Speak at Your Own Peril: "It's Just a Phase"

Yesterday we had lunch at a Burmese restaurant. I will be ever-grateful to our friend ODG for taking us there. Our family is in Philadelphia for the TransHealth conference, and are just a few blocks from Chinatown. The Tiny Tornado loves Chinese food, so we've been strolling down there every day, and having the kind of wonderful meals where we are all passing plates around saying, "Try this! Have a bite of this!" The Burmese food was a great new experience. Similar to other Asian foods, but with a different kind of flavor and spiciness. I had a chicken dish that made me understand why people go on and on about the flavors in food--I'd put a bite in my mouth, and it tasted lemony but not sweet, with an undertone of smokiness. Then, as the lemon flavor faded, a spicy heat would rise up to take its place. I couldn't eat it quickly, because this layering and progression of flavors was so worth experiencing that I had to wait it out each time. Wowza.

Anyway, I was complaining at lunch about people saying that the Tiny Tornado's interest in boy things and boy clothes is "just a phase." Sometimes they use those exact words, and sometimes they simply imply them. Someone told me yesterday that she knew authoritatively that children do not have a fixed gender identity until age 6 (tell that to the 11-year-old girl I met yesterday who transitioned male-to-female before starting kindergarten). Another said that she thought all kids would be wildly gender creative and exploratory if they were free to do so, which begs the question of why my two older kids, certainly as free to do so as my youngest, were only mildly gender-transgressive as young kids. And someone also told me yesterday (I get this one a lot, but only from people who haven't actually met the Tiny Tornado and encountered the force of his will) that the TT is "trying to be like her older brothers," or "emulating her dad." Which, again, begs the question of all the girls with older brothers they love and admire who nonetheless do not dress like them and demand that everyone call them "he."

But, yes, someone also said to me yesterday, in so many words, "it's probably just a phase."

I was complaining about this at lunch, and the Lego Savant said, "Really? Someone said that to you here? You'd think all the people at a place like this would know better." Sometimes the Lego Savant surprises us. He seems to sail through life blissfully unaware that a surprising proportion of his adult friends and loved ones are gay, lesbian, transgendered, transsexual, or queer in various other ways, or that these things are seen as deviant in some places and by some people. Every now and then, though, he comes out with something that makes us realize that he has been paying attention all along, understands a great deal, and has some insight to share.

Anyway: those of you who are my Facebook friends may already know that on Thursday morning when we arrived at the conference, the Tiny Tornado was asked which pronouns he preferred so that it could be indicated on his nametag. You can probably guess from that sentence that he chose the boy pronouns.

I could do a whole digression here about how he has never seemed to care too much about pronouns before, but now I wonder if it just hadn't really occurred to him because nobody had offered him the option before. Because suddenly he cares very much about the pronouns, even getting angry at the Lego Savant yesterday when LS slipped and called him "she." (An apology, a hug, and an explanation that we're all doing our best but will slip sometimes seemed to resolve that.)

But: today I am talking about the expression "it's just a phase." Because, as I said at lunch, the next person who says this to me is going to get a fork in the Adam's Apple. (Metaphorical fork. Metaphorical Adam's Apple. I am a Quaker, after all.)

Because, listen: this phrase is not only dismissive of my child's self-understanding and how important it is to him right now, but it implies that anything we do in our lives for only a while, any exploration we undertake is somehow unimportant if it doesn't lead to permanent change.

Raider ViaDude (my new anagrammatic pseudonym for my sweetie) went to a presentation yesterday afternoon where the speaker said that the few studies that have been done show that about 25-40% of kids who are transgendered before puberty actually fully transition. Some reach puberty and discover they're actually gay, for instance, or otherwise have some different understanding of themselves than "I must be a girl" or "I must be a boy." [Insert digression here on the very interesting distinction made in the parent support group the other day between "expression" and "identity." I'll save it for another post.]

So there's really a pretty good chance that the Tiny Tornado will not permanently identify as male, or choose to transition. But that doesn't mean that what's going on now is "just" anything. Clearly it is a very important exploration for him, something he feels strongly about and is enjoying (you should have seen him glow when I helped him find some shorts he could wear as swim trunks, instead of his tankini, to the trans families pool party last night).

When I think about my own life, there are some things that were "phases" but were nonetheless very formative for me. One that comes immediately to mind whenever I think about something like this is my flirtation with punk rock when I was 18 and 19. I was never really a punk rocker, more of a hanger-on wannabe, but being exposed to that subculture and that music did good things for me.

Recently, I spent a year or so seriously considering attending seminary, culminating in a visit during a prospective student weekend. But within a few weeks of that visit, which I enjoyed, it had become clear to me that I was not going to attend seminary, and I have not had a tinge of regret or any residual urges about it.

Was that "just" a phase? Or was that me spending some time asking an important question about my life, which was eventually clearly answered in the negative?

So, you know, when people say that the Tiny Torndao is "just" going through a phase with his gender explorations, it irks me. It irks me because even if tomorrow, or next month, or in a year he says, "You know what, mom, I'm really a girl and I feel very sure about that," that doesn't mean that this time of wanting to be seen as a boy, treated as a boy, talked to and talked about as a boy, is "just" anything. It's the life he's living now. It's him asking a really important question.

We don't need to wait ten years to find out whether he's "really" trans to know that his life right now, at 4 years old, matters. There is no "just" at all about a little person living a great big life.