What your trans friend actually thinks of your gender reveal
Spoiler alert: it’s not a big deal
All too often, even the accepting friends of trans people walk on eggshells around us.
And all too often, the not-so-accepting folks feed directly into this. They’ll insist that we’re volatile annoyances whom you indeed have to walk on eggshells around. It’s a vicious cycle, so let me set the record straight: we’re not.
Maybe I’m just in my thirties and suffering from the medium-term effects of never having used TikTok before (I had to google whether that was one word), but I reckon I’m nowhere near alone.
So you’re having a kid, and you announce that “it’s a girl!”
These days, the Internet would like you to believe that your trans friend will get insufferably wound up by the very words.
“yOu CaN’T sAy ThAT!” I’ll shout indignantly, “gender is all made up, and you can’t inflict society on your poor child! You need to raise them in a woke terrarium until they’re old enough to tell you otherwise!”
Then I’ll huffily exit the Zoom meeting I’ve already ruined and cancel you on Slack.
Yeah, no.
If I did believe something to that extreme, chances are, I’d keep it to myself. But rest assured, I really couldn't care less what color onesies you’re putting on the baby, as long as you’re feeding her and being nice.
Personally, if I were a parent, I’d take the ‘girl until proven otherwise’ (or ‘boy until proven otherwise’) approach. And by ‘proven’, I only mean, “as a parent who pays attention to my child, if they end up wanting or needing something different when it comes to their appearance or how we relate to them, we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”
Being allergic to pink and purple has nothing to do with one’s internal sense of sex (correlation, not causation, remember?), so why induce an allergy for no reason? Paint that nursery lilac if that’s what you wanna do. Make it green in three years if your kid wants it green. I’m happy to come over and help you either time.
Expose your daughter to women of every form and shape and career and disposition, and if your gut and her gut still say that the very fabric of the socks under those sociological shoes is still a bit off and itchy —
well…that’s the business of the kid, you, the therapist, and the pediatrician.
(though I’ll still insist you let the kid wear whatever shoes they damn well please before you get to the soul-level socks part, which, chances are, you won’t. Your trans friend is bad with metaphors, but also here to help and give advice rooted in actual, lived experience if that happens. Deep breath, Internet.)
I have no interest in preemptively pulling the pronoun alarm and forcing the evacuation of your comfort zone. Frankly, I’m just happy for you, and I’ll bring the best damn sugar cookies you’ve ever had to the baby shower.
