More About Children and Gender

In a previous blog post I discussed two particular parenting styles, which seem especially unusual concerning children and gender. The first was (what was probably) a fa'afafine, a boy raised as a girl in a culturally sanctioned third sex, a practice which occurs in several of the Pacific Islands. The second was about Kathy Witterick and David Stalker, who have refused to reveal the sex of their third child, Storm, with the intention of allowing Storm to discover his or her own gender identity, free of societal expectations.

Storm with brothers Jazz (left) and Kio (right)

As I write this, Storm is now three years old, and still of unrevealed sex. There is a more recent interview with the family here. It seems quite clear that Storm's parents love their three children very much. They seem able to stand aside from any expectation of what their children will be, and just watch what happens. As a parent myself, I find it extremely difficult not to project onto my children some sort of expectation about what sort of adults they will eventually become. In addition, gender-neutral parenting is extremely difficult to achieve, for even the most well-informed and well-intentioned parents.

Witterick and Stocker have (perhaps understandably) provoked a fair bit of outrage. While I admire the unconditional nature of their love, I ultimately think their idea is misguided. Children are not simply free to decide for themselves how the world works. I believe that responsible parents attempt to equip children with both cognitive and moral structures which help them to make sense of the world. (If they don’t, then sure as eggs someone else will: via the TV or the Internet or popular music; even their peers). Therefore, it is inevitable that some parental biases and ideas (and neuroses and hangups) will be communicated to their children. I believe it is an essential part of growing up to weigh those parental structures and decide to keep some and abandon others.

One might, for example, discover that one's child had a penchant for cruelty or mischief. I don't think a responsible parent would simply stand by and admire that ("Aww, bless, there's the kid setting fire to the cat again. Isn't it cute?") but would actually intervene.

Both of those situations are where the parents have decided how they are going to raise the children in a certain way. What happens when the child has other ideas from the parents?

In this powerful and thought-provoking article, Eric Adler of the Kansas City Star describes the situation of "A.J.". Born an apparently normal boy, A.J., now six years old, knows he is a girl.

Then around Christmas, A.J. said it. He took his mom's breath away. They were in a store, walking hand in hand.
"'Mom,'" she recalled him saying. "'Do you know that I'm a girl? I'm really a girl on the inside.'"
It was not a question. It was a statement.
"My child did not say, 'I want to be a girl.' He said, 'I am a girl. How can you not see it? Don't you know?'"
The room went out of focus. She tried to respond.
"I said, 'No. No. I didn't know. The doctors told us you were a boy, so that's what I thought.'"
"OK," her son replied. They kept walking. Her mind spun.
"You cannot be prepared for this as a parent," she said. "It's not in any of the What to Expect When You're Expecting books."
Back home, she phoned her husband. "We have big stuff going on here," she said.

A.J., has one older brother, who seems to be an "ordinary" boy, into trucks and sports and the like.

"We were just parents going to work, sending our kids to day care, and this happened to us," the mother said. "I had never even heard the term 'transgender.'"

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/26/4850042/i-am-a-girl-transgender-children.html#storylink=cpy

A.J. in her bedroom

The article goes into considerable detail about the parents' reaction. For reasons of confidentiality, they are not named. As comparatively conservative people, they supported their child the best they could, and sought professional advice.

They called Children's Mercy [Hospital] and then Gibbs [Caroline Gibbs, gender counsellor]. They remained cautious and skeptical, wondering whether someone who ran a place called the Transgender Institute might be too apt to diagnose a child as transgender. They sat down with A.J., watching Gibbs for signs of leading questions. Gibbs, as A.J.'s mother recalled, began talking to A.J.
"Can you tell me something about yourself? Are you a boy or a girl?"
"I'm a girl," A.J. said.
"What makes you think you're a girl?"
"I just am," she said.
"Is it what you wear or what you play with?"
"No. I just am," she said.
"Your parents say 'my son' and 'him.' How does that make you feel?"
"I'm really a she," A.J. responded, "'cause I'm a girl. I'm a daughter."
"But they don't call you that."
"Yeah, I know," A.J. said.
Her mother could see her sadness.
The eventual diagnosis: gender dysphoria, which led to weekly counselling.

Both parents were supportive of A.J.'s change in gender and role, and both the school and the other schoolchildren were accepting. However, the parents of the other children were a different matter. Sadly, many of them turned their backs.

In the pickup line after school, parents stopped making eye contact. Invitations disappeared. Some parents said they would call, but they never did.

"It is not something that I expected," said A.J.'s father, "but as a parent you want to do what is in the best interest of your child. Your job is to shepherd them into the world. And if your own family can't be accepting of who they are, how is the rest of the world going to accept them, or how are they going to accept themselves?"

A.J.'s mother wrote a follow-up article, which you can read in full here. This article attempts to deflect potential criticism of her and her husband's approach to their transgender child. From my perspective, A.J.'s parents come across as sensible, concerned, loving and right-thinking people, and therefore this article does a great job. But doubtless other people may hold different views.

I absolutely admire A.J.'s parents for their standpoint. What they have done, in openly supporting their child in this difficult time, is both painful and courageous. It's quite clear this situation is not of their choosing; nonetheless they both seem determined to make the very best of it.

Adler's article goes into some discussion about what therapists do when faced with gender dysphoric children.

Treating and guiding young children identified as transgender remains a thorny issue. Some therapists discourage the transitions. Some remain neutral and allow free gender expression to see what evolves. And some actively support and guide children with their new identities.

Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2014/02/26/4850042/i-am-a-girl-transgender-children.html#storylink=cpy

The problem is that nobody knows how these children are going to turn out. Some children, known as "desisters" eventually change their minds and return to their birth gender. Again, nobody knows how common desisters are. The experts quoted in the article consider desisters to be few, but studies from other countries report that desisters are quite common. (Even adults occasionally detransition, as described in my blog post here).

Autism: getting commoner (US figures)

A generation ago, autism was very rare. Then suddenly it seems to be everywhere. Is that because we are facing an epidemic of autism? Maybe. On the other hand, maybe we are just getting better at recognising it. Autistic genius Daniel Tammet describes in his extraordinary autobiography, Born on a Blue Day, that his parents struggled to deal with his stereotyped behaviours and incessant wailing as a child, but labelled him "sensitive".

I wonder if something similar isn't happening with transgender children. A generation or more ago, most parents would just not have listened or sympathised (unless the child were a tomboy!). "It's just a phase, son. Here's a toy gun. Go and shoot something". I know that something akin to this happened in my own upbringing. My boyish behaviours were encouraged, and my non-boyish behaviours discouraged, and my family was educated, kind and enlightened. (And I believe, to a great extent, parenting of the kind I had is still very prevalent).

On the other hand, transgender children seem to be becoming more common. (Now you can even get picture books for children about it). The problem is, how common are they? Nobody knows for sure. There are no clear terms of reference, or agreed standards of diagnosis. In other words, we can't even be sure that the numbers they count in the Netherlands are directly comparable with the numbers in the US, or the UK, or anywhere else. I tend to think that, as with autism, the apparent rise in prevalence is not due to a sudden rise in actual numbers of gender-non-conforming children, but an increase in recognition and tolerance of them.

How should they be treated? Nobody knows for sure, and I can say this with absolute certainty. In scientific terms, it is an evidence-free zone. No amount of professional expertise (so-called "eminence-based medicine") can substitute for good scientific studies-- and there are none.

A generation ago, children with ambiguous genitalia were arbitrarily assigned their most likely sex at birth. This was done, with the very best of intention, by doctors, and supported by parents. It was believed at the time that surgical assignment of sex, together with hormonal and psychological treatment, would be all that was necessary to ensure the child would grow up happy and well-adjusted in their assigned sex. Unfortunately, this was often a disaster.

As they became adolescents and eventually adults, some of those people rebelled against the arbitrary assignment of sex at birth, and transitioned to the other sex. One particularly tragic case concerns David Reimer, born a normal male, whose penis was accidentally destroyed during circumcision. His parents were persuaded he should be raised as a girl, but despite orchidectomy and female hormone treatments, Reimer never accepted his assigned sex. He underwent surgical transition to a man, married a woman and became a stepfather to her children. He took his own life at the age of 38.

Reimer's case is pretty extreme, and the psychologist involved, John Money, seems in retrospect to have been profoundly misguided-- if not an unmitigated quack. Nonetheless, Money reported Reimer's habituation as a girl to have been successful, leading to this becoming the template for the care of many other children in similar circumstances.

Boy: dress

The warning signs are all there. Assuming Money was acting with good intentions (which is questionable), we have a case where a prestigious doctor decides on a course of treatment without doing any sort of studies first. Money brushed aside any evidence that went against his belief: that Reimer was doing fine as a girl. Unquestioning acceptance of Money's technique led to it becoming an accepted, standard treatment. I believe that most of the doctors who performed surgery on intersex children were doing it with the very best of intentions, believing they were doing the right thing. But we now know they were wrong.

Likewise I do not doubt that the clinicians caring for A.J. believe they are acting in her best interests, using the latest medical knowledge. Unfortunately, the latest medical knowledge just isn't up to much. All we have are case series; in effect, anecdote and eminence. There is absolutely no way to be sure that what we are doing now is not going to lead to further problems a generation hence.

What do we actually need? First, we need agreed definitions of what we are studying. Next we need numbers; as many as we can get. Next, we need randomisation into two arms: a treatment arm (say, hormones), and a non-treatment arm. Next we need double-blinding: the non-treatment group should receive placebo tablets instead of real hormones, and the researchers recording the results should be blinded as to which subjects have had which treatment. Next, we need clear, clinically-relevant endpoints. Finally we need time, lots and lots of time, since these outcomes can't be measured in six months or a year but over a decade or more.

There are plenty of good reasons why research like this is cumbersome, time-consuming, expensive, uncomfortable for the participants and difficult to conduct easily. Nonetheless, without it, clinicians treating transgender children are doing no better than informed guesswork. We do have the opportunity not to make the same mistakes as John Money, but do we have the will?

===

My thanks to Randy for drawing my attention to the Kansas City Star article. Thanks to Una for pointing out a factual error which I have now corrected.

===

Addendum 13th April 2014

My thanks to Heather Colleen for drawing my attention to this interesting article in the New York Times written by the mother of a non-girly girl. What I hear in the article is the perplexity, the uncertainty, but also the love and acceptance, and the lack of hand-wringing or catastrophising. Well worth a look.

My thanks also to JJ Saphir for drawing my attention to this article from the New Zealand Herald, which strikes a very opposite view, and is highly critical of allowing children free gender expression. The author unfortunately trots out some fairly obsolete views in support of his very hardline position.

Gay Football Players

Perhaps just a quickie for this one.

One of my favourite radio programmes is More or Less, a mathematics and statistics programme produced by the BBC. I heartily recommend the podcast, which I adore. A shout out to regular presenter Tim Harford, who is brilliant, funny, quirky and fascinating. Another shout out to series producer and frequent guest presenter Ruth Alexander, who has one of the most beautiful voices ever to tickle my eardrums.

The program styles itself as a guide to the numbers "in the news and in life", and is very, very good at sniffing out numerically dubious reports in the news, claims by politicians, and interesting angles on problems, such as the Tuesday Boy problem, or the wonderful question (answered definitively): if you stacked a 4x4 Lego brick on another one, then added another, and another, how tall would the stack become before the bottom brick is crushed by the weight of the stack on top? (*)

So one of the questions they tackled was this: how many gay professional football players are there? (Of course, you know I mean soccer when I say football). How many can you think of? Not many, I'll bet. The most recent openly gay professional footballer in Britain was Justin Fashanu, and that was 20 years ago. Wikipedia devotes a whole article to the question. Football statistician Bill Edgar, of The Times did some analysis.

First, Edgar made the assumption that the rate of homosexuality among professional footballers was the same as in the general male population. He found varying estimates of the prevalence of homosexuality, so chose the lowest reasonable estimate he could find: 1.5% (see my discussion here), which is still a bit higher than the 1% figure which I suggest.

Looking specifically at Premier League football players, there have been 3,200 of them in the last 20 years. The statistical chance of none of those men being gay is 1 in 1 thousand million million million; 1 in 10 to the power of 23.

Okay, so numbers this large make my head hurt. What does that mean? More or Less says it means that if the whole Earth's surface were covered in white drawing pins touching edge to edge. and just one of them were red, the chance of you picking the red one, at random, is 200 times higher than the chance of there not being a gay footballer somewhere in the Premier League over the last 20 years.

So, mathematically speaking, we can say it is exceptionally unlikely that there hasn't been a gay footballer in the Premier League. We cannot, of course, say how many there have been; we cannot know if the prevalence of homosexuality in Premier League footballers is the same as in the general male population.

It may mean, of course, that gay men are excluded, either overtly or covertly, from the Premier League. It may mean that gay men can become professional footballers, but remain in the closet for fear of hostility from fans, managers, clubs, or media. And Justin Fashanu's career definitely suffered after he came out.

What it shows to me is that acceptance of homosexuality is not as far forward as we all like to think it is. This is bad news for any group seeking integration and equality with what we like to call the "general population".

(*) The answer is 375,000 bricks; a vertical tower of 3,591m (or 2.17 miles) tall.

===

Addendum: 26th January 2014

Thomas Hitlzsperger

Top NZ rugby player Ryan Sanders has come out and admitted he is gay, after his professional playing career was over. In the interview in the NZ Herald, Sanders admits to having feigned relationships with women to conceal his homosexuality. The elite rugby players here are the national team, the All Blacks, and Sanders believes at least one of them is gay (and he may be including past members). Statistically speaking, he is almost certainly correct. According to this article, there were 1109 men in 2011 who had played for the All Blacks. That's not far off the figure (3200) used to calculate the British odds, as above.

This article also drew my attention to Thomas Hitzlsperger, a German by birth who played in the English Premier Division. Hitzlsperger came out as gay only a couple of weeks ago, after officially retiring from football in September 2013. According to Wikipedia, Hitzlsperger had a long-term girlfriend, Inga, from whom he split in 2007, just before they married.

What these men have in common is (seemingly) concealing their homosexuality during their careers, only coming out after they have retired. Each has concealed his homosexuality by dating women. Whoever the gay footballers are, they are still keeping it quiet while they are in the public eye. I feel certain that Hitzlsperger is not the only gay Premier Division footballer. Where are the others?

Addendum: 23rd February 2014

Stoney

Well, it's like buses. You wait for ages, and then three come along at once.

The England Women's Soccer team captain, Casey Stoney, has just come out and revealed she is gay in the last couple of weeks.

Meanwhile, across the pond, NFL player Michael Sam has announced he is gay. Almost predictably, anti-gay campaigners protested openly in public (methinks they doth protest too much?), attempting to picket a ceremony at which he was to be honoured. But their protest was drowned, heroically, by 500 students who formed a human wall between Sam and the small group of vocal protesters. This is an extraordinary gesture, and you can read the full story here.

And it has just been announced that NBA player Jason Collins has been given a contract with the Brooklyn Nets. Collins announced he was gay last year-- but found himself without a team. Admittedly, his contract is only for 10 days, but it's a start.

Collins, Stoney and Sam are still within their playing careers; in fact, in the ascendency. Does this mean that a floodgate of gay sports people is about to open?

I am indebted to Rachel for drawing my attention to Casey Stoney. Please feel free to tell me about any other gay sports people you may hear about.

Addendum: 30th April 2014

I have just become aware of the National Gay and Lesbian Sports Hall of Fame, which was established in 2013. It's inaugural list of inductees is very sparse, and includes at least one dead person as well as several organisations (rather than individuals). And, of course, it's limited to the US, though it is (apparently) open to trans people. Nonetheless, it's a step forwards.

Addendum: 5th May 2014

Star player: Saeluah

I didn't think I would be able to do this, but finally, I can introduce a transgender international soccer player. Jaiyah Saeluah plays for American Samoa, officially one of the weakest international football teams in the world.

Saeluah is a fa'afafine, one of a culturally-accepted third sex which exists in the Pacific Islands. In simple terms, fa'afafine are usually boys raised as girls. I have blogged about them twice already, here and here. She is also one of her team's star players. She is fully accepted by her team mates, and her manager, although she is known as "Johnny" when out on the pitch, and she was rejected from the college soccer team when she went to study in Hawaii.

Admittedly, as a player for one of the most inconspicuous teams in the world, it's unlikely that Saeluah will make much of a dent in the status quo. But nonetheless, hers is a triumphant story. They've even made it into a movie, which I can't wait to see.

With thanks to Peter, I can direct you to a Guardian interview with her here.

Children and Gender

I was out one day in a sunny park with my children. As young kids often do, they formed instant but evanescent friendships with some of the other children. My youngest daughter was playing with another little girl with dark hair tied in bunches.

I always try to keep some sort of eye on my kids when they are in public places, and I notice other parents naturally doing the same. I caught the eye of the mother of this little girl, as she and my daughter came over to show and share their toys. It's OK, I was trying to mentally say, I'm a parent too. You don't need to worry.

When it came time to leave, I asked my daughter to say goodbye to her little friend. "What's your friend's name?" I asked my daughter. "I don't know, daddy," she said (How can they play all day without knowing each other's names? But they can!). The mother had come over, and was standing a little way off, smiling. "What's your little girl's name?" I asked the mother. But then she frowned, offended. "He's not a little girl," she replied. "He's a little boy."

I boggled. The child was wearing a sparkly top and corduroy jeans, and gym shoes. He had dark hair tied in bunches in the manner of little girls. Nothing in his behaviour had given me any clue that he wasn't a girl, and clearly my daughter had taken him for a girl.

Speechless, I didn't know how to react. Why are you dressing your little boy like a girl? I wanted to ask. And assuming you know what you are doing, how can you possibly be angry when I don't recognise he is a boy? I am sure I am not the first person to make that mistake! I decided this might be one of the circumstances in which the Prime Directive applies. So we said a polite goodbye and left.

Later I mentioned these events to a colleague at work. "Was the mother Samoan?" he asked. I didn't know, but she did appear to be a Pacific Islander. "The child will be a Fa'afafine," he said. (Say it FAH-Fa-Fee-Nay, or at least he did). It turns out that it's culturally normal in Samoa to raise boys as if they were girls. But this wasn't in Samoa, but New Zealand.

I don't pretent to understand the cultural background or purpose to this behaviour. If she were really raising her boy as a girl, surely she should have accepted my reading of him as a girl and not protested? Unless in NZ it's illegal to overtly raise fa'afafine? It might well be, although I don't know. It might even be that the child isn't a fa'afafine, but just a boy whose mother likes sparkly tops and bunches.

According to Wikipedia, some fa'afafine resume the role of normal males in adolescence; some attempt to live as women in adulthood (and pursue sexual relationships with heterosexual men), while some seem caught in the middle, as a culturally-accepted third gender.

In May 2011, the Toronto Star reported the case of parents Kathy Witterick and David Stocker, who refused to reveal the gender of their third child, Storm. By the time I write this now, Storm will be about a year and a half old.

"If you really want to get to know someone, you don't ask what's between their legs," says Stocker. "What we noticed is that parents make so many choices for their children. It's obnoxious."

Stocker and Witterick are trying to allow Storm to make his or her own way in the world, unencumbered by the expectation that a chosen, binary gender imposes on him or her. (I know lots of people really well, and I must say I have never felt it necessary to ask what's between their legs!)

"Please can you just let Storm discover for him/herself what (s)he wants to be?!" writes Witterick.

The Toronto Star article provoked a storm of protest. If you've read my other blog posts, you will know that it looks like one of the biggest hurdles they will face raising Storm in this way will be their constant agony over which pronouns to use! Imagine how hard they must be trying not to give the game away with a careless use of a specific pronoun.

Both these parents and the woman I met in the park are taking an active decision to raise their children outwith normal gender roles. Though I respect their rights to raise their children as they see fit (the Prime Directive again!), I disagree with both points of view.

Third gender: Fa'afafine

In the case of the woman in the park, she is dressing her boy in such a way that he appears to be a girl. I don't know if she otherwise treats him like a boy, or whether he is expected to behave like a girl at home and is only given girly toys. I can't help feeling this is an extremely harmful thing to do. Kids have enough uncertainty in life, without wondering: why does my mum dress me like this instead of like the other boys in my kindergarten class?

For the parents of Storm, I understand the point they are making, and their need to make it forcefully by refusing to reveal Storm's gender to the world. On the other hand, children need some sort of structure: they can't simply choose the way the world works for them. As one mild example, my kids don't want to eat their vegetables, brush their teeth, learn their times-tables or even say please and thank-you. I regard these activities as more or less essential, but if I gave my children the choice, they would not do them. It doesn't trouble me one whit that Stocker thinks that's obnoxious! Likewise, I think I owe it to my kids to give them some sort of moral framework with which to interpret the world. As they get older they will (as I did) learn which parts of that framework to keep, and which parts to discard.

For what it's worth, we have always provided a mix of toys for our kids: they can play with the Lego and the trucks, or the toy kitchen and the dolls, whenever they want. In addition, we try to make sure that all our kids can come for a cuddle (or otherwise express vulnerability) whenever they want: they are never told to be "big brave soldiers" (as I was!).

Two things, I think, will confound both sets of parents. First, the personalities of the children involved. I believe personality is innate and cannot be modified, not even by gender-non-normative parenting. We might find that Storm decides quite rapidly whether she wants to play with the trains or whether he wants to play with the dolls' house, and expresses that preference repeatedly. (And the minute this happens, s/he will immediately cease to be newsworthy in any way! Shock: Small boy plays with Nerf Guns!) Likewise, the child in the park might start to assert his masculinity more clearly than his mother wants, especially after he starts school and starts to meet more traditional boys. I do fear for both children how their peers will react: I hope they will react with acceptance (and we raise our children to be accepting of all their peers), but they may react with cruelty or ridicule. That's no laughing matter.

Secondly, whatever parenting does, it can't hold off adolescence. It might be quite hard for Storm to keep his place in the rugby team when his periods start, or her place in the netball team once her voice breaks and she starts sprouting a beard. And the child in the park will declare himself to be a man eventually. No amount of paternal wishful-thinking can overcome the inevitability of adolescence, or the tendency of almost the entire human race to see ourselves as having only two genders.

Further Reading

Georgia at BroadBlogs has blogged about Storm here. The article is interesting and has a different angle from my own, and I also refer you to the wonderful X: A Fabulous Child's Story.

For more about this topic, I have written a continuation post here.