“But what’s really interesting to me is that social conservatives want to have it both ways—-they argue both that gender is innate and unchangeable, and that it’s learned.”

Well, it’s not as much a contradiction as it sounds.

You and I would say that people are sad and fucked-up when they are forced to behave according to gender roles that are not normal for them. 

They would say that people are sad and fucked-up when they are forced to behave according to gender roles that are “contraindicated” by their birth sex.  This doesn’t mean you can’t be assigned a gender role randomly and taught it, it just means that you will be miserable if it’s not “right” for you, and they have rules about what’s “right” for you that don’t involve anyone’s personal desires.

The difference here is they believe the role is assigned by God or Nature and indicated by your physical sex (ignoring intergender people altogether) and we believe the role is our choice.  Either one allows for indoctrination into an inappropriate role, and misery occurring therefrom.

They would say that people are sad and fucked-up when they are forced to behave according to gender roles that are “contraindicated” by their birth sex.

No, they would say that people are sad and fucked-up when they aren’t forced to do otherwise.

Other news articles covering this said that Shiloh was going through a Peter Pan phase, and particularly has latched onto the character John. Hence wanting to be called by his name.

As one of the tomboys who grew up to be a still tomboyish woman in a straight relationship, I can’t understand the fuss over what she wears and wants her hair to be like.

Also, I suspect this is the sort of thing that leads certain parents to freak out about your “rebellion” when you finally get to exert your bodily autonomy—a) you get to exert your bodily autonomy for the first time, of course you are going to try all kinds of stuff and b) some of the stuff you try out is just what you find comfortable or aesthetic. Shiloh’s parents seem to be dispensing with that crap, and letting her try what she wants. And of course, THAT also freaks out conservatives since the whole parent-leader-child-submissive crap is built into their patriarchy as the modelling behaviour for male-female relationships. God forbid a person figure out what they want on their own.

We had a psychology professor at the community college where Professor Avenger taught whose main claim to fame was that he was a respondant in the Kinsley survey, and he thought it was awful that Dad would refer to my sister as ‘Fred’ around people, that it would screw up her psychology or something, and when he told me that I showed him this exchange from Dr Who:

The Doctor: ...One more thing. Your name.
Romana: What about my name?
The Doctor: It’s too long. By the time I’ve called out, “Look out…” What’s your name?
Romana: [slowly] Romanadvoratrelundar.
The Doctor: By the time I’ve called that out, you could be dead. I’ll call you “Romana”.
Romana: I don’t like “Romana”.
The Doctor: It’s either “Romana” or “Fred”.
Romana: All right, call me “Fred”.
The Doctor: Good. Come on, Romana.

  They would say that people are sad and fucked-up when they are forced to behave according to gender roles that are “contraindicated” by their birth sex.

No, they would say that people are sad and fucked-up when they aren’t forced to do otherwise.
Comment #2: DaveL on 03/06 at 01:15 PM

They don’t think it’s forcing if it’s the “right” gender.  It’s appropriate guidance.

I’m describing the way they think, not the way you and I think.

All of this, plus this:

Has it occurred to anyone that Shiloh/John might be showing very early signs of being transgender?

It wouldn’t be unheard of—many TG folk start to identify with the “opposite” sex in childhood. It’s possible, just possible, that the Jolie-Pitts are sane enough that they’re not especially worried about that. If Shiloh grows up to be John, then Shiloh grows up to be John. her/his body, her/his choice.

Of course, it’s also possible that Shiloh is just a girl who isn’t very girly. Like my daughter, who hates dresses and wants her hair short because she hates getting it styled and—oh yeah—who’s quite certain she’s a girl. Or my sister, who played sports and never wore skirts when pants would do and who was every inch the tomboy growing up, and who’s happily married with two kids today. Somehow, she didn’t need to be told that girls have to dress girly to grow up to be a heterosexual woman; she just was one.

Finally, though you didn’t mention it, I do love that it’s Angelina who’s turning Shiloh into a boy, because, you know, her father has nothing to do with his kid.

Also, not to belabor the obvious, but do these numbskulls have any idea what a royal freaking pain in the ass it is to keep a 3-year-old’s long hair from getting 1) all kinds of stuff stuck in it and 2) hopelessly tangled? (Of course they don’t, their wives do all the washing, brushing and detangling.)

It seems a lot of really young kids have their first “crushes” on people, characters, etc. and react by wanting to be that person.  I think that’s something adults could learn from, honestly.  Not to turn into someone you crush on, but to think about what they have that is so attractive to you, and maybe if that’s something you want for yourself. 

I dunno, it’s a good way to imagine what you want your goals to be.

Jeff, I don’t know.  I think what a lot of people experience subjectively may not be that easy for outsiders looking in to decipher, especially at such a young age.  I mean, it’s possible.  But who knows?  I’ve seen kids that age think they’re animals.  Usually this means they will grow up to like animals.  Sometimes they’re pretending to be what they want to be, sometimes it’s what they are going to like, sometimes it’s just fucking random.  It makes sense to them, but child choices don’t seem to have much relationship to adult choices.

I mean, in any direction, it’s great, of course.  Just, there’s not a lot of point in speculating.

I used to insist on starting stories I told about myself (some made up, some not) with “when I was a little boy . . .”  I would usually be informed by family members that I in fact had never been a little boy, but with more confusion than heat.  I was unpersuaded, and continued telling stories that way until I tired of the figure of speech.  I’m a butchy-cis-straight lady, FWIW, but I don’t think it matters.  I also really liked capes and shawls when I was a kid, I don’t wear them as a grownup.

do these numbskulls have any idea what a royal freaking pain in the ass it is to keep a 3-year-old’s long hair from getting 1) all kinds of stuff stuck in it and 2) hopelessly tangled? (Of course they don’t, their wives do all the washing, brushing and detangling.)

Not only that, but it’s the little girls, not tha patriarchs, who actually experience the brushing, washing and detangling. I once babysat for a Quiverfull (before they called themselves that) family with 9 kids, 3 of whom were little girls not allowed to cut their hair, so it was all down to their butts. Every step of the hair care routine was torture for those kids. They hated having it washed, they cried when it was combed because it hurt their scalps, it just blew me away how many hours of their lives were spent in misery because of that hair.

My daughter turned out to be very much the same, so we got her a buzz cut and she loves it. The absolute longest it’s been in the last year is one inch. She never has to comb it or worry about it being in her face, the only washing it needs is a rinse in the shower, and she absolutely loves when I whip out the clippers to trim it.

When I was a kid, my father taught me appropriate gender behavior by beating the shit out of me whenever I did anything girly.  Now I am a very masculine acting gay man.  FAIL.

On the hair thing, my dad used to leave the room when my mom would brush our hair in the morning (we had a no-cutting rule too) because we would scream.  My mom is not a mean person, nor is she particularly religious/into femininity, the whole hair business was really an aberration.  He was the one who insisted she get us conditioner and detangler, even though he usually had no opinions about purchasing household products. 

And damn, jackspratt, I’m sorry, that sucks.  I know that’s inadequate, but damn.  (((innernet hugs)))

Yeah, they do want it both ways. Reminds of that one deranged right-wing fuck-up blogger/journalist (I can’t remember the details) who was talking all about how important it was that he would take his son in the shower with him and intimidate him with his manly cock so that he wouldn’t turn gay.

Long hair is inconvenient, like having to wear dresses all the time is. Can’t have things be too easy for the wimminfolks.

“By age 3, my girls were making the basic choices about hair and clothes.  Mom and Dad only got to nix things based on temperature outside and basic appropriateness.”

This is the way my daughter has been since she was 2.  She still (at almost 19) has very strong opinions about fashion for herself and others…

I’m curious what Dana, The Pandagon Troll thinks about this Deep Concern Over Gender Roles.  There are pictures on his site of his daughters (as pre-teens) dressed as ballerinas (and I assume that was not unusual in their house), and now one is already in the Army and the other is following close behind.  For a good Catholic (and one assumes supporter of the Patriarchy like all good Republicans) isn’t that Gender Role Fail?  OTOH, apparently his mother was in the Army too.  So maybe in this one small aspect he’s progressive…

Wow, do parents really have so much control they can just treat their kids like dolls to dressed up as the parents want?

Gorobei: If you read comments on the celebrity parent blogs that have covered this, you would see that yes, a lot of women* seem to think their children are dress up dolls who should simply submit to their aesthetic choices rather than develop their own sense of style.  They will tell you that a 3-year old cannot express these types of preferences, to which sane parents who actually listen to their kids and allow them to demonstrate preference will tell you that a 3-year old very much CAN decide to dress in very specific ways. 

What’s funny (sad) are the comments like “Well, the tomboy clothing doesn’t bother me that much but they went too far when they cut her beautiful hair off!  She’s a girl!”  Because apparently one cannot be a girl with short hair (for those of us raised in the 70s and 80s, this is indeed news to us) and parents should not allow their child’s appearance to confuse complete strangers about which genitalia the child possesses.

I personally give Angelina and Brad a lot of kudos if they are simply rolling with their daughter’s growing sense of individuality and not trying to force her to fit other people’s expectations.  I hope they would be similarly open-minded if one of the boys wanted to wear pink nail polish or dress more stereotypically feminine.  For myself, I am doing what I can to de-program my 3.5-year old from thinking there are “girl toys, girl clothes”, ideas he picks up from watching television and listening to the parents of other kids, by letting him have those things.  I know his dad worries that I will let it go “too far”, but this seems mostly associated to the notion of not teaching our son to use aggression or violence to assert his will (apparently, this is equivalent to me putting a sign on our son that says “beat me up” at school).

*These are blogs whose target audience is women, so I am not saying that only women do this.

In the picture on the left, is Shiloh wearing a tiny tailored jacket?  Because I find that slightly more fucked up than the pixie cut on the right.  Seeing a kid that small in clothes that sophisticated makes me think of poise training and little girls being acclimated to hoop skirts.

I had short hair as a girl because my hair is simultaneously thick and fine-textured, so I get really horrible knots in it if it gets too dried out.  My mother got so tired of trying to untangle it that she finally had it cut short.

Fortunately, Dorothy Hamill was popular at the time, so getting my hair cut short like hers was actually a really exciting prospect for me. 

My youngest wanted to be called PeanutButterSandwich at that age.  Her older sisters thought that was hysterical so she continued that for several years.  She’s now married and goes by her birth name, by the way.
I mostly bought boys clothing for my three daughters because they were cheaper, better made and took more wear and tear dished out by my tomboys.  They turned out fine and have kids of their own now.

My 5 year-old has gone by Lilly, CheetahGirl, & Daisy.  Daisy was so popular for a while that we have Daisy the neutered male cat and Daisy, Grandma’s miniature poodle.

An’ she *still* won’t brush her own tangled hair, but refuses to have it cut short.

Bloody stupid newsmedia and bloody stupid Americans for buying this crap.

“Only 2.99”?  That rag is seriously overpriced.
++++
“Their homophobia is clashing with their sexism,..”  Bravo, well said.

“And a lot of little girls allowed to be /tomboys/ Starbuck grow up straight.”

Just a quick edit to contextualize this for the 21st century.

Also, @14: by no means should you allow her anywhere near a television showing How I Met Your Mother.

I wonder if there is a meta freak out going on here too.  Angelina made a name for herself early in her career playing lesbians (e.g Gia).  Perhaps the “family values” set thinks she’s been properly recloseted now that she is married.  Letting her daughter dress like a boy probably screams “regression!” to them.  Peter Pan phase - nothing to see, move along.

When my son was 3, he wanted a dress.  I picked up two of them for $1 each - in the pink color he loved.  He wore them to the store, to preschool, etc. 

He now looks like the kid in the ad at the bottom left side.  We let him explore girlness while he was little.

Meanwhile, our right wing baby sitter regularly let her son parade around the neighborhood in a feather boa and pink sparkly heels.  “Toddlers get to cross dress” she said. 

This isn’t “making her into a boy” it is “respecting her desire to explore her identity”.  I think it leads to fewer confused people down the line - my older son is solidly heterosexual and very much male in gender expression these days - artsy as hell - but male identified.

My mom told me that I could have long hair only when I was old enough to take care of it myself.  As an adult, I found long hair convenient because I could just braid it at any time, and wore a braid to bed to keep it from tangling.

My son was such a tangled curly mess of hair that I made him cut it after a halloween disaster.  Then he grew it back until he started to care what girls thought.  Also, he cut it because long hair got popular.

hp, I would have fashion obsessed parents look at my kids and ask “how do you get them to dress themselves”.  The answer: YOU LET THEM even if they combine horizontal and vertical matching strips, mismatch colors, etc.

I never understood the need of some on either side of the political spectrum to assign a time when children become aware of their sexualiy and if homosexuality is learned or biological.  To me these delineations were/are largely irrelevent in these debates/conversatios.  Who cares?  The unfortunate part about this is far too many people, both from the left but mostly from the right, think it’s their business how someone else’s child is raised or if they’re shagging someone of the same gender.  Our society has morphed into a big fish bowl where people look at Brangelina and actually think their opinion is relevent in how they should raise their child.

True story:  Was babysitting my god-daughter, beautiful eight year oldd girl, red hair, and decidedly tom boyish in her dress.  Took her to the store and some lady actually had the gaul to tell me she should be dressed in appropriate gender style, i.e. a dress or frilly shit.  I flat out told her to mind her own damn business.  Then my god-daughter told the lady , who was about mid 40’s in appearence but had on obscenely short shorts and a tank top, to dress her age.  Man was I proud.

Moral: Mind your own damn business.

One thing I’ll say is that, following Jezebel’s coverage of this same issue it looks like Life and Style seriously manipulated some of the quotes it got for this article.  Quotes they solicited from their usual fluffy style/gossip sources.  Many of whom are personally quite liberal, they’re just vapid.  Though the stylist who wrote in to Jezebel about how her words were mangled actually seemed quite intelligent, fwiw. 

So I’m not sure you can chalk this up to Right Wing Talking Points.  Though of course someone had to manipulate those quotes to cobble this “article” together, and someone had to pitch it in the first place.  I’d be more inclined to think Ha Ha Social Conservatives Are So Schizo! if this were coming out of Focus On The Family or some other source that is more indicative of the conservative hive mind.

But, ugh, this has been the Tabloid Cover I Love To Bitch About ever since I saw it while waiting in line at the supermarket.  So yeah, sure, let’s get on board with whatever!  Boo Life And Style!

Gender roles are innate, but you have to be taught how to do them right—or rather, if you’re a woman, you have to be taught that you can never do them right.

But also, everything Angelina does has to be strange and weird and offputting. That’s her role in the tabs. (Because famous women who are recurring tabloid characters pretty much have their choice of Freak, Victim, Tyrant or Madonna.)

Has it occurred to anyone that Shiloh/John might be showing very early signs of being transgender?

It wouldn’t be unheard of—many TG folk start to identify with the “opposite” sex in childhood.

Then again, many cisgendered folk start to identify with the “opposite” sex in childhood and then, at some later point, go back to identifying with the gender that matches their dangly bits. 

A female cousin of mine started, around this same age, to refuse to wear anything but boys’ clothes, to play with “boy” toys, and even to openly talk about how she wanted to be a boy “when she grew up”.  This cousin is now a sorority girl, with a serious boyfriend, and meeting every gender norm you can think of vis a vis those two identifiers.  You would never, ever guess that she was even a tomboy as a child. 

The bottom line is that little kids are A) really just learning about gender and what it means, and B) playing with a lot of different identities and ways of thinking about themselves and others.  Just because William wants to wear pink and spell his name “Billie” and dot the i’s with hearts, and muses about being a mommy someday, doesn’t mean he’s going to grow up to be transgendered.

I’m a little upset over the current this calvacade of anecdotes has taken, which can be roughly summarized as “[I/my kid/some family member] did [gender nonconforming thing], and still turned out normal(straight, married, with kids).  Therefore, this behavior is nothing to worry about.”

Turning out to be some flavor of trans is normal too.  Statistically less likely—which may be why there’s no anecdotes with that outcome posted—but still normal.

The fuss over John is unnecessary not b/c it’s likely she’ll turn out normal, but rather, just as Amanda said @#10, the experience is John’s alone and it’s simply pointless to speculate.

Ummm, Emmet, that’s not at all what I meant.

Simply that one cannot surmise from a three year old’s gender nonconforming behavior that they will grow up to be transgendered.

And I don’t believe that I said my cousin turned out “normal”, but that she turned out just about as feminine and hetero as they come.

Unless you’re responding to someone else’s comment, I believe you jumped from “my female cousin grew up to be female” to “normal” all on your own.  I also didn’t speculate about anything at all - in fact, my post was a response to Jeff Fecke, who decided that, because 3 year old Shiloh doesn’t happen to be wearing pink or ruffles in this one photo, and because a tabloid is wildly speculating about other things that may or may not be going on*, therefore we are free to speculate that Shiloh is transgendered.

* Keep in mind this is the same publication that decides, on a weekly basis, that Jennifer Lopez is pregnant with septuplets, and Ellen Degeneres is leaving Portia di Rossi for Lindsey Lohan.  It’s not as if this is scientific proof that Shiloh Pitt is doing anything at all but being photographed wearing not-nauseatingly-feminine clothing.

Exceptionally fine post with comments to match.

Turning out to be some flavor of trans is normal too.  Statistically less likely—which may be why there’s no anecdotes with that outcome posted—but still normal.

I would need to see some statistics (or at least some anecdotes) but, counterintuitive as it sounds, I wonder if transgender people are actually less likely to do this kind of thing as a child because they’re already having trouble figuring out the rules for their apparent gender.  It seems to me (as a former tomboy) that this may be the kind of play you engage in when you’re secure in your own gender, so pretending to be another one seems like a fun game.  If your feelings aren’t matching up with your apparent gender, you might concentrate on getting that gender “right” since, frankly, it’s not going to be a game for you.

I may be totally off-base, though, so feel free to correct me.

OTOH, it probably is more common than not that a girl who wants to be a tomboy will grow up thinking she’s an equal, and even expand that concept to *all* women being equal to men, which would make her turn into (gasp) a femininst!
She may go through a period when she just enjoys the Only Girl In the Room position, but I suspect few women don’t outgrow that when they realize that some men don’t care how well they fit into masculine environments, they are still belittled for being female.

And feminist scare conservatives at about the same level as lesbians. Especially since feminist-on-feminist porn doesn’t do it for them.

Shit, when I was 3 I was going about insisting everyone call me “Gonzo” because he was my favorite Muppet. Somehow, I managed not to grow up into a blue, furry creature with a gigantic nose. And hell yes, I had very specific ideas about how I wanted to dress. I knew what I wanted to wear and would make life extremely difficult if I didn’t get any input on my clothing. I still don’t wear skirts very often. And yet! I’m not a man! Or, for that matter, a lesbian, as some people who knew me as a child no doubt feared.

But then, I am a feminist, so maybe that’s another source of fear. Shiloh’s not being forced into frilly dresses and thus may grow to realize that women are human beings. THE HORROR.

Opoponax, yours is far from the only comment describing childhood behavior that didn’t result in the person in question being trans.  As a trans person?—yeah there’s a definite trend I’m seeing here of reassurance that gender nonconforming behavior =/= Teh Trans, whew!  Thank goodness for that.  So no, it was definitely not about just you.

Mnemosyne, I don’t think those stats exist, sadly.  Anecdata says it depends on the environment (whether gender noncomformance is tolerated or punished) and how soon the child is consciously aware of a sex/gendered mismatch.  A lot of people don’t “realize” till puberty and a significant portion only do so after reaching adulthood.

Re: comment 22, Mnem, we must be about the same age. I totally wore the Dorothy Hammil haircut for a while in elementary school.

And I forgot to say, *why* so many little girls like to be tomboys. They get more freedom. You wear a skirt and people tell you you cannot climb trees. Wear jeans, and you can play however you want. Wear long hair, and you don’t get told not to do things, but you learn the consequence of getting stuff in your hair is pain. Boys are more likely to talk to you and treat you with respect if you are ready to play their games (not that the girls are thinking about it as craving approval (I hope), but there are more friendships opened that way, more options for play and socializing.
Considering all the restrictions children face, it’s only natural that many of them would choose things that give them more freedom rather than less.

Also, fiction for kids, adult reactions, etc often codes tomboys as being braver, emotionally stronger, and more sure of themselves than girly girls. Girly girls get complimented as pretty and well behaved, but that’s really not enough to prevent many girls from wanting to try the alternative.

As a trans person?—yeah there’s a definite trend I’m seeing here of reassurance that gender nonconforming behavior =/= Teh Trans, whew!  Thank goodness for that.  So no, it was definitely not about just you.

I wasn’t saying that, and I didn’t get that others in general were saying that.

The bottom line is that ALL children play with gender expression.  And yet, a very small number of people ultimately become (openly?) transgendered.  Which of course means that it’s very common to know a child who defied gender norms at a young age, and yet did not grow up to have a nontraditional gender identity. 

And of course, this goes both ways.  I was an extremely prissy little girl.  Then somewhere around puberty I started to become more androgynous, even to the point of being mistaken for a guy in my teens and early 20’s. These days I’m a little more feminine than that, though I don’t think I’ll ever be as into bows and butterflies as I was at age 9. 

To be honest, it frustrates me that ANY childhood gender expression that slightly deviates from the most rigid norms is often immediately jumped on as ohnoez, transgender!!!  I mean, seriously, Shiloh is trans because, what, she’s not wearing anything pink in this one picture?  Because some tabloid decided she wants to be called John?

One wonders what the chattering classes would have said about my childhood desire to be called She-Ra Carolina Sparkly Ring at around the same age….?  Kids are weird, and should be free to be weird without the whole country clutching pearls about what it means for their future sexuality.

Also, fiction for kids, adult reactions, etc often codes tomboys as being braver, emotionally stronger, and more sure of themselves than girly girls.

This totally pissed me off, as a girly girl.  I think it’s why I preferred reading material like the Little House books and Anne of Green Gables, both of which had feisty girls who didn’t necessarily conform to the Rad Tomboy vs. Milquetoast Priss dichotomy.  Also Ramona, where each sister had her own place on that spectrum, which had little or nothing to do with that sister’s behavior.  Both got to be either badass or victimized based on the plot of whichever book.

You do realize that it’s only in the last decade or so that children claiming to be a different gender than the one they were assigned have started to be taken seriously and in some cases allowed to begin transition before natal puberty kicked in?  I’m sorry, there IS no wave of “ohnoez transgender!”  There IS a wave of “that child can’t possibly know what gender they are and we need to make them undergo their natal puberty so they can be really, really sure they want to transition” and then have the fun of trying to undo the past 8 years or so of having the wrong hormones directing their sexual development.

To whit, comments 6, 11, 23, 28, 30,35 (yours) all fit the pattern I pointed out, and 42 gets an honorable mention for not growing up to be a Muppet (though that would be sorta cool). 

One, exactly one comment (#6) suggests that the kid might be trans.

I did enjoy Ramona.  Beatrice got the short end of the stick being the prissy older sister, though.

Being cast as the prissy older sister, that is.

rhys @27-

One thing I’ve noticed about the anti-gay right is that they seem fundamentally unable to grasp the notion of bisexual. It’s either gay or straight and gay and non-gender-conforming are the same thing. Either someone is a feminine gay man/butch lesbian woman or they are a proper gender-conforming hetero. The idea that someone could be gender-non-conforming but super straight or gay but gender conforming or the idea that sexuality and gender function more often in our society as more of a complex continuum than the digital switch they are imagining is literally beyond their ken.

You can see it in their anti-gay programs where they don’t seem to get that even if their program’s actually did work for once, all it would prove is they found a Kinsey 5 bisexual. So yeah, the idea that Angelina Jolie is an out bisexual woman but “properly married” to a man just shoots way over any understanding of gay issues they can grasp. So they respond by just relegating it to the same “it’s different, hate hate” file as everything else that hurts their tiny brains.

Mnemosyne @40

No idea. There have been a lot of transgender people who report “knowing” as children and pushing themselves in that direction or naturally flowing in that direction and others who felt something was wrong and pushed in the other direction or who didn’t know something was wrong until adolescence or later.

Personally, I didn’t go through a femininity phase as a child, but then I’m fairly agendered in my gender performance (though my mental sex is female), so I’m not sure I’m a good baseline for trans experiences.

Overall, though the results seem as across the board as the childhoods of gay kids and straight kids. We seem to have various phases we all go through and transgendered people seem to differ on when the gender dissonance really starts to make itself felt. The two big times seem to be adolescence or childhood, but certainly there are a number of us who like gay people don’t really realize what was obvious in retrospect until well into adulthood. So, varies. Shiloh/John could end up as pretty much anything she/he decides to be and we’ll probably have to wait until she/he is more of a teenager to know for sure and just treat her/him as she/he wants to until then and afterwards. Safest strategy in general.

The post itself-

Well yeah. Part of it is that they don’t really believe any of the bullshit that comes out of their mouths so they never really care that they contradict themselves multiple times. Fred Clark at slacktvist has had some great posts detailing all the various things the religious right believe that contradict each other including their belief that they are a powerful majority and force that should dictate what life in America is like and a tiny oppressed minority under threat of elimination by the larger secular world.

It’s all basically sound and fury to try and sell their real agenda which in this case is the shutting down of options and the freedom to be oneself in order to prolong the conformist patriarchy. Women and men with greater options and who don’t feel constant cultural pressure to force themselves into molds in which they don’t fit don’t end up as bitter repressed people willing to give all their money and time to an abusive church or support political movements based on making other people’s lives worse. They may even want to do things like marry for love or care more about their partner than presenting a “Leave it to Beaver” image of success while living a life of quiet desperation and resentment. And that may lead to caring more about real problems than nice distractions like whatever paranoid delusion is affecting the religious leaders at the time.

They don’t really care about their arguments, they just want uppity women and gays to shut up so that life can return to like it was on the TV screen when they were a child and everything would be wonderful or at least less besieged by the ugly inevitable march of progress.

Good point @47

I suppose I mean to say, look for consistency. If your three year old says they want to be referred to as a boy or the six year old is going through a tomboy phase, just assent and see where it goes, but if your ten year old has spent several years wanting to be referred to as a boy and is openly agitated when you refer to them with a female epithet or when they wear girl clothes, it might be worth it to talk to some people at The Center just in case.

I can see how it can be tricky, especially as some gay people went through faux trans phases as a kid and not every case is a true positive, but it is kind of messed up how high the bar is for us trans people where it is constantly assumed that a cis person having to go through what we do would be so traumatic that we all have to jump through extra hoops and delays to ensure that never happens even if it means trapping large numbers of trans people in traumatic gender dissonance.

I imagine this will only get easier with greater victories in feminism and gay rights giving kids their own vocabulary to separate sexuality from gender and to have less cultural bullshit to cut through towards asserting themselves as they truly are.

It’s all become clear to me now.  Because my mother and I have the same name, my dad nicknamed me Charlie and still calls me that on occasion.  That must be why I’m a lesbian.  Thanks, Conservative Whackadoos, for clearing that up for me.

I’m sorry, there IS no wave of “ohnoez transgender!”

I don’t know if there’s a “wave”, but I know it’s the first thing that people I know jump to these days when a small child starts defying gender norms.  As evidenced by this magazine cover. 

Also, re Beezus - she was the prissier of the two, though in the early books, when she’s still the protagonist because Ramona is too young to be an interesting narrator, she isn’t girly in the way that, say, Eloise is girly.  Or the Disney Princesses are girly.  Her best friend was a boy, and the illustrations often showed her wearing jeans, and with short hair.  She merely liked crafts and reading and other quiet activities, as opposed to her hellraiser little sister whose main hobby was breaking bricks.

and then have the fun of trying to undo the past 8 years or so of having the wrong hormones directing their sexual development.

I don’t see anyone here implying that Shiloh not be allowed to express gender as Shiloh sees fit, and I don’t believe that ANYONE has said ANYTHING about transition, period.  The gist seems to be, “we don’t know whether Shiloh is transgendered or not, and it’s best not to speculate for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact that gender is complicated and it’s impossible to know about a child’s future gender identification due to their clothing preferences at age 3.”

Also, is it just me, or is Shiloh’s haircut in the two photos just a freshly trimmed bob compared to a grown out one?  They’re like an inch or two different from each other. 

I feel really, really bad for tabloid celebrities’ kids.

Addendum to myself @51 and sorry for the semi-confused rambling, but I’ve been trying to figure out the issue for myself lately, so my opinions aren’t as solid as some of my others-

It’s also the case that hormone therapy makes a great check in general for “real” transgenderism or not. Willing to go through with it after full information? Potentially a great deal of chance of having gender dissonance. Have it done? Well, that’s sort of the moment of truth, usually fairly early on. If gender dissonance suddenly appears, you drop the therapy cause, whoops, actually cis and if it starts to rectify that gender dissonance, yup, you were right.

It’s actually a fairly handy way to root out the “not sure” aspect as gender dissonance tends to be a hell of a punch so it going away or suddenly appearing is a pretty good confirmation or denial on the question for those curious enough to ask the question to begin with.

Course, I can’t even imagine the outcry that would result if I were to suggest using that as an open option to consistently-questioning pre-adolescent kids (especially in that critical just before puberty age) but it could be a better system than the mess we have now.

Course, that has little bearing to someone like Shiloh/John who is too little to be properly informed or to think about it on that level, but just as a general thing, perhaps.

I think it’s more the irony of conservatives having these mini-meltdowns over children not being super-consistent in their performance of gender norms, given the fact that most kids who display even fairly extreme versions of gender role subversion go on to be straight and cis.  It’s like spending hours a day trying to hold back the tide and then declaring victory when it recedes.  Being trans or queer isn’t actually linked to whether or not you like nail polish or hand tools, so acting like that’s how you stop someone from being trans or queer accomplishes nothing but aneurysms and misery.

Give that child a hot spring shoe, goddamit, before this minute is over!

@16—-
I saw tha pamphlet too. It was about raising your son straight and had a section on teachng your boy to own a penis that included like jumping up and down in the shower or something. I remember asking all the penis-owners I knew if such rituals actually existed.  I have scoured the googles and have not been able to find it since. I am glad someone else saw it and I am not just crazy!

Kevin Maroney, commenting at Making Light (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight/archives/11926.html), just reminded me of one of my favoritemost comments ever: ‘. . . a Roseanne Barr joke: “Some people say I’m not *feminine* enough. Well, they can all suck my dick.” ‘

This expresses my feelings *exactly* concerning other people trying to make *anyone’s* personal decisions, even a child’s, their business.

I don’t know if there’s a “wave”, but I know it’s the first thing that people I know jump to these days when a small child starts defying gender norms.  As evidenced by this magazine cover.

You know the writers and editors of Life and Style Weekly?<i>  Or you’re jumping on the first convenient example?  The more extreme, the better a headline draws eyes.  No one cares about gays anymore—trans is where it’s at. The editors weren’t seriously entertaining the possibility so much as going for the juicy headline.  Now. going by the number of people you “internets know” on Pandagon, one comment out of more than 50 suggested the <i>possibility that John is trans.  Not a wave by any stretch.  If the people you know in real life bring this up as frequently as you say, ask yourself what’s bothering you about being forced to take it into consideration.  The odds say it’s less likely, but acknowledging it as a possibility is not the same as speculating.  It’s pointing out something that could happen amongst a range of options, not what will happen. 

I don’t believe that ANYONE has said ANYTHING about transition, period.  The gist seems to be, “we don’t know whether Shiloh is transgendered or not, and it’s best not to speculate for a variety of reasons, not least of which is the fact that gender is complicated and it’s impossible to know about a child’s future gender identification due to their clothing preferences at age 3.”

Refusing to speculate doesn’t mean ignoring the possibility she’s not going to turn out cisgendered and cissexual.  It means not guessing at the outcome because we’re not her.  That’s all.  All I did was point out was there was a pattern developing where people were reinforcing that childhood gender exploration didn’t result in a trans outcome.  In my experience that sort of reinforcement tends to crop up unconsciously when cis privileged people want to reassure each other that their kid catching the trans is unlikely.  Why would reassurance be needed?  Because, logic follows, being trans is a bad thing, or abnormal, or whatever icky feeling thinking about one’s child being trans brings up for a parent.

Shit, formatting fail.  Sorry.

I have to back Emmett up here.  I was thinking the same thing reading through the thread even before I got to his first comment.  Even if you never say (or think), “It’s worse to be trans,” a lengthy series of “Oh here’s a non-normative child who grew up not-trans!” stories creates that impression.

Even if you never say (or think), “It’s worse to be trans,” a lengthy series of “Oh here’s a non-normative child who grew up not-trans!” stories creates that impression.

I don’t see why. It seems pretty clear to me that the point of all these stories was that the majority of children go through some sort of “non-normative” phase, to borrow your term, or even remain so whether trans or not, and that picking on this toddler’s clothing, etc. as something that will somehow confuse her about her gender is thus patently ridiculous even for people who are transphobic.

I don’t see why.

Privilege.  Invisible to the privileged.  Yes? 

the point of all these stories was….that picking on this toddler’s [preferences for gendered things as if allowing those things will] confuse her about her gender

And.  When all the stories have the same ending, what impression does that make?  See?  This other person turned out not-trans.  Nothing to worry about (until she doesn’t grow out of it.)  Then we stop indulging the child’s explorations and tell them they aren’t old enough to be making those sorts of decisions.  Consistently framing childhood gender variance as solely play that doesn’t mean anything in the long term, that doesn’t ultimately hinder a person’s eventual, successul adoption of a cis identity—which is the framing that stories with “not trans” outcomes build and reinforce—results in delegitimizing trans children’s experiences.  I am not saying everyone has to start referring to John as a trans individual.  I am pointing out systemic cis privilege that acts to undermine and delegitimize trans narratives (literally “stories”) by excluding them from canon (e.g. the accepted framing of experiences of childhood gender variance).

The point is that even for people who are transphobic it’s weird to act as though a toddler preferring to identify (in clothing or whatever else) with a gender that doesn’t match their genitals is a sign of… well, anything. Whether you’re comfortable with the idea of your child being trans or not, it’s just a thing plenty of little kids do. Transphobic people have nothing to freak out about, and accepting people don’t have to start looking into ways to help their child transition, at least until the kid is past toddlerhood. Our point is not that Shiloh—or John, if the story is true—obviously isn’t trans because, god, didn’t we all do that shit and look at how normal we are. It’s that worrying about it when the kid is 3 is jumping the gun.

The point is I am pointing out an exercise in systemic privilege that has shit-all to do with the story, and that is being pointedly ignored because no really, let’s talk about how we totally all are not like those awful transphobes because we know better than take a child of three’s gendered behaviors seriously.  I mean how reactionary is that?!

for people who are transphobic it’s weird to act as though a toddler preferring to identify (in clothing or whatever else) with a gender that doesn’t match their genitals is a sign of… well, anything.

It’s not wierd.  It’s SOP for those assholes. 

Our point is not that Shiloh—or John, if the story is true

As far as I’ve read, the kid wants to be called John but hasn’t expressed a pronoun preference.  Hence my usage of John and she.

[The point is] that worrying about it when the kid is 3 is jumping the gun.

My point is, why is it something to worry about regardless of the kid’s age?

It’s SOP for those assholes.
True enough.

My point is, why is it something to worry about regardless of the kid’s age?

The transphobes would worry because omg transpeople are scary. Parents who would accept their child, whether trans or cisgendered, would worry about helping their kid transition and worry about their child’s safety as a transperson in an unaccepting world. “Worry” in context doesn’t inherently imply any judgment about transpeople.

Emmett, do you have kids?  Or are you just too busy reading shit into anecdotes to actually do your own research.

Uh, Emmett, most of us do know better than to take a tabloid snapshot of a toddler’s haircut and nickname as a reliable indicator of gender identity. You should too. First off, we’re scrutinizing something more akin to a snapshot of a reflection in a fun house mirror. We know that Shiloh’s got a short haircut and a masculine-sounding nickname. And we only “know” this from a publication that nobody with an ounce of critical acumen would trust for fairness or nuance.

Most of us are annoyed that a tabloid would speculate on a toddler’s gender identity based on practically zero evidence. Whether Shiloh’s cis- or trans-gendered, it’s ridiculous to draw any conclusions based on her haircut and nickname at age three. More to the point, it’s not fair for grownups with all our baggage about gender and sexuality to start projecting our categories onto toddlers as if their gender experimentation were proof of their future identity. Experimentation is the norm, not the exception. Any developmental psychologist will tell you as much.

It’s like saying that a kid who likes his teddy bear is guaranteed to become a wildlife biologist or the kid who loves her fire truck is destined to be a firefighter. Maybe they will be. All other things being equal, the past tends to predict the future. A lot of people will tell you they felt inklings of their life’s work very early on. On the other hand, a lot of kids like teddy bears and/or fire trucks and go on to unconnected careers. Children should be allowed to experiment and explore without having adults act like every step is “proof” of some future or orientation.

worry about their child’s safety as a transperson in an unaccepting world.

You do not see the connection between delegitimization (even if unwitting or unacknowledged) of trans narratives, identities, and lives with the perpetuation of an unaccepting world?  Well, I guess that’s privilege.  I’m going to bed.

Ms Kate, I am trans.  I was a trans child.  Unless you were and are, maybe you should can it.

Well, now I officially have no fucking idea what you’re talking about, Emmett. No one here is delegitimizing anything by pointing out that 3-year-olds experiment with gender all the time and it’s not an indication of whether they’re trans or cis.

Wow, Emmett, you’re so right!  We should all stop expressing our opinions and telling anecdotes about our childhood!  I mean, it’s not like it’s relevant to the discussion, right?  We should all just shut up and let Emmett tell us what’s what!

/sarcasm

Lindsey, you and everyone else are making very sure to tell me that you absolutely aren’t reading anything into this.  Great.  Wonderful.  Really.  So why is it so important to discount even the possibility that this kid might be trans?  If it doesn’t mean anything one way or the other, why am I drawing fire for saying maybe?

You should too.

I should too what?  Assume the child is cis until proven otherwise?  B/c that is what “not speculating” seems to entail here.  I’m pointing out that’s cissexist.

it’s not fair for grownups with all our baggage about gender and sexuality to start projecting our categories onto toddlers as if their gender experimentation were proof of their future identity.

It’s also not fair to use those projections to disprove a kid’s future identity.  Which is what a chorus of “I did it, and I’m not” is doing.  It’s reinforcing a cissexist structure.

For crying out loud, where did I say this kid was trans or that the tabloid story is some sort of gospel that you must heed?  I nowhere said “Gender experimentation is always proof of anything.”  It can be significant, but it’s not always.  Which is, not coincidentally, the same point Jeff Fecke made that Opoponax responded to, and whose assumption my original critique was aimed at her started this whole thing.

I’m saying—this freaking story aside—that sometimes it means something  I’m saying that the comments here appear pretty strongly to be saying that it never means anything b/c somehow entertaining the possibility that it might is “speculating.” 

Take away the tabloid aspect and this is every cis dominated discussion of a gender experimenting child ever.

Long hair is inconvenient, like having to wear dresses all the time is. Can’t have things be too easy for the wimminfolks.

Like being thin, wearing bras and high heels, having manicures/pedicures etc.  If it’s hard to achieve naturally, time consuming, expensive, and ridiculously uncomfortable, then by god it’s essential to being a properly feminine woman.

SuzanneM, the dominant narrative is the cis one, which says that childhood gender experimentation is essentially meaningless.  One b/c they’re little and they don’t really understand what they’re doing, and two, b/c if a person ends up cis (which is the norm, obviously), then whatever gender variant stuff they tried in childhood had no meaningful effect.  Lindsey’s post (and Amanda’s @#10) point out it’s problematic for adults with gender baggage attempting to project backwards on children, but they don’t finish the analysis.  The cis narrative is that childhood gender experimentation isn’t meaningful because for cis persons, it isn’t.  The comments here ran predictably along that line.  And you can see the pushback that snowballed when I tried to point that out, b/c duh, no one likes to have their privilege pointed out.  And I apologize that I’ve tried to say this about 15 different ways now and I’m still not satisfied with my own explanations.  But maybe, maybe, this one will be the one that makes sense.

Emmett, I assume everyone might be trans. Diversities in gender, gender identity, and gender presentation are part of the human condition. Out of respect for others and a basic level of skepticism, I try to avoid making assumptions about people I’ve never met wrt to their identit(ies).

This goes double if they are under the age of four and triple if everything I know about them comes from a magazine that’s obviously trying to cash in on anti-trans hysteria.

Nobody’s saying Shiloh’s not trans. Of course she could be. We’re saying we don’t know. Of course we should take the kid’s preferences seriously. Her parents seem to be doing a good job of letting her make age-appropriate decisions about her hair, clothes, and nickname. Taking a 3-year-old seriously means honoring the day-to-day choices that she’s capable of making. When you start projecting her nickname and her haircut into an adult gender identity, you’re not taking her seriously, you’re just projecting your ideology onto her.

People are irritated that a tabloid is trying to pigeonhole her as one identity or the other based on the kind of behavior that the vast majority of children engage in. Shiloh’s a real person, not a Rorsharch blot or a bundle of gendered mannerisms. We’ll know when she’s old enough to articulate an identity for herself.

The cis narrative is that childhood gender experimentation isn’t meaningful because for cis persons, it isn’t.

Following from this*, “speculation” in this context doesn’t mean musing on whether a child is trans.  It means musing on whether childhood gender experimentation is meaningful.  The dominant (cis, privileged) narrative is that it’s not.  Therefore, when I (and Jeff Fecke) suggested it might be meaningful, I (we) got pushback.  Ah.  Well that explains the reactions I got. 

*still not satisfied, obviously

But when we’re talking about meaningful/reliable prediction of adult behavior, it isn’t across the board for any of the above.

Statistically, across the population?  No, definitely shown not to be reliable.  But to the individual?  The sum of cis anecdotes in which it isn’t individually meaningful to adult identification is what creates and sustains the dominant narrative.  And now I understand better why the practice of that narrative-building here via anecdotes was squicky to me.

but it’s not meaningful to anyone but the child, nobody else can use the information that this child or child has decided to wear clothes more generally associated by the other gender to make any sort of predictions on how that child will grow up, hence the anecdotes, which said, that you couldn’t tell a persons adult decisions from their behaviour as a child, even if the child’s behaviour resulted in having meaning to them.

And yes, you’re right, lonestar, that this has little to do with the fundamentalist assholes blowing a gasket over a three-year old with a bowl cut.  But if you flip it around…let me think.

Right, so fundies believe that everything wrt childhood gender expression is meaningful in a society-wide way as a predictor of adult ID/behavior.  So the reponse to that is simply to point out the studies that have built the case that no, it’s not, and they’re just making shit up.

Because anecdotes describe personally meaningful experiences and aren’t data that can be added and analyzed to refute fundie lies, so the underlying reason for so many to be shared here was…people like to share stories and shoot the shit.  Bonding experiences.  Building community.  Et cetera.  But in so doing, they’re reinforcing cissupremacy.  Not consciously, but it’s there.

Lindsey, thanks for replying.  When you say,

When you start projecting her nickname and her haircut into an adult gender identity, you’re not taking her seriously, you’re just projecting your ideology onto her.

I’m not.  I’m saying maybe.  Might.  The same thing you’re saying.  It’s been very, very wierd to get the reaction I got to, “Consider that maybe this kid’s gender stuff is going to be meaningful to her eventual gender identity.”  Of course I didn’t say it so neatly and that was part of the problem.

Emmett.  The child is three years old.  You don’t find it disturbing that a toddler who’s barely verbal is on the cover of a national magazine with headlines proclaiming that she must be transgender?

That’s why we’ve been emphasizing that gender experimentation is normal.  Because putting a small child on the cover of a magazine and speculating about her gender identity is completely abnormal and we’re taken aback that people would even do it.

Put another way, if Shiloh/John is transgender, what kind of effect will having this kind of speculation published in gossip magazines starting at the age of 3 have on hir?

I think I’m mostly talking to myself now, but….

What do we mean by meaningful?

But in so doing, they’re reinforcing cissupremacy. 

An indicator of a dominant group is that its experience is considered the norm.  Therefore a result of privilege is the tendency to conflate individual meaning with society-wide meaning, since in many cases they are essentially the same.  So when Leah Jaclyn says,

hence the anecdotes, which said, that you couldn’t tell a persons adult decisions from their behaviour as a child, even if the child’s behaviour resulted in having meaning to them.

Being part of the dominant narrative, anecdotes conflate societal meaning with individual meaning, projecting that conflation on the child and overriding individual meaning the child may find in her experience, if that meaning differs from the societal meaning.  Assuming we’re still talking about gender identity, this is the way that trans narratives are delegitimized and cissupremacy is maintained.

Emmett, there is a point of connection here, because what I think all of us relating the anecdotes about our childhoods are really saying is, “Holy shit, what if my parents had decided that I had to be shoved into a restrictive gender box when I was still at an age when I was experimenting with this stuff?  How damaging would that have been for me?”

Mnemosyne, of course I find it disturbing!  Tabloids are shitty, worthless pieces of….shit (I’m a little tired over here).

That’s why we’ve been emphasizing that gender experimentation is normal.  Because putting a small child on the cover of a magazine and speculating about her gender identity is completely abnormal and we’re taken aback that people would even do it.

This is…touching.  I’m not being sarcastic.  Honestly…take away the tabloid part of it, and people speculate about the gender identity of children all the time.  It’s completely normal and part of the coercion we all undergo to become properly gendered women and men under patriarchy. I <i>wish all parents were as okay with letting their kids experiment as Pandagonians are, but there’s plenty that aren’t.  And parents aside, pretty much everyone a kid encounters that has power over him can and does use it to reinforce proper gendering.  Most of it isn’t as blatant as outright accusations of being the other binary gender, but even that is far from rare.  It takes it to another level to have the publicity, and it’s rotten, but it’s not extra rotten for being an attack on a child’s gender.

goddamit, tags again.

For what it’s worth, I’m in Emmett’s corner. The suggestion that Shiloh—like all children—may actually be trans shouldn’t be silenced like it’s a terrible thing to call someone. I’m going to report another person’s anecdote as best I can. Hope I don’t misrepresent anything.

Once I read a comment on a blog (might have been this one, don’t remember) where an adult lesbian recounted some bullying she got as a teenager, because she didn’t present herself as femininely as the other students would like, and got called gay. When she reported this to her mom as “Oh they called me a lesbian” and was visibly upset, her mom said something to the effect of “Well you aren’t one, are you? So don’t worry about it.” One can see how that would be the WORST thing to say to a closeted person. The implication is there is that the fuss being kicked up is only bad because it’s perceived as groundless, not because it’s wrong to harass GLBT people. When queer people hear that sort of message growing up—‘don’t worry about it, you’re not queer’—there’s an implied continuation of “and you better not be”. Now, that may not be your intention with the deluge of anecdotes about
non-gender conforming kids that grew up to be cis , but to queer ears it evokes that sort of memory, especially when someone suggests that she may actually be trans and that that’s ok if she is and it’s viewed as potentially destructive speculation.

Mnemosyne, for sure there is connection (isn’t there almost always?  |=)

This stuff doesn’t come as a surprise to me b/c I’m so used to picking up on it.  Being painfully aware of it, more like.  And I certainly don’t begrudge anyone being thankful for not being shoved in a gender box.  But there are systems at work here and the relating nonetheless reinforces cisnormativity.

Which only took me, like, two dozen comments to articulate.

It takes it to another level to have the publicity, and it’s rotten, but it’s not extra rotten for being an attack on a child’s gender.

It’s extra rotten because it’s an attack on a child who did nothing but be born to famous parents.  ONe can argue that famous people leave themselves over to rotten attacks by being famous, but attacking the children of famous people is extra rotten, IMO.

And, yes, having huge headlines on a magazine accusing a mother of “harming” her child and intimating that there’s something abnormal or wrong about a small child playing with gender roles is an attack.

I do get what JillieFromChile is saying, though—the form of the defense may be inadvertently emphasizing the “cisgender good/transgender bad” message that transgender people have been getting their whole lives.  I think people were mostly trying to say that small children play with gender roles all the time and it’s not automatically indicative of anything in their future development.

Shorter me:  it’s hard for me to say it’s no big deal for a national magazine to run huge headlines speculating on the gender identity of a three-year-old.  Yes, we all need to be more aware of trans issues, but doing it by gossiping about a toddler is not the way to do it.

Where’s an edit function when I need it?  “doing it is not the way to do it.”  Sheesh.  Bedtime for me.

Indeed, statistically, Shiloh will most likely be cisgendered, and gender play at 3 is normal and uncorrelated to adult identification.  It’s hard to deal with attacks that 1. probably misidentify people based on stereotypes, or non conformity and 2. view this perceived identity as wrong or bad as part of a privileged system. Fiercely denying the identity can come close to your prototypical dudebro disgustedly saying “I’m not a fag!”, not so much that he resents being misidentified, but because, to him, being gay is the worst thing you could be. I appreciate careful guidance to avoid echoes of that from members of the marginalized group. That’s why I stick up for Emmett.
Fortunately I have my own anecdote demonstrating a troublesome situation where it’s difficult to respond to bigotry without reinforcing it:
I am a cisgendered bisexual female. At times in my life I’ve presented quite masculinely, and got identified as male often in my teens. One time I was kissing my then boyfriend goodnight outside my university dorm while I was sporting a short haircut and baggy clothes, when someone yelled “sick fags!” down at us from the 6th floor. First I was dumbstruck by the mere presence of homophobia on my campus, and then furious. I didn’t know if I should correct them and potentially say “Hey, I’m not actually a gay dude! So that doesn’t apply to ME personally” as if it’s only about me when they threaten gay men or pretend to occupy an identity that I don’t really. I settled for flipping them off and calling them cowards, but to this day I never could think of the optimum response to avoid reinforcing their privilege or asserting my own privilege. The demons of my nature crafted a fantasy after the fact where I called them down for a fist fight, won, and then revealed my true gender. Not a terribly nuanced response, but satisfying.

Adding the important part of the puzzle that I think Emmett was looking for:

Just because a kid grows up normative doesn’t mean they won’t end up trans.

I played baseball and soccer as a kid, all my heroes were male, I never owned an easy-bake oven and yet, whoops, mind of a woman.

How we grow up isn’t really a good judge of anything as many have been pointing out, especially when we’re talking about ages as young as 3, because we’re talking about something essentially normal in the brain. Whether the mental sex jives with the external sex or what sexuality arises in a child really has little to nothing to do with any input or even young childhood experimentation. Could end up trans if they were “normative” as kids, could end up trans if they were demanding the opposite pronoun their entire life, the sole “worry” a parent should have is paying attention to consistency around the time of puberty just in case one has to do something now rather than later, but otherwise a kid could “end up” gay or trans at any time or even “end up” hetero or cis at any time (which we all know is the worst of all possible worlds )

I’m going to chime in on Emmett’s side also.  I’m not trans, but the number of comments that said, basically, “x person did something non-gender conforming, but grew up gender-conforming” was immediately obvious.  No, one on its own doesn’t give a negative impression, but the whole slew of them absolutely did. 

I was quite surprised not to see trans issues included in Amanda’s article actually.  In a piece about a small girl dressing/being dressed a bit boyish, she found time to examine right-wing gender narratives, homophobia, sexism generally, but not trans issues?  Now that is making trans issues invisible.

Ha, Mnemosyne, I clicked off my monitor literally the minute before your comment posted, after having completed a “final” refresh.  But yes, I agree.  Not the way to have these conversations.  Cerebus, JillefromChille, thank for making points I didn’t manage to.  And thanks too, Katherine.  And re: invisibilizing trans issues…maybe I shouldn’t be Amanda a pass, but I understood her approach reflected the ringer wingers she was analyzing.  Their “position” is that gender and sexuality are all controlled by proper performance of gender roles, so being trans is just a form of being gay and that’s (the homophobic fear) what I saw her addressing.  But I think you’re right, she could have been more explicit about addressing and analyzing it from a non-fundie perspective that took into account both oppressions, or at least acknowledged their conflation in wingers instead of neglecting to mention transphobia entirely.

People were rushing in to say “you can’t tell,” not “she’s not trans.” I defy you to find a single commenter who asserted that Shiloh must be cis.

Nobody’s saying that childhood gender exploration doesn’t matter. In fact, this kind of exploration should be taken seriously for all children. But taking it seriously means listening to them and honoring their choices, not jumping to conclusions about what it all means.

We’re not doing trans kids a favor by going out of our way to ignore the evidence. The fact is that all kids experiment. Too many parents already punish experimentation that doesn’t fit with their vision of how the child “should” turn out. That’s bad for all children because play and experimentation are important. It’s also bad for society because children who are shamed or punished for non-conformity internalize the message that straying from your assigned gender role is bad.

I also want to support Emmett.

Consider the scenario of a toddler who is particularly adept at tossing a ball around.  Someone might say “That kid of yours is so good with a ball he/she might grow up to be a major league baseball player!” 

Even though the chance of that child growing up and making it to the major league is statistically slim, and it’s impossible to know what kind of career a toddler will want when they grow up, it’s not likely that the response to this would be “You shouldn’t project something like that on a toddler.  We have no idea what this child wants to be when he/she grows up!”  nor would another friend chime in with “My kid was good at throwing a ball around back in the day too, but didn’t end up a major leaguer at all!”  The response would likely be something like “Yeah, that’d be great!”

The point is that people speculate about the future of small children all the time, and often that speculation is dead wrong.  However, this type of speculation only inspires a defensive response if we think that it’s a negative thing being projected on the child.

I have no idea if John/Shiloh is transgendered, but I don’t consider it a negative thing at all if that ends up being the case and I don’t believe that it’s healthy or righteous for progressives to defend her against that possibility.

I think one of the issues here is that it’s hard to separate (in this case) the cis/trans issues from the public/private ones. Let me riff for a moment from MadameTrixie’s example, and go with a kid who is accidentally famous enough to be in the tabloids. (Heck, at 3 you can’t be famous by anything but accident.)

“That kid might grow up to be a major league baseball player” said by a friend, acquaintance or onlooker becomes “Kid X being scouted by major leagues” and “Kid X breaks down under pressure of training schedule” and “Kid X steroid scandal”.  Because that’s what tabloids do.

In a situation like this, sensible people are in a double or triple bind. There’s no way in a sound bite to simultaneously acknowledge that

a) behavior that violates rigid patriarchal gender norms could be a sign of being transgendered
b) which is no big deal and
c) behavior that violates rigid patriarchal gender norms is also fine if you’re not transgendered

when your audience is all the way back at “behavior that violates rigid patriarchal gender norms is not OK”?

Count me in for support for Emmet too.

I think it’s a weird line to walk, what Emmet’s saying…on one hand, it ain’t no one’s dang business whether this or any other 3 year-old grows up to identify one way or another, or be attracted to one sex or the other.  But it’s the bare norm to make dozens of comments and anecdotes that imply that she’ll turn out het and female, because, well, that doesn’t really sound like a comment on her gender/sexuality, while mentioning that she might turn out trans does sound like a comment on her gender/sexuality.  In reality, they both are weirdly inappropriate comments on her identity/sexuality, and honestly, they’re both a little ick, but then again, that’s the point of this post.

But I did get the same squicky feeling as Emmet, reading down the comments thread, that every anecdote turned out pretty dang normative.  Rare to none on the “I was a girly kid and I transitioned to a burly dude by age whatever”, or even “I seemed so heteronormative as a kid but look how butch/femme/other-gay-typology I am now!” in the same vein as the normative narratives above.  This may be, of course, because the normative narrative is by a wide mile far more common.  It may also be the total dearth of consideration that non-normative narratives are also part of the scenario, and invisible only because they are non-normative - and not because they don’t exist or are even all that uncommon.

Well, I wouldn’t say that even for children who play around with gender roles and end up cisgendered, that their playing around with gender roles was *meaningless.*  IMO, that so many kids do it means that it has quite a bit of importance at the time.  It just may mean that, when playing at being the opposite gender, those kids discovered that their original gender fit better.  Does that make sense? 

Having come late to the discussion, I have to agree with Emmett.  The anecdotes partly come cross as intended, that it’s ridiculous to speculate on the adulthood gender identity and sexual orientation of a three-year-old.  Because most of them end with “and I/my relative/my friend is now cis” they collectively do convey a sense of reassurance that Shiloh will also turn out cis.  Which wasn’t intended, but happened anyway.

I’m with Amanda on the intellectual cesspools that are celebrity tabloids—any actress over thirty who hasn’t bred or married is always, inevitably cast as a sorry, failed woman to be pitied by the housewives of America who apparently eat that shit up. The story on Shiloh has crossed a line: rather than merely being annoyed and mildly irritated by it, I’m enraged and saddened by it. And is it just me, or is the picture of her on the right much cuter than the one on the left? She actually looks like a three-year-old in the “boy” picture, as opposed to looking like a miniature fashion model ala the left picture.

I totally understand where Emmett’s coming from here, and I think we need to make a distinction clear.  I don’t think anyone is suggesting that the people who gave us these anecdotes are transphobic.  Certainly, there are statistically going to be far more cases where someone exhibited non-gender-conforming behavior as a child and turned out to be cis, than cases where the child grew up showing gender-conforming behavior and turned out to be trans.  Thus it is totally understandable that those anecdotes dominate. 

However, I don’t think it is at all fair to dismiss a trans person who tells you what it FEELS LIKE when he reads all those anecdotes as a group, one after the other after the other, that just seem to communicate: you’re not normal, your experience doesn’t exist.

As a lesbian, I think about what it would sound like TO ME if this discussion were more focused on the sexuality side rather than the gender side.  Consider if the suggestion were that this little girl dressing like a boy would make her a lesbian.  And then comment after comment after comment just said “I/my relative did that but didn’t turn out to be a lesbian!!” with no examples in the other direction.  I can totally see that it would to start to sound like “don’t worry, she won’t be a dyke” and I would want to say “maybe she WILL be a lesbian, and what the hell is wrong with that!??!”  Of course, the readers of this blog being who they are, if that were the discussion we would probably have plenty of reverse-examples: “I totally acted gender-conforming, but turned out gay anyway.”  But here, we don’t get a hint of a reverse-example in this case until comment #50 by Cerberus. 

So Emmett, I defintely see what you’re saying.  And think this is a learning opportunity for people who are not transphobic but nonetheless inadvertently made a trans person feel offended.  Just like I consider myself as non-racist as it’s possible for a white person to be in this country, and if I said something that made a PoC feel I had denigrated their race, my reaction should not be “but I’m not racist” but rather “tell me why that pressed a racism button, so I can learn not to do it in the future.”

We’re getting the dialectic wrong here. The tabloid opened with “Shiloh’s trans.” The headline, literally, was “Shiloh’s turning into a boy.” So, a lot of commenters gave counterexamples to illustrate that it’s complete bullshit to start assigning gender identities to strange toddlers based on their nicknames and haircuts, as represented in salacious, sexist, transphobic tabloids. The point here is that the tabloid has no idea what it’s talking about.

Emmett, you were a trans child.  Okay. However, you are seriously lacking in the larger perspective here because you have clearly not spent any time around 3 year olds. If you had,  then you would know that NEARLY EVERY 3 YEAR OLD EXPERIMENTS WITH THIS STUFF.

And not every 3 year old is a trans child. 

As a scientist, I know that you can’t do any comparative studies of anything that is nearly universal.  Ergo, you cannot say that BECAUSE a child experiments with gender appearance that child *might* be trans because nearly ALL children that age do this.  It would be a useless screening mechanism in three year olds.

I did wonder if my son was a trans child.  He played almost exclusively with girls, wore dresses, and wore his hair long.  He did not, however, give himself a female name and, if somebody complemented him on his beautiful face and curly hair as a beautiful girl while he was wearing a dress, he would correct them and say “I’m not a girl - I’m a boy in a dress”.  He stopped wearing dresses in kindergarten, and purple heart and sparkle leggings for pants around the start of second grade.  Not because I told him that he should, but because he was done with that and started playing more with the boys around age 7 or 8.  He is who is is - but his cross dressing at a younger age was not an indicator of anything other than curiosity and the freedom that only a sundress can bring in the summer.

The question should NOT be: is this three year old transgendered?

The question should be: How can we best identify and support transgender children?

Assigning transgender status to a member of a group who cannot quite articulate their feelings and that nearly universally engages in “cross dressing” behavior is folly and projection.

Identifying kids who are very uncomfortable exhibiting “normative” gender behavior that is socially demanded once they begin school is a very good start.

As for “inadvertently offended someone”, are we going to stop discussing scientific and rational descriptions of the universe that omit God because it hurts some people’s feelings, too?  Sorry, but I’m not going to stop pointing out scientific and rational reality because it might hurt feelings.

CalliopeJane:  I understand the point about not delegitimizing or disappearing gay or trans identities through anecdotes, but I’m confused how simply relating a story from my personal life necessarily means I am doing so.  If I don’t have an anecdote where the ending is “...and she turned out lesbian/trans and that’s okay” am I therefore required to keep silent in order to avoid the appearance of cis/het privilege?  For me, I always make sure that when I talk about my son’s future relationships that I leave it sufficiently ambiguous or openly refer to his future loves as “he or she” to include the possibility of queerness but I admit that I rarely consider that he might be trans (not because I think being trans is negative in itself, but more because of it’s rarity relative to other sexual/gender identities).  It is not my intention to make anyone feel invisible, but I also think that Emmett unfairly attacked others and imputed ill-intent to the anecdotes (even if I do understand how a lifetime of such anecdotes could lead to his conclusion).

In my case, I do have an anecdote about an older cousin wherein youthful cross-dressing and desire to be called by a male name did seem to be related to gay/trans identity.  I did not share her story because her gender issues cannot be disentangled from her mental health or abuse issues (in terms of causation or coincidence) and would only serve as a negative reinforcement of conservative notions that gender performance must be strictly regulated in order to preserve psychological health.  I could easily see an anecdote like this being interpreted as suggesting that gay/trans identities are related to mental illness or sexual abuse, which I think does more harm in the sharing if the goal is to make non-normative sexual/gender identities less stigmatized and seen as neutral (which is how I see heterosexuality). I’d rather stick to anecdotes arguing that one cannot determine anything concrete about a person’s gender/sexual identity from their youthful experimentation with gender performance. I personally believe that if we can learn to accept more fluid expressions of gender in children then we begin the process of accepting more fluid gender expressions in adults as well, which hopefully helps us become more accommodating of non-normative identities.  Maybe I’m naive.

emmet,

Sorry about my comment (11) being insensitive—I actually thought about talking more about the whole cis part of my comment, because you’re right—there is this narrative that non-gender-conforming behavior somehow isn’t a sign of concern because it “doesn’t mean” that the person won’t be cis when they grow up—what I really wanted to express is that children should be allowed to express their identity in whatever fashion they want, and maybe it means that they are trans, maybe it doesn’t, but that is really up to the child as he or she grows up, and it is the good parents’/societies’ role to support individuals without judging. 

I think the feminist narrative that runs through my head (I can express gender however I want and it doesn’t matter—I’m still me/a woman) may not include the lived experience of transpeople.  But, the answer to that, of course, is for me to shut up and listen.  So I’ll do my best to do that, and thank you for being willing to do the talking, because I know that’s not your job or anything. 

-Izzy

And “he or she” was probably a bad use of pronouns—should’ve written zie, particularly in this context.

<And “he or she” was probably a bad use of pronouns—should’ve written zie, particularly in this context. <

zie?

It’s a gender neutral pronoun—after writing an apology for not considering cis privilege when writing my own comment, in the apology comment, I fall into the he or she binary trap instead of using “zie”, which encompasses a lot more, I think, and is more respectful.

to Amanda @ #10 - yes, it seems at least “precedented” if not common.  Like this little boy who wanted to “be” a train. (2nd paragraph)

http://chicago.metblogs.com/2005/05/25/save-the-cta-rent-a-train/

Long hair is inconvenient, like having to wear dresses all the time is. Can’t have things be too easy for the wimminfolks.
Comment #17: annejumps on 03/06 at 03:03 PM

Yeah, that may be the way rightwingnuts think, but again, it’s a contradiction, even in practical terms.  Longhair itself can be a male or female thing.  Some men find having to get haircuts uncomfortable and costly,  and then, unless one wants a buzz, which doesn’t work for all headshapes, there’s the styling issues.  Long hair does tend to be warmer, protects the scalp from sunburn and can conveniently be tied back in a ponytail.  It’s the intermediate “styles” that are a damn pain the ...head.

CalliopeJane:  I understand the point about not delegitimizing or disappearing gay or trans identities through anecdotes, but I’m confused how simply relating a story from my personal life necessarily means I am doing so.

I never said it did.  In fact, I explicitly pointed out that I *don’t* think anyone providing these anecdotes is transphobic or meant any offense, and that the preponderance of those stories is a simple reflection of the statistical likelihood of the various possible outcomes. 
But, I *also* said that I could understand how hearing nothing but normative stories could *feel* uncomfortable to a trans person. 
Those are not contradictory.  I can understand that no prejudice underlies anecdotes AT THE SAME TIME that I understand it maybe sounds different to someone who’s lived that life.  Differing subjective experiences are allowed.  One person doesn’t always have to be right and another wrong, we can use these areas where subjective perception differ as opportunities for everyone to understand each other better. 

And as for #112 - I don’t CARE if I insult the anti-rationalist people, in fact I’m downright glad of it.  I was talking about a situation where I hypothetically insulted someone that I did not INTEND to insult, where I committed an insult (in that example, racism) that I am self-motivated to try to avoid.  It’s not analagous; I do not aspire to be non-wingnut-offending, I do aspire to be non-racist.

Calliope, I’m not insulted - I’m just pointing out that you are creating one world where it is okay to point out rational things even though some people get hurt feelings about it (aka atheism) and another where pointing out rational things - like nearly all kids Shiloh’s age “cross dress” and it means nothing at all about their future gender identity - becomes ZOMG! It must be Privliege my feelings are HURT because you must be a Transphobe to point that reality out!

Sorry - it is silly to inject bullshit into reality and then defend it with “ow my feelings!” either way.

There are two problematic things about the fundies’ outlook on gender identity that are apparent from this article: 1. Fear and revulsion of glbt people 2. an irrational presumption that early childhood non gender conforming behavior could lead to those identities. Mostly I think we’ve been caught up in mocking the paranoia and factually incorrect number 2. I would say that number 2 follows from number 1. Fear and misunderstanding of other identities leads to fear and misunderstanding of whatever things are (rightly or wrongly) associated with those identities. If conservatives didn’t hate queer folk, they wouldn’t be fanatically looking under their beds for scary creeping queerness, which is what reading permanent identities into the behavior of 3 year olds amounts to. It seems like a disproportionate amount of discussion has focused on attacking number 2, showing the link to be faulty, and not enough time mocking the root cause of this fearful link, hatred of queer people. To Ms Kate: presenting factual information isn’t the problem so much as the misplaced focus this information is being used for. In conjunction with other people getting angry at Jeff when he tried to focus back on point 1, and talk about what that rhetoric means for trans children, it looks bad.

In other words, sharing these anecdotes to reinforce that the tabloid is probably wrong and Shiloh will probably be cis, in conjunction with people smacking down Jeff for suggesting we consider what this talk would mean if Shiloh is actually trans—that is what the effect of open hatred of non conforming identities might have on people that hold that identity—seems to mean that we’re angry at people for misapplying their bigotry to people that don’t occupy those identities. Like we’re mad at them for being inefficient bigots instead of just bigots.

Number 2 is a marketing tool for number 1 Jillie ...

Yes but it’s also important (probably more so) to examine the impact such hateful rhetoric could have on children who actually occupy the maligned identities as opposed to just attacking the marketing tool in that it leads to misidentification. That’s not the problem with the tool, that it’s inefficient at identifying the ‘proper’ targets; it’s that it’s a tool that’s being used for hatred. After people discounted the gender play to queer identity link to show that it’s faulty, Shiloh will probably be cis, smacking people down for suggesting the possibility that Shiloh’s trans (as it is a possibility for all children) and what this sort of attention would mean to zie in that case seems counter intuitive to the real point, which is that these people hate queer people and attack anyone with the faintest whiff of a sign that they are not cis, straight or gender conforming.

Put another way, if Shiloh/John is transgender, what kind of effect will having this kind of speculation published in gossip magazines starting at the age of 3 have on hir?
Comment #87: Mnemosyne on 03/07 at 02:31 AM

I really appreciated this comment.

I’m kind of confused about the argument going on here.  Emmett objects the anecdotes about being a tomboy-ish child and growing up to be a cisgendered adult. 

Of course I could tell an anecdote about how I grew up to be a transgendered adult…..but that’s not my experience, as I am cisgendered.

I didn’t really see anyone denying that Shiloh could potentially grow up to be trangendered, just that it’s completely impossible to predict at this point, and it’s no one’s damn business anyway.

I’m heartily sick and tired(ableism!) of people taking offense at comments that weren’t intended to be exclusive or discriminatory against transpeople or any other group when they relate their own observations and conclusions on a given matter.

Goodness, yes!  Because heaven knows that whether something is offensive/prejudiced/exclusionary/whatever is all about the INTENT behind that action or thought!

Can you tell me how people relating their own observations about family and/or friends as young children was offensive/prejudiced/exclusionary against transpeople?

I think you just single-handedly wiped out a large portion of racism, sexism and all other -isms right there.

No, but you demonstrated Einstein’s observation about hydrogen and human stupidity, thank you very much.

The little girl doesn’t even look “masculine”.  I would wear the exact same clothing she is wearing (but obviously in a larger size).  As for calling her John, well since when is Shiloh a particularly feminine name?  I think her real name is simply gender-neutral.  And when girls are called by traditionally male names, it usually makes the name more feminine, rather than making the girl less feminine.  Consider the names Shirley, Stacy, Madison, and a hundred others.  “Madison” actually means son of Maude, yet it is now generally given to daughters.

And even if this little girl were acting like a boy, so what?  Even if she decided to act like a boy for the rest of her life, what’s the worst that could happen?  If she does turn out to be a transsexual (not that her current clothing choices would affect this), at least she will be free to just be herself.

Can you tell me how people relating their own observations about family and/or friends as young children was offensive/prejudiced/exclusionary against transpeople?

It was exclusionary in the accumulation - if the stories were “lots of kids play with gender; it has no effect on their gender identity” and stopped there, it wouldn’t be exclusionary, because the outcome, whether someone is cis, straight, gay, lesbian, trans* isn’t the point, the point (as people keep saying) is that children of Shiloh’s age play with gender presentation.

When, however, all the stories are “lots of kids play/I played with gender, and all the ones I knew/I turned out cis, then it takes on an air of reassuring each other that gender play is normal only if the child ends up cis.  It’s not intentional, but it’s there - the “normal” (and tacitly desireable) outcome is cis.  This sets all other outcomes up as “abnormal” (tacitly undesireable).

What people seem to be trying to (and think they are) saying is the former story, but what’s coming out is the latter.  Added to this is an admonition that to speculate on whether Shiloh is trans is inappropriate, but all the stories of cis outcomes are also speculative - the normalization of cis outcome is blinding people to that.

I also felt a strong sense of “children play at the other gender, but it’s okay, because they usually turn out cis and straight”, because those were the only anecdotes being told, and the cumulative effect of one story after another is what cause the effect.  A single narrative is just an anecdote; the repeated iterations of that narrative becomes a reinforcing theme of normalcy.

It was not intended, I know - clearly, the reactions to it being pointed out show that it was entirely unconscious - but I think it is valuable to bring unconscious themes to the foreground.  If people who think they are non-transphobic think it’s okay to envision Shiloh turning out cis just like they did,  but feel that speculating that she might be trans is not appropriate, it shows how deep the cultural narrative goes.

Because Opoponax mintioned Priss as a girly girl and it distracted me, I must point out that Priss is one of my favorite anime characters.  She is both a street bike riding, armor suit wearing badass and a miniskirt wearing rock singer.
Also, I was a girly girl who insisted on dresses until about 3, then slid to dresses about half the time by elementary school start and had moved entirely to pants almost exclussively by high school.  I still almost always wear pants and do the longish hair I can braid pull back out of the way.  I like long hair okay, but mostly I really hate having to get the short hair trimmed every two weeks.

One of those early anecdotes was “I was a girly-girl and turned out lesbian”, so not seeing the exclusivity here so much as “what I did at 3 didn’t mean anything really significant to who I became”.  You are trans and feel you are being left out?  Here’s an idea, share yours and then it isn’t so exclusive.  This group is pretty open to letting people share their experiences, much more so that to have motives they clearly did not intend assigned to them.

It’s when those personal stories are shared to present evidence of some larger truth that narratives/societal “norms” become the problem.

The only ‘larger’ truth that was presented was that children’s behavior when they’re young doesn’t have anything to do what they turn out to be when they’re adults.

If there weren’t any trans narratives, that’s not something we cis folks can do anything about unless someone is willing to share their narrative instead of bitching about the lack of them in the first place.

but with your level of intellect it’d be like being mean to a sea sponge and I can’t bring myself to go there.

At least a sea sponge doesn’t attempt to make someone feel bad for sharing a personal narrative.

I totally disagree with the assessment.  This has been a long-running theme with Shiloh, it is not a “phase” or her personal fashion preferences.  I think Brad said before (year ago) on Oprah that she was refusing to be called Shiloh.  I sympathise, because I have a 2 year old who from time to time thinks his name is “Caillou,” but I highly doubt that in Shiloh’s particular case that none of this is being imposed by outside influences with an agenda ie her parents.  I am not going to get into the choice of clothing, but if you look at the clothing of Shiloh over time from the time she was really very small, that this is not “dressing like a tomboy.”  Most of her clothes are baggy, bulky, and altogether inappropriate for rough and tumble play.  She is layered up in boots in shots where the other little girl Zahara is wearing a sundress and sandals.  It is a very big responsibility to say that a 2 or 3 year old, even a very advanced one, would have the responsibility of choosing all of their own clothing in the store and in daily living.  Sure, sometimes kids get attached to their favorite clothes or costumes, why not let them dress up they’re just kids, but seriously any cursory observation of Shiloh’s “choices” over time will be very revealing.  I don’t think that the parents are trying to impose any type of gender confusion, but a deeper type of confusion about herself that will give the ability to program or impose the personality of choice later in life.

Transpeople are a MINORITY group, so they do not have the numbers in a cis-dominant space like this one - like the world at large - to counteract a narrative which repeatedly silences their experience due to the sheer numbers of people saying, for example, “I was a tomboy and I turned out femme and/or straight.” The onus is on cis people - particularly progressive-identifying cis-people - to actually seek out trans narratives and educate themselves.

Except that nobody identifying themselves as trans has taken the opportunity to share their experiences here and increase the understanding of us horrible, bigoted, silencing cis types by doing so.

It’s not fucking “bitching”, it is the same way in which any minority group is shut down by the majority who think they can better speak on their behalf or who do not recognise that their lack of knowledge of the situation is (often unintentionally) silencing and reinforcing prejudiced attitudes against the minority group.

Nobody has posted their experiences here in an attempt to speak for transpeople here, or in their stories have implied anything to silence and reinforce prejudiced attitutes against transpeople.

Cis people do not have an understanding of what it is to be trans and cannot be 100% aware of how their words/actions can reinforce prejudice against transpeople or exclusion of trans perspectives.

Take an opportunity to provide that trans perspective and understanding from your POV or continue to have a shit fit about us monstrous cis types excluding trans perspectives to your hearts content.

The fact that trans people are thought to be “bitching” because, in a cis-dominant space where there may be comparatively few trans-voices, their voices are being ignored?

What would you have us do, research trans-voices on that subject and place them in the comments in lieu of any personal perspective at all?

That’s not progressive, that’s not being inclusive.

Neither is demonizing one side for just telling stories that in no way exclude other perspectives from being heard, or imply that such narratives are invalid, which hasn’t been done on this thread.

That’s being incredibly blind to your privilege and defensive when someone tries to educate you on the topic.

I’m sorry, being told many others here and myself are rotten excluding bigots is not educating us on any topic whatsoever.

And god, you’re like a cliché of the conservative type who’s super offended at being asked to broaden their horizons and listen to PoC experiences before you try and describe them from your White POV.  Do you even hear yourself?

I don’t remember either talking about what they wanted to be called when they were very young or their childhood in particular, I do remember one of them coming across as lecturing in their first comment on this thread:

I’m a little upset over the current this calvacade of anecdotes has taken, which can be roughly summarized as “[I/my kid/some family member] did [gender nonconforming thing], and still turned out normal(straight, married, with kids).  Therefore, this behavior is nothing to worry about.”

Turning out to be some flavor of trans is normal too.  Statistically less likely—which may be why there’s no anecdotes with that outcome posted—but still normal.

INTENT DOES NOT EQUAL OUTCOME.  The fact that people here are well-meaning in sharing their stories does not mean that the end result is not silencing/results in a display of unconscious prejudice.

Again, I don’t see how you link this outcome of ‘silencing’ since, again, no trans has seen fit to enlighten us with a trans perspective on the PARTICULAR ISSUE AT HAND, VIS. CHILDHOOD PREFERENCE VS ADULT ORIENTATION.

Telling us that there is silencing and a display of unconscious prejudice really moves the issue forward.

I’m not trans myself and therefore can’t provide examples from my own life.

Then who empowered you to find and educate all us chuckleheaded, well-intended cis folk?

Research: yes.  Place them in comments: no.

I was being sarcastic, I’m sorry if it flew over your head.

The difference is that those of us aware of those anti-trans undertones will either re-word or choose not to share our anecdotes because we know how that enables an anti-trans narrative.

I don’t see how relating an experience enables an anti-trans narrative, you’re essentially calling for self-censorship in the name of a greater good.

As for this and your other comments re. being demonised, I’d suggest that you’re reacting the way in which any privileged person reacts to being called on their privilege

You don’t know anything about my life, if I’ve had or have now trans friends, what values I was raised with, etc, so I suggest you’re operating out of a state of ignorance in this matter.

Just because you might ID as liberal/progressive and consider yourself an ally, it doesn’t make you infallible.

I never implied that I was in any of my postings here.

All of us have absorbed all forms of prejudice to varying degrees; it’s unavoidable.

I’m sorry, but this version of intellectual original sin wasn’t my cup of tea when I was working in progressive organizations 25 years ago, and it isn’t nowadays.

People saying you’ve done or said something racist/homophobic doesn’t mean they think that you are a racist/homophobe through and through the end.

No, I’m just ignorant of my unconcious prejudices. 

The acceptable response is not to freak out at being thought of as a racist/homophobe/etc but to reflect on the actions or words that drew that assessment of one aspect of your language/behaviour and accept that even the most well-meaning people are not perfect and then try and educate ourselves so that next time we’re more aware of the ramifications of what we say and do.

Oh, I can accept that even the most well-meaning people aren’t perfect, after reading what you’ve written here, I have no problem with that concept whatsoever.

Anyway, thanks for showing me the errors of my ways.

Feel free to continue on in life uneducated around this topic, Dark Avenger.  Just don’t be surprised when you get called on it.

Demonstrate some sound reasoning and logic behind your finger-pointing in the future, and you might get me to reconsider my position on anything from Adultery to Zoonooses.

Keep snarking and insulting someone whose concern for minorities might stem from the fact that his ancestors have included those excluded from citizenship and marriage based on their nation of origin, it’s a real winner.

Yeah, OK.  You’re right: nothing you’ve said here says anything about you or your experiences at all.

Arguments stand or fall on their merits, not on the experience of the person advancing them.  That’s almost elementary, YMMV.

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