WHAT'S BAD IF A BOY WANTS TO DRESS AS A WOMAN?
They want to put on their skirts, play with dolls and paint their nails. But they do not consider themselves male or female. And a new generation of parents is learning to raise them.
The evening before sending him to "primina", Alex's parents, Susan and Rob, wrote an email to the classmates' parents. "Alex" was written in the email "has always been of" fluid genre "and in this period he identifies himself with ease in both footballers and princesses, superheroes and dancers (not to mention Lava and Unicorns, dinosaurs and shiny rainbows)." They explained that Alex had recently gotten very sad when his parents had forbidden him to wear women's clothes except during a disguise game. After consulting her pediatrician, a psychologist and hearing parents of other "non-conformed gender" children, Susan and Rob concluded that "the essential thing was to teach him not to be ashamed of how he felt inside." That was the motif of the fuchsia, pink and yellow striped dress that she would wear the next day at school. To complete the information, the email reported an information link on "variable gender" children.
When Alex was four years old, he defined himself at the same time "boy" and "girl" but for two years now he defined himself as a boy who occasionally liked to dress like a woman and act as such. Sometimes she wears clothes at home, puts on nail polish and plays with dolls; other days he makes rough and aggressive games and claims to be Spider-Man. Even his gestures totally change according to how he feels that day: the days he wears women's clothes is graceful, kind, he moves almost like in a dance and when he speaks he finishes the sentences with high tones. The days instead of opting for only male clothing takes on an arrogant bully attitude. Obviously, if Alex had been a child who sometimes played or acted as a male, the email would not have been sent or even thought of. Nobody would notice if a little girl played football or wore a Spider-Man shirt.
There have always been people who break the normal "gender" laws. Some medical texts of the late nineteenth century described "inverted" females as very direct people, with a particular aversion to sewing jobs "and with an" inclination and taste for science "; inverted males, on the other hand, are defined as "totally incapable in outdoor games". In the mid-1900s, doctors tried corrective therapies to try to eliminate atypical gender behaviors. The aim was to prevent children from becoming homosexual or trans-gender (a term used to define who feels they were born in the wrong body).
Today, many parents and doctors refuse to resort to corrective therapies, creating the foundations of a first generation that allows males to play and dress freely and freely in ways previously reserved exclusively for females - in order to exist in what a psychologist has defined " that middle space ”between traditional masculinity and femininity.
These parents took courage from a rapidly growing internet community of people who share the same views and whose children identify as boys but like tiaras and backpacks with unicorns on top.
Even trans-gender individuals retain the traditional binary classification between genders: born in one but belonging to the other. Instead, the parents of the males of this "intermediate space" argue that gender is a range of possibilities and not just two opposite positions, where no man or woman can be said to belong precisely and completely.
"Of course, the world is simpler and more orderly if two precise and separate gender possibilities are established," a North Carolina mother wrote in her blog last year, "but canceling all the spaces between one and the another possibility ends with not sincerely representing the lived reality. And I will say more: if you do, you are also canceling my son ”.
The passionate author of that blog, Il Rosa is for boys, she reserved the right to reveal the identity of her son, the parents interviewed did the same for this article. As much as these parents want to support and defend what makes their children so unique and happy, at the same time they fear to expose them to a rejection by society. Some have changed schools, changed churches and moved houses to protect their children. This tension between surrendering to compliance and encouraging free self-expression is common to all parents of children who differ from the "norm".
But the parents of the so-called "pink boys" also have another concern: knowing that gender determines a large part of an individual's identity, they fear that an incorrect parental decision could damage the social and emotional well-being of their children. The fact that there are still conflicting opinions among leading psychologists about whether or not it is right to stifle or encourage unconventional behavior makes these decisions even more difficult to make.
Many parents who allow their child to freely occupy this "intermediate space" were socially liberal even before having a "pink" child, ready to defend the rights of homosexuals and equal rights for women and ready to put I discuss the boundaries between traditional masculinity and femininity. But when their children get out of the conventional norms, even they are disoriented. "How is it possible that the way my son plays - a simple and joyful thing in himself - can create so much discomfort? And why does it bother me when he wants to put on a female dress? "
Despite the firm tone of the letter that Alex's parents sent via email to the other parents in the class, Susan was terrified. He feared that Alex's propensity for femininity would make him an easy target of bullying, even if in a school in a rather progressive New England city where they lived. She felt tortured by statistics indicating that homosexual and trans-gender teenagers, what she imagined Alex could become, were more prone to drug use and suicide. He started having panic attacks. "It was all a big dizziness," he said. "It is hard to realize how much difference gender identity can mean in the existence of a person. As a parent, it is very destabilizing when it affects one's own child. And I worried that if it was so difficult for me to understand something about this son of mine, I who love him more than my life, how could people react in front of him? ".
So far little research has been done on children of non-conformed gender, so it is impossible to know how many children come out of gender limits - or even exactly what these limits are. Studies have shown that 2 to 7% of males under the age of twelve regularly exhibit mixed gender behaviors, although very few really wish to be a female. What this indicates for their future is difficult to know. Around the age of ten, most "pink" males give up their propensity for appearance and unconventional attitudes, both because they overcome this desire and because they repress it. All the studies performed on what happens in adulthood to male children of undefined gender, all show strong methodological limits, however they indicate that even if many homosexual men in childhood were not "pink" boys, from 60 to 80 % of the "pink" boys eventually become homosexual. The rest, growing up, become either heterosexual men or women, doing hormonal treatments or undergoing surgical operations.
However, "fluid" gender behaviors on the part of females rarely become the object of study, this is because the variations to traditional femininity are many, widespread and generally accepted. Studies in material indicate that "male" are much more likely than typical "females" to become bisexual, lesbian or identify with a "male", but most of them become heterosexual.
Alex was clearly part of that small percentage of boys who swing between the limits of the two genders. At three years of age, he insisted on wearing skirts even after the masquerade games ended in the kindergarten he attended. He pretended to have long hair and drew figures of long-braided girls with large, sumptuous skirts. At four years old, she often sobbed when looking in the mirror while wearing pants, said she felt ugly.
Concerned, her mother started surfing the internet in search of information. Together with her husband Rob, they found the necessary support online to affirm - rather than repress - the expressions of "floating gender" that their child showed. Just a few years ago it would have been unthinkable to find such encouragement. It must be said that gay movements have made a big difference. Furthermore, the visibility of trans-gender people - both among political candidates and among the tango dancers of Dancing with the Stars - created a significant breach for those who felt between the two genres. Although acceptance is not yet widespread, many school districts and local governments do not allow discrimination based on identity and gender expressions.
Trans-gender activists have also put a lot of pressure to bring about major changes in psychiatry, which still considers gender confusion to be a real mental illness.
Now, the Association of American Psychiatrists is reviewing the diagnosis of "Gender Identity Disorder in Children" in the next edition of the "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Illnesses". Critics, however, condemn Dr. Kenneth Zucker's choice as head of the investigation. Zucker runs an important Sexual Identity Disorder Clinic in Toronto and is the most famous and qualified defender of traditional methods in cases of gender non-compliance. Zucker invites parents to direct children firmly towards well-defined toys, and the same applies to clothing and playmates, and advises to prohibit any behavior associated with the opposite sex. Zucker's academic papers argue that while an individual's biology may predispose some children to gender non-compliance, other factors, such as trauma and emotional distress, often have a strong influence. Other contributing causes mentioned are "overprotective mothers", "emotionally absent fathers" or "male hostile mothers".
Defenders of the fluid gender and sympathetic doctors say that telling these children to stop with their trans-gender interests and propensities only increases their mental stress.
Furthermore, there is very little evidence that the therapeutic intervention can change the path of gender identification or sexual orientation in these children. Doctors opposed to traditional therapies argue that not conforming to a gender is the same thing as being left-handed: unusual, but not unnatural. Instead of pushing children to conform, these doctors teach them how to react to expressions of intolerance, encourage parents to accept their children's natural expressions, especially because some studies show that parental support is a strong factor for these children. defense against self-exclusion and loss of self-esteem.
It is not known how many parents actually choose to follow this approach instead of the traditional one. It is clear, however, that in recent years, in the U.S. and in Europe, the "challenges" to conventional models have increased both in scientific publications, both among specialists and between parents themselves.
"The climate has changed," said Edgardo Menvielle, director of one of the few programs in the world dedicated to young people of non-conformed gender at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington. “Many parents don't even go to doctors anymore. They go to websites and join online groups of people with the same "problem". More and more parents decide that inducing their children to conform to a specific gender could seriously damage their self-esteem, which I share. I think it is not at all ethical to say to a child: 'This is the kind you have to be'. "
In Washington, Menvielle coordinates a parent support group that she founded together with a psychotherapist named Catherine Tuerk. When C. Tuerk's son (also of an atypical gender) was a child (we are talking about three decades ago), the mother consulted a psychiatrist who told her to keep her son away from female toys and female friends, so as to encourage a more aggressive attitude. She and her husband then enrolled their son in karate and football and took him to the psychologist four times a week for years. The boy became sad and angry. At twenty-one, the boy told his parents that he was homosexual. Over time, Tuerk and her husband realized that all their efforts had been nothing but abuse of their son. From then on, Tuerk devoted herself to preventing others from making the same mistake.
Alex's mom Susan got to know Tuerk in her online searches at the time when Alex insisted for the first time to wear baby clothes to go to kindergarten. After a long telephone conversation with Tuerk, Susan bought some female clothes for her son. The thing that bothered Alex was that on the street people mistaken him for a female. "I don't like that they take me for who I am not," said the boy to the babysitter. When his parents asked him if he wanted the pronoun "she" to be used instead of "he", he replied "No, I'm still a" he "."
Susan and Rob wondered if Alex eventually became a trans-genre. They knew that more and more doctors prescribed puberty blocking hormones to pre-teen boys who considered switching to the opposite sex. These hormones not only saved time but spared young boys from developing those sexual characteristics that they felt foreign to them. Zucker was also in favor of the hormones to give to teenagers who wanted to change sex, because there was increasing evidence that such treatments avoided frustration and sadness. However, many have doubts as to whether adolescents are mature enough to make such final decisions, especially considering that the side effects of such prolonged hormonal treatments are not yet well known.
Although Alex still had a long time to go before making such a decision, mother Susan often thought about it when she witnessed the boy's emotional upheavals while attending kindergarten. He had fastened himself in a lavender-colored dress and was furious when his mother put it to wash. Alarmed, Susan and Rob decided to limit the disguise days to Tuesdays and Saturdays, telling Alex that they could not wash her favorite clothes so often. Their real reason was much more complex. First: they lacked the emotional strength to allow them to wear them every day and deal with people's misunderstandings and judgments. Second: they had noticed that Alex behaved in different ways, according to the mood of the day and the clothes he wore. As they continued to give Alex games and toys of various kinds, they hoped that if he wore longer male clothes he would feel more comfortable when in society, as he would respond to the gender expectations that she would expect from him for the his biological sex, given the real possibility that he would eventually evolve into a well-identified male adult.
Yet it was hard not to wonder what Alex really meant when he said he felt like a "male" or a "female". When he behaved in a feminine way, it was because he simply liked the things of females and therefore thought it was nice to be female? Or did she really feel like a female in those moments (whatever that feeling) and therefore consolidate this way of feeling by choosing toys, clothes and attitudes culturally identified as "female"? Whatever the reasoning, was Alex's obsession so different from the obsession of thousands and thousands of girls who insist on wearing uncomfortable clothes? Was it so different from the contrary obsession of the "male" that instead they can't stand similar clothes?
Nobody knows why most children slide easily into their assigned gender, and some fail to do so. Hormone levels certainly contribute to determining both. One suggestion comes from a rare genetic condition known as Congenital Adrenaline Hyperplasia (C.A.H.). This condition produces high levels of androgens, including testosterone, in the early stages of gestation and can create genitals similar to males in females. Females with C.A.H. they are educated as females and given female hormones, although studies have shown that these girls are more aggressive and physically active than ordinary girls, and have a particular propensity for toys such as cars, trucks, construction and male playmates. Although most of them become heterosexual, females with C.A.H. they are more likely to become lesbian or bisexual than other females who have not been exposed to androgens during gestation.
Genetics also play a role in determining gender. Some researchers have compared the gender behavior of two identical twins (who share 100% of the genes) with that of two different twins (who share about half of the genetic makeup). The most important study was a 2006 Dutch survey on twins, 14,000 seven-year-olds and 8,500 ten-year-olds. The study concluded that genes account for 70% of atypical gender behavior in both sexes. However it was not clear what exactly was inherited: whether the precise preferences of behavior, or the instinct to associate with the other gender, or the impulse to reject the limits that are imposed - or other completely different elements.
Whatever the biological influence, the expressions of masculinity and femininity are culturally and historically well defined. In the 19th century, both boys and girls often wore long clothes and had long hair up to seven years old. The colors were the same for both genders. Sometimes pink was considered a "strong" and therefore masculine color, while blue was considered delicate, the children's clothes for both sexes had laces, flounces, flowers and lace. There were changes in the early 20th century, writes Jo Paoletti, a professor of American studies at the University of Maryland and author of "Rosa and Celeste: distinguishing boys and girls in America." At that time, some psychologists were beginning to support the thesis that those males who identified themselves too much with their mother would become homosexuals. At the same time the suffragettes pushed for the emancipation of the woman. In response to these social pressures, clothing began to change and boys began to wear clothes different from those of mothers and females in general. In 1940 any form of lace was banned from men's clothing and even the colors began to distinguish precisely between the sexes.
In the meantime, women started wearing pants, working outside the home and practicing different sports. Historically "male" sectors became neutral territory, especially for teenage girls, and the idea of a girl who behaved in a male way lost its critical connotation. A 1998 study by the Sex Roles Academic Journal indicates how ordinary it has become for girls to occupy that "intermediate space": 46% of adult citizens, 69% of baby-boomers and 77% of Generation X women say they have been "tomchies".
Nowadays, the evolution of conventions related to gender also extends to the choice of children's names: names that were once decidedly masculine, are now also used for females. However, the opposite never happens. This happens because girls tend to conquer new social spaces when they "invade" male territory, while boys run away from any hint of femininity. "Being human in our society is much more beneficial," says Diane Ehrensaft, a psychologist from the University of California, San Francisco, who is in favor of allowing children to be, as she calls them, a "creative genre." "When a boy wants to behave like a girl, it makes us tremble, because why would a person want to be of an 'inferior' gender?" Boys are seven times more likely than females to have to resort to specialists for psychological assessments. Sometimes the "infractions" are limited to the desire for a Barbie for Christmas. In comparison, most of the girls who resort to psychologists are far more extreme in their "atypicalness": they want male names and pronouns.
Some cultures define specific categories for those who come out of gender-related social conventions. In Samoa, biological males who take female attitudes are defined as "third sex", in the local language "fa'afafine". In the U.S.A., some of these occupying the so-called "intermediate space" call themselves "genderqueer", even if it is not a very precise cultural concept.
"People need gender distinctions to understand the world, to bring order to chaos," says Jean Malpas, who heads the Gender and Family Project at the Ackerman Institute in Manhattan. "So we wanted to test people's well-being:" Do you feel comfortable? Do you feel OK? Or do you feel embarrassed? "The social categories of MAN / WOMAN, BOY / GIRL are fundamental, and when an individual challenges this order by making the boundaries between the two vague, at the beginning it is very confusing. "It is as if the laws of gravity were questioned."
This is true for Moriko and her husband, who for years have struggled to understand their son's attraction for women's clothes, even if it marginalized him socially. "I was sad and scared, really scared," said Moriko. "This thing here is certainly not covered in the book" What should you expect when you wait. " I didn't know what to do, what to think and what would happen. They brought their seven-year-old son to a psychologist in New York, hoping for adequate advice and good support. On the contrary, the therapist attributed to them the femininity of their son, said that Moriko was emotionally detached and that her husband was too absent. He advised them to confiscate the dolls and girls' clothes from the boy and to find male playmates. They followed his instructions, but their son became sad; eventually they stopped the therapy. "It was evident that this was not the right way". Moriko said. "It was hurting all of us."
When her son was nine years old, Moriko and another mother started a support group for families who wanted to accept, and not change, their children's gender expressions. They offered a room for parents to talk to each other and another room for their children to play. Today this group has more than twenty families. Few of these children still take hormone blocking drugs, some others have clearly become homosexual. Moriko's son is still 'floating'.
Moriko's son will soon be in junior high school at Long Island State Middle School. His friends are mostly girls and he dresses like them: tight jeans, black eyeliner, pastel-colored lipstick and low-cut blouses that he takes from the girls department of the department stores. (Moriko makes him wear under a tank top). When his teachers asked him what pronoun they should use when talking to him, he said "male". But he doesn't want to be called neither boy nor girl.
"This guy is exactly in the middle," said Moriko. “His feet are getting longer, his voice deepens. He doesn't intend to take hormone blockers, we just don't know what's going to happen. " And here Moriko sobbed and started to cry. "His therapist said to me," I know very well that you have lived for so long without a gender "box" and I know it is very frustrating and confusing, but now the boy doesn't want to be put in any "gender box". I am not trying to label it, but it is hard not to wonder what it is, if it is not a male and not even a female. Sometimes I think that not being in a specific "gender box" is bad, even if it were "homosexual" or "genderqueer". "I just want to cling my mind to a specific concept. I know I have to be patient, but sometimes I feel like an emotional hostage because, being his mother, it's my job to help him be what he wants to be, and I can't do it if he still doesn't know what he wants to be. "
Non-compliance with a specific gender is a sensitive topic, and those parents who welcome this thing in their children can be very misjudged. When J. Crew made a commercial with their president who put pink nail polish on his son's toes, with the words "I'm lucky, I find myself a son who has pink as his favorite color" a commentator said he was exploiting his son "hiding behind a facade of liberal politics and trans-gender identity". Then came Kathy Witterick and David Stocker, the Toronto couple immediately targeted by critics after claiming they didn't want to reveal the sex of their child because they didn't want to subject him to any sexual expectations. The idea came from their six-year-old son, Jazz, who for three years had insisted on choosing his clothes from the "girl" department in stores. "I had no intention of destroying the notions of gender in my children." Witterick told me. “I had enough life experience to know that the way we build masculinity determines whether men are victimized because they are girls or become" tough "people who victimize those who are not. But I have no problem admitting that the first time Jazz chose a female dress from the store shelf, I really didn't know what to do. Drops of sweat began to fall on my forehead. "
Ellen R. and her ten-year-old son Nick live in a small New Jersey center. Sometimes Nick spends hours designing skirts for his thirty-six Barbies and creating them for himself and his dolls, using cloth, ribbons and duct tape. For a while Nick kept his passion secret, But one day in second grade a friend came home by surprise and saw the Barbies scattered throughout the living room. The boy ran away from our house, The next day, at school, he said to the whole class "Nick plays with dolls." "Everyone looked at me, I wanted to scream, but at school you can't scream. So I said it wasn't true. But nobody believed me. " For a few minutes, silence remained, focusing on a slightly defective clip on the hair of one of the Barbies. "He was my friend," he said then. "This is the worst thing."
Since then, Nick has never invited or been invited to play at his schoolmates' house for two years. Down below Ellen is convinced that Nick shouldn't be ashamed of what he is. Nonetheless, it must fight against the fear of being marginalized and frowned upon. "When your child has feminine attitudes in kindergarten, the other parents think he is cute, but he is no longer cute when I am elementary, and less and less as he grows up. When I sit next to other parents at class meetings and assemblies (I am a class representative), and it is difficult not to think: 'Maybe they are making fun of both me and my son. "
For other parents, the discomfort is even stronger. When Jose was small, his father, Anthony, accepted the "fluency" of his kind, and even played with him at the "beauty shop". "But as Jose grew older, it became clear that his interests weren't just passing fantasies," recalls Anthony. He fought for a long time against the sense of confusion, disappointment and alienation that came from his son, who called himself "girl-boy". Even if he tried to hide it, Anthony felt his heart ache when he saw Jose preening on a loaned suit from a neighbor, or with a wig on his head. Sometimes Anthony would join in whatever game Jose was playing, sometimes he would fight him. If Jose came out of the house carrying a Barbie, Anthony muttered, "Do you have to carry it with you every time?" Once when Jose was three years old and put on women's clothes every day, Anthony protested "Jose! You are a male! You're not a girl - you're a boy! "And then she started crying. Jose slipped out of bed went over to his crying father and started stroking his head. "I just didn't know how to relate to him," Anthony recalled recently. "I didn't know how to make a father of a daughter in a boy's body."
Anthony and his wife, who live in New York, created a support website and started going to a psychologist. This invited them to allow Jose to play the games he wanted. In a therapeutic compromise, the psychologist suggested allowing Jose to wear anything he wanted at home, but he didn't have to do it for any reason outside, to avoid being made fun of. The summer after kindergarten, Jose and Anthony went to a camp dedicated to atypical children. There Anthony was very impressed to see how happy all the children were to play together freely in women's clothes. After this experience, he and his wife joined a support group and enrolled Jose in a prestigious dance school, where he is still notably distinguished by his skill. Anthony is very proud of his talent.
Now Jose is nine years old. He is interested in Lego and cartoons where superheroes fight to fight crime. He rarely wears a female dress and is happy to be a boy; still plays with dolls, just this. Anthony is satisfied with the situation, although he admits with some reluctance that he still can't stand when his son speaks and acts like a movie diva, and he cannot explain why. Anthony apologized to Jose. “I told him I had a closed mind. I really didn't understand, I had never known someone like him, so it took me some time to get used to it. And I'm very sorry. " And more than once Jose said to him: "I forgive you".
It is true that nowadays boys and men have more spaces to choose their clothing and how to behave, even in a much less masculine way than in the past. Long hair and some necklaces and some earrings are now widespread among men, especially in some societies. Many men shave their eyebrows, do manicures and wear pink clothes. In some areas of the country, this opening of styles has allowed in parallel an opening for those males who swing between the rules of the two sexual genders. "
For example, James, a fourteen year old boy who wore long hair from five to ten years old, wore women's clothes and was often mistaken for a female. This thing neither disturbed nor exalted him. In fifth grade, however, he had abandoned his skirts. A year later, he was so convinced he was a boy that he categorically prohibited parents from remembering or mentioning his past with his friends.
James is now six feet tall, his voice is deep. Her hair is still shoulder-length and she dyes her tips pink. When he is with male friends, they play together with video games and create manga characters. When she is with female friends, they disguise themselves with wigs and make skits, with high-pitched tones of voice. They brush their hair and braid each other.
At a cafe near their Cambridge home, his father told me that he had initially tried to dissuade James from wearing women's clothes in public, to defend himself and his son from judgments and criticisms. But that first embarrassment slowly turned into pride. "He is a very brave person," said the father. "I learned a lot from him ... In college I remember wondering why gays don't behave in a less flashy way? People would stop hitting him, but then I thought, hey, speak for you. Now I know it's wrong. My son has shown me that it is all part of an identity, not something that a person puts on and takes off at will. And it's not up to them to worry about putting us all at ease.
One day, this spring, I went to the playground with an 8-year-old boy named P. J. A pink ribbon with glittering butterflies kept his thick black curls tied, which he occasionally pulled back with a theatrical gesture. He wore a bike helmet decorated with snakes and skeletons, a blue Pokemon T-shirt, black and pink stretch trousers, a fuchsia sweatshirt and an iridescent heart as a pendant around his neck. He and his friend ran happily around the park chasing each other loudly, they made new playmates.
After playing for half an hour, some children huddled to catch their breath and get to know each other a little. The eyes of a ten-year-old girl widened. He turned to me, the adult closest to her, and said, "Do you know that she is a boy?" I nodded yes. Convinced that I had misunderstood, she indicated P.J. who was next to her and said “No! This is a boy here! " P.J's parents allow him to wear girl's clothes in public, which he rarely does, knowing full well the comments that this would arouse (eg. Yes to the dentist, no to his grandparents' house). At school, though, parents allow him to wear anything except female clothes, as the full suit is a garment that is more explosive on its own than all the pinks, fuchsia and sequins put together. P. J. he told me that he was wearing "female" blouses (he used his fingers to make the gesture "in quotes") three days a week and male shirts the other two days. Most often he chooses pink or purple pants. Although the parents paid half their day out of their pocket for the teachers of the school, psychology related to sexual uncertainties in children, P.J. it is still targeted on the school bus or during recreation time.
"Some kids at school make fun of me," he says. "They keep asking me," and here the voice becomes whining "Are you a boy or a girl? I forgot. " And then they also ask me the next day. I don't believe that if they forgot it only one day later, they are just bad. They say I should cut my hair because I look like a girl and if I look like a girl it's wrong. It's none of their business, but they tell me the same. "
P. J.'s favorite video game, Glory of Heracles, shows an ambiguous genre character that P.J. defines as a girl who wants to be a boy. "Do you feel like this?" I asked him one day at his house. "No, I don't want to be a girl," he said, as he mirrored himself in the mirror of his room posing, Cosmopolitan style. "I just want to get girls stuff." "Why do you want to be a boy and not a girl?" He looked at me like I was an alien. "Because I want to be who I am!"
To explain himself better, he told me about a third-class boy who was a football fanatic. "He comes to school every day in his football suit," said P.J. "But that doesn't mean he's a professional footballer." He's right: no one turns to look at those who dream of becoming a football star, while guys like P.J. and Alex are looked at with embarrassment, especially when they get even bigger.
For this reason, last summer, while Alex's parents were considering sending their son to the local primary school, they feared that the children might treat him badly and make fun of him. They therefore decided to prohibit him from putting on female clothes in kindergarten. Alex didn't take it so badly. At that time his requests for disguises had thinned out, once or twice a month at most, and he always wore male clothes, even if he always liked to put on a necklace with rainbow-colored beads and nail polish. In addition, his parents had told him that he decided on the socks, the shoes, the nail polish and the jewelry - as a way of expressing himself as he felt the ground little by little.
Towards the end of the first week of kindergarten, Alex came to school wearing shock-pink socks - one of those "forbidden" colors. A boy in the class asked him, "What are you female?" Alex told his parents that he had felt offended and that he hadn't had the courage to answer. In solidarity, his father bought a pair of pink sneakers to wear in the morning when he accompanied Alex to school.
Then Alex's teacher, Mrs. C., also intervened. During the hour of the "circle of experiences" he mentioned some male friends who were putting on their nails and wearing earrings. Mrs. C. said that when she was younger she liked to wear men's sneakers. Did this make her a boy? Did the children think he shouldn't have done it? Did they think it was right to laugh at her for this? The children said no. Then she told them that long ago girls were forbidden to wear pants, which made more than one child's eyes widen. "I said: 'Can you imagine if they forbade you to wear pants when you want it'? What if you really wanted to wear them and someone told you that you are not allowed just because you are female? It would be terrible! "After these words, comments about Alex's appearance practically ended in class.
It took weeks for Alex to regain his safety. And then, about once a week, he would put on his pink socks and glittering shoes and trot around boldly in the garden to play.
