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BlogHer Contributing Editor Rita Arens recently posted about a mother and her transgendered child. Rita offered lots of wonderful insight and resources. Except the kind that matters. The kind that comes from someone whose been there. The politics around children who have the courage to resist the gender straight jacket have left those same children adrift. Sometimes a child just wants the freedom to explore. S/he isn't trying to make a statement about our society and its penchant for homophobia and misogyny. Certainly that was the case in our household some ten years ago. My article entitled "My Son, the Cross Dresser," first appeared in Salon Magazine (May, 1998) and engendered much debate and discourse. I reprint it here for my sisters at BlogHer to offer one mother's take on raising a child who danced across the rainbow of self-expression.
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My son is a cross-dresser. Most mornings he gets up, puts on a hand-me-down dress stolen from his sister, wraps an old white pillowcase around his head with a ribbon (his "long blond hair") and prances around singing, "The hills are alive with the sound of music." My son is 3 and a half years old.
At the toy store, he does not want Batman. "I want a Batgirl doll," he cries. When he begs to play with his friend Margo, it is not because he likes her better than his best friends Billy and Andrew; she just has more to offer -- like an extensive collection of Barbie dolls and a whole wardrobe of little clothes he can dress them in.
He loves preschool -- partly for the teachers, somewhat for the other children, but mostly for its wonderful selection of tutus, fancy party shoes and pretend jewelry. His grandmother (my mother) received the shock of her life when she went to pick him up one day and he was wearing a blue tutu with beaded gold slippers. The other mothers laugh and tell me he is such a thespian. The teacher tells my husband and me that he is "highly in touch with his feminine side."
If we only had to worry about preschool, life would be fine -- but his grandparents (on both sides), his aunts and uncles, his baby sitter and just about everybody else are up in arms. "Boys should be playing baseball, not Barbie," my mother-in-law exclaims. "I was so embarrassed," complains my mother after the harrowing tutu incident. "He keeps taking my daughter's Cinderella slippers!" my neighbor told my other neighbor who told me. The older siblings of his friends have called him an oddball, a weirdo and generally not normal. Adults tend to be more subtle with questions like: "So when do you think he will grow out of it?" or "How does your husband feel about it?"
I have tried to explain to each of them that my son approaches life with a unique flair. While he loves soccer, he often plays it wearing a silk cape that flutters in the wind when he runs. Playing with his cars takes on new dimensions when he acts out both the "damsel in distress" and the "sheriff to the rescue" role, alternating hats to represent each character. My husband can't wait for Little League to start because he sees a little slugger in our son who can already
