Thanks for sharing this. I don't have strong opinions on the issues at hand, but I too was a 'girly' boy and continued to experiment with androgyny in my early adulthood. The worry that this would categorise me as enby or trans now is what keeps me from expressing that part of myself.
I don't "identify as" anything to do with my gender, but I do think gender norms are dumb, and if I didn't feel like it was a political statement, I might still feel comfortable expressing that...
Seen a lot of revisionist "Kurt Cobain was trans" posts... no he wasn't. He was a 'cis het' (hate this term) guy who subverted gender roles... which we used to think of as a feminist act.
It should still be possible for us to challenge male gender roles without identifying out of maleness, or bi/ heterosexuality. Like many bisexual people, I feel threatened and eclipsed by some of the identitarian rhetoric about gender.
This a hundred times. "Trans" just seems to be obliterating all previous GNC behaviors. I don't change my hair or try makeup because I wish I was a woman, but because I'm expanding the definition of "man." Short of desperation and/or physical change, you can do anything as your birth gender that you could jumping the fence. (Unfortunately, you'll run into bigots each way.)
Another former tomboy here, and while I never felt gender dysphoria, as a child, I often said I wished I'd been born a boy because, as I saw it, boys got to do more of the cool stuff I wanted to do than girls. Always felt I thought more "like a man" and all this is to say that yes, I am hopeful we will return to a time where not conforming to the stereotypes of your sex is not a big deal. I am glad that I was born into Gen X so that I was left alone to integrate these feelings into an unmedicated adulthood and so so much freer then than, it seems, now to pick and choose which gender norms I was happy to adopt and which ones I rejected as opposed to suffering so much angst over it.
Yes, I do read this blog sometimes, and no I did not know that about you trying on my clothes and jewelry. I guess it's kind of silly to get upset about it now, though.
Thanks so much for writing this, Luke. I’ve been struggling with how to express these sentiments to a wider group of people I associate with. I’m bisexual and feel like my fellow queer people (I hate what that word has come to connote, sort of related to what you’re talking about here) have lost our damn minds. I’m worried I’m going to lose all social opportunity if I say anything at all, and I’m in a new-to-me place where I know almost nobody and am lonely af. I feel trapped and don’t know how to say anything, and yet saying nothing feels wrong too. Anyway, this is very well-written and I applaud you for publishing it.
Hi Noah - it's nice to see you outside BARpodlandia. I'm so sorry you're lonely af. I'm feeling very alienated from my own community on account of this issue, and also on account of being a moderate on Israel/Palestine, in a dark blue town surrounded by a sea of red, which of course amplifies polarization. This comes at the exact time when I would need to be reviving my social life after becoming an empty nester and now a divorcee. I think you may also recall that I'm the mother of a desister and my teaching field encompasses this whole gender/sexuality mess.
I wish you were in my neighborhood. We would hang out. Maybe we'd feel a little less trapped. It helps me to know that there are other compassionate critical thinkers out there, who are questioning the orthodoxy on this precisely because we're compassionate. Thank you for that. Hang in there, friend.
Thanks, Kittywampus! I agree; it is a comfort knowing I’m not alone, and I hope you hang in there too! My divorce was about 9 years ago, and it was such a huge, painful experience. My heart goes out to you; I hope you’re able to find some community despite the obstacles you’re facing.
Gender has become a "third-rail" topic, much like politics and religion. The only winning move is not to play. Which is a pity, because there are questions that need to be asked, in an open philosophical context. Unfortunately, tans people (and, by extension, most other queer people) are stuck in siege mode, where ANY question is an attack. And that's the conundrum; how to find a middle way between "everyone outside the John/Jane duality should be shot" and "everyone is exactly what they say they are, no questions allowed, ignore any evidence to the contrary."
From 7th grade through my first year of college I shopped the boys’ department, wore sports bras to hide my chest, cut my hair short (that part was intermittent to be fair), and got a secret little thrill every time called me “young man.”
And then….I grew out of it.
I’ve been told that this means that I was never “just like these trans kids” (and that is offensive for me to suggest that I was) because these trans kids “know who they are” and if I were really just like them I would have KNOWN I was a boy instead of just wanting to not be a girl, so really what I am doing is imposing my straight experience onto the trans one.
I find this super unconvincing (but maybe I’m just a bigot??). No one even remotely ever suggested that this was possible to me! If this had been a concept available to me from 1997–2003, I really can’t imagine NOT believing it!
I just don’t want to see the medicalization of kids who are going through what I basically see as a pretty normal and even healthy adolescent experience. Isn’t saying that someone is normal and healthy and doesn’t need to be medically treated because there is nothing wrong with them the OPPOSITE of being a bigot?
This is such a good point. My sister was a major tomboy, wanted to be a boy, thought it was fine when mistaken as one. She also grew out of it, does that mean she "isn't trans" because she would have "known" she was a boy. No - literally no one was telling her "oh you might be a boy" or "you can be a boy" or "you are a boy". Parents weren't telling her that, teacher, friends, etc were not indulging such a thought, so it didn't even occur to her. Instead, she was allowed (this was the late 70s/early 80s) just be a tomboy, play with the boys, dress as she wanted, have short hair etc.
Yeah, the “Kids know who they are!” rhetoric is so strange. Like, ten percent of all kindergartners think they’re Batman. Most of us are trying on different “identities” well into our college years.
Most of us never figure out “who we are.” We just reach our thirties and realize no one cares.
Yes. I've been supportive of gay rights and warm toward gender nonconformity since the 1980s, my college years, and I care about these kids precisely due to this long history. What's more convincing: that open-minded people have suddenly become bigots for no good reason, or that we're following logic and evidence in caring for the same populations we've always supported?
I was a tomboy and this all resonates with me. I think we (society) have gone down a weird path wrt gender and women and children have been harmed. Everyone should be free to express themselves how they choose, and for adults this may include medical or surgical interventions, which is fine by me. But the evidence does clearly show that the best thing to do with gender dysphoric kids is leave them be. I really hope that's the system we'll go back to now it's all crystal clear.
I can't say the old way, where anything slightly less-than-masculine made one GAAAYYY, was much healthier. People would be more comfortable with being GNC if GNC conduct was more normal.
When I was 13/14, I wore baggy clothes and told everyone I was practically a boy.
I don't think I experienced gender dysphoria, I just hated the biological reality of being a woman and everything that came with it.
If I had been born 10 or 15 years later, I'd probably have no breasts, a deep voice and life-long regrets now.
(Though I doubt that my parents would have let me transition. My mum was and still is a football-loving, power tool-weilding tomboy and would hopefully have talked me out of it. But the "live son/dead daughter" argument might have convinced even the most reasonable parents.)
I’m sorry, but you love Trump now. I don’t make the rules.
(Kidding! But I will tell you that my leftist bonafides made no difference when I questioned certain aspects surrounding how we collectively handled COVID. Friends of mine, people I’d known for decades, accused me of being a right-winger. It was baffling. I ended up burning a lot of social capital for sticking to what I considered to be some pretty reasonable opinions. We’re in a climate right now where dissenters are labeled and ostracized, regardless of what other leftist positions you still hold.)
I usually avoid articles and videos on culture war topics, but I’m always looking forward to your posts. Unlike mosts stories, yours are not about being right, or vilifying the other side. And you never forget that every person is deserving of our love. No matter how uncomfortable it is.
The President of the last German Protestant Church Assembly said that people with opposing views should come together under the presumption that the other person could be right. This is a sentiment I find in your writing.
My goals in my writing are always (1) be funny; (2) be insightful; and (3) be welcoming—in that order—so this comment really means a lot to me. Thank you! 🤗
This is a fiery enough topic (and for good reason: so much potentially at stake on both sides, and the research so contentious) that I’ll continue to maintain my cowardly position sitting on the fence for the time being, but I REALLY appreciate this perspective. I, too, had no truck with “guyishness” as a kid (and was in ballet to boot). This marries the personal and the epic (the horrible history of science — holt crap, is that book title taken yet?!). If anyone knows of something so well written on the other side, please point us toward it!
Posts like this always inspire a strange mix of reactions from me. On the one hand, I too had a masculinity-skeptical childhood, where reading and dressing up stuffed animals and domestic upkeep were much more interesting than sportball and...whatever boys did in all-boy groups. It was all somewhat mysterious, since I always kept mixed company, and the community was really neutral about gender norms...just like, there wasn't any concept that any given set of proclivities for any given kid was remotely weird. We were all weird! There wasn't such a thing as a "tomboy" (or whatever the male equivalent is), and even kids like me did occasionally enjoy some roughhousing or whatever. No real gender labels means there was no pressure either way, just whatever felt fun in the moment. This, uh, backfired spectacularly when we all grew up and mixed into the normie population, with its aggressively cishet categorizing of All The Things. Not a great time to simultaneously experience puberty. Confusion abounded. Loooot of us ended up later coming out as some form of LGBT...but only after highschool, when it was finally safe to do so.
And that's where the other hand comes in: spending my teenage years fearfully closeted Really Sucked. The bullying, the ostracism, seeing a lot of now-former friends contort themselves into blandly stereotypical gender roles to try and fit in. So I totally get where people are coming from who want to Protect Trans Kids!(tm) and such. No child should have to go through that. Even the ones who ended up relatively well-adjusted normie adults - I'm glad they "grew out of it", but boy those growing pains were tough. And the ones like me who did take the plunge and end up trans etc, well, that's a whole different ring of hell.
Where I find myself lost, then, is the line between supporting struggling kids and the hypothetical opportunity cost of ending up "normal" (there's really no non-judgemental term for that you-know-what-I-mean category). I've met several extremely-definitely-trans people who fit the roadmap to a T, who Just Knew they were _____, and have no regrets. I believe them! I've also encountered a lot of people like me, the marginal-marginalized who ended up just slightly on one side or the other...not-that-into-it trans people, tomboys, Just A Phase. And I believe them too, especially about path dependence; the sleepy small town I grew up in had no real LGBT presence, so it's almost a surety I'd never have learned the concept of "transgender" without some infelicitous Wikipedia searches. What would have happened if not for that? I don't know, and it saddens me that even inquiring in that direction tends to be viewed as Suspect At Best these days. Major, highly-personal life decisions ought to be introspected upon deeply, not peer-pressure railroaded. And having warring extremist camps trying to railroad kids isn't good for anyone, not even the extremists.
Thanks for this perspective! My daughter idolizes her brother and all the time calls herself a boy (she's only 4), which sort of causes me anxiety in our current climate, but I feel like that's probably just a very common occurrence among younger siblings, throughout history. Anyway, reading this gave me a little more peace about it all.
I am so happy and amazed that Freddie chose to share your post on his monthly selection of subscriber writing. He usually censors anything an odds with his own complete acceptance of everything that trans activists spew. I am in full agreement with you and appreciate the honesty that you have shown about your childhood.
Thanks for sharing this. I don't have strong opinions on the issues at hand, but I too was a 'girly' boy and continued to experiment with androgyny in my early adulthood. The worry that this would categorise me as enby or trans now is what keeps me from expressing that part of myself.
I don't "identify as" anything to do with my gender, but I do think gender norms are dumb, and if I didn't feel like it was a political statement, I might still feel comfortable expressing that...
Seen a lot of revisionist "Kurt Cobain was trans" posts... no he wasn't. He was a 'cis het' (hate this term) guy who subverted gender roles... which we used to think of as a feminist act.
It should still be possible for us to challenge male gender roles without identifying out of maleness, or bi/ heterosexuality. Like many bisexual people, I feel threatened and eclipsed by some of the identitarian rhetoric about gender.
Exactly. You can't subvert gender norms while simultaneously reifying them. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This a hundred times. "Trans" just seems to be obliterating all previous GNC behaviors. I don't change my hair or try makeup because I wish I was a woman, but because I'm expanding the definition of "man." Short of desperation and/or physical change, you can do anything as your birth gender that you could jumping the fence. (Unfortunately, you'll run into bigots each way.)
Another former tomboy here, and while I never felt gender dysphoria, as a child, I often said I wished I'd been born a boy because, as I saw it, boys got to do more of the cool stuff I wanted to do than girls. Always felt I thought more "like a man" and all this is to say that yes, I am hopeful we will return to a time where not conforming to the stereotypes of your sex is not a big deal. I am glad that I was born into Gen X so that I was left alone to integrate these feelings into an unmedicated adulthood and so so much freer then than, it seems, now to pick and choose which gender norms I was happy to adopt and which ones I rejected as opposed to suffering so much angst over it.
Me too. Thanks for sharing.
Yes, I do read this blog sometimes, and no I did not know that about you trying on my clothes and jewelry. I guess it's kind of silly to get upset about it now, though.
How old were you then?
I dunno, 8 or 10. In my defense, you had a very nice bedroom
Thanks so much for writing this, Luke. I’ve been struggling with how to express these sentiments to a wider group of people I associate with. I’m bisexual and feel like my fellow queer people (I hate what that word has come to connote, sort of related to what you’re talking about here) have lost our damn minds. I’m worried I’m going to lose all social opportunity if I say anything at all, and I’m in a new-to-me place where I know almost nobody and am lonely af. I feel trapped and don’t know how to say anything, and yet saying nothing feels wrong too. Anyway, this is very well-written and I applaud you for publishing it.
Hi Noah - it's nice to see you outside BARpodlandia. I'm so sorry you're lonely af. I'm feeling very alienated from my own community on account of this issue, and also on account of being a moderate on Israel/Palestine, in a dark blue town surrounded by a sea of red, which of course amplifies polarization. This comes at the exact time when I would need to be reviving my social life after becoming an empty nester and now a divorcee. I think you may also recall that I'm the mother of a desister and my teaching field encompasses this whole gender/sexuality mess.
I wish you were in my neighborhood. We would hang out. Maybe we'd feel a little less trapped. It helps me to know that there are other compassionate critical thinkers out there, who are questioning the orthodoxy on this precisely because we're compassionate. Thank you for that. Hang in there, friend.
Thanks, Kittywampus! I agree; it is a comfort knowing I’m not alone, and I hope you hang in there too! My divorce was about 9 years ago, and it was such a huge, painful experience. My heart goes out to you; I hope you’re able to find some community despite the obstacles you’re facing.
Gender has become a "third-rail" topic, much like politics and religion. The only winning move is not to play. Which is a pity, because there are questions that need to be asked, in an open philosophical context. Unfortunately, tans people (and, by extension, most other queer people) are stuck in siege mode, where ANY question is an attack. And that's the conundrum; how to find a middle way between "everyone outside the John/Jane duality should be shot" and "everyone is exactly what they say they are, no questions allowed, ignore any evidence to the contrary."
YET ANOTHER tomboy here.
From 7th grade through my first year of college I shopped the boys’ department, wore sports bras to hide my chest, cut my hair short (that part was intermittent to be fair), and got a secret little thrill every time called me “young man.”
And then….I grew out of it.
I’ve been told that this means that I was never “just like these trans kids” (and that is offensive for me to suggest that I was) because these trans kids “know who they are” and if I were really just like them I would have KNOWN I was a boy instead of just wanting to not be a girl, so really what I am doing is imposing my straight experience onto the trans one.
I find this super unconvincing (but maybe I’m just a bigot??). No one even remotely ever suggested that this was possible to me! If this had been a concept available to me from 1997–2003, I really can’t imagine NOT believing it!
I just don’t want to see the medicalization of kids who are going through what I basically see as a pretty normal and even healthy adolescent experience. Isn’t saying that someone is normal and healthy and doesn’t need to be medically treated because there is nothing wrong with them the OPPOSITE of being a bigot?
I wish I understood.
This is such a good point. My sister was a major tomboy, wanted to be a boy, thought it was fine when mistaken as one. She also grew out of it, does that mean she "isn't trans" because she would have "known" she was a boy. No - literally no one was telling her "oh you might be a boy" or "you can be a boy" or "you are a boy". Parents weren't telling her that, teacher, friends, etc were not indulging such a thought, so it didn't even occur to her. Instead, she was allowed (this was the late 70s/early 80s) just be a tomboy, play with the boys, dress as she wanted, have short hair etc.
Yeah, the “Kids know who they are!” rhetoric is so strange. Like, ten percent of all kindergartners think they’re Batman. Most of us are trying on different “identities” well into our college years.
Most of us never figure out “who we are.” We just reach our thirties and realize no one cares.
Yes. I've been supportive of gay rights and warm toward gender nonconformity since the 1980s, my college years, and I care about these kids precisely due to this long history. What's more convincing: that open-minded people have suddenly become bigots for no good reason, or that we're following logic and evidence in caring for the same populations we've always supported?
In the American civil religion, self-development is a holy ritual.
I can understand why the trans activists wanted to do an end run around the old process, which was years of "are you sure?" and waiting,
I was a tomboy and this all resonates with me. I think we (society) have gone down a weird path wrt gender and women and children have been harmed. Everyone should be free to express themselves how they choose, and for adults this may include medical or surgical interventions, which is fine by me. But the evidence does clearly show that the best thing to do with gender dysphoric kids is leave them be. I really hope that's the system we'll go back to now it's all crystal clear.
I can't say the old way, where anything slightly less-than-masculine made one GAAAYYY, was much healthier. People would be more comfortable with being GNC if GNC conduct was more normal.
From yet another tomboy: thank you so much!
When I was 13/14, I wore baggy clothes and told everyone I was practically a boy.
I don't think I experienced gender dysphoria, I just hated the biological reality of being a woman and everything that came with it.
If I had been born 10 or 15 years later, I'd probably have no breasts, a deep voice and life-long regrets now.
(Though I doubt that my parents would have let me transition. My mum was and still is a football-loving, power tool-weilding tomboy and would hopefully have talked me out of it. But the "live son/dead daughter" argument might have convinced even the most reasonable parents.)
I’m sorry, but you love Trump now. I don’t make the rules.
(Kidding! But I will tell you that my leftist bonafides made no difference when I questioned certain aspects surrounding how we collectively handled COVID. Friends of mine, people I’d known for decades, accused me of being a right-winger. It was baffling. I ended up burning a lot of social capital for sticking to what I considered to be some pretty reasonable opinions. We’re in a climate right now where dissenters are labeled and ostracized, regardless of what other leftist positions you still hold.)
MAKE AMERICA PRETTY GOOD AGAIN
Schizmogenesis. Manicheanism for the 21st century.
I usually avoid articles and videos on culture war topics, but I’m always looking forward to your posts. Unlike mosts stories, yours are not about being right, or vilifying the other side. And you never forget that every person is deserving of our love. No matter how uncomfortable it is.
The President of the last German Protestant Church Assembly said that people with opposing views should come together under the presumption that the other person could be right. This is a sentiment I find in your writing.
My goals in my writing are always (1) be funny; (2) be insightful; and (3) be welcoming—in that order—so this comment really means a lot to me. Thank you! 🤗
This is a fiery enough topic (and for good reason: so much potentially at stake on both sides, and the research so contentious) that I’ll continue to maintain my cowardly position sitting on the fence for the time being, but I REALLY appreciate this perspective. I, too, had no truck with “guyishness” as a kid (and was in ballet to boot). This marries the personal and the epic (the horrible history of science — holt crap, is that book title taken yet?!). If anyone knows of something so well written on the other side, please point us toward it!
Posts like this always inspire a strange mix of reactions from me. On the one hand, I too had a masculinity-skeptical childhood, where reading and dressing up stuffed animals and domestic upkeep were much more interesting than sportball and...whatever boys did in all-boy groups. It was all somewhat mysterious, since I always kept mixed company, and the community was really neutral about gender norms...just like, there wasn't any concept that any given set of proclivities for any given kid was remotely weird. We were all weird! There wasn't such a thing as a "tomboy" (or whatever the male equivalent is), and even kids like me did occasionally enjoy some roughhousing or whatever. No real gender labels means there was no pressure either way, just whatever felt fun in the moment. This, uh, backfired spectacularly when we all grew up and mixed into the normie population, with its aggressively cishet categorizing of All The Things. Not a great time to simultaneously experience puberty. Confusion abounded. Loooot of us ended up later coming out as some form of LGBT...but only after highschool, when it was finally safe to do so.
And that's where the other hand comes in: spending my teenage years fearfully closeted Really Sucked. The bullying, the ostracism, seeing a lot of now-former friends contort themselves into blandly stereotypical gender roles to try and fit in. So I totally get where people are coming from who want to Protect Trans Kids!(tm) and such. No child should have to go through that. Even the ones who ended up relatively well-adjusted normie adults - I'm glad they "grew out of it", but boy those growing pains were tough. And the ones like me who did take the plunge and end up trans etc, well, that's a whole different ring of hell.
Where I find myself lost, then, is the line between supporting struggling kids and the hypothetical opportunity cost of ending up "normal" (there's really no non-judgemental term for that you-know-what-I-mean category). I've met several extremely-definitely-trans people who fit the roadmap to a T, who Just Knew they were _____, and have no regrets. I believe them! I've also encountered a lot of people like me, the marginal-marginalized who ended up just slightly on one side or the other...not-that-into-it trans people, tomboys, Just A Phase. And I believe them too, especially about path dependence; the sleepy small town I grew up in had no real LGBT presence, so it's almost a surety I'd never have learned the concept of "transgender" without some infelicitous Wikipedia searches. What would have happened if not for that? I don't know, and it saddens me that even inquiring in that direction tends to be viewed as Suspect At Best these days. Major, highly-personal life decisions ought to be introspected upon deeply, not peer-pressure railroaded. And having warring extremist camps trying to railroad kids isn't good for anyone, not even the extremists.
Thank you for your vulnerability and the laughs, as always! God bless you!
Thanks for this perspective! My daughter idolizes her brother and all the time calls herself a boy (she's only 4), which sort of causes me anxiety in our current climate, but I feel like that's probably just a very common occurrence among younger siblings, throughout history. Anyway, reading this gave me a little more peace about it all.
This is just brilliantly articulated. Thank you for writing it.
It's no 18 Months, and I'm mildly ashamed it took me this long to speak out...but I really appreciate you saying so. 🤗
You're too kind.
I am so happy and amazed that Freddie chose to share your post on his monthly selection of subscriber writing. He usually censors anything an odds with his own complete acceptance of everything that trans activists spew. I am in full agreement with you and appreciate the honesty that you have shown about your childhood.
you had me at "spew" ('cause that's what they do)
Your points on Ivermectin and bloodletting made me both think and laugh. Can't ask for more. Subscribed.