But she was such a pretty little girl

A plea to parents

Recently I found myself standing on a street corner of a big American city, taking part in a small protest in support of legislation to protect children from the aggressive and harmful medicalization currently occurring in that state, and in every state in the US, whereby children are being given puberty blockers, wrong-sex hormones, and surgeries in an attempt to change their sex. It's concerning to me, and to many others, that the affirmative model of care today revolves around taking the word of a child seriously and trusting them to make permanent, long ranging decisions around their health that will impact them for life, before they are old enough to get a tattoo or drive a car.

A woman approached me sympathetically and stated “my daughter is just like your daughter”. Upon further questioning it became apparent to me that her daughter is not identifying as trans and has no plans currently to undertake a medical transition. Her daughter is butch. And this mom is not ok with it. She told me that she is no longer speaking to her daughter, because she “doesn't approve of her lifestyle”. I asked her to show me a picture of her daughter. Tearfully she produced a picture of a beautiful young woman with short hair, no makeup, and masculine-type clothing. She told me that her daughter is a lesbian, and she's deeply upset about that.

I told her that I thought her daughter was beautiful, just as she is. And I meant that. I could see her struggling to accept even my statement that her daughter was beautiful as a gender non-conforming woman. We chatted for a few more minutes and she was gone. I hope that she will think about our conversation. I'm sure I will never know.

I know that as parents we are concerned for the well-being of our kids, and we have hopes, dreams, and expectations of how those dreams will take shape. We dress our little girls in frilly pink and our boys in denim overalls. Most of us believed that we weren't subscribing to gender role stereotypes, after all we supposedly were moving past those restrictive roles as a society, encouraging girls to sign up for STEM classes and boys to take dance if that's what their giftings and inclinations were. And yet we freak out if our girl wants a crew cut and Carhartts instead of a dress. The gender industry, with it's wholesale endorsement of ideas such as boy brains in girl bodies, has shown us that despite what we may have said, we still buy in to gender role stereotypes that leave a lot of our kids feeling like confused misfits. This is leaving our kids vulnerable to those who would prey upon their insecurities for profit, harming them in the process. There's no such thing as a transgender child, but there is such a thing as a woman who doesn't wear makeup and prefers plaid shirts to dresses. It takes a lot of courage and strength to show up in the world in a way that goes against conventional standards, and these days it's a lot more acceptable to go on Testosterone, lop off your breasts, and adopt a new name and pronouns than it is to simply be a woman who defies gender expectations.

I confess that I was late to the party on this. I didn't know any gender non-conforming women and to be honest I doubt that I would have made efforts to know or understand them. I'm not going to beat myself up about that, but I do wish that I had known, back when my daughter was a teen, more of what I know now. I paid for the purple undercut haircut and largely ignored the creative clothing choices. Those were never hills I wanted to die on. Hair grows back, clothing preferences change. But I wonder now if she was trying to tell me things, things that I wasn't ready to hear and wasn't equipped to understand. I wish now that I had known some of the women that I know now, who walk through this world confident in their appearance, assured of their womanhood, and unapologetic about it. These are the women who could have modeled to my daughter that she can wear what she likes, shave her head but not her legs, and be no less female for it. I was unable at the time to tell her this. I hope that we can talk about it, someday.

Looking back, I remember as a teen making choices about my appearance that didn't exactly thrill my parents. I ripped up my Levi’s and sewed a large triangle of colorful fabric down the side of each leg, producing large bell bottoms. My mother hated those jeans. That's probably one of the reasons they were my favorites. I once got my hair, which was past shoulder length and naturally thick and curly, permed up into a mass of tight frizz. My mother hated that too, which made it the best ever. It's a natural and normal part of adolescence to distance oneself from her parents way of doing things, in order to find a sense of independent identity. It's just that back in our day, none of those choices were irreversible. Without space, time, and acceptance to explore and perhaps to rebel a bit, maybe our kids are reaching for the ultimate rebellion, now easily accessible and exponentially more powerful in it's ability to strike fear into the hearts of parents.

I'm going to use this space today to plead with you to examine your attitudes toward your child's appearance. I'm regularly shown pictures such as the one on the city street that day, by moms who are really struggling to accept their children's choices. These pictures are accompanied by responses varying from “She was such a pretty little girl, what happened to her?”, all the way to “I'm frankly disgusted with the way she looks right now”. Please try to see how these responses look and feel to your child. She's probably already feeling like life is a huge challenge for her. She's probably already dealing with rejection at various intersections of her life. She's coming to realize that the world is a tough place to live in, as a woman, and it's getting tougher all the time. She needs your compassion. She needs your support. Please choose your words, and your reactions, carefully. It takes a great deal of strength and humility of soul to admit it, but please be willing to examine yourself. Are you equating a dress, a bikini, or shaved legs with signs of healing? It's possible that your daughter will be whole and healthy, and not craving the acceptance of others, if she shows up in old Levi's, a flannel shirt, and steel toed boots. There's a lack of older women who are willing and able to model that sort of self acceptance to our daughters. For the ones who are, I am more grateful than I can tell. I wish my daughter had met them.