Subject: 5-year-old twins (one cis, one trans)
Audience: social media group of extended family/friends who would probably be accepting…but you never know for sure until you tell them.
Hi everyone!
We haven’t been posting much recently because life has been especially distracting in recent months, but there is something we’d like to share.
Did you know that most children realize their “true gender” between 3 to 5 years of age? I’ll admit, it’s not something I’d given much thought because as a straight cisgendered (that is someone whose internal sense of gender matches their physical anatomy) MAN/WOMAN, I never really HAD to think about it, but yup, 3 to 5 is when you start to figure out whether your gender matches your sex. Or you start to figure out that it doesn’t. And if you’re really lucky you’re in a place where you’re able to share that with your family so they can start getting right what they’d previously been getting wrong.
So, that’s the stage of life the twins are currently living. TWIN A has figured out that (POSSESSIVE PRONOUN) gender matches (POSSESSIVE PRONOUN) body, and TWIN B has figured out that (AFFIRMED GENDER POSSESSIVE PRONOUN) gender doesn’t. For all these years we’ve been thinking of TWIN B as a (GENDER ASSIGNED AT BIRTH), and now we know that wasn’t right.
So, as a friend of mine often says “know better, do better.” Now we know better. We now know that gender identity is clear to children when they are younger than we’d imagined. We know that there’s a difference between being a “(ASSIGNED GENDER) who likes (SOMETHING STEREOTYPICALLY NOT FOR ASSIGNED GENDER)” and being a “(AFFIRMED GENDER) in a (ASSIGNED GENDER) body.” We know that both are awesome ways to be, and that the only way to know which one a child is, is to ask them and listen to what they’re saying. We now know that treating children in a way that affirms their internal sense of gender is the only acceptable way to treat them, because they alone know what the experience of being them feels like. We know that treating them in a way that doesn’t affirm their expertise in that area often has dire consequences.
And we know that (TWIN B) is also a (AFFIRMED GENDER)’s name. And that our (TWIN B) is a (AFFIRMED GENDER). And (PRONOUN) is perfect exactly as (PRONOUN) is. (Okay, we always knew about the perfect part.)
We also know that it can be hard to think about things in new ways, and difficult to break old habits and establish new patterns. So we know that, going forward, it might feel a little strange at first to use (POSSESSIVE PRONOUN) correct pronouns. You might slip up from time to time and forget to use “(PRONOUN)” or “(POSSESSIVE PRONOUN)” and we understand. We make the same mistake sometimes! So don’t feel ashamed if that happens. And please don’t feel offended if we gently remind you of (POSSESSIVE PRONOUN) pronouns when we hear you slip. Because now that we “know better” that is how we’ve helped each other “do better.”
If you’re interested in recommendations of books to read to either educate yourself or help explain things to young children, we’re happy to recommend a few. If you want to stick to visual media, Gender Revolution (a Katie Couric special that is sometimes available on Netflix) is a good place to start.
If you want to just use the (AFFIRMED GENDER) pronouns and trust us that this is the right thing for our child, that’s fantastic, too!
Well! Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get back to why we’re all here: pictures of these two cuties!
Trans Parenting: Letters to the World 