Lisa Belkin
Senior columnist for life/work/family, The Huffington Post
About That Boy Who Likes To Wear A Dress
Posted: 08/08/2012 11:48 am
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-belkin/transgender-children_b_1756145.html (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/lisa-belkin/transgender-children_b_1756145.html)
Reading Ruth Padawer's eye-opening and important piece in the New York Times Magazine this morning, I was struck by one particular moment. Alex, who identifies as "a boy and a girl" (by which he means a boy who likes to dress and play in traditionally "girl" ways), had recently started kindergarten, and "toward the end of the first week ... showed up in class wearing hot-pink socks," Padawer writes. "A mere inch of a forbidden color." A boy teased him and the teacher responded by holding a remarkable conversation during circle time:
[...]
Parents, by definition, are always behind the times. We don't lead our children into the future so much as follow them there -- responding to youngsters like Alex, who ask "why?" and cause us to ask it too.
It is not a one-directional process, of course. We learn, we teach, we learn some more. We are led by children like Alex, who, Padawer reports, ceased being bullied after that teacher-led circle time. Or like Beckett, who appeared with his mother, Jenna Lyons, the creative director of J. Crew, in the company's catalog last year, painting his toenails pink. Or like Tyler, who, despite being born in a male body, insisted he was a girl from the age of 2, and whose story galvanized readers of the Washington Post this past spring.