Susan's Place Transgender Resources

My daughter is not transgender she's a tomboy

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/opinion/my-daughter-is-not-transgender-shes-a-tomboy.html

New York Times/By Lisa Selin Davis   04/18/2017

"" I just wanted to check, the teacher said. " your child wants to be called a boy, right? Or is she a boy that wants to be called a girl? Which is it again?""

I find it hard to express why, but I really liked this article. Well worth reading.

It is a good article. I love that the author states that she would be supportive if her child was trans. On the other hand, I would love to see an article talking this way about accepting boys who like "girl" things but still identify as boys. In my experiences (being seen as a tomboy for the past 38 years), society is pretty accepting of masculine girls/women and I think most people still default to assuming they are a tomboy rather than trans. The same certainly cannot be said for AMAB folk. I can bind, pack, wear mens fashions, and act like a man... people just think I'm a middle aged tomboy. If a male read person puts on a dress and wears makeup anytime other than Halloween, they are assumed to be trans.
I got into a discussion about this on FB today and was annoyed by the fact that the same people who were cheering about breaking down gender stereotypes for girls saw no problems with enforcing stereotypes on boys.

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It's great when people can not be judgmental of whatever you're doing.  I just a couple of days ago had my mother complaining at me that I'm wearing nail polish.  And she always tells me to cut my hair.  Coming out to her is probably not going to be great!


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To me, tomboys are just people that fall on the trans spectrum, but are socially accepted, so it's not an issue in self identity, at least not to the extent of MtF people. Maybe some day people won't think in terms of gender binary and people will just express how they wish.


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Quote from: Gertrude on April 20, 2017, 03:41:12 PM
To me, tomboys are just people that fall on the trans spectrum, but are socially accepted,

By that reasoning my mother, who said she was a tomboy when young, fell on the Trans spectrum.  Doubt if she saw it that way.  As an adult she only wore dresses and didn't think women should wear pants.

Did have a Grand Aunt that always dressed in what looked like men's clothes, never got married so she could have just been a Butch style Lesbian.  We never had the nerve to ask her.

I thought this was an interesting response to this article....I have mixed feeling about the original article...this one is an interesting view


"An Open Letter to Those Praising the New York Times "Tomboy" Piece"

https://medium.com/@chase.strangio/an-open-letter-to-those-praising-the-new-york-times-tomboy-piece-755e655ce31c (https://medium.com/@chase.strangio/an-open-letter-to-those-praising-the-new-york-times-tomboy-piece-755e655ce31c)

I don't agree with that open letter, so far as I can understand it anyway. I like original Tomboy article, perhaps because its a nice story and on a topic and viewpoint I've not come across before. That open letter reads far more into it and if feels like I'd have to be a activist to fully appreciate it. I'm not.

To throw some gasoline on this fire, things may not be as clear cut as they seem.  The author wrote an earlier piece about her daughter that indicates she may be more than just a tomboy.  I am not saying anything against tomboys.  My sister was one as are others I know.  In addition gender can be somewhat flexible for some especially while growing up.  While I agree with the assumed premise of the author that gender roles expectations are BS, I feel the medium article does a decent enough job of pointing out some of the nuance behind the statements made.

http://www.parenting.com/article/tomboy?cid=searchresult (http://www.parenting.com/article/tomboy?cid=searchresult)

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Quote from: Georgette on April 21, 2017, 01:28:21 AM
By that reasoning my mother, who said she was a tomboy when young, fell on the Trans spectrum.  Doubt if she saw it that way.  As an adult she only wore dresses and didn't think women should wear pants.

Did have a Grand Aunt that always dressed in what looked like men's clothes, never got married so she could have just been a Butch style Lesbian.  We never had the nerve to ask her.

It's a spectrum and social pressures can change over time as can ones beliefs vis a vis social constructs.


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Personally I don't see being a tomboy as being on the trans spectrum, but on the other hand it is a spectrum so I can't say its not. I doubt anyone can say with any authority if it is or not, and being such an unanswerable point it confuses things that I'd rather not confuse.

If you take the argument to its logical conclusion then I'd argue everyone is transgender, because I don't think anyone can be 100% male or female without the most infinitely small part of the other gender. That's not a particularity useful viewpoint when discussing transgender.

Quote from: AnonyMs on April 21, 2017, 08:50:33 AM
Personally I don't see being a tomboy as being on the trans spectrum, but on the other hand it is a spectrum so I can't say its not. I doubt anyone can say with any authority if it is or not, and being such an unanswerable point it confuses things that I'd rather not confuse.

If you take the argument to its logical conclusion then I'd argue everyone is transgender, because I don't think anyone can be 100% male or female without the most infinitely small part of the other gender. That's not a particularity useful viewpoint when discussing transgender.

No one is 100% anything I suppose, so why bother discussing anything? Anyway, for the purpose of study and observation, people usually fall within a bell curve when measuring an attribute. Most people on the earth have brown eyes, most fall within a height range and most self identify as either female or male gender, even if they skew away from the center. We're on the edges. A Tom boy will have different socialization because male is more acceptable and expressing such is a lot less problematic than men expressing as feminine. So, social acceptance may lead to self acceptance for who they are, whereas with mtf, there's more pressure to conform to a more extreme binary and a choice has to be made. I think that as societies morals change about gender towards acceptance, we will see more males that may have chosen the archetypical female role in the past , be gender fluid. The diversity will always exist, the the social template will change.


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Quote from: Gertrude on April 21, 2017, 09:14:26 AM
No one is 100% anything I suppose, so why bother discussing anything?

If everyone is trans then the word has no real meaning unless you're talking in fairly abstract terms. Hence my preference to limit it to where its clear. Its just a preference though, I'm not saying its right or wrong because I don't know.

Honestly, there are some things that they both miss. The NYT article, I agree, didn't need to bring in trans-ness because it discredits her argument. I agree with the open letter, to a point. It would seem that the NYT article author didn't realize that she's actually making it easier and more justified for people to question the legitimacy of trans identities.

I agree with a few here that it is entirely possible for someone considered a tomboy to belong on the spectrum, but I wouldn't hold out for that to be any sort of conclusive argument. Honestly, every person in the world is on the spectrum; some just happen to be less of an extreme than others.

That being said, I've been attacked (CPS involvement and everything) by the community in which I live for allowing my son to dress the way he wants. He, at times, will wear dresses, earrings, fingernail polish, and many other things considered "girly". Do I question him about it? I have once, but I don't hound him about it. He likes typical boy things and typical girl things. Does he have to choose? Hell to the naw. I asked him whether he feels that he is a boy or girl and he just says, "I don't know," with a shrug. I showed him a chart of the gender spectrum and he pointed to somewhere in the middle. That's good enough for me. He still gets treated the same as before, with the same pronouns and name. If he feels differently and wants to be treated as such, I will make it happen for him. Until then, he can do what he likes. My point is that people need to keep their noses out of other people's business and stop trying to tell them how to live their lives.

Quote from: SiobhánF on April 21, 2017, 09:47:44 AM
My point is that people need to keep their noses out of other people's business and stop trying to tell them how to live their lives.

This.  There's far too much bother about other people's lifestyles.  If it's not illegal or harmful/destructive to my life, i don't care about it.  This and articles like it, are written specifically to raise a reaction from both sides....get page hits by stirring the pot.  Transphobes see it as a way to generally discount a transgender life and trans-allies praise it because the mother said she would have supported her daughter if she was in fact transgender.  In my world, this stops getting "discussed"(argued) altogether and people go back to living their own lives instead of worrying about others.

Don't give the haters anything to react to.

I was a tomboy who everyone thought was a boy! 

My son also gets mistaken for a girl. I leave it up to him to correct them, which he has.

What a great article and what a wonderful parent this mother is for supporting her child if she ever does feel uncomfortable with her gender.

I see both the article and open letter as being correct, although the article should have also defended trans people from all of the accusations and prejudice we face.

A world where gender matters less, is thought of equal terms and as a non-binary thing, sounds like a very good world indeed.

Thinkprogress has a response...

Quote"Chase Strangio, a trans man who heads up much of the ACLU's transgender legal advocacy, offered an even more critical response. He argued that Davis was speaking from a place of significant privilege and that by framing her daughter's experience in contrast to trans youth, her op-ed is contributing to the narrative that questions the legitimacy of transgender identities. "Trans youth are dying because society is telling them, telling us, that we are fake," he wrote. "A white young person being asked questions about her gender is not a new problem and it is not a problem that should be blamed on trans people or trans affirmative shifts in society or medicine."...

...Like Strangio argued, just because some transgender people feel comfortable embracing some aspects of society's prescribed gender roles doesn't mean that transgender equality actually requires the reinforcement of a strict gender binary. It just means that trans people live in the same world as everybody else and aren't necessarily immune to society's gender expectations just because they're trans.

Davis may be frustrated that her daughter is often mistaken for transgender, but her daughter is also much freer to be who she is because of the progress made by transgender pioneers. It's intellectually lazy to blame transgender people for reinforcing gender roles when they are, in fact, at the forefront of breaking down the limitations on how anyone can express their gender."

Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/tomboy-article-transgender-8d398a1f0f32

I agree with them.

Tbh I was fairly happy to see an article that reminded people liberal enough to care about trans issues that having a gender nonconforming child is not the same as having a trans child. I would rather not have been made to worry about what gender I actually identify as as a kid.  The fact that there was the word tomboy and it was something other than a girl but also meant i didn't have to prove being a boy, was enough for me back then.

But now as a fully grown person I see an overlap between what I thought of in my head as "tomboy" with the trans spectrum. I sort of identified with it like it was an actual gender - I'm not a girl I'm a tomboy (I could switch that out for my previous less convincing mantra of I'm not a girl Im a boy). And I am always and will pobably always be unconfortable with people referring to me as a girl or seeing me in really gendered ways. Or catching myself in the mirror when I'm not expecting it. Dunno what that all means but there we are.

Anyway, there are tomboys who grow up to be feminine, there are tomboys who grow up to be butch women who love being women, there are tomboys who grow up awkwardly and boyishly like me (and probably should choose one of the other options), there are tomboys who grow up with a strong non-binary identity, there are tomboys who are actually transguys who transition to various extents. I prefer not getting into the complexities of gender with children. Just let them be for a bit and see how they choose to be.

I think the article that Susan provided was a good one...nice balanced arguement

Quote from: ElizabethK on April 21, 2017, 02:00:08 PM
I think the article that Susan provided was a good one...nice balanced arguement

I agree!  ;D

I liked the Medium article better than the NY Times article.

The NY Times article reminded me of that Seinfeld episode  "The Outing." The one where whenever they talked about being gay they always followed with the joke, "not that there's anything wrong with it."   There is for me a discordant note that rings in my ear.

Hi Jane

I like your comment and know the program you speak of.... It made me think

"not that there's anything wrong with it."   

So remind me then why we are talking about it then?....

Liz

QuoteSex is about who you go to bed with

Gender is about who you go to bed as

I have heard that quote so many tries I am not sure who to attribute it too.

Elizabeth, I think you meant:

"Sexual orientation" is about who you go to bed with

Quote from: ElizabethK on April 21, 2017, 04:30:57 PM
I have heard that quote so many tries I am not sure who to attribute it too.

Most likely me but I got it from the Jenner special.
Sexual preference is who you want to go to bed with
Gender identity is who you want to go to bed as.

Quote from: Jane Emily on April 21, 2017, 07:04:02 PM

Quote from: ElizabethK on April 21, 2017, 04:29:11 PM

So remind me then why we are talking about it then?....

Good question.

I finally had a chance to read the article today. I think part of this stems from something I remember from the 90s when being gay was becoming something that people actually thought about. Heterosexual people would actually feel somewhat annoyed and resentful that this was now something that they had to think about. I remember people who would have been in their twenties at the time feeling annoyed that if they were to go out to eat with a same sex friend that some people would look at them and try to figure out if they were gay. I think there might be something like that going on now, as trans people become more visible in society, more people will look at non-conforming people and wonder if they might be trans.

Though I must say that unless the author lives in a very progressive area I wouldn't think it would come up this often if there were nothing to it. Either the author is exaggerating or maybe her daughter is on the spectrum.

Quote from: Dena on April 21, 2017, 06:26:38 PM
Most likely me but I got it from the Jenner special.
Sexual preference is who you want to go to bed with
Gender identity is who you want to go to bed as.

The saying was doing the meme circuit for awhile...I happily accept the corrected version..Thanks

Liz

Quote from: amberwaves on April 21, 2017, 07:21:02 AM
To throw some gasoline on this fire, things may not be as clear cut as they seem.  The author wrote an earlier piece about her daughter that indicates she may be more than just a tomboy.  I am not saying anything against tomboys.  My sister was one as are others I know.  In addition gender can be somewhat flexible for some especially while growing up.  While I agree with the assumed premise of the author that gender roles expectations are BS, I feel the medium article does a decent enough job of pointing out some of the nuance behind the statements made.

http://www.parenting.com/article/tomboy?cid=searchresult (http://www.parenting.com/article/tomboy?cid=searchresult)

Thanks for posting that, amberwaves.  The Parenting article does a better job of pointing out the mother's understandable anxieties, which adds some context to her insistence that her daughter is not trans.  Clearly, she doesn't want her daughter to be trans.  Who would?  "Statistically speaking, my child will face more discrimination and less access to basic goods and services!  Hooray!"  The Time article's weird focus on trans-ness makes more sense when you know that the author is haunted by the specter of what her daughter might face if she begins identifying full-time as male. 

The Time article has problems, but I think those ought to be laid more at the feet of the editors than at those of the author.  The author is writing about her own child, and no one looks at their kids with 100% clear vision.  There will always be hopes and fears coloring the image.  The editors, on the other hand, not only failed to detect the problematic subtext of the article (or did detect it and just didn't care), but also decided that a troubling article ought to go on the front page.  Most likely this is because, as the author of the ThinkProgress article points out, the public is interested in questioning the basic reality of transness, and what the public is interested in sells.   

Quote

Quote from: Susan on April 21, 2017, 12:30:29 PM
Thinkprogress has a response...
Read more: https://thinkprogress.org/tomboy-article-transgender-8d398a1f0f32

From the Thinkprogress response:

"Strangio's concerns were validated by conservative responses to Davis's op-ed. Despite the author's support and affirmation for transgender youth, opponents of trans equality nevertheless saw her defense of her daughter as confirmation of the supposed dangers of respecting trans identities."

This is what I worried about with the NY Times piece.  I doubt it was the author's intention, but I could see this sort of interpretation coming a mile away.

Quote
From the Thinkprogress response:

"Like Strangio argued, just because some transgender people feel comfortable embracing some aspects of society's prescribed gender roles doesn't mean that transgender equality actually requires the reinforcement of a strict gender binary. It just means that trans people live in the same world as everybody else and aren't necessarily immune to society's gender expectations just because they're trans.

Davis may be frustrated that her daughter is often mistaken for transgender, but her daughter is also much freer to be who she is because of the progress made by transgender pioneers. It's intellectually lazy to blame transgender people for reinforcing gender roles when they are, in fact, at the forefront of breaking down the limitations on how anyone can express their gender."

These last two paragraphs hit the nail on the head for me.

Take care,
Paige :)

Quote from: ElizabethK on April 21, 2017, 04:29:11 PM

So remind me then why we are talking about it then?....

Because the subtext of the article seems to be, quit asking my daughter if she's trans, cuz if y'do, she might just become trans, "not that there's anything wrong with that."

By this definition, her daughter is transgender.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/transgender (http://www.dictionary.com/browse/transgender)

The real kicker will come when her child reaches puberty.  Will her child react well to developing female secondary sex characteristics?  Will her child's brain respond favorably to elevating levels of estrogen?  I hope that her mother's fear of having a trans child doesn't interfere with the support that will be needed to successfully transition physically and socially. 

Quote from: Jane Emily on April 22, 2017, 02:14:44 PM
Because the subtext of the article seems to be, quit asking my daughter if she's trans, cuz if y'do, she might just become trans, "not that there's anything wrong with that."

Nicely put

Quote from: Jane Emily on April 22, 2017, 02:14:44 PM
Because the subtext of the article seems to be, quit asking my daughter if she's trans, cuz if y'do, she might just become trans, "not that there's anything wrong with that."

I've said it before, denial isn't just a river in Egypt.


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Went to one of the local TG support groups last night, haven't been there in months.

We briefly discussed these articles.  I added that my mother may have been in the Trans spectrum because she was a (tomboy) when young.  So maybe I am not the 1st but the 2nd in the family.  We also discussed the many Gender identity vs Gender Roles and expectations being part of all this.

My mother didn't believe in strict gender roles or expectations.  My 3 brothers and I did a mix of gender expectations.

 I don't think anyone is on the trans spectrum simply by merit of having been a tomboy when they were young. Being a tomboy is a good thing for most girls - it has you be a bit more outgoing and active. I find it almost irritating when grown, feminine women say "oh yes i was a tomboy" and start implying that it actually means something to them now like "oh really I'm just like a man" when all they mean is that they are not a total housewife - it means something to me now and i feel like their stealing a bit of me, being completely feminine but rambling on about these things like they have significance.

Also I'd like to say that i see there being almost no way to know if someone is really transgender as a kid, so i don't think this is worth arguing. Tbh i wouldn't know which way to go with the kid if i was this woman either.

Point is to not make it a big deal, at this moment, with any kid. Let them tell you. That requires you to be available to them, emotionally, and support them in their quest to find their true self and where they fit in society.  A little guidance in how life works doesn't hurt, imo. Our role as parents is to prepare them for life, not gender expectations; that's for them to decide for themselves. If they don't know, then that's that.  ;D

I'm a bit confused.

First the author's son tells her he's a boy.

Then she writes an article misgendering him and describes forcing him to wear dresses and skirts that he doesn't want to wear ("refuses to" -- which means, what did you do to get him to wear them, exactly?).

Four years later she writes another article saying her son isn't trans, but a tomboy, and please everyone stop asking his pronoun. She pours on a bunch of sugar in the form of "let's accept alternate gender expression (as long as my child isn't trans)."

How is anyone seeing this as anything but horrifying and sad?

Quote from: AnonyMs on April 21, 2017, 09:20:55 AM
If everyone is trans then the word has no real meaning unless you're talking in fairly abstract terms. Hence my preference to limit it to where its clear. Its just a preference though, I'm not saying its right or wrong because I don't know.

I didn't say everyone is trans


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Quote from: MeghanMe on April 23, 2017, 02:02:17 PM
I'm a bit confused.

First the author's son tells her he's a boy.

Then she writes an article misgendering him and describes forcing him to wear dresses and skirts that he doesn't want to wear ("refuses to" -- which means, what did you do to get him to wear them, exactly?).

Four years later she writes another article saying her son isn't trans, but a tomboy, and please everyone stop asking his pronoun. She pours on a bunch of sugar in the form of "let's accept alternate gender expression (as long as my child isn't trans)."

How is anyone seeing this as anything but horrifying and sad?

I told my mum I was a boy but it never caused me distress that people sort of ignored me. The only thing that bothered me is that boys at school sometimes tried to leave me out. I really don't think this is horrible. Forcing the kid to wear dresses is unecessary (and I had tantrums about that ->-bleeped-<- but it wasn't traumatic), but just letting it be a tomboy thing for a while is fine. As long as your not putting your child down, I think its fine. Kids don't even know what gender really is. So I think putting them on a trans path is just as questionable as just saying "she's a tomboy" or something to that effect. Also her kid could have changed her mind by the time of this article?

Quote from: MeghanMe on April 23, 2017, 02:02:17 PM
I'm a bit confused.

First the author's son tells her he's a boy.

Then she writes an article misgendering him and describes forcing him to wear dresses and skirts that he doesn't want to wear ("refuses to" -- which means, what did you do to get him to wear them, exactly?).

Four years later she writes another article saying her son isn't trans, but a tomboy, and please everyone stop asking his pronoun. She pours on a bunch of sugar in the form of "let's accept alternate gender expression (as long as my child isn't trans)."

How is anyone seeing this as anything but horrifying and sad?

What article were you reading?