From Your Minister
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For the past several years, I’ve been part of a group called Transforming Families, in which families that include trans* kids come together for support, information sharing, and fun. My 18 -year-old, Jie, identifies as trans*, which is what takes me to these meetings. (Jie, by the way, has absolutely given me permission to write about this, or I would not be doing so.)
I don’t know your reaction to all of these gender identities, to the notion that gender is not a biological binary of male and female, but rather a complex and many-faceted reality. I don’t know if you agree that a very significant aspect of gender is a social construct, not a biological one. My own processing about it has included pretty much every thought and feeling imaginable. Being with dozens of other families as they grapple with this new, often surprising, dimension of their lives has been very helpful and very interesting.
Jie has never been a gender-conform-ing kid. From earliest ages, this biologically female child wanted to be the king, the knight, or the daddy in imaginative games. At three, Jie asked if Santa Claus could change a girl into a boy. In pictures, you can absolutely see the moment when Jie realized the implications of dress to convey gender, and had complete wardrobe control—no more adorable gingham jumpers with covered buttons, no more sparkly shoes or flowered overalls.
Families in our group have very different experiences. Some have been caught completely off guard when their teenager, who has been sullen or angry or using drugs or otherwise generally manifesting unhappiness, comes out to them as trans*. Others have elementary-aged children who have already declared their identity in a new gender and are changing their names in their classrooms.
Knowing Jie, raising Jie, has opened me to a world of seeing gender in a new way. That Christmas long ago, I told Jie that Santa Claus couldn’t change girls into boys, but doctors could and if Jie wanted to do that as an adult that would be OK. But later in childhood, Jie was clear that being a boy wasn’t quite it either. When I asked Jie, about aged seven, “Do you think you’re in the wrong body?” Jie’s answer was, “Nope, this is my body. I feel like I’m in the wrong world.”
Jie’s self-understanding in high school first centered on the word genderfluid and then genderqueer. When the broadening concept and the word trans* appeared, Jie was glad to have a larger community to be part of. And so am I. Still, though, Jie does not identify as either male or female, either he or she.
So, just from being born and living in the world, Jie has helped me to transform my understanding around gender. It’s not like I was bigoted or close-minded before. But developing an understanding which involves your own family—every scrap of your own mind and heart and body—living with something, day in and day out, is much deeper than understanding about a general principle. Real transformation, deep transformation, comes from whole-bodied experience, not from simply declaring something to be so, or from having good intentions.
Nothing is as transformative as love. When Jie first told me not to use any pronouns, to use “Jie” as the pronoun, my reaction was not enthusiastic. “That’s just too hard,” I said. (Sorry—I’m not a perfect parent, OK?) Jie looked at me sadly and said, “I see over and over how friends are so much more supportive than families are, even though families claim they love you best.” Ouch. OK, I’ll work on it. “I’m glad you have a short name at least,” I said. Months later, I mostly get it right, but I still blow it when I’m stressed or distracted or otherwise not paying close attention.
At some point in my own process, I felt something release, and suddenly there was freedom where there had been resistance and constriction. Now I find it a delightful part of my life to be as conscious around gender and language as I have become, and my hat is off to the gender warriors like Jie who refuse to be categorized as one or the other. From the moment babies pop out of the womb we begin asking “Boy or girl?” and we never stop. The work of the folks in the Transforming Families group goes deep into unpacking unconscious assumptions and either/or thinking, and I am grateful to be part of this transformation.
A note on the word trans*.
The asterisk doesn’t usually point to a footnote! Without the asterisk, the word trans or transgender is most often used to describe people who are, according to a standard dictionary, “appearing as, wishing to be considered as, or having undergone surgery to become a member of the opposite sex.” (People who are not transgender, whose self-identity conforms with the gender they were assigned at birth, are sometimes known as cisgender.) The word trans*, with the asterisk, is much more inclusive than the word transgender, and basically means anyone who is not cisgender. These identities include transgender, transsexual, and transvestite. But wait, there’s more! Trans* is also understood to include genderqueer, genderfluid, non-binary, genderless, nongendered, two-spirit…and many other identities.
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