My column in today’s edition of the Grand Haven Tribune.
Last week, one of my fellow community columnists asked a question. On Oct. 25, Geri McCaleb wrote, “What’s extreme about recognizing that boys are boys and girls are girls?” While I doubt that McCaleb does not know how very loaded and problematic that statement is, I’d like to offer an answer. Whether or not McCaleb is interested in learning the answer to her question, though, I’m absolutely sure there are likely a good number of well-meaning and thoughtful folk out there who might ask the same question.
The question itself comes from one of the core commitments of the “Ottawa Impact” PAC, as every candidate they endorse has as one of their values the statement, “A boy is a boy. A girl is a girl.” The problem with this statement is that it seeks to erase the reality of any person who does not fit within the gender binary. It literally seeks to pretend that the trans community doesn’t exist – and thus only continues the marginalization and discrimination toward those who identify as anything other than cisgender (this is the term for those whose sense of gender identity corresponds with the sex they were assigned at birth).
First, just from a scientific and realistic standpoint, the idea that “a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl” ignores the reality of people who are intersex. That is, the statement ignores the reality of those who are born with ambiguous genitals, or genitals that do not clearly match their chromosomal gender identity due to a variety of scientifically identified conditions. Most scientists believe that somewhere between 0.02 percent or as many as 1.7 percent of births fall under this identification.
Yes, these children are real. Yes, they attend schools in Grand Haven. And to pretend they do not exist is to participate in the culture of stigmatization and discrimination that has led to the high rates of infanticide and abandonment these people experience within their own families.
Second, the true attack of this claim, I imagine, is not on the intersex community (I’m willing to allow that people may be ignorant and unaware of this scientific reality). Rather, it is directed at those who might have a clear biological gender externally but who cannot identify with that gender internally. This could be someone born as a boy who identifies as a girl, someone born as a girl who identifies as a boy, or someone who is nonbinary and does not identify as either female or male.
The Mayo Clinic (clearly not a secret cabal of liberalism) even has a helpful article for parents titled “Children and Gender Identity: Supporting Your Child.” In that article, the staff of Mayo Clinic stress that it is common for children to go through periods of gender exploration when it comes to clothes and toys and even the roles they adopt in play. For some kids, however, as they get older this sense that they identify as a different gender persists. They encourage parents, “Listen to your child’s feelings about gender identity. Talk to your child and ask questions without judgment.”
People can become aware and able to articulate their transgender identity at any age. In a non-discriminatory environment, many adults who identify as transgender can point to an awareness of that reality as young as 7 years old. Some can identify it even younger. For others, they may live for years with a vague sense that they don’t really fit in and it’s not until later in life they realize it is because of their gender identity.
The reality of children and adolescents who don’t fall into the “boy/girl” categories of cisgender is an essential reality for educators and school board members to recognize.
The American Psychological Association advises: “Parents of gender-nonconforming children may need to work with schools and other institutions to address their children’s particular needs and ensure their children’s safety.” Data from the National Institute of Health indicates that 82 percent of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40 percent have attempted suicide – with rates of suicidality being highest among transgender youth.
As adults, these children will also face profound challenges. Most anti-discrimination laws do not protect transgender people from discrimination. They are often discriminated in housing, employment, health care, legal systems, along with their educational experience and their family of origin. In a recent study, about half of transgender participants reported they had experienced a transphobic hate crime at some point in their life. Half.
“A boy is a boy and a girl is a girl” – these are words that contribute to a culture that is literally killing trans people, literally killing trans kids. And ignorance cannot be an excuse anymore. It particularly cannot be an excuse among those who would like to be elected to our school board. Their denial of the reality of non gender-conforming kids is just one of the many reasons I voted for our current school board incumbents (Carl Treutler, Nichol Stack and Marc Eickholt) and against the transphobic platform of the Ottawa Impact candidates (Tommy Van Hill, Roger Williams and Thomas Hoekstra II). While Van Hill, Williams and Hoekstra certainly have the right to their transphobic views, they must be stopped from imposing them on the children of our school district.
One more word on this question, before I close. And that is to the loss. There is a loss when people deny the reality of trans people. You miss how wonderful, beautiful and strong these people are. In my work with the Lakeshore GSA Youth Group (http://sjegh.com/gsa), I’ve had the gift of meeting some kids in our schools who don’t identify as cisgender. They are smart, funny and amazing kids.
Because I believe our God delights in diversity. After all, God created animals that can change their gender identity (particularly common among fish). Some birds can have the biological characteristics of both genders. People want to force God’s creation into a box, insisting that everything should live how God made them – and I agree. After all, fish should swim and birds should fly, right? But our God is a God who created some fish to break the norm and fly into the air and some birds to dive into the water and swim.
The wonderful diversity of God’s creation – and the wonderful gifts of all transgender individuals, whether kids or adults – should be cherished, celebrated and protected. It should never be denied.
About the writer: The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer, Tribune community columnist, serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com. His opinions with regard to the candidates in the school board election are those of him alone as a resident of the community and do not necessarily reflect those of his church or congregation. However, his congregation and denomination enthusiastically support the rights and gifts of trans people everywhere.
The Mayo Clinic (clearly not a secret cabal of liberalism) even has a helpful article for parents titled “Children and Gender Identity: Supporting Your Child.” In that article, the staff of Mayo Clinic stress that it is common for children to go through periods of gender exploration when it comes to clothes and toys and even the roles they adopt in play. For some kids, however, as they get older this sense that they identify as a different gender persists. They encourage parents, “Listen to your child’s feelings about gender identity. Talk to your child and ask questions without judgment.”
People can become aware and able to articulate their transgender identity at any age. In a non-discriminatory environment, many adults who identify as transgender can point to an awareness of that reality as young as 7 years old. Some can identify it even younger. For others, they may live for years with a vague sense that they don’t really fit in and it’s not until later in life they realize it is because of their gender identity.
The reality of children and adolescents who don’t fall into the “boy/girl” categories of cisgender is an essential reality for educators and school board members to recognize.
The American Psychological Association advises: “Parents of gender-nonconforming children may need to work with schools and other institutions to address their children’s particular needs and ensure their children’s safety.” Data from the National Institute of Health indicates that 82 percent of transgender individuals have considered killing themselves and 40 percent have attempted suicide – with rates of suicidality being highest among transgender youth.
As adults, these children will also face profound challenges. Most anti-discrimination laws do not protect transgender people from discrimination. They are often discriminated in housing, employment, health care, legal systems, along with their educational experience and their family of origin. In a recent study, about half of transgender participants reported they had experienced a transphobic hate crime at some point in their life. Half.
“A boy is a boy and a girl is a girl” – these are words that contribute to a culture that is literally killing trans people, literally killing trans kids. And ignorance cannot be an excuse anymore. It particularly cannot be an excuse among those who would like to be elected to our school board. Their denial of the reality of non gender-conforming kids is just one of the many reasons I voted for our current school board incumbents (Carl Treutler, Nichol Stack and Marc Eickholt) and against the transphobic platform of the Ottawa Impact candidates (Tommy Van Hill, Roger Williams and Thomas Hoekstra II). While Van Hill, Williams and Hoekstra certainly have the right to their transphobic views, they must be stopped from imposing them on the children of our school district.
One more word on this question, before I close. And that is to the loss. There is a loss when people deny the reality of trans people. You miss how wonderful, beautiful and strong these people are. In my work with the Lakeshore GSA Youth Group (http://sjegh.com/gsa), I’ve had the gift of meeting some kids in our schools who don’t identify as cisgender. They are smart, funny and amazing kids.
Because I believe our God delights in diversity. After all, God created animals that can change their gender identity (particularly common among fish). Some birds can have the biological characteristics of both genders. People want to force God’s creation into a box, insisting that everything should live how God made them – and I agree. After all, fish should swim and birds should fly, right? But our God is a God who created some fish to break the norm and fly into the air and some birds to dive into the water and swim.
The wonderful diversity of God’s creation – and the wonderful gifts of all transgender individuals, whether kids or adults – should be cherished, celebrated and protected. It should never be denied.
About the writer: The Rev. Dr. Jared C. Cramer, Tribune community columnist, serves as rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church in Grand Haven. Information about his parish can be found at www.sjegh.com. His opinions with regard to the candidates in the school board election are those of him alone as a resident of the community and do not necessarily reflect those of his church or congregation. However, his congregation and denomination enthusiastically support the rights and gifts of trans people everywhere.
While as a non-binary person I appreciate the gracious spirit of your op-ed, it manifests some significant ignorance in how to talk about trans people. Sex, gender, and the experience of gender are different things, and one does not imply the others. Yet you conflate them throughout this essay, even to the point of speaking of non-existent things like "biological gender." Gender is not biological. Sex is a biological reality described by empirical biological science. Gender is a social construct that shapes how sex is controlled and interpreted within a community. Felt gender is a personal experience we have of our bodies within the social constructs of a community. There is no 1:1:1 relation between these three categories. I can feel myself as feminine in a community that perceives me as a man while have intersex biology.
ReplyDeleteThe complexity of trans issues comes from the uncertain interactions of these three dimensions of human life. Which is why social rhetoric is so damaging to us. When someone says that "a boy is a boy and a girl is a girl," there's no willingness in a statement like this to recognize that 'boy' and 'girl' are ambiguous words, even between both uses of the same term. Is the first or even the second instance of 'boy' referring to sex, gender, or felt gender? If it means that a sexed male has the gender of a man, this is simply a statement about how a particular community applies gender to sexed males. That person may not experience their gender in the same way as their community perceives them, and this requires negotiation. And none of this has anything to do with their sex, because sex is not gender and gender is not sex.
For the same reasons, it's problematic when liberals and progressives make reductionistic statements like "some boys are girls" or "trans women are women." Again, these pithy phrases ignore the distinctions between sex, gender, and felt gender, and reduce the complexity of our lives down to a political slogan. We are people, not issues. I know your heart is for the rampant abuse of and suicide in our community. But the way to help us is to allow space for not yet understanding how sex, gender, and felt gender intersect. These are all new and complex interactions that everyone is trying to navigate, even those with stable gender identities. The way to advocate for us is to allow for uncertainty, to allow for not knowing, to simply say that gender might not be something we really understand yet. That creates freedom for those of us who others do not yet understand. When you write sentences like, "This could be someone born as a boy who identifies as a girl," this is not helpful, because it conflates sex, gender, and felt gender, and imposes an arbitrary standard on what should determine how these three human realities intersect. Instead advocate for being open to the reality that for each person it might look different, and the real work of our time is teaching ourselves and our neighbors how to let go of pre-defined gender expectations so that people are safe to redefine the social construct of gender.
Thank you so much for your response and for artfully and clearly articulating the nuances of this realities in ways I failed to do so as a cisgender man. I'm very grateful.
DeleteThis column is written for a newspaper in a conservative small-town, so I did try to keep it as simple as possible knowing that many would be resistant to anything I wrote. However, your points are well made and I will try to do better in the future.
Thank you for your response. I don't see you as failing; certainly not failing out of your own sex and gender identities. I understand you want to be an advocate on our behalf. Too often though that can fall prey to a kind of cultural apologetics, where we have to give definitive answers to correct error (kind of like Evangelicals do with inerrancy or creationism). Sometimes it's just better to create space to be safe with new things we don't yet understand. I myself come from a conservative small-town, and I know that my community is not afraid of me per se; they're afraid of what they don't understand. No one has taught them how to live without answers.
DeleteThis is why the best apologetic for sex and gender in society is teaching people how to live without having everything figured out. Because those of us who are sex and/or gender minorities don't have everything figured out! We need spaces for that work, just as those who are afraid of us need that same space to learn how to listen to and live with us.
The best part of your essay is when you spoke about the value and beauty of diversity. That doesn't require any special knowledge about sex and gender issues, nor is it something one cannot speak on if they're from a stable sex or gender identity. Sharing essays and teachings where you celebrate sex and gender diversity simply because your theology of aesthetics celebrates God's diverse creation is a wonderful way to advocate for us.