Today in Transphobia

If you can't view the image, it's the cover (via Cover Awards) of pop culture rag Life & Style Weekly, featuring before-and-after pix of Shiloh Jolie-Pitt with longer hair and shorter hair, reading: "Why is Angelina turning Shiloh into a boy?" Beneath the large yellow headline, subtext reads: "A boy's haircut and clothes. Calls her 'John.' No girlie things. Is it harming the 3-year-old?"

ZOMG!!!eleventy! It's a girl-child with a gender-neutral haircut! O NOES! Let us all immediately commence upon BLAMING HER MOTHER!!!

(And her mother only. It's only her mother, Angelina Jolie, who is reportedly "turning Shiloh into a boy," but her father, Brad Pitt, has no parenting role, or at least no parenting responsibility, because of his very manly penis. Or something. I don't claim to understand how the minds of the jack-booted gender normative enforcers work. But luckily, Life & Style has EXPERTS! To weigh in! On this important subject!

Alana Kelen, who is a senior fashion stylist at VH1, tells us that "Shiloh is pushing the boundaries of a tomboy look and crossing over to cross-dresser territory."

Okay. And? If that were true it would be bad why...?

Well, maybe celebrity stylist Gili Rashal-Niv can shed some light on the subject: "I get that times are tough but does Angie really need to have Shiloh sharing clothes with her brothers? Hopefully we won't be seeing Maddox in one of Shiloh's dresses any time soon."

Oh Maude forbid! Not a BOY IN A DRESS! AIEEEEEEEEE!

Tell us what's what, Glenn Stanton, director of Family Formation Studies for Focus on the Family (WTF?!): "They need help, they need guidance of what that looks like. It's important to teach our children that gender distinction is very healthy."

Why? BECAUSE GOD SAYS SO, THAT'S WHY, YOU FILTHY HEATHENS!

Our last expert to opine on the international crisis of a three-year-old's gender presentation is parenting coach Karen Deerwester, who says: "Giving preschool-age children the freedom and flexibility to experiment with how they want to be seen in the world is a wonderful gift."

Wow. How eminently sensible.

In addition to, and inextricably tied up with, the transphobia at work here, there's also the familiar stank of misogyny, and the curling stench of homophobia, all stewing in the fetid pot of gendered heteronormativity: Girls must look feminine, according to the rigid definitions of feminine beauty as prescribed by the kyriarchy, so that they may serve their primary purpose as sexualized objects of the male gaze.

And though it's not explicit, there is also an element of racism underlying the insistence that Jolie is "ruining" her white (biological) daughter by "turning her into a boy," an objection that wasn't raised when her Asian (adopted) sons have had longer ("feminine") hair, or when her African-American (adopted) daughter has worn her older brothers' hand-me-downs, as does Shiloh.

Further, we have yet another example of a child's agency being denied, or treated like it doesn't even exist.

Maybe Shiloh asked for that haircut. Maybe she likes dressing up like a boy, like lots of little girls with opposite-sex parents do, because it makes them feel close to their dads. Maybe she asked to be called "John" because it's her grandfather's name.

Or maybe zie asked for that haircut and dresses up like a boy and asked to be called John because zie's transgender.

And lucky enough to have parents who respect hir as an individual.

Either way, it's none of our goddamned business. And I resent being obliged to put an alternative to this shit out into the universe. Because it really isn't my business—but the notion that a child who doesn't conform to hir birth gender is somehow less than certainly is.

[Related Reading: To Tutu or Not to Tutu?]