Gender-Related Name Change Rant

I ranted a little on Facebook today, and then realized I might as well blog it as well.

I'm doing a lot of paperwork this morning, including getting the Tiny Tornado's petition for a legal name change filled out and printed. In Michigan, you can change your name for any non-fraudulent purpose, and when I changed mine, I was only asked whether I was doing it to evade debt or any other criminal sort of reason.

Unless it's for gender change reasons. In which case, you need a letter of support from an expert, cause god forbid *you* be the expert on your own name. It's so stupid! We could have named him Guyname Manlyman Lastname at birth and nobody would have stopped us, but now he's 7 and has CHOSEN HIS OWN NAME and we need a letter.

*grump, whine, complain*

Of course, we had no trouble getting a letter. The doctors at the Lurie Children's Sex & Gender Development Clinic have a form letter. "It is common that social transitioning for gender dysphoric children will lead to a dramatic improvement in social and psychological functioning, as Name_of_Child has experienced. There is no question that Name_of_Child was struggling with gender dysphoria and has benefitted from social transitioning."

But that it was easy for us to get the letter is not the point. The point is that people who don't fit the gender binary are unnecessarily subjected to additional scrutiny. AND THIS IS WRONG!

And the point is also that people who don't have the privilege of access to one of the THREE children's gender clinics in the whole country, or other knowledgeable and compassionate care providers, might find it difficult-to-impossible to get such a letter even though their child would also benefit from having a legal name that matches the name they use. THIS IS ALSO WRONG.

/end of rant

Not Actually a Boy, and Here Are the Reasons Why

When I said the other day that I was going to try to do a post every day in August, I was hoping to pull my daily readership back into the low (very low) triple digits, which is where it lives when I'm posting regularly. And then my article at Friends Journal about the Tiny Tornado's gender history went viral. I don't know how many total hits it's gotten, but nearly over 14,000 people have "liked" it on Facebook, and it's been reblogged and linked to all over the place, including at It Bets Better, which must have given it a big boost.

The article has driven traffic to this blog as well. I got nearly 4000 hits on Friday, though today we're down to a mere 1500 (so far). I figure today's decline marks the end of my fifteen minutes, and I'm trying to accept it with good grace. By tomorrow I'll be a has-been, and by Tuesday, I hope to be poised for a comeback.

The response has been overwhelmingly good, but of course we've had the usual assortment of judgment and ignorance, and one or two actual trolls. A favorite activity for commentators is explaining why the Tiny Tornado could not possibly be a boy. We have heard all of these theories before, and we're going to hear them again. Here's what I think of them as of today.

1. Sexism

This is a common theory. It goes like this: The Tiny Tornado, observing the sexism that is rampant in our culture and recognizing the limited options available for women, decides to be a boy to protect himself and to give himself more opportunities.

Why I love it: A child who is two or three is not imagined to know enough about his internal landscape to express a preference about his own gender expression, but is nonetheless somehow able to analyze and interpret the cultural landscape in a sophisticated way and make a rational decision to maximize his privilege within it.

2. He is emulating his older brothers.

Another popular contender. In this one, the Tiny Tornado is so enamored of his older brothers that he abandons his innate and biological sex and gender in order to be more like them.

Why I love it: The Tiny Tornado, an independent, assertive, confident, fashion-conscious, extroverted athlete who doesn't sit still even when watching TV, is almost nothing like his older brothers. If he were emulating his older brothers, he'd consider extended periods of "alone time" to be essential to his functioning; he'd sit still for hours on end, building with Lego, reading, or playing Minecraft on-line with friends. If he wanted to be like Word Boy, he'd be more interested in dissecting animals than in training them, and if he wanted to be like the Lego Savant, he'd have a passion for history. His older brothers are wonderful kids and well worth emulating. But the Tiny Tornado is a force unto himself.

3. He's never seen a girl playing hockey or wearing an oxford shirt.

In other words, he simply lacks role models for the kind of tomboy he really is.

Why I love it: The theorist imagines that ze knows what the Tiny Tornado has and has not seen, and also that something as minor as a girl playing hockey (which he owns a book about) or wearing an oxford shirt (which he has seen many times on the older girls down the street who dress very well) could shape a person's entire identity. It would be like diverting the mighty Mississippi with a popsicle stick.

3. He doesn't know that being a lesbian is an option.

To be fair, this is actually part of the gender pathway for many gender-variant kids. It is not uncommon, I am told by people who know a lot more than I do about these things, for a kid to approach puberty, begin to feel sexual attractions, become aware of lesbians and gay men through the media, and realize that they can resolve their sense of not-fitting by coming out rather than by transitioning.

Why it doesn't work for the Tiny Tornado: many if not most of our closest friends are in same-sex relationships, including TT's much-loved Uncle Toots, who is practically a third parent to him. In addition, the two women next door, who are the best neighbors in the world and also TT's mentors in the world of dog training, are an affectionate couple who love each other very much and are not exactly conventional in the femininity department.

4. He wore a Spiderman t-shirt the summer he was two, and wanted short hair.

Nobody actually thinks that wearing a Spiderman t-shirt and cutting his hair makes TT a boy. But they think I think it.

Why I love this: Because these people simply don't know us. I identified as a lesbian for much of my adult life, and have a whole string of butch lovers in my past (and maybe not only in my past). If there is one thing I know about women, it's that they can have short hair and shop in the menswear department. In fact, I'd say that one of the things I love about women is that they can have short hair and shop in the menswear department.

Also: although I currently have luxuriant curly hair, this is me in the summer of 2009, holding my newborn nephew. Why did I have that haircut? Because I wanted to. Am I a girl? Yes.

Su Penn, who identifies as a girl, rocks her buzz cut.

5. His parents are unable to imagine anything beyond the gender binary.

I'm being playful in this post, so I won't rant about how people seem to believe that transgender kids somehow have an obligation to be "ungendered" or "bigendered" that their non-trans counterparts don't share. I will say that I do my best to imagine what is beyond the gender binary because people I love live there. And maybe the Tiny Tornado isn't fully aware of the option to be both/and or neither/nor or "other," but he has encountered the possibility. Our kids met a both/and adult who was helping in the children's program at TransHealth, and meeting zer challenged all three of them in ways that we are still having conversations about.

6. His parents are pushing him, deliberately or subconsciously, into a male identity for self-aggrandizement or to further their own political agenda.

Yeah, OK, this one is totally true.

Ha, no. Just kidding. If anything, our love of GLBTQ people (including our own selves) and our sense that we would find it somewhat satisfying if one or more of our kids grew up to be G, L, B, T, and/or Q led us to hold back, to not take steps like suggesting male pronouns or a name change until the Tiny Tornado brought them up or was offered them by other adults, because we didn't want to push him. We were always supportive, I think, but we really forced him to be very clear with us. If you want to know more about just how slow I really was to let go of the bright, sassy girl I was sure he was going to grow into, you might want to read the story of the daisy dress in this post from last August.

I sometimes still feel a little sad when I see a black girl of 6 or 7 or 8, with her hair done up nice in braids and beads, wearing something bold like a purple skirt with red tights, and bossing somebody around. I thought he was going to be that girl. I love boys. I love being the mother of boys. I was going to love my daughter, though, just as much. I wanted that girl, no denying it, and letting her go grieved me, even as I celebrated the emerging little boy.

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Our Visit to the Lurie Children's Hospital Gender Clinic

At TransHealth in June, I had the opportunity to hear Dr. Jo Olson speak. She is director of the Transgender Youth program at Children's Hospital Los Angeles, which until very recently was one of only two programs in the US dedicated to treatings trans youth; the other is in Boston. Recently, the Lurie Children's Hospital in Chicago has begun to work on creating a gender clinic as well; not officially open yet, the clinic already has around 75 patients, from age 4 to early 20s. Chicago is only four hours from us, so I was excited to learn about the Lurie clinic, and assumed the Tiny Tornado would be a patient there someday.

But when? I went to Dr. Olson's presentation with a burning question: at what point should we make contact with a gender clinic? The Tiny Tornado is years away from puberty, and has no behavioral or psychological problems. Should we get started early, or wait until it's time to consider puberty blockers?

Dr. Olson talked about many other topics of interest to me, and I learned a great deal. In fact, I have another blog post to write about all the notes I took in her presentation. But as I listened and took notes and found little nooks and crannies in my brain to store all the new information, I was still thinking: When do we take the Tiny Tornado to a gender clinic?

Dr. Olson's presentation ran over, and she had said nothing about this. I raised my hand, but others with questions were called on first. The answers to their questions were long and complicated. I raised my hand more forcefully, but I was in the very back of a large and crowded room and went unnoticed. Dr. Olson began to mention more often how much the session was running over. The people leading the next session in the room began to mill about near the door, looking cranky. Dr. Olson was about to wrap things up, and she hadn't answered my question. "I am not letting her out of here without answering me," I said to myself. "I will tackle her in the hallway outside if I have to."

I didn't have to. In the middle of the very last question she took, she digressed to say that she often doesn't see kids until they're in crisis in one way or another. "If I had my way," she said, "I'd have these kids in my clinic at 4, 5, 6, 7, get to know them, have a baseline, have the chance to avert some of the crises."

I had my answer. And as soon as we got home to Michigan, I called Lurie and made an appointment to visit the children's gender clinic.

Raider, the Tiny Tornado, and I drove to Chicago yesterday for our appointment. The clinic has two pediatricians and a psychologist on staff, and will be adding another doctor in the fall. We talked mostly with Dr. Gales, but we also met the clinic director, Dr. Garofalo; the staff psychologist, Dr. Chen;and the friendly, efficient, and quick-witted administrative person who helped me set up the appointment, Jen Leininger.

Everyone was very welcoming, and they seemed delighted to meet the Tiny Tornado. We ran through a short version of the Tiny Tornado's gender history with Dr. Gales, and it was such a relief and pleasure to be with someone to whom nothing had to be explained. I realized partway into my recitation that I am always, when talking to people about this, braced for conflict, or for the rude question I've answered a hundred times before, or prepared with an overabundance of evidence to make my case. With Dr. Gales, we just had to hit the highlights, and he listened openly and nodded in a "Yep, that's about what we'd expect," kind of way.

We had one fun moment when we were talking about TT's first haircut--the mohawk he got just before he turned three--and I delivered my usual rant about "But I learned how to do the hair! The oiling, the combing, the parting, the braiding--all for nought." Dr. Gales, who is black, said, "Well, if my partner and I end up with a girl, I'll call you. I've been terrified about the hair thing. I know nothing!" I was like, "Oh, heck yeah, I can hook you up. I have resources."

Dr. Gales talked to TT for quite awhile. He reassured TT, who worries about his body betraying him and growing breasts when he gets older, that he has nothing to worry about, that his body is not going to change for a long time, and there are things the doctors can do to make sure it changes in the ways he wants. He told TT, "It's your job right now to enjoy turning six, have fun in kindergarten, keep growing. I don't want you to worry about this at all."

We've been telling TT for some time that there are doctors who can help him grow up as a boy, if that's what he continues to want. Now those doctors have names and faces. TT hasn't wanted to talk about the appointment with us, but he smiled broadly and nodded when asked during the appointment if he was glad to be meeting them. Though Dr. Garofalo commented that he doesn't think they'll necessarily be TT's doctors long-term--this is an "exploding field," he said. By the time TT is 11 and likely to be encountering puberty, there may well be someone closer than Chicago working with transgendered kids ("though doing it well," Dr Garofalo said, and shook his head).

Dr Gales also told TT that he's a "trailblazer." TT is part of a cohort of young children--there are several others, as young as four, who are patients at Lurie as well, and others elsewhere in the country--who are the first ever to have access to quality care for gender dysphoria at such a young age. Dr. Gales told TT that, as they help him, they will also be learning from him, and what they learn will help them do even better with the kids who come along later. This kind of went over TT's head but it meant a lot to me. The Tiny Tornado has been a lot of people's "first," including the staff at his school, and most of our friends and family. Although people have been overwhelmingly supportive and positive, he will continue to be in the position of educating people by his very presence, and by the conversations that we need to have in order to make sure he's treated appropriately and has the support he needs. This isn't always easy and, although we've encountered very little, there is always the possibility of judgment or hostility.

In addition, I've struggled with my conscience over my decision to share TT's story on my blog, on Facebook, and, soon, in Friends Journal. But you know, writing about my life is what I do. It's my talent, my gift, my ministry, and, about some things, my obligation (it's also my pleasure). If TT really is among the first kids to have care from a young age, then he might not have the luxury of perfect privacy. Partly just because I'm his mom, and this is what I do. If he wanted a more private type of mom he should have arranged with God to be adopted by a different family. But partly because he is a very resiliant, self-assured, powerful child and, it seems to me that we might have a job to do, one that would be impossible for a different kind of kid and a different kind of mom. Certainly Raider has commented that one thing we bring to, say, the parent support groups at TransHealth is our totally calm assumption that the Tiny Tornado is OK as he is, and that things are likely to work out fine.

This was one of the interesting things about our talk with Dr. Gales: we did not require the usual degree of parent education or reassurance. "I do affirm everything you're doing," he said, and that was nice. The next time anybody gives me trouble about it, I have a board-certified pediatrician with expertise in this area to back me up.

I mentioned seeing Dr. Olson at TransHealth, and Dr. Gales said that not only do they know her well, but there are so few doctors doing full-time work with trans youth that they have a conference call every week. The group of them are seeking NIH funding to do some research into treatments and best practices, and it's possible that TT will be part of a research study at some point. Like Dr. Garofalo, Dr. Gales commented on how fast the field is growing, suggesting that, by the time TT reaches puberty, there may be more treatment options than just hormone blockers. That will be interesting to see.

As well as being a trailblazer, we get to be followers as well. Dr. Gales mentioned that they have a female-to-male teenager in the clinic who is dealing with his school around participation sports--the hormones he is taking are technically banned substances. This has been something I've thought about many times, with TT being as athletic as he is. What if he wants to participate in team sports when he's older? It's good to know we're not going to be the first family facing that issue, and I am holding the young man we heard about in the Light.

In some ways, not much happened in the meeting. We chatted, we smiled, the Tiny Tornado fist-bumped everybody on the way out. But we accomplished our goal: we made the connection. We made the possibilty of medical assistance more concrete for TT. We established a relationship so that, if problems come up, we're not scrambling to find help. I feel surprisingly buoyed up, and less alone, although I would not have said before yesterday that I felt alone on this journey.

We'll go back next summer. At some point, we'll start going every six months. Eventually, there will be decisions to be made. It's good to know that there are people out there dedicating their careers to figuring out how to help us, and other families like us, make them.

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It's Like a Game We're Playing

The Tiny Tornado is obviously still working through the end of preschool. The other day we had this conversation:

TT, whiny: Mom, do I have to go to preschool tomorrow?

Me: No, honey. You're all done with preschool.

TT, bursting into tears: You mean I'll never see Miss Kathleen again?

At home, despite my recent humorous take on the challenges, we're actually doing pretty well. He spends big chunks of his day playing video games, riding bikes, or sword-fighting with his big brothers. He does errands with me. He has taken up an old hobby, luring the dogs into his bedroom with treats and then dressing them up in t-shirts and shorts. He roots around in the recycling bin for supplies to make houses for his stuffed animals. He sets up obstacle courses in the living room. Overall, he does a pretty good job of keeping busy and actually out of trouble.

My biggest challenge with him is one I still have with Word Boy: the endless chatter, the endless questions. I'm thinking about setting a limit on how many times per day each kid can say, "Mom...?" We'll see how that goes.

The other challenge is this whole boy thing. He stands firm in his gender identify for the moment. "I'm still a boy," were his first words to Raider when he woke up the other morning, and he asked me, "Am I still a boy if I go in there?" when I made as if to take him into the women's room with me. (I assured him that many boys go into the women's room with their moms until they are 5 or even 6.)

For the most part, I am carrying this lightly, as he seems to be. That's made easier because it doesn't quite feel real to me. It feels like a game we're playing. Maybe that's partly because, except for the pronouns, nothing has changed. The Tiny Tornado didn't need new underwear, a new haircut, new clothes, or new toys to be a boy. Just a new pronoun.

It also doesn't feel real because, really, what are the odds? Our lives are full of female-to-male transgendered people. Sure, some of them we've met because, at some point, we started hanging out in that community. But a number of people in our lives have transitioned since we met them--including three people who were still living as women when I dated them, and one close friend of Raider's. Most of these folks are still important parts of our lives.

And then we go adopt some random baby, and he turns out to be gender-nonconforming? *rolls eyes* You wouldn't believe it if I put it in my novel.

The other day, Raider and I got to go out to lunch together while all three kids were at a movie with a friend. We talked about this, of course. I said, "I can't help wondering if in some subtle way we made this happen."

Raider laughed. "You've met the Tiny Tornado, of course?"

I'm not a big fan of "things were meant to be." I love being the Tiny Tornado's mom and can't imagine life without him--but I assume I'd feel the same way about the baby girl whose mom decided to parent her a few months before we brought TT home, or whatever baby we might have adopted had the Tiny Tornado's placement with us fallen through.

But I have often thought that the TT is lucky to have us. He's a challenging kid (though, really, what kids aren't? Maybe your kids. Not mine. Not most of the kids I know, even the "easiest" ones). And we've done a good job of rolling with those challenges. We've always been good at appreciating our kids' qualities even when those very qualities were what made the days hard sometimes--and that's certainly true of the Tiny Tornado, whose drive and self-assurance and competence are a wonder to behold, even as you're excusing yourself to scream into a pillow, "Why the hell can't he ever just do what I ask him to do one time, just one time, without arguing! Argh!"

"Isn't he a wonder?" we say to each other. "Now can you watch him for awhile so I can take a xanax and a nap?"

People often say to me, "I admire the Tiny Tornado so much. But I'm glad you're his mom and not me." I always find "better you than me" statements a little judgmental, but at the same time, I am also glad I'm his mom and not someone else. Because I'm doing a good job with him. And I can imagine that many people might not.

My point was going to be, though, that on top of all that, he's genderqueer. In all the randomness of adoption--the agency we chose; K's decision to place her baby for adoption; her decision to let the agency choose the baby's placement just when we were the family who'd been waiting the longest, rather than choosing herself from all the waiting families--in all of that, this little female-bodied boy ended up with us.

Without false modesty, I am going to suggest that we are probably one of the ten American families who are best prepared to deal with a gender-nonconforming child. And here he is, right now, putting sunglasses on the dogs.

What are the odds?

Like I said, I don't cotton to "it was meant to be." I don't know a thing about what is "meant" and what is just the serendipitous one-in-ten-million chance.

To be honest, I'm not entirely happy about it. About the boy thing, I mean. I've pretty well gotten over my disappointment at not being able to buy funky, colorful girl clothes, and my disappointment at not being able to use all that work and study I put into learning to care for and braid nappy hair. But the boy thing, I'm still working on that.

I used to roll my eyes when I heard gay men and lesbians say, "I wouldn't want my kids to be gay." Because being gay was the best! I loved being a lesbian! I loved lesbians! I loved being part of that community. I loved gay men, the quiet steady ones and the flamboyant ones who showed up at Pride dressed like Vegas showgirls. I could hardly imagine a better outcome for my hypothetical children than being gay.

My thesis advisor at Goddard, Nora Mitchell, whote a poem called "Faggots" that always spoke to me. Here it is:

FAGGOTS

My lover says sometimes
that I look like a faggot, meaning
like a man
who looks like a woman.
On the dark streets a woman veers away from me
and walks faster. Hands jammed
in my pockets and fast-moving,
I am also trying to stay safe

in my city at night. Like a child
I want to protest, I'm a girl --
over and over -- to this woman,
to my father's two friends in the hardware store.
They said they'd have to see me throw
before they'd believe me, but I knew
that I threw just like a boy.
Coming up behind me, my lover teases,

you swish, as if I had to
pretend to walk like a woman,
or it were something I could mimic, like a man.
Like her I love the way faggots move;
I love the humor in their eyes,
their wrists, their chins,
as if their bodies kept faith
with the fire of laughter and repeated

some old joke the world could never get.
Queens are men
who leave their names behind
with all their reasons as delicate
as the works in the heart
of a watch. Robert
becomes Robin, or someone more
extravagent, more vulnerable still.


I love transmen and female-to-male transgender people. I think it's clear I have a way of finding them, sometimes even before they've found themselves.

But when I let myself think ahead, when I forget that we're not worrying about what happens in five or ten years or wondering if our insurance will cover hormone blockers, or whether there's a decent developmental endocrinologist in Michigan with at least some experience with gender-nonconforming children--well, I hope he's not a boy.

Because if he is, well, that comes with a whole lot of challenges. Everyone I know who has transitioned is happy with that choice. But there is often a residue of questions, of regret: from going through puberty as the wrong sex, from never having a perfectly ordinary male body. At TransHealth, I went to a workshop in which a doctor and a psychologist talked about current best practices for trans kids, which usually includes a gender-appropriate puberty. One of them referred to the damage done by past bad practices. After the workshop, a friend cried on my shoulder for a bit. He didn't say why. But I think it was regret for what might have been possible for him had he been a child today.

Gender-appropriate puberty carries a cost, though: almost always, the loss of fertility; not being allowed to participate in either girls' or boys' sports; wondering if your friends would still love you if they knew.

Then, too, harboring, under your clothes, body parts that don't match people's perceptions of your gender is dangerous. Trans people are at high risk of violence. Already, even before the Tiny Tornado chose male pronouns, I worried about what might happen if someone assumed "she" was a boy and then learned differently. Not that I expected physical violence, but expressions of discomfort, of disgust, of judgment? That, I worried about.

I want the Tiny Tornado to be who he is. Of course I do. With all my heart. And if he grows up to join that large and loving community of trans people I love so much, well, I know he will be welcomed and loved there, as indeed he already is and always has been.

I think I just want, like all parents, for my kids' lives to be easy. The Tiny Tornado is perfectly happy, deeply engaged with everything and everyone he loves, in love with his own luscious self, full of piss and vinegar. He has no idea he's on a hard road.

But I do.