The Toddler's A-Gender

[ishai_wallace]

The other night, The Small Person asked that I read Jacinta Bunnell and Irit Reinheimer's Girls Will Be Boys Will Be Girls at bed time. After we read it, The Small Person announced "My gender is purple." It is certainly true that The Small Person strongly identifies with purple at the moment. For the first time, The Small Person talks about having

Comments

[magid]

Nothing truly of substance to say, other than your small is pretty wonderful, and I appreciate your thoughtful parenting.

[anonymous]

So so so many things I adore about this post, among them:

a) "culturally queer" and "culturally trans*"
b) "but also I don't want to teach him that being a girl is in any way wrong or bad (whether The Small Person is a girl or not)"
c) "I am not a girl. I am a toddler."
d) so pumped that you're giving children a voice about their gender, especially as gender ultimatley surfaces for the first time at this age
e) loved that at different times in the post you used three different pronouns to describe your child. I found it really told the story of hir journey thus far.

Would you mind if I re-post this on Blakelock's blog?
Twoey

[ishai_wallace]

Thanks for asking. Of course, go ahead and share if you want! I hope you are having a brilliant summer.

[ftmichael]

I agree with all of this really a very lot. Adultism is so overlooked and often blatantly ignored and we need to be doing this work now, as you said. Small people have so much to say and so few grown people ever seem to be listening, which I find by turns infuriating and deeply sad.

'We worry about what a child will become tomorrow, yet we forget that [ze] is someone today.' -Stacia Tauscher

That is a very happy-looking Small Person in that photo! :)

[ahavia]

Well said!
Ahavia

[pantryslut]

It's fascinating to me that long hair seems to be the strongest gender signifier that our toddler currently has.

I am particularly fascinated by this too, for in California, that is most definitely not a strong enough signifier to signal to people that Simone is not my son. (Phrasing chosen carefully here, because Simone's gender currently takes a paragraph.)