In order to dive into this subject, I first needed to look at myself growing up and how unsure I was of my own identity. The conversation of how confusing it is to be a child stepping into their teenage years can go on indefinitely. So many competing areas of information pouring into a person’s mind can mix up the most secure of individuals.
It is difficult enough to discover your own individuality with the average things felt on a daily basis but to add in the factor of gender identity can make anyone question themselves beyond their abilities. People begin thinking about gender in a way they wouldn’t normally think; the idea that gender can be fluid and change just by the power of one’s own mind.
When I was a child other kids in my neighborhood had no idea I was a girl. My hair was cut short and I enjoyed playing with the boys much more than the girls. I was, by definition, a tomboy. Playing with Barbie dolls or dressing up and wearing makeup just wasn’t my thing. It seemed boring and most girls were ridiculous to me.
I would play war with the local boys by splitting into teams and spending day after day searching for our opponent; our enemy. Once they were in our sights, we would bomb them with seeds found on the shrubs in my yard. These weren’t ordinary seeds. These were the kind that stung like a rock when they hit you. I don’t recall every game we played but at some point, the boys became way too aggressive and annoying for me. I either stopped playing with them or we moved away, as we tended to do.
One thing I do remember was trying to convince them I was a girl. I don’t recall my age at the time, but I would guess about 12 years old which was right about the time my mother bought me my first training bra. I was very excited, I guess, because I stood at the window of our apartment on the second floor and flashed my friends in order to prove I was a girl.
The response I got was not what I expected and was my first indication that boys really do focus on one or two things. The next day I was asked if I wanted to make-out (and they didn’t say make-out). I was mortified and upset, primarily because I didn’t really know what it all meant but knew it wasn’t right. I was no longer their guy friend and I’m guessing that was when we stopped hanging out together.
There were times growing up when I thought it would be more fun to be a boy. They got to do things I didn’t get to do (or at least that is what I perceived). I had to act a certain way or be a certain way as a girl. It’s hard for me now to fully grasp what I felt back then but there was never a belief that I could actually be a boy. I just wanted to be something other than what or who I was at that moment and being a boy would take me as far away from myself as I could get.
Throughout the years of my childhood and teenage years, I wanted to be someone else. I looked at the lives of other people and knew they had it better than me. Much of my poetry from that time reflected my disappointment in being me. I knew no one else would want to be me and I wished I was them instead.
The thing about childhood and teenage years is that often, the person in question, wants to be anyone else other than themselves. How was I to maneuver around the ins and outs of being human, let alone a girl? So maybe being a boy would be easier.
There are many areas of focus a person can look at in order to determine how they are worse off than someone else. Wealth, gender, beauty, strength, intelligence… even a person’s family can be an area of pleasure or disappointment. I was a girl living in poverty with a facial disfigurement and of average intelligence. I did not like life.
My mother never told me I had to remain poor or that I was dumb or ugly. Either I would overcome the prejudice I held against myself or puberty would come and go and I would be who I would ultimately be. Eventually I grew up and the problems of my youth morphed into more important things. How to balance my finances and raise my son to be better than me was top on the list.
The difference between my mother and what “appears” to be a huge number of parents today (which is debatable) is the notion that a child can change their gender like changing their clothes (sometimes literally). We’ve gone into this realm of not wanting to disappoint our kids to such a degree that they can do absolutely anything, no matter what. The fact I wanted to be a boy at various times while growing up didn’t mean I should not be a girl. It’s how humans investigate one another as well as their own minds. The question ‘what if’ does not mean a person must change, it means they are wondering what it’s like to be or do something else.
I remember telling my son that he could be whatever he wanted, do anything he wanted to do. Looking back, that wasn’t necessarily bad but there are two things to keep in mind.
The first is that the reality of the word ‘anything’ to an adult and to a child are not necessarily the same thing. When a parent says ‘anything’, they might mean that the child is not restricted to be a certain thing when they grow up. When the child hears ‘anything’, they might think they can be a giraffe.
The second is that the parent is responsible for creating limitations and boundaries for their child. To do otherwise, is to neglect the child. The parent must teach the child about choices and the consequences of those choices. To let them do whatever they want is to create chaos. Telling your child that they can do and be anything is fine, unless you mean they can literally be a giraffe. Of course, they can pretend to be a giraffe, but to let them think that some day they can be a giraffe rather than a human is to encourage insanity.
When my son was about eleven years old, he played on a local basketball team. He asked me one day, if he were to get a basketball scholarship, if that would mean he would not have to study anything other than basketball. I giggled a little and told him that even with a basketball scholarship, he would have to study all of the other subjects necessary to graduate from college. He wasn’t too pleased with that answer but it didn’t deter him from playing basketball.
What I didn’t tell him was that he would not be a professional basketball player because he would never be over six feet tall. Why would I want to break his heart like that? I knew that as he grew older he would determine that on his own or simply become uninterested in basketball. Both occurred within a couple of years and his creativity and dreams were not broken by me saying “you can’t do it because you’re too short”.
Parents today are afraid to disappoint their child or somehow stunt their imagination and therefore, their overall personality. There are limitations that need to be set or, once a child is an adult, they will lose themselves into a fantasy world where no one can reach them. Oh, they will find like minded friends, but they won’t be able to communicate with anyone else and will lock themselves away from the world. They will grow to be bitter, angry adults who think life is unfair and that everyone is against them.
The people they meet won’t truly be against them however they will be bewildered that their parents didn’t teach them about life. Real life, not some made up place where they can be one thing today, and another thing tomorrow. Any parent who takes advantage of a child’s fragile mind and implants the idea of changing their gender whenever they feel bad about something, is neglecting that child. It is the parent’s duty to teach their child how to evaluate this world, life’s effect on them, and how they can, in turn, positively affect their own life rather than fearing it.
Are there people who should change their gender? Only those people can answer that question but they should answer it once they have become adults and taken an in-depth look at how such a change will affect them. That is a very personal choice that even adults have a hard time making.
When parents tell their child they can change their gender on a whim, and while they are still kids, they are lying to them. Lying to them because we can’t change gender just by wishing it or wearing different clothes. And it is my opinion that any parent who lets their child take drugs or undergo surgery to change their gender while they are still a child, is abusing that child. There have already been cases where children began the transition and then changed their minds.
Children do that! They change their minds from day to day. Allowing them to make such a huge and, in many cases, irreversible change is a cop out because the parent just doesn’t want to tell them no. This is different than telling them they can’t have two helpings of dessert; this is a permanent life change.
Unfortunately, the damage has been done to the minds of some of our most fragile individuals. The continual bombardment of praise from friends (especially strangers on social media) who encourage them to remain buried within themselves will surely make it worse. Sadly many of these outside influences are enticed by the notion of causing chaos in the mind of another person and find joy in pushing them to the brink of destruction. It’s a sad case indeed when one doesn’t know whom to trust.
This post was originally seen on Alexandria (aleksandreia.com).
