'I wanted to give my child a gift. The gift of seeing people as more than just a gender'
With every new semester, the number of students asking me to call them by different names and usethan they were given at birth grew. Women confided that they were experiencing sexism from their chemistry professors. Men vented about the pressures of masculinity. These 18- to 20-something-year-olds were feeling crushed by gender stereotypes. I could relate.
The experience was disappointing, if not unexpected. When I was pregnant, I would dream up hypothetical situations with cruel pediatricians refusing to use they/them pronouns and flight attendants treating Zoomer like a stereotype and anxiously think through how I would react to these circumstances. I was afraid that my family members might be so nervous about accidentally using a gendered pronoun for Zoomer, so nervous about offending me, that they would distance themselves from us.
A common critique of gender-creative parenting is that “the kid will be confused,” but Zoomer doesn’t seem confused at all. In fact, they have a more nuanced understanding of sex and gender than a lot of adults. We teach them to use gender-neutral words until a person tells us about themself. We call kidsWe have taught Zoomer about their own body without using boy-girl labels.
Gender-creative parenting comes with a giant mirror and forces me to ask myself, “Kyl! Where are you?” I’ve examined my own gender identity and expression more in the past four years than I had in the three decades before becoming Zoomer’s parent.
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