Shaker Deborah forwards this article at NPR (and recommends, for Shakers who can listen to it, the audio, which has more details) about two sets of parents dealing with young sons who have been diagnosed as transgender. Both stories made me blub—for totally different reasons.
Suffice it to say, I would take the approach of Jona's parents.
Tangentially, Iain and I recently got on the subject of intersex children, and I said if we ever had a kid who was born with what's generally called sex-indeterminate genitalia, I would never go the traditional route of forcible sex/gender assignment by surgery, but just give the kid a gender-neutral name and let them decide who they want to be on their own. And Iain was immediately in agreement. "Fook the binary." (I so love him for that.)
I can't even imagine forcing a kid to take piano lessons against her or his will, no less forcing a kid to adhere to a gender or sex role against her or his will, or biology, or whatthefuckever. We're all handed a freak flag at birth; I'd be damned before I'd be the one to tell my own kid they couldn't fly theirs.
I know that's easy to say when you're not a parent, but there are some things you just know about yourself.
I would make a terrible parent in lots of ways; that ain't one of 'em.
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