A Difficult Subject for a Blog

My brother and I, along with Nancy and hir brother, in front of the plane that would take us to Nantucket.

There has been a lot of chatter in the news lately about transgender children, and more than enough hysteria about whether or not they should have “treatment.” The venom—and willful ignorance--in some of these opinions is horrifying.

To my sorrow, I know more than I’d like about transgender children.

When I was a child, Nancy was my best, perhaps my only, friend. We lived in neighboring towns and went to different schools, but our parents were very close. We played together, swam in the pool together, and went to the same day camp. Every summer our mothers rented a house together on Cape Cod. Those four weeks in Hyannis were the highlight of my year.

On the surface we didn’t have a lot in common. Nancy was an all-around athlete; I was happier with a book than a bat. I was a chatterbox; Nancy rarely spoke.

We both had trouble fitting in.

I suffered from what is now called social anxiety. Back then it was just called shyness. Nancy’s problem was bigger. Inside, where it really counted, Nancy was a boy.

(S)he looked like a boy, moved like a boy, and spoke like a boy. (S)he refused to wear girls’ clothing, play girls’ games, or act like a girl in any way. S(he) also pitched a very mean softball.

Hir gender was obvious to anyone who really looked, and it drove Nancy’s parents crazy. They were sad, they were angry, and they didn’t know what to do.

Hir parents tried hard to turn Nancy into a girl, but nothing worked. As soon as they left the room, s(he)’d take off the dress, grab a pair of jeans, and carry on being a boy. I don’t know who suffered more: Nancy or hir parents.

In earlier times, Nancy might have been called a “tomboy.” That was a niche a boyish girl or mannish woman could fill, however uncomfortable it might be. Think, for a moment, about all the stories about women, disguised as men, who fought in their countries’ wars. Today’s army has thousands of transgender soldiers. Some are obvious; many are not.

If Nancy had been born fifty years later, s(he) might have had a fighting chance to be hir own true self. In early 1950’s America, s(he) had no chance at all. Back then, transgender wasn’t even a concept.

Nancy’s parents thought s(he) was insane. So, apparently, did hir doctors.

When therapy didn’t work, Nancy was hospitalized. When medication didn’t work, s(he) suffered through far too many rounds of electro-shock therapy. It made a terrible mess of hir memory but didn’t affect hir gender identity at all..

I didn’t see much of Nancy in those days. On hir rare visits, s(he)’d sit on my bed and cry about all the old friends she couldn’t recognize any more.

As soon as Nancy was legally old enough, s(he) discharged hirself from the hospital and did the only thing she could to end hir pain. Not long after, my mother received a phone call from Nancy’s mother. Her daughter was dead. No cause was given. No funeral was held.

So predictable. So unnecessary. So terribly, terribly sad.

People can always find something to obsess about, especially if the subject is even a tiny bit titillating. Transgender stories are always good for a bit of a thrill. Last year’s hot topic was same sex toilets.* This year it seems to be “treatments” (whatever they might be) for transgender children. The rhetoric is pretty heated on both sides, but it doesn’t need to be.

Here’s what I think:

The most effective treatment for transgender children is also the simplest:* Listen to what your child is telling you, in actions or in words, about who s(he) really is. Acknowledge hir reality and take it seriously.

Then sit back and let your child take charge of hir own true identity.

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*I don’t want to imply that access to same sex toilets isn’t a huge issue for transgender people. It is. But to my mind the public outcry, for or against, mostly misses the point.

**Brandon Boulware, father of a transgender daughter, spoke movingly to the Arkansas State Legislature about Joint Resolution 53. If passed, it will require transgender children to play sports only on teams reflecting the gender they were born with.

NBC television covered Mr. Boulware’s speech on March 16, 2021. I found it by chance on Facebook, but it’s easy to find on YouTube.

I’d love to hear from you. Leave comments in the box below or email me at storiesbyjudith@gmail.com