of trans and gender non-conforming kids, many of whom have expressed immense relief that there’s someone out there, living their life, supporting their kid and not acting like they have a shameful secret. I’ve heard the same from adult trans people, many of whose families simply didn’t have the knowledge or resources to support them when they were kids.
In short: maybe it’s you who should consider self-reflection. You don’t seem to have a lot of knowledge about my situation, or about the science and lived reality of being transgender. Particularly considering you’ve decided to offer me advice.
Jesse
Jesse’s response deserves to be shared widely. My best wishes to Jesse, Theresa and their family.
