The revolutionary truth about kids and gender identity
[Music]
are you a mommy
or a daddy the little boy called to me
one day when i went to pick my youngest
son up
from the daycare playground he looked up
at me curious
waiting for my answer but before i
answered him i thought about
how many times in my life i’ve been
asked that essential question
are you a boy or a girl sometimes it’s
actually been more of an accusation
meant to make me feel shamed for having
an androgynous or ambiguous gender
presentation
sometimes the question’s been hurled at
me with menace
meant to make me feel unsafe because
i’ve made someone else feel
uncomfortable
say in a public restroom but often
in my role as a pediatrician and as a
parent it’s been asked with curiosity
without judgment a child’s genuine
attempt
to put me into the categories known to
them now
this little guy was probably about three
or four years old and i could tell by
his tone that he was asking out of
curiosity
he genuinely wanted to know which of the
two adult categories known to him
did i fit into was i a mommy or a daddy
you see i look quite a bit like a daddy
but
i sound an awful lot like a mommy
so i bent down and i said to him you
know what
i’m not a mommy or a daddy
i’m a mapa a mapa he said
what’s that well i explained amapa is
like
a mommy and a daddy both oh
okay he said so then
what’s your favorite dinosaur
and what it took this little guy seconds
to accept
it often takes grown-ups a lot longer to
unlearn and realize
that more exists among human beings
than can be answered with the simple
question are you a boy or a girl
are you a man or a woman are you a mommy
or a daddy what i’m here to talk to you
about today
as a pediatrician who specializes in
caring for transgender and gender
diverse kids
as a parent with three young kids of my
own
and as a person who identifies as both
queer and gender diverse
is how kids understand both simple and
complex
ideas of gender identity and where the
journey that many young
transgender and gender diverse kids are
on today will ultimately lead
all of us so let’s start with how
kids understand gender identity well
from the age of about two
kids can understand gender differences
now this is mostly based on physical
characteristics and anatomy as they
sort and put people into categories boys
and girls mommies and daddies
kids at two are actually very good at
putting things into categories and
they’re very concrete and binary
thinkers so this is a fun and easy task
for them as they move into age three and
four
they then begin to figure out where they
fit they’ve seen the categories and
they’re turning the lens
inward to discover where they fit in the
categories that have been explained to
them
most of which are boy and girl now
they often develop more sophisticated
understanding
of physical characteristics and anatomy
around this time and they’re often not
shy about sharing their discoveries with
us they may
exclaim i’m a girl and i have a vagina
and that may happen in the
pediatrician’s office or in the checkout
line at the grocery store
they have figured out their place in the
world and they are claiming it
it shouldn’t surprise you then that some
transgender kids
are also claiming their identities as
young as three and four years old
they know the categories they know how
they should feel inside
based on their anatomy and they also
know that the way that they see
themselves doesn’t line up with other
people’s expectations
from as young as some kids can talk
they’re explaining to their parents the
truth about their identities
now as kids move beyond into the age of
four and five
they’re starting to figure out gender
role or what does it
mean to be a boy or a girl this is when
kids are understanding how they should
act
based on their gender identities and
they’re learning about concepts like
boys toys and girls toys for the first
time which
even if we don’t teach it to them all it
takes is one trip to target to figure
out which toys belong to who
and so they’re first figuring out what
do they like they’re trying on
different ways of dressing different
costumes they’re doing pretend and
imaginary play they’re
playing with different types of toys
they’re figuring out first what they
like
and then is it okay or not and this can
actually be a hard time for all kids
not just kids who are transgender and
gender diverse as they first figure out
what they love
and then they figure out might they be
punished in big or small ways
for being themselves now i mentioned
earlier that i’m a parent
and i have three boys or rather i have
three kids
six six and four who were assigned male
at birth and continue to identify as
boys
and when our kids were growing up we
tried to expand their gender categories
just a little bit so instead of saying
to them these are boy parts
and these are girl parts we taught them
that
most boys have penises and most girls
have vaginas just to leave open the
possibility that
biology isn’t destiny and that how
someone feels inside or their gender
identity
may not line up with expectations based
on anatomy
they actually adapted quite quickly to
this and i remember the day that one of
my sons came up to me and he said
moppa i’m a most boy
i thought tell me just a little bit more
about that
well he said you know how most boys have
penises but some boys don’t
i’m a boy that has a penis i’m a most
boy
fair enough i thought and yet
despite our attempt to expand gender
categories a little bit for my kids and
despite them growing up with a parent
who goes by the name of mapa and who
identifies as non-binary
my own kids still brought these gender
expectations home with them
i remember one day when my son theo he’s
the beaming smiling child here in the
blue princess dress
i remember when he came home from
daycare one day with that exact dress in
his backpack
and he said to me mapa i don’t want to
bring this dress for show and tell
anymore
now you can tell by this picture how
much theo loves that dress and he used
to love dressing up in costume and i
could tell it made him feel a little bit
sad so i said theo
tell me why well he explained
one of my friends and one of my teachers
told me that boys don’t wear dresses oh
i said okay well theo do you
remember when we talked about that
clothes are for everyone
and toys are for everyone in our family
you can wear whatever clothes you want
in our family it’s okay for boys to wear
dresses
now in some families boys might not get
to wear dresses
but those aren’t the rules in our house
and that’s not the rules in our family
i know he said i just don’t want to
anymore
and you know what he never did
and not only did he never bring that
princess dress for show and tell anymore
he really stopped dressing up and
playing princess after that
and was it because at four and a half he
was ready to be done
dressing up as a princess and playing
pretend maybe
or was it because he was worried that if
he brought that dress
back to show-and-tell again and violated
the rules of being a boy
that he might be punished for that maybe
i’ll never know the answer to that for
sure but what we do know
is that by the time most kids are six
and seven years old
they are conforming inter-traditional
gender roles what i mean by that is that
girls are becoming more feminine boys
are becoming more masculine
they’re starting to conform their
hairstyles the way they dress
the toys they play with their peer
groups to what society expects of them
based on their gender identities now
is this because naturally boys and girls
are different
or is this because our society has very
strict expectations of how boys and
girls should act
based on their identities the research
would tell us that it’s probably some of
both
and honestly we’ll probably never know
the answer to that question for sure
but here’s one thing that we do know
what we do know
is that kids who violate our
expectations around gender
are punished for doing so what we know
is that 80 of transgender and gender
diverse kids
experience harassment in schools in fact
we know that the number one reason that
kids are bullied in school
is for gender non-conforming dress or
behavior
those girls who are too masculine or
boys who are too feminine
regardless of their underlying sexual
orientation or gender identity
we know that up to 60 of transgender
kids
are rejected by their parents
and that the disruption of this
fundamental attachment has devastating
consequences for their self-esteem
one of those consequences being that in
some studies trans and gender diverse
kids are eight to nine times more likely
to try to take their own life
and we also know that the world is
changing we know
that in 2016 in the state of minnesota
when we asked 9th and 11th graders to
describe their gender identities to us
that 2.8 percent of them or nearly three
percent
identified as transgender and gender
non-conforming
that’s close to three times what we’ve
previously found in adult studies
we also know that we’re hearing new
words and new language to describe
gender identity all the time
mostly from the young people in our
lives words like gender queer
gender expansive gender fluid non-binary
bigender agender and on and on
we know that kids today are discovering
their gender identities now more than
ever
and they’re finding new language and new
models to share those identities with us
ah so you’re thinking i get it
this is a trend this is a fad this is
cool this is the next new thing
and my kid and the kid in my kids class
and the neighbor kid
and actually maybe even you dr gephard
you’re part of this new wave this cool
trend of being transgender and gender
diverse
hold that thought for just a second
let’s go back to those two and three and
four-year-olds you know the ones i was
telling you about early on the ones who
are learning about gender categories and
they’re grabbing at words and language
for the first time to describe that to
others
do you know what else those kids are
learning how to do do you know what else
they love to do they are learning
how to color and they in fact
love to color and what if when our two
and three and four-year-olds were
learning how to color
what if we reached into our pocket and
we pulled out
two crayons pink and blue
and we said draw us a picture of who you
are
draw us all who you imagine yourself to
be but we’d like you to do it
with just one crayon pink or blue
no i’m sorry you actually can’t choose
both you have to pick
one pink or blue
imagine all the pictures we would never
see imagine all the vividness and color
that kids could imagine themselves to be
and that they see reflected back to them
in the world
imagine all that we would miss
and now imagine if we handed them this
imagine if we handed them a box of 64
crayons
and instead of saying pick one we said
pick as many as you would like show us
who you are tell us all the stories
pick one for a while that’s your
favorite and then pick another one and
then go back
to your original favorite if you
can imagine it then you can draw it
it is my foundational belief that we all
know who we are from a very young age
including the truest expression of our
gender identity
and we actually spend most of our lives
searching for
the words and the tools and the safety
and the agency to share ourselves
with the world queer author and activist
leslie feinberg said
gender is the poetry we write with the
language
we are taught gender
is the poetry we write with the language
we are taught
if we give kids the language if we open
the box of crayons for us
they will tell us who they are
so no i don’t think that this is a trend
or a fad i think that this
is the revealing of a truth a truth
that has always existed and kids can’t
draw the truth of themselves with just
one crayon child advocate marian wright
edelman said
kids cannot become that which they
cannot see
and kids today are seeing more and more
lgbtq folks people like me
people like the actors and actresses on
this screen
more than ever before we are giving them
a bigger box of crayons and they are
actually drawing for us more imaginative
pictures
of what it means to be a boy or a girl
or something in between
than many of us can ever remember
and so what is our job as parents as
pediatricians as aunts uncles
grandparents
friends neighbors teachers
our job is to listen our job
is to ask interesting questions and then
listen for the answer who are you
what do you like what makes you
feel like you and when kids begin to
show themselves to us
we support them without steering we
reveal our own gender identities we ask
and share names and pronouns
we give them all the examples of what it
means to be a boy or a girl or
transgender or something in between
what i’ve learned in my role as a
pediatrician for the last 15 years and
as a pediatrician who specializes in the
care of transgender and gender diverse
kids is that
these kids don’t need me to figure them
out
they need me to listen to really listen
and to help them amplify the voice
that’s inside them
they don’t actually need me to diagnose
them they need me to help them
be heard and when these kids begin to
show themselves to us
when they start down that brave journey
of self-discovery
we remind them that they are beautiful
and strong and resilient
and most importantly we love them
we fully and fiercely and wholeheartedly
love them and
if we do this our kids will draw for us
the most beautiful pictures of who they
are they will write for us
the beautiful poetry of their identities
and in doing this
they will expand the world of gender and
not just for them
but for all of us because how many of us
were given just two crayons to choose
from but longed for a bigger box
how many of us were never given the
right tools or language to describe our
own identities
you see in loving and supporting
transgender and gender diverse kids
we’re not only helping them
be more free and true versions of
themselves
we’re helping all of us have the
language we need
to discover ourselves leslie feinberg
also said my right to be me
is tied with a thousand threads to your
right
to be you because after all
we all deserve a bigger box of crayons
thank you