The new Caitlyn Jenner

Parent Cafe
641

There have been experiments with that, with parents who have done everything they can to isolate out cultural factors, influences, you name it, and what they seem to indicate is that certain things are not learned behavior. The whole nature versus nurture thing has been argued out ad hominen, and those arguing the purist point have been blown out of the water time and again. Among other things, I recall reading something several years ago where they did cross cultural studies of societies, including isolated tribes who had little to no contact with the modern world or the rest of the world, and they found there were certain things that came up time and again across cultures. For example, the kind of play little boys and girls tended to be attracted to. The studies authors were saying that when you see the same thing time and again,in cultures that are isolated or part of the modern world, that it is a strong indication it is inate.

There are obviously things that are cultural, the concept that girls make themselves pretty to compete for the attention of partners, for example, is cultural (in some cultures, men do that). Human beings are not clean slates, though, we have instincts, driven by millions of years of evolution, and how for example hormones affect things are very, very complicated (estrogen and testosterone are both powerful things, they are a lot more than why a man has hair on his body and a woman develops breasts), and that plays into it. If the theory that gender is wired into the brain via the hormone washes that a fetus undergoes (and as I wrote in another post, there is evidence to support this from experiments), then the answer would be no. How we express that gender identity would obviously be very different if we could isolate out the cultural stuff, the learned behaviors, but I donā€™t think it would affect the core identity. Put it this way, our core gender identity is so intrinsic to who we are we really donā€™t notice it, If I tomorrow I got rid of the label of male and female, wiped it out of peopleā€™s memories, and simply called everyone ā€œhey youā€, inside I think people would still feel and act differently.

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I was raised with very traditional gender roles. My sister and brother, bought right into it, and seem to feel fairly comfortable with that decision. I think that from birth, they appreciated that structure.
But it didnā€™t make sense to me.
Even though my parents werenā€™t as extreme as some, with the worship of males, I still was very aware, and felt that it was very unfair that even though I was the oldest child, my brother( who is 2 & 1/2 yrs younger), had significantly more opportunities and privileges than I did.
I have a strong memory of my 1st gd teacher telling me my choices in life were to be a teacher, a nurse or a secretary.
Some people may have taken that as a challenge, but I just felt demoralized.
However, when I had two girls, I did everything I could so that they did not feel those same limitations.
Although I did learn, that some behaviors seem to be innate, like when my daughter dressed up her matchbox cars with skirts, and made them little houses.
:wink:

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I was fortunate that my family was very accommodating when I was young. I had a complete Phillies uniform and also an Eagles (football) uniform before I was 6 years old. My grandfather always wanted a son and then a grandson, and I was it! I appreciate that - and I suspect it must have been a little hard on my very feminine mother. There was never a hint from any immediate family member that I could not be a doctor, lawyer or President, for that matter. I had some great aunts who werenā€™t as completely on-board with my tomboyism, but it didnā€™t slow me down much.

One benefit of all this was that I was very comfortable around boys and had many as friends all the way through life. This has helped me tremendously professionally and in my adult-onset sport of running (and triathlon). I donā€™t know that my parents and grandparents were particularly conscious of the wisdom of their tolerance, but I think it was the right thing to do.

I tried to be very gender neutral raising my own kids. My daughter was fairly feminine, but I encouraged any interests that she might have, and my son really enjoyed rolling around a toy vacuum cleaner, which some of the husbands of my friends thought was a little odd.

644

Aww, so cute. I wonder if he still enjoys this now that he is grown, and if so, may I borrow him every few days?

:smiley:

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A link to the podcast of the recent Wisconsin Public Radio interview with Helen Boyd Kramer (a non-trans woman who teaches at Lawrence U.) and her wife Betty, who used to be her husband. Iā€™ve known them both for more than 10 years, since they used to live in Brooklyn, and theyā€™re always interesting to listen to:

http://www.wpr.org/listen/769601

Helen has written two books on the subject. (I made a brief appearance in the first one, under the clever assumed name of ā€œDonnaā€!)

646

My first friend was the boy next doorā€¦we were the same age and his father was not at all happy that we were so close. We were not allowed to play anything that little girls would typically play. He was terrified that his son might be considered a sissy. Lucky for him, I didnā€™t play with dolls ( other than trolls and stuffed animals ) I donā€™t think it ever occurred to my mother that I might become a tomboy if I climbed trees and played with match box cars and toy soldiers

647

While my parents were raised with pretty traditional gender roles, they did an excellent job of letting me know I could do anything and be anything. Perhaps that is due in part to the fact that I was an only child, so there was no brother to contrast with, but I am guessing not.

My dad loved baseball, so I loved baseball. He taught me how to pitch and throw (ā€œlike a boyā€ :slight_smile: ) and we spent a lot of time on the diamond. They also let me believe I could have any career I wanted and I never thought about being a SAHM even though I eventually became one for a time. I was in accelerated science and math and the only reason it was remarked on was because my dad was a writer and more comfortable in the humanities than STEM subjects.

At the same time, I couldnā€™t wait to be old enough to wear make up and heels. I liked being a girl too.

In my comments above I think I was just musing about what makes us feel feminine or masculine. Obviously wearing Clinique is not innate, but perhaps adorning the body is more innate to females than males? Although in some cultures and species it may be the opposite.

Long hair is seen as feminine in our culture, but there are other religions and cultures where men do not cut their hair. I imagine for a lot of history people had long hair because there were not always implements to cut it. So why do people who want to look more stereotypically feminine grown long hair? Itā€™s just currently what society says a woman should look like. (Note, this is not ME talking, but societal stereotypes).

648

I can certainly confirm that going through puberty in what you feel is the wrong way is a horrible experience. I remember it vividly, and not the least bit fondly. (Not that it affected my voice or height very much, which is fortunate in my present position but made life more difficult for me in a number of ways during all the years I was trying to live as a man.) What made the experience even worse for me, I think, is that I was somewhat delayed in entering puberty, and it didnā€™t begin at all until it was induced by my having to take daily testosterone pills for several years in my early teens, after having had a number of testosterone injections when I was 9 in an unsuccessful attempt to make the undescended testicle I was born with come down.

In the 1960s, daily testosterone tablets (the brand was Halostestin, a powerful anabolic steroid) were considered a standard remedy to make very small boys grow (at least at the Rockefeller University growth clinic) and I was barely 4 feet tall when I was 12. I suppose it helped me reach my final height of 5ā€™2", but it definitely caused my bones to close prematurely, and I fell well short of my ā€œpredictedā€ height of about 5ā€™6". An advantage now, but not so much then.

And even back when I started taking testosterone in 1967 or whenever it was, I specifically knew, and remember thinking to myself, how much I wished it were estrogen instead.

Of course I didnā€™t say anything. I couldnā€™t imagine saying anything in such a different world. And in retrospect, itā€™s hard to separate how miserable I was going through puberty with the fact that the entire time I was going to Rockefeller U., my endocrinologist was sexually abusing me. In the last few years, Iā€™ve learned that he did exactly the same to other children. I admit I was happy to see his obituary about six or seven years ago, although not so happy that he lived to be almost 100. (I should emphasize that the abuse had nothing to do with why Iā€™m trans; I knew years before then, even though of course I didnā€™t have the vocabulary for it.)

So if the world then had been like the world now, I quite possibly could have been one of those child transitioners. And my life would have been much, much, less miserable and unhappy for the decades I spent hating and being ashamed of myself and trying to make myself be ā€œnormal.ā€ But then again, I wouldnā€™t have my son, and I always, always wanted a child. Partly because I loved little kids, and partly out of a sense of family responsibility, deriving largely from what happened to my mother and her family. It would have been very hard for me to be happy without a child. Even though I could have adopted, I suppose, it wouldnā€™t have been my son, whom I wouldnā€™t trade for anything ever, as I said earlier in this thread. And thatā€™s my dilemma when I think about transition in oneā€™s teens. A dilemma I donā€™t really know how to solve, but if one thinks about concrete individual cases, I see no reason not to delay puberty for a few years if a child is seriously gender dysphoric, because they can always change their minds if they donā€™t really like living as the ā€œotherā€ gender. I think trying to avoid years of misery (including going through the wrong puberty) is better than placing the possibility of a future interest in reproducing biologically as something that has to be protected above all else ā€“ including present and future happiness. I canā€™t look at the question dispassionately because I have an actual child who means more than anything to me. Thatā€™s not the case with a teenager.

649

D used to play with the boy next door who was a year older. She brought her my little ponys & he had his transformers.
I had trees in my backyard to climb, but very few toys. I had a Skipper and a Tutti doll, although I was not much for pretend, except for my imaginary friends, ( since I didnā€™t really have any real ones)
I was the oldest, and classes and camps and chemistry sets were an extravagance, until the younger kids were old enough, then it was a necessity. We would go as a family to my younger siblings school or scouting events, especially my brothers, as my sister was only 11 when our dad died. I didnā€™t think about them not attending mine, until my grandparents showed up at a daytime performance, ( elementary choir) mentioning they felt bad since my parents couldnā€™t come.
I always felt that something was off with me. I was bored to death playing with paper dolls I had made, I wasnā€™t allowed to have tools and pieces of wood to nail together and paint like my brother was later. He did give me some of his Legos that he didnā€™t want anymore since he had epoxied them together. Oh thanks. :wink:

The trouble with raising kids with different expectations depending on their sex is that when they grow up, they expect that to continue.
I would like to think that parents are more enlightened now, but I think it really depends where you live.
Even with my own Facebook friends, there is a current discussion about how everything has gone downhill since blacks & women were given the right to vote.
( well, not really, but you get the idea)

650

"This is tangential, but this discussion makes me wonder about how we are socialized into girl things and boy things. I was born female and enjoy so called feminine things like wearing dresses and using make up etc. Undoubtedly because I was shown at an early age that that is what girls ā€œdoā€. Of course we know that not all girls do this.

Iā€™m having trouble articulating what I want to say. I guess Iā€™m asking if itā€™s possible to grow up without any indicators of what it means to be female or male, how would we act? Iā€™m sure not every male to female trans person is eager to indulge in make up or dresses but I would think many are because they are finally able to act like the gender they feel they were born into and do things society says are in the realm of females"

I think my childhood was as close to being neutral, as far as gender roles, as could possibly be. A very strong mother, passive aggressive, loving father, both engineers. Not allowed to have dolls in the house, toys were things such as legos and airplanes. We still did traditional female chores like cooking and laundry, but nothing particularly feminine. I donā€™t remember any discussion of what men or women were expected to do, or anything that I couldnā€™t or shouldnā€™t do because I was a woman. In fact, when I went into the Air Force, as one of the earlier women pilots in the eighties, I was shocked to find out that we couldnā€™t fly fighters. It never occurred to me that there were things that women werenā€™t ā€œallowedā€ to do. My parents never mentioned that, perhaps because they didnā€™t want to hold us back from anything.

And with that upbringing, I probably act more like a man than a woman, though I look distinctly female (and am probably kinder than a manā€“no offense, guys). I guess that is why I still have such a hard time wrapping my head around the entire gender dysphoria issue, as I would be perfectly happy as whatever I was. My sex does not define me in any way.

651

For the most part, I donā€™t think I was encouraged in any particular direction, and was left to do pretty much what I wanted. My mother had me vacuuming and dusting from a very early age (on the theory that I was small and could easily fit underneath the furniture), and taught me how to sew a little. My father taught me how to hammer a nail and use a screwdriver and ride a bicycle. My grandmother taught me how to play cards. I had no interest in climbing trees, or playing any kind of sports or ā€œcowboys and Indians.ā€ On the other hand, I had no interest in dolls and tea parties ā€“ but then again, I loved stuffed animals, and, I am told, viewed them as my children and insisted on tucking each one in and saying good night to it. But liked toy cars, too. The majority of my friends when I was little were girls (but certainly not exclusively so), until I got to a point, around second grade, when it was no longer considered socially acceptable for little boys and little girls to be friends with each other. (Oddly enough, within the last year or so, Iā€™ve struck up something of a renewed friendship with the woman who was my best friend in kindergarten! Among other things, she writes for a national paper, which is how I found her.) Mostly, I was a bookworm as a child. And I didnā€™t care whether the books were about boys or girls; I read just about everything.

I am not sure how much any of that had to do with how I felt. Itā€™s simply something that always seemed to be there for me. I canā€™t explain it, and I donā€™t think it really matters much, does it? All I know is that I felt very wrong for most of my life, very painfully so at times, and donā€™t feel that way anymore.

The only real pressure I ever felt as a child was when I was about 7 years old, and my father tried to make me wear a button that said ā€œItā€™s a Manā€™s World.ā€ I knew that was true, practically speaking, but I just couldnā€™t relate, and refused to wear it. I suspect he was trying to make me feel better about being a boy.

652

I was lucky in that I was raised in a very gender neutral household. My wedding is the first time Iā€™ve worn a dress and make up since prom and most people were shocked that I wore a dress. To be honest, the dresses looked better on me than a pant suit.

I was (and am) a major tomboy. Climbing trees, playing video and trading card games, sports, all male friends, the works. I have often wondered whether Iā€™d have had identity problems if I grew up in a household that was more gender typical. After all, I have often wondered why I donā€™t care about hair, makeup, clothes, and boy bands like Iā€™m ā€œsupposedā€ to. Luckily, itā€™s never been an issue and I roll my eyes and ignore any comments I get about my lack of ladylike characteristics.

With that said, Iā€™ve had a whopping helping of what itā€™s like to be a woman in this society over the last few weeks. From the assumption that Iā€™m now ā€œMrs. Spouseā€ (strangely, not one card addressed to Mr. Romani) to the repeated questions about kids that have certainly not been directed to my spouse. Iā€™m even having a hell of a time trying to figure out what to call us as I donā€™t like husband and wife.

I am grateful that we live in a time where people like me, Donna, Caitlyn, and all others who donā€™t quite fit in neat little boxes can exist. Is it easy for trans individuals (to be clear, I donā€™t identify as trans and would never pretend to understand the trials and tribulations of trans individuals)? No of course not. Do we have a long way to go? Absolutely. But thereā€™s a conversation and increasing visibility and decreasingly rigid gender roles. That, I believe, we can be grateful for.

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Iā€™m not sure weā€™d be having this conversation without Caitlyn. And Donna. (How many in our society have a Donna to patiently discuss with?)

And Iā€™m not sure we can truly feel what another does, only relate, in parts. Iā€™m not even sure we can casually discuss ā€œgender neutral.ā€ Even the idea we fall into a continuum shows how we accept gender roles, whether socialized or inherent. Identity is a big sticky wicket. Speaking academically, even a word like tomboy is (culturally) loaded.

None of this is simple.

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romani- Most people donā€™t fit into neat little boxes. I do appreciate Donnaā€™s insight and the open sharing of her experience, because it certainly helps the rest of us understand some of the emotions, fears and struggles. I believe hearing from a non-celebrity person like Donna is much more instructive than much of what Caitlyn is going to share publicly, although that is helpful, too.

655

"I was (and am) a major tomboy. Climbing trees, playing video and trading card games, sports, all male friends, the works. I have often wondered whether Iā€™d have had identity problems if I grew up in a household that was more gender typical. After all, I have often wondered why I donā€™t care about hair, makeup, clothes, and boy bands like Iā€™m ā€œsupposedā€ to. "

What IS ā€œgender typicalā€? I grew up in a household where we did care about makeup/clothes/fashion - but my dad was in the fashion business, so Vogue, etc. was his business reading and he had a great eye for clothing for us. But I was also raised that there was nothing I couldnā€™t do professionally.

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Interesting radio interview with the author of the NY Times op-ed by Elinor Burkett, the feminist who argued in a NY Times op-ed against transgender women being truly female:
A Feminist Questions Transgender Identity Standards
http://www.wnyc.org/story/feminist-questions-transgender-identity-standards/

Right now the Brian Lehrer, the host, is interviewing transgender men and women for their responses.
Trans Men and Women Talk Gender
http://www.wnyc.org/story/trans-men-and-women-talk-gender/
That show will be available to listen online in an hour or so.

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I think some on this thread are as guilty of pigeon-holing people as they accuse others of doing.

Agree with pizzagirl- Fact that my mother and grandmother enjoyed makeup, clothes and jewelry didnā€™t affect expectations for me and what I could accomplish. In fact, my mother had been a superstar student and one of my bigger traumas was constantly being held up to that standard. This, despite her green eye shadow and frilly clothes.

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Put me down as another who was raised by parents that were not at all conventional about such stuff. My best friend as a kid was the boy next door, and all of the kids on the road played together in the woods. We dug clay out of the stream bank and made things from it, we caught frogs (I refused to touch them, so I would spot them and my friend Steve would catch them), we played with plastic army men, we played poker, I had an electric train and a tool kit. My mother would take us on expeditions to new house sites where we would get pieces of wood (from the scrap pile only!), bring them back to our house and make boats or whatever out of them, then paint them and so forth. I had some dolls, but I also had a holster with six guns which was my favorite thing. :slight_smile: I wanted to wear my black cowboy hat to kindergarten with my six guns over my favorite dress: pale yellow with a full skirt and a bow that tied in back. (My mother made it.) I was and am a bookworm and read everything. My favorite author was Stephen W. Meader, who wrote ā€œboysā€™ā€ historical adventure stories. I loved horseracing, and every day would look though the entries in the paper and make my picks, then note had they did the next day and make more picks.

My older sister, on the other hand, was more conventionally feminine in her interests. While we both had music lessons, she was the one who did ballet, and she was embarrassed by my black cowboy hat.

My father asked us math questions at dinner, and we had to try to identify the composer of the dinner music. :slight_smile: Maybe it made a difference that we didnā€™t have a brotherā€¦

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I did not grow up with a brother, only a sister. I will be honest and say that when I was ā€œpresentedā€ with boy/girl twins, I was unsure how I would raise a boy. It turned out to be a complete non-issue (and if anything, my boy is more nurturing / touchy-feely of the two) but at the time, I was concerned that I didnā€™t know or do ā€œboy things.ā€

660

I had the same concern, @Pizzagirl! :slight_smile: