BOYS WILL BE GIRLS, GIRLS WILL BE

BOYS
Children Affect Parents as Parents Affect Children in
Gender Nonconformity
Diane Ehrensaft, PhD
Oakland, California
There are transformational possibilities in the family when presented with a
child who is transgender or gender nonconforming. Challenging orthodox
psychoanalytic thinking that these childrens gender presentations are a conse-
quence of poor parental rearing, trauma, or attachment disruptions, it is pro-
posed that gender nonconformity is healthy rather than pathological and that
typically these children initially just show up in their families, rather than being
shaped by them. Looking at the metabolism of transphobia and the transforma-
tional possibilities within the family when boys will be girls and girls will be
boys, 3 family types that either support or impede their childrens creative
gender development are presented: the transformers, the transphobic, and the
transporting, with case material to illustrate each of the family types. A psy-
chological construct is developed to explain the feedback loop between family
and child: The transgender or gender nonconforming child who transgresses
binary gender norms may face culturally imbued transphobia and psychological
trauma within the family while simultaneously facilitating the familys tran-
scendence of transphobia through transformative experiences with the child as
he or she transitions from the gender assigned at birth to his or her authentic and
afrmed gender identity or expression.
Keywords: gender nonconforming child, transgender, transphobia, family
response to gender nonconforming child, true gender self
In recent times we have been confronted with the widely broadcast news of a number of
gay youth who committed suicide following unrelenting teasing and bullying by their
peers. Although all of the youth were identied as gay, reading more carefully
This article was published Online First June 13, 2011.
Diane Ehrensaft, PhD, Bay Area Youth Gender Acceptance Project.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to 445 Bellevue Avenue, Suite 302,
Oakland, CA 94610. E-mail: [email protected]
Psychoanalytic Psychology 2011 American Psychological Association
2011, Vol. 28, No. 4, 528548 0736-9735/11/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0023828
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about their lives, it soon becomes apparent that it was not their sexual orientation, but
rather their gender presentation that drew the ire and disdain of their classmatesthey
were girly, they were fem. The term genderist has evolved to describe a set of beliefs and
practices that derive from the assumption that there are only two genders and that those
who stray from their assigned gender boxes, male or female, are to be challenged,
chastised, or cajoled toward normativity. Transphobia, a term to which we may be more
familiar, refers to the anxieties, prejudices, aspersion, aggression, and hatred cast on
individuals who do not accept the gender assigned to them at birth but instead play outside
that denition of self or perhaps any binary categorizations of gender, possibly to the
extent of altering their body to t their afrmed rather than their assigned gender.
1
Transphobic thinking and actions often take genderism and homophobia and wrap them
up into a single package that attacks anyone who transgresses from the binary categories
male/female either in their behaviors, expressions, identities, or choice of love objects. It
is such transphobia that has placed so many children and youth at risk, either for physical
or psychological harm.
These at-risk children are either gender nonconforming or transgender. They play at
the margins of gender in their dress, play, choice of friends, choice of toys and activities,
or very self-identities. They are young people who transgress the cultural expectations of
binary girl/boy categories and express themselves as either uid, creative, or cross in their
gender development. As we know, these children do not grow up in isolation, but in the
context of their particular families and specic cultures and communities. I address these
transgender and gender nonconforming children, focusing specically on their childhood
experiences within the family and the ingredients for gender health within those families.
Transgender and gender nonconforming children, along with their gay and lesbian
cohort, are a minority group in our society. In part, we can identify their minority status
by paying attention to the -isms or phobias that confront them from the surrounding
culture, from their families, or even from within themselveshomophobia, transphobia,
sexism, and genderism. The children are differentiated, however, from almost all other
minority children in that they may face aspersion from their very own families, who are
supposed to be their protectors. That means that gender nonconforming and transgender
youth, along with gay, bisexual, and queer youth, are one, if not the only group of minority
children who cannot count on the love and support of their own families in their minority
identities. For example, in our country many Black parents teach their children to have
pride in their race, prepare them for the racism that is other peoples problems, not theirs,
and watch their backs if their children should meet up with prejudice or violence. The
same is true for children of other racial, ethnic, or religious minorities. The parents and the
children are emotionally bonded together in their shared minority status. Transgender,
gender nonconforming, and gay youth cannot automatically count on such support or
bonding within their families. In contrast with the shared status within ethnic, racial, or
religious minority families, it is rare (but not unheard of) for gender nonconforming,
transgender, or gay children and youth to share their gender or sexual identity minority
status with their parents and/or siblings. In their position of otherness, it is not rare for
these same children to meet up with prejudice or aspersion from their own family
1
The term assigned gender refers to the gender placed on an individuals birth certicate,
determined by medical personnel or observers of the infants birth, typically based on the appear-
ance of the external genitalia. The term afrmed gender refers to the gender an individual asserts as
the one he or she identies as being, which may or may not match that persons assigned gender.
529 CHILDREN AND GENDER NONCONFORMITY
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members. Thus it is no accident that the ranks of homeless and foster care youth are
disproportionately lled with transgender and gay and lesbian youththey did not
become gay, lesbian, or transgender because they lost their families; they were thrown out
of their families or ed violence, abuse, or unrelenting harassment at the hands of family
members precisely because of their gender or sexual identity. This singular risk factor for
the youth is even more pronounced for gender nonconforming and transgender than gay
youth (although it should be noted that it is not uncommon for the categories to overlap):
There is greater opportunity to keep information about your sexual partners or desires in
the family closet than to hide that once you were Jack, and now you are Jill.
The story is all too common of the child harassed, abused, or disowned by family
members for being other than gender normal, as a result of parental or even sibling
behaviors, behaviors that are driven by fear, anxiety, or hatred. I invite you to focus with
me on the more uncommon story: the working through of genderism and transphobia by
a childs family members and the transformational possibilities within the family when
presented with a child who lives outside the culturally prescribed gender boxes based on
assigned gender at birth. To do that, I call forth seven T words: transgender, transphobia,
transgression, trauma, transition, transcendence, transformation. Put together in a sen-
tence, the seven Ts create a formula that reads as follows: the transgender child who
transgresses binary gender norms may face culturally imbued transphobia and psycho-
logical trauma within the family while simultaneously facilitating the familys transcen-
dence of transphobia through transformative experiences with the child as he or she
transitions from the gender assigned at birth and its prescribed social accoutrements to his
or her authentic and afrmed gender identity or expressions. Depending on how that
process unfolds, the child will either come out with an authentic gender self or with a
bruised and battered psyche that at its worst could lead to partial or complete annihilation
of the child if that self is denied its expression.
Holding this formula in mind, I pose the following questions: For the transgender or
gender nonconforming child, what are the ingredients for family transformation? What are
the impediments to family transcendence? These are not just academic questions, but
urgent clinical queries. In 2009, Ryan, Huebner, Diaz, and Sanchez at the Family
Acceptance Project at San Francisco State University published the rst of their ndings
regarding the role of family support in the psychological outcomes for lesbian, gay,
bisexual, and transgender youth. Although their preliminary report (2009) included only
the rst three categories of youth, Ryan (personal communication, September 3, 2010)
indicated that the ndings are equally applicable to transgender youth. The results of this
study demonstrated that family rejection was associated with signicantly higher rates of
depression, suicidal ideation and attempts, substance abuse, and sex-related health risks
for gay, lesbian, and bisexual youth in contrast to their peers who came from families with
no or low levels of family rejection. In their report Ryan and her coauthors stated:
Because parents and key caregivers are perceived to play a vital role in an adolescents health
and well-being, it is surprising that so little attention has focused on parents and caregivers
inuence on their LGB [lesbian, gay, bisexual] children and adolescents health and well-
being. (p. 346)
It is surprising. Not just gay, lesbian, and bisexual children and youth, but gender
nonconforming and transgender young people as well need the same attention to their
family experiences, and not just in adolescence, but across their entire span of develop-
ment. The discourse that follows will hopefully prove to be a contribution to that effort of
530 EHRENSAFT
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developing a paradigm and set of practices for family acceptance that will transcend
family rejection and lead to better mental health outcomes for gender nonconforming and
transgender children and youth.
Who Are the Genders in Your Neighborhood?
Gender nonconforming and transgender is actually a very broad category, so before
launching into a discussion of the family experience, allow me to delineate further the
broad range of gender diverse children and youth of whom we speak. The schematic
subcategories of gender diverse children and youth listed below are informed by two
contemporary gender constructs: (1) gender expressions: those activities, behaviors, and
modes of presentation that children embrace to communicate their gender; and (2) gender
identity: the internal sense of self as male, female, or other (cf. Brill & Pepper, 2008). The
types of children include:
Transgender children: Afrm that the gender they are is opposite to the gender
assigned at birth. They typically say they are a girl (boy), not that they want to be one.
They represent a very small minority of gender nonconforming children. Many see
these children as embracing a binary schema of gender in its extreme, simply reversing
the gender box they live in, but albeit that this might be so, their gender expressions
are often a uid amalgam of many different gender markers of the culture.
Gender uid children: Do not abide by the binary norms of gender prescribed by
the culture but instead ow along the spectrum from male to female, but not
necessarily with a cross-gender identication or identity.
Gender priuses: Think of themselves as hybridshalf boy, half girl, or some
combination thereof (e.g., Im 60% girl, 40% boy).
Gender tauruses: Similar to priuses, except they assert they are one gender on top,
another on the bottoma creative solution to a mismatch between genitalia and
the minds messages to the child about his or her authentic gender.
Protogay children: Play at the margins of gender in the beginning stages of their
gay development. They may remain gender uid throughout their lives, or as they
establish a gay identity may realize that earlier theories, such as loving a boy
means having to become a girl, are untrue and that boys can love boys and girls
can love girls. In early childhood, they typically do not say that they are a boy
(girl), but that they want to be a boy (girl).
Prototransgender youth: First come out as gay or lesbian but then later
discover that they are not gay but actually transgender and therefore were
living in an inauthentic gender identity. This appears to be more common in
female-to-male transgender than in male-to-female transgender youth and
young adults.
Gender queer youth: Defy all categories of culturally dened gender altogether
and prefer to identify as gender free, gender neutral, or outside gender at all.
Gender smoothies: As seen in the gender uid youth and gender queer youth,
metaphorically take everything about gender, throw it in the blender, and press the
on button, creating a fusion of gender that is a mix of male, female, and other.
Gender oreos: Are layered in their gender, perhaps presenting as one gender on the
outside, but feeling as another on the inside. These are often children who are
hiding their authentic gender selves from public scrutiny or from their own psychic
realization.
531 CHILDREN AND GENDER NONCONFORMITY
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Accept this list as a working model, most likely incomplete and adjustable as new
21st-century gender lives unfold, as we now embark on the family journey for these
gender diverse children and youth.
Coming To Versus Coming Out
According to PFLAG (2007), families of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender
persons may all experience the same stages of denial, anger, and grief, along with
safety concerns and confusion when a family member comes out. I have no argument
with this statement, except around the issue of coming out. When it comes to gender
nonconforming and transgender children and youth, particularly in families with very
young children who transgress cultural norms of gender, the predominant report from
the parents is that for them, their children did not come out, but rather came to them.
Repeatedly in my clinical interviews with parents and in reports from others, parents
describe a history in which their gender nonconforming child just shows up, and often
in extreme contrast to their other gender normative children. Traveling back in time,
mothers and fathers often recall the rst evidence of gender nonconformity some-
where in the second or third year of life, which is the exact age when children rst
cognitively grasp the concept of gender:
When he was two, he was always in my jewelry, my purses, always in the closet for my shoes;
wanting to dress like me . . . I dont think anyone encouraged it. (Report from a mother, as
cited in Green, 1987, p. 116)
Even before her son turned two, Sherry Lipscomb noticed that he wasnt like other boys.
When she took him shopping, he would go gaga at sparkly dresses. He would toss his baby
blanket around his head like a wig and prance on the balls of his feet. (Cloud, 2000, p. 90)
In my own consultation room, I heard similar reports: When he was 18 months, he just
started wrapping himself in owing scarves and insisting on wearing my blue and yellow
jeweled high heel sandals around the house; or, When I tried to put her in a dress for
her second birthday party, she just started screaming and ripping it off.
These parental accounts are corroborated by their childrens reports. As long as
they can remember, the children or youth always felt there was something different
about them, and they often call on God, parents, doctors, or fate to x the mistake that
seems so visible to them but so invisible to others. As one little boy told me, Why
cant Mommy put me back in her tummy and make me come out a girl? Another little
boy echoed this longing for gender reincarnation, I want to die and go to heaven and
come back a girl.
Contrary to psychoanalytic theorizing that gender nonconforming children are re-
sponding to trauma or attachment disruptions (Coates, Friedman, & Wolfe, 1991),
expressing interfamilial conicts (Zucker & Bradley, 1995), or serving as objects of their
parents own unresolved gender or psychiatric issues (Stoller, 1985), my clinical experi-
ence with families of young gender nonconforming children tells me that more typically
the children simply present themselves early in life to their parents; and their parents, often
initially bewildered, search for ways to respond. As expressed by Paul, one such confused
father faced with a 3-year-old son who insisted on princess dresses over baseball bats: It
was really hard for me to be with him. I just wanted to play ball, not go to the ball. How
can we make sense of this coming to within a family context?
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Late 20th and early 21st psychoanalytic gender theorists have challenged the theory of
a biologically determined sex and gender system. As Corbett (2009) critiqued, The
claims of the binary are so powerfully compelled that they are unthought as natural and
essential. Gender is routinely conated with anatomy and gender is routinely conated
with that which produces our desires and personality traits (p. 91). In contemporary
psychoanalytic gender theory, gender is repositioned as a uid spectrum, rather than a
biologically determined dichotomy. I would go even further and propose that gender is
actually a three dimensional web, woven together with threads from nature, nurture, and
culture. Each individual weaves together his or her own unique gender web, and like
ngerprints, no two will be exactly alike. The culture and family plays a strong hand in
shaping the childs web, but it is the childs psyche that will metabolize the messages from
both within and without to generate his or her own unique gender self. Whether we
conceptualize a uid spectrum or a three dimensional web, the prevailing contemporary
theory asserts that all human beings, not just the gender nonconforming child or adult,
carry within them the socially constructed attributes of both the feminine and the
masculine along with characteristics that defy any such binary categorization (Dimen,
2003, 2005; Goldner, 1991, 2003; Harris, 2000, 2005). Yet this still does not tell us how
a gender nonconforming child just comes to the parents, rather than being shaped by them.
Let us begin with the premise that gender is always a ne choreography between the
organism and the environment within a specic cultures denitions of male/female. We
then nd a repeated pattern: Children show up to their parents as gender nonconforming
and their parents insist that they did nothing to promote the gender nonnormativity but
instead had to gure out how to meet up with it. Now let us consider possible organic
underpinnings to this showing up. I am following the lead of medical researchers who
believe that transgenderism, as homosexuality, is rooted in complex biological factors that
exist at birth (Spack, as cited in Spiegel, 2008). There are still mysteries about how it all
begins, but recent theories suggest a transgender or constitutional predisposition caused by
the bathing of a fetus in opposite sex birth hormones while in utero or by some genetic
carrier or spontaneous gene mutation. Relatedly, there has been a paradigm shift in the
identication of the biological components of core gender identity: It is not what is
between your legs but rather what is between your ears, that is, your brain functioning, that
holds primacy. Culture denitively mediates and gives meaning to gender, including
telling us what signicance to give to the primary or secondary sexual characteristics of
our bodies, dictating, for example, that a girl cannot have a penis and a boy cannot have
a vagina. Yet, it appears that some core aspects of gender also may have some constitu-
tional bedding. According to Menvielle (2004), cofounder of the Outreach Program for
Children with Gender-Variant Behaviors and Their Families, now renamed the Gender
and Sexuality Advocacy and Education Program, parents have little or no inuence on
the childs core feelings that dene him or her as gender typical or gender variant. Such
core feelings appear immutable (p. 3).
Immutable may be too strong a word, but I certainly observed among many young
children an enduring and persistent sense of those core feelings about their gender.
However, now I would like to move beyond biology to propose another way of thinking
about the phenomenon of the transgender and nonconforming children just showing up
that is rooted neither in the brain nor in the genitalia, but in the psyche. I borrow from
Winnicotts concepts of the true self, the false self, and individual creativity. In his
concepts of human development, Winnicott (1960, 1965) identied the true self as the
authentic core of ones personality, from which spontaneous action and a sense of realness
come. He proposed that the original kernel of the true self is evident at birth. The potential
533 CHILDREN AND GENDER NONCONFORMITY
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for the true self to unfold is predicated on appropriate mirroring and emotional holding by
the primary caretakers, in which the adults do not impose their own selves on the childs
psyche but rather allow the childs authentic self to emerge. Winnicott dened the false
self as that part of the personality that accommodates to the demands of outer reality and
functions to shield the true self from annihilation. Within family life, this means that the
child, through the false self, will develop the capacity to comply with the parents
expectations about who their child is and how they expect their child to be. According to
Winnicotts theory, there are different points along a spectrum at which any one individual
must call forth the false self to protect the true selfs existence. One of those points is
where the true self is acknowledged as a potential and allowed a secret life, whereas the
false self holds forth to accommodate to the expectations and demands of the environment.
The psychic intention at that point is the preservation of the individual despite abnormal
environmental circumstances (Winnicott, 1960). Individual creativity is the psychological
function that launches the true self and allows it to stay aoat. It facilitates spontaneity,
authenticity, and feeling real. In the beginning, individual creativity is reliant on a
co-construction between the child and the people who comprise the holding environment,
adults who in optimal circumstances will be responsive to the childs true self and able to
follow the childs lead rather than imposing their own sensibilities about how that child
should be. Individual creativity works to help an individual build a meaningful personal
world for him- or herselfa weaving together of internal desires with external realities to
build ones subjectivity. When allowed to function unfettered, individual creativity leads
to the discovery of ones quintessential self. Individual creativity is the opposite of
compliance. In compliance one recognizes an external world in which one must t. In
creativity, an individual calls on his or her own lens through which to view that external
world while taking liberties to dene the personal meaning of that vision. In existential
terms, individuals will either nd themselves living creatively and feel that life is worth
living or end up nding no such creativity and doubting the value of living at all. Through
creativity, the goal of life is to allow ones true self and individuality to blossom. Danger
prevails when the false self takes over and suffocates the true self. In the most extreme
case, an individual might want to stop living completely rather than let the false self
continue to beat the true self into submission.
Although Winnicott (1960; 1965), never intended these concepts as dening features
of gender, the three terms are remarkably adaptable to a nonbinary theory of gender
development (Ehrensaft, 2009). The true gender self begins as the kernel of gender
identity that is there from birth, residing within us in a complex of chromosomes, gonads,
hormones, hormone receptors, genitalia, secondary sex characteristics, but most important
in our brain and mind. Once we are born, the true gender self is most denitely shaped and
channeled through our experience with the external world, but its center always remains
our own personal possession, driven from within rather than from without. Even in the
face of imposed prescriptions, proscriptions, or repudiation, we strive to both establish and
claim rights to our true gender self, which will include both our gender identity and our
gender expressions, and although stable, may still shift over the course of our lives. A
childs early afrmation of the core kernels of the true gender self might explain why a
parent will report that their gender nonconforming child just came to them that way and
why medical researchers are proposing a constitutional factor in transgenderism.
The false gender self is the face a child puts on for the world, based on the expectations
of the external environment and the childs interpretations and internalizations of either
appropriate or adaptive gender behaviors. Any child can and probably will develop a
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false gender self, running the gamut from the cisgender
2
gentle boy who puts on a macho
persona to empower himself and please his Marine dad to the transgender child who hides
dresses in the closet to avoid punishment from disapproving parents. Living an authentic
gender life is a particular challenge for children who experience an extreme discrepancy
between the gender assigned to them at birth and the gender they know themselves to be,
particularly if that discrepancy is not welcomed by the family or community in which they
live. The gender nonconforming and particularly the transgender child may need to wrap
a blanket over the true gender self to ensure surviving in a world that might not be ready
to embrace that child for who he or she is. That world qualies as abnormal environ-
mental circumstances in Winnicotts (1960), terminology and that blanket would be the
false gender self. This process can occur either consciously or unconsciously. If such
children are not given the opportunity for their true gender selves to emerge, they may nd
themselves at the most extreme end of the true selffalse self spectrum, in which intense
efforts by the false gender self to shield the true gender self from annihilation, if failing,
can result in the childs desire to die or be destroyedfrom the despair of the true gender
self never having a chance to emerge or the distress of being trapped in a life and/or body
that feels too unreal. This dynamic might account for the higher rates of suicidal ideation
and attempts among the youth who met up with family rejection in Ryan et al.s (2009)
study of family support.
To guard against such morbid eventualities, gender creativity steps in, dened as each
individuals unique crafting of a gender self that integrates body, brain, mind, psyche,
socialization, and culture to establish his or her authentic gender identity and expressions.
In the creative impulse of gender, a little child is drawn to make something of gender that
is not based just on the inside (the childs body, the childs thoughts and feelings), nor just
on the outside (the family, the cultures expectations), but a weaving together of the two,
with the child in charge of the thread that spins the web. Every childs gender creativity
will be unique. Every child will depend on a supportive environment to allow his or her
gender creativity to unfold. Every child will suffer if an intrusive environment grabs the
thread from the child and spins its own web around the child. For those children who are
gender nonconforming, gender creativity works actively to circumvent the false gender
self and privately keep the true gender self alive even in situations where it is not safe to
let it come out.
It is important to differentiate gender creativity from gender creation. If a transgender
child just shows up rather than being shaped by the parents, how is his or her core
transgender self creative rather than just is? Would the concept of gender creativity
erroneously suggest that a child made a decision to choose this identity, rather than
coming into the world with it as the kernel of the true gender self? As with any child,
gender creativity is not the end product, that is, the gender identity and expressions, but
rather the act of putting together the wardrobe of the afrmed true gender self, both
literally and symbolically.
So now we circle back to the question of gender nonconforming children just showing
up rather than being molded by their parent. The childs gender as a product of the parents
shaping has been the rubric of orthodox and even some contemporary psychoanalytic
thinking, in which it is either argued or assumed that gender nonconforming children are
typically the products of their parents untoward actions or emotions. Yet this assumption
or argument appears to y in the face of observational evidence of the children who just
2
Cisgender refers to a person who is living in the gender assigned to him or her at birth.
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come to their parents, often to the parents perplexity. It seems reasonable, therefore, to
propose an alternative concept: In the feedback loop between parent and child, the
transgender or gender nonconforming child may be shaping the parent far more than the
parent is shaping the child. The shaping begins with a child who is presenting the original
kernel of the true gender self that existed at birth, whether as a result of genetics,
biochemistry, prenatal environment, or some yet to be explained phenomenon.
In Winnicotts (1965), theory, it is the parentinfant dyad that is critical in setting the
stage for the expansion of that early kernel of the true self by allowing the childs
spontaneous expressions to unfold rather than imposing the parents will and personality
on the child. The facilitation of the true selfs emergence is accomplished through the
process of mirroringreecting back to the child the childs image rather than imposing
the parents. For the time being, let us hold this concept of mirroring and facilitation as
a pivotal key to understanding the capacity of the parent to either support or impede a
childs exploration of the true fender self.
Transphobia and Baby Love: A Case of Cognitive Dissonance
Where does transphobia come in? The family is paramount as the primal and primary
cultural entity in which a child rst develops a sense of self as boy, girl, or other. Far
before the baby ever knows what a boy or girl is, the parents hold that category in mind
as they minister to the baby who was announced at birth to be a boy or a girl (Fast, 1984,
1999). What happens to parents who over months or years have established a relationship
with their child as boy or as girl only to hear from their child that they have it wrong, as
the child persistently and perhaps transgressively refuses to accommodate to assigned
gender expectations? What happens if those parents are bound to an unthought binary
gender system as the norm of health and well-being?
They may suffer from a profound sense of cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance
is dened as a mental conict that occurs when beliefs or assumptions are contradicted by
new information. The family of the gender nonconforming or transgender child is ripe for
just such a conict. The family is the rst place a child rst develops a sense of self as boy,
girl, or other. Consider the two phenomena of the young gender nonconforming children
who just come to their parents and those older youth who might later come out to their
parents. In the course of development, it is the parents, not the child, who rst hold in
mind that their child is a boy or a girl. Now the parents who thought they knew their
childs gender status may be confronted with new information when they hear from their
child that they have it wrongI am not the girl (boy) you thought I was. What if
normative binary gender is the very bedrock of the parents own being and of their dreams
for their children? Herein lays a perfect storm of cognitive dissonance in the collision
between transphobia and baby love: Transgender and gender nonnormative people are
sick or deviant and to be despised or feared versus I love my child who is now showing
up or telling me that he or she may be one of those people. How does the family resolve
this? Holding the seven Ts formula in mind, what could cause a shake-up in the family to
make parents accept rather than reject their child, given this conict?
From the childs point of view, she or he can only hope that baby love will trump
transphobic fears, and that the attachments that have already been built will guide the
parents away from their negative beliefs to a more positive sensibility about their childs
gender creativity and gender nonconformity. Even if it takes several years and myriad
layers of emotional turmoil, a child may maintain hope, all the while never realizing that
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the most powerful moving force in the resolution of the cognitive dissonance may be the
child him or herself. The power of the child to bring the parents around to acceptance will
most certainly depend on the strength of the bonds of love that child has with the parents,
bonds that must prevail in overcoming the virulence of the countervailing transphobic
assumptions and beliefs that serve to condemn the child.
Few parents will have read Judith Butlers (2004) work in preparation for starting a
family, but her proclamation in Undoing Gender could have a profound effect on them
when confronted with a gender nonconforming or transgender child: What is most
important is to cease legislating for all lives what is livable only for some (p. 8).
Translated into experiential family life, can the parents make room for their gender
nonconforming child to establish his or her own true gender self? Will the parents instead
feel obligated or compelled to insist that their child squelch his or her gender creativity
and present to the family and to the world with a false gender self that will compromise
the childs well-being but conform to the socially legislated norms of gender health? In the
resolution of the cognitive dissonance of baby love pitted against transphobic beliefs, what
is the difference between the family who allows transphobia to prevail and the family who
calls on baby love to pull up the roots of transphobia?
The Family as a Pulsating and Changing Organism
A childs gender development is not created from thin air. As previously stated, it is a
dialectical creation between the organism and the environment. To once again quote
Butler (2004):
One only determines ones own sense of gender to the extent that social norms exist that
support and enable the act of claiming gender for oneself. One is dependent on this outside
to lay claim to what is ones own. (p. 7)
Let us consider the family as a microcosm of this outside for the child, which is in turn
affected by the culture surrounding the family. Both in traditional and transgressive
psychoanalytic theories of gender development, parents of gender nonconforming children
are typically cast as conservative, coercive, confused, or condemning forces, with a
psychology that does not change over time (Ehrensaft, 2007). Yet we learn from our
psychoanalytic theories and training that no thought, feeling, or belief is static. This
applies to families as well as individuals, which will change with evolving developmental
thrusts, life experiences, or direct interventions. The arrival of a gender nonconforming
child in the family will be just such a catalyst of change. Bell, Weinberg, and Hammer-
smith (1981) explained as follows:
Familial factors commonly thought to account for homosexuality may themselves be the result
of a prehomosexual son or daughter being different to begin with. For example, a boy who
is constitutionally predisposed to be less masculine than other boys with regard to his
temperament, his interests, or his sense of identity may be regarded with regretif not open
hostilityby a father who insists his son be as masculine as he. The father may respond to
such a son by withdrawing emotionally or becoming openly hostile. The son, in turn, may
dislike or feel bitter toward his father and become less likely to identify with him. (p. 218)
The authors aptly pointed out that the child shapes the parent as well as the parent shapes
the child; what they overlook is that not only might the childs protogay disposi-
tion shape his fathers emotional withdrawal and bring forth his homophobic reactions;
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this same child offers the father the opportunity to face his own internal aspersions toward
his son and work through them in an effort to stay connected rather than estranged from
his little boy.
Such a process of transformation is never a point in time but may unfold over many
years of family life. The transphobic or homophobic parent of today may be the PFLAG
parent of tomorrow. Marlene Shyer raised a gender nonconforming son in the 1960s and
1970s, a child who denitely qualied as a protogay boy who later came out as gay in his
college years. When Christopher was in kindergarten, Marlene went to the teacher saying
she was afraid that he might grow up to be a homosexual, based on his cross-sex interests
and aversion to rough and tumble play. Throughout his childhood she took Christopher to
several professionals, one who administered a full-day battery of tests with the following
feedback: This test is perfectly conclusive. Its just as I suspected: it indicates without
any doubt that your son is perfectly normal, and will grow up to be totally heterosexual
(Shyer & Shyer, 2001, p. 61). Marlene described her response at that time: I sailed,
wafted, skipped, whistled and sang my way out of that ofce (Shyer & Shyer, 2001, p.
61). Years later, looking back, she lamented her lack of support for her son and the pain
she caused him: I suppose like many people of my generation, I deserve to have my brain
washed out with soap, but its a long evolutionary process and Im still learning (Shyer
& Shyer, 2001, p. 230). Her attitude toward her son has done a 180 degree turn:
I see my son as the special bequest the gods had up their sleeves for me, a gift so generous
I sometimes think I dont deserve my luck. It is not that Im privileged to have a child who
is gay; I am privileged to have a gay son who is Chris. (Shyer & Shyer, 2001, p. 75)
I personally never had an opportunity to interview either Marlene or Christopher Shyer,
nor see them in psychotherapy, but as the mother of a gay son myself, I resonated not with
the content of her exact experience with her gender nonconforming son, but with the
evolving process of parental acceptance that took place not only over the course of my
sons childhood but also over the span of two decades of history in which sea changes
were occurring in the cultures and in my professions understanding of gender and sexual
development and in the growing acknowledgment of the diversity of genders and sexu-
alities.
Several years ago parents would sit in my ofce crying that their child might be gay.
These days I more likely hear, Its just ne if hes gay, but I just couldnt deal with him
being transgender. Marlene Shyer might have been one of those parents in my ofce
many years ago. I can only assume from her written account that her own evolution out
of homophobia and toward afrmation of her gay son was driven not just by the changing
times that witnessed the elimination of homosexuality as a disorder in the Diagnostic and
Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1994) and the
increasing cultural acceptance of gay people, but also by her deep personal bonds with her
son. Will the same transformation over time be possible for the 21st century parents of
transgender children with transphobia as the next frontier to be traversed?
Both internally and interpersonally, what can we identify as the dynamics of that
transformation? What will allow some families to submit themselves to a psychological
soul-searching process in which they confront their own anxieties and aversions to their
gender nonconforming childs presentation so as to give their child space to nd his or her
own gender identity? What makes other families surrender to either coercive or manip-
ulative measures in an attempt to legislate their childs gender outcomes? There are some
obvious answers that concern the open versus close-mindedness of the community
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surrounding the family, the religious or philosophical beliefs deeply embedded in the
parents psyches, and the level of anxiety about the childs safety in a world unfriendly to
a gender nonconforming child. All of these are factors that originate in the environment
outside the family. I shift the focus to the intrapsychic and interpersonal dynamics that
emanate from within the family as I offer a schematic outline that will hopefully open a
discussion and lead us toward deeper understanding of family acceptance versus rejection.
In these pulsating family organisms, I have been able to differentiate three different kinds
of families of gender nonconforming or transgender children: (1) the transformers, (2) the
transphobic, and (3) the transporters. Albeit overlapping and never so clearly delineated,
for claritys sake I would like to present each family type separately.
Transformers
The transformers are the parents who have worked through and are comfortable in their
own gender authenticity, whatever it may be, have the ego capacities to hold and
metabolize anxiety and conict, have the capacity to de-center and recognize their child
as a separate person, and possess bonds of love to their child stalwart enough to transcend
all other adversities that might intrude on their relationship with their child. These parents
will stand a good chance of overcoming whatever transphobic reactions may reside within
them to evolve into parents who both meet their child where he or she is and become an
advocate for their gender nonconforming child in the outside world. In the seven Ts
formula, these are the parents who will achieve transformation. Some of them may have
to go through a challenging or grueling psychological process in the evolution toward
transformation. Others may have already embarked in such a process well before their
child ever came to them, either because of their own gender journey or because of a
personal existential and emotional sensitivity that permits expansiveness and creativity,
rather than rigidity and conformity, in meeting with otherness, whether in family members
or in the culture at large. Rarely, however, do parents have no issues to work out in
relating to their gender nonconforming or transgender child.
Especially for parents with a transgender child, there will be loss and mourning to be
addressed, a process that may be a necessary and painful one. I am reminded of a single
mother who embarked on a prolonged and stressful search to adopt a daughter. In her own
visions of building a family, she could envision it with a daughter, but never a son. For 10
years she lived out her dream with her adopted daughter, until her 10-year-old became
insistent that she was a boy, not a girl. Committed to accepting her child for who she (or
he) was, she nevertheless was overcome with grief that she would be losing the daughter
whose gender was so profoundly important to her as she embarked on motherhood.
Indeed, she had a great deal of mourning to do.
Many committed parents of a transgender child rush to short circuit the process of
mourning the child they had as they learn to accept the child they have lest it be
misconstrued as transphobia or transmitted to their child as lack of acceptance. Yet the
mourning process does not equate with unremitting transphobia, but rather with a
confrontation of a real life experience of losing the child that the parents had always held
in mind. In fact, if the mourning process is swept under the rug, the psychological residue
with only impede a truly transformative experience of leaving behind the child as known
to accept the child who needs acknowledgment.
Paul was the father who lamented his son going to the ball rather than playing ball.
Paul spent the rst 4 years of his son Jonathans life angry at his wife, Jennifer, and
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blaming her for cradling their son in a blissful motherson bubble that he believed shut
him out. Jonathan had always been a child who gravitated toward art and drama. When it
came to decorating his room, he chose pink and fuchsia and chiffon and rufes. The
rst-born child, he and his mother did have a very close connection, and they shared many
happy moments together doing complex art projects, these moments later becoming
ammunition for Pauls resentment of Jennifer for emasculating their son and entangling
him in her own feminine sphere. Paul himself was a sports and an outdoors man, and
connected much more easily with Jonathans younger brother, Charlie, who was all about
soccer and T-ball, the kind of ball that t Paul much better than Jonathans princess balls.
I nd it interesting that Paul held a professional position in a eld typically populated by
women, although, as is often the case, he had worked himself up into an administrative
position that drew higher wages and better status than any of his female colleagues.
For the family, Jonathans birthdays began to become fraught. Every year Paul hoped
this would be the year that Jonathan would begin being like all the other boys. Every year
Jonathan made a wish that he could be like all the other boys, both so he could t in more
with his peers at school but more important to please his father. Every year as he blew out
the candles he knew the wish would never come true. He watched how easily his father
related to Charlie around boy stuff, and he grew to hate Charlie for the gift he had that
Jonathan lacked a normative if not hyperbolic male gender presentation and the loving
attention of their father. In light of his observations of that differential attention, Jonathan
grew to believe that his parents, particularly his father, saw Charlie as an angel and
himself as the devil. Eventually, it would be exactly that belief on Jonathans part that,
when brought to Pauls attention, became Pauls wake-up call. However, until that time,
Jonathan held the fantasy of selling Charlie at a yard sale and sending him far, far, far
away, the further the better. And Ill make my parents think Charlie ran away, and that
would be the end of it.
At age 9, Jonathans desire to be female was overt and repeatedly expressed by him.
Paul and Jennifer and the boys were spending the summer in another state, and they
decided to allow Jonathan to enroll as a girl in a summer camp there. That same summer
Paul and Jennifer also consulted with a renowned specialist at a pediatric gender clinic to
assess whether Jonathan was a candidate for hormone blockers. Truth be told, the
evaluation did not go well for Jonathanhe was totally intimidated by the interview
questions and suddenly found everyone around him going way too fast into catapulting
him into a transgender category: I dont want to be a girl. I like myself just the way I am.
Yet he was still stalwart in his desire to dress up in princess costumes and be the belle of
the ball.
At that point, Paul and Jennifer were totally stymied. If the word gender was
mentioned in his presence, Jonathan burst out crying. If Paul tried to entice him to go out
and throw a ball around, he ran in his room and slammed the door. It was during this time
that I received a call from Jennifer, asking if I could work with their family. Paul and
Jennifer were beginning to get into ghts about what to do about Jonathans gender and
were becoming more and more polarized, as Jennifer seemed to ease seamlessly into
accepting wherever Jonathan wanted to go with his gender and Paul could only hold onto
to his queasiness and growing realization that he did not like the son he had and continued
to hold Jennifer accountable. Jennifer warned him and Paul himself came to realize that
his son was not changing and that either he was going to have to accept Jonathan for who
he was, or remain ever alienated from him. That is when I began working with Jonathan
and his family.
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I learned quickly that Paul had a tendency to blow up at Jonathan, who denitely could
be obstinate, rebellious, and dramatic in his feelings and reactions. In an individual
session, Jonathan cried and said how afraid he was of his father. He had memories of
being four and his father yelling at him for the things he liked to do. By Jennifers report,
Paul gets tweaked when he comes home from work and sees Jonathan in a female
get-up. With distress in his voice, Jonathan confessed to me that he was not normal
because of the boygirl thing: Well, most people arent like that, so Im not normal. In
my rst sessions with him when I asked him to list the things he would like me to know
about him, Number 8 in a list of nine items was, Im not normal, and Numbers 5 and 6,
respectively were, I love my family, Well, sometimes not.
Paul was the quintessence of a parent caught on the horns of a dilemma: I love
Jonathan (even though he is trying)/I do not like Jonathans girly self. The trigger for
Pauls transformation toward an acceptance of his gender nonconforming son came from
a simple message from me to him in a parent session: Jonathan really misses you and
thinks you dont want him. This was followed by further explanation of Jonathans
distress and pain in coming to believe that his father did not like him for who he was, angst
that was accompanied by anger, if not rage, that his father expected him to be someone
who he was nota boys boy like his little brother.
Pauls rst reaction to taking in this information was to well up with tears. Jennifer
reached over and put her hand on his knee, comforting him, but also added that what I said
rung true. Paul denitely wanted to nd his way back to Jonathan, or maybe for the rst
time nd his way to Jonathan, but rst he needed therapeutic space to freely express his
queasiness and difculty in connecting to Jonathan. The biggest mistake many gender-
accepting parents make is to sweep any negative feelings under the rug as being
politically incorrect, only to nd that the feelings get relegated to unconscious malaise
or free-oating conscious angst or irritability. Jennifer also needed help to stay with him
and listen, rather than tightening up and withdrawing when he expressed his discomfort
with Jonathans gender presentations. It was particularly difcult for her to sustain a
listening ear when Paul articulated his nurture theory that held Jennifer accountable for
Jonathans girly self and went like this: Jonathan was the way he was because of Jennifers
indulgent hovering and unwillingness to allow Jonathan an individuation process; not
being able to escape from the orbit, Jonathan succumbed to living inside it with her as a
pseudofemale; and she was all too happy to encourage it. These are not crazy thoughts;
Pauls theory about Jennifer and Jonathan mirrors traditional psychoanalytic texts that
posit that a son needs to separate from his mother to be able to identify with and reproduce
the masculinity of the father (cf. Stoller, 1985). A ght that had already been brewing for
years, Jennifer was both incensed by and dismissive of Pauls accusations of her culpa-
bility in creating a boy who was fem. As so many parents around her, she held that
Jonathan just came that way. However, her ire and dismissal only fed into Pauls feelings
that his wife indeed had something to be guilty aboutwhy else would she get her backup
so much? In turn, the conrmation of Jennifers fears that Paul felt rejecting of their
gender nonconforming son made her compensate by bending over backward to afrm
Jonathan in all his gender expressions, perhaps even going overboard beyond where
Jonathan himself was ready to go, as when they took him to the gender clinic for an
evaluation for hormone blockers.
Paul and Jennifer continued to work together to untangle these gender knots, but it was
actually through Pauls new experiences with Jonathan that Paul transformed into a
gender-accepting father. Distraught that his son thought he did not want him, Paul looked
for ways to connect with Jonathan, following Jonathans lead rather than trying to direct
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him. The irony was that it was really not so hard to do. When push came to shove, Paul
himself was not so much a Marlborough man (material that was emerging in the collateral
parent sessions), and he began to realize that Jonathan was actually not so other from
himself. They both shared an interest in the physical sciences, which is the eld Paul
worked in. Paul began to take Jonathan to work with him, where Jonathan marveled at the
wonderful things his dad got to do there. Paul made special Saturday dates with Jona-
thanthey went out bike riding and exploring nature. Paul began to take more time to
watch Jonathans impromptu solo drama productions, where Jonathan was always the
queen, the princess, or the mermaid. During this time, Paul also began to read up on
gender nonconformity and the new theories of gender health predicated on uid rather
than binary gender development.
The road to transformation had several pathways: Paul and Jennifer needed space both
together and individually to explore the full range of their feelings about Jonathans
gender presentations and possible transgender identity; they needed time to absorb the
feedback of my impressions of Jonathan from my individual sessions with him; they
needed the opportunity to take their new insights home and apply them to their interac-
tions with Jonathan. With Paul, I interpreted not only his worries that he would never
accept his son, but his fear that his son would never accept him. He had the fortitude to
examine his own anxieties about having a son who liked to wear dresses. He had the
ability to de-center off his own needs and focus on the needs of his son and how he could
meet them. He had a resilient observing ego that allowed him to explore his defenses and
his own gender angst, not just about his son but about himself as well.
By the end of a years work, Jonathan had settled into being a gender uid boy. I think
there is a good possibility that he may be a protogay boy who will evolve into a gay young
man, but that part of the story is yet to unfold. Whereas it remained true that Paul found
it much easier to accept that he had a son who was gender uid rather than a son who was
transgender, he grew to recognize that it was Jonathan, not Jennifer or himself, who would
be the architect of Jonathans own unique gender web. He saw that if he stepped in to
tweak his sons gender to his own liking, he would not only alienate his son, he might even
damage him. He loved his son too much to do that. As a transforming parent, Paul was
now ready to escort Jonathan to the ball.
The Transphobic
The transphobic are the parents who are still not secure in their own gender authenticity,
experience their child as an extension of themselves, respond to adversity in their
relationships with their child as deep narcissistic wounds, and are therefore rendered
unable to call on the bonds of love to shepherd them through the turbulent waters of
meeting up with their gender-nonconforming child. Instead, they may resort to primitive
defenses, particularly splitting and projection, and essentially spit their child out amid a
spray of disdain, disgust, or despair. These parents may be prone to the scapegoating that
Waddell (1998) pointed out is so prevalent during adolescence when an individual is
needed to disavow parts of the self and project them on to an other. During this phase,
anxiety about identity arouses an acute intolerance of difference, either in the self or in the
other. Pressures toward conformity cause the group to nd a nonconforming individual,
eject him or her from the group, and batter that person with intolerance. This dynamic
precisely describes the parents who, along with other family members, disavow their child
in a storm of transphobic reactivity that allows no room for nonconformity, transforming
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love into hate based on their childs transgressive gender identity. This group of parents
appears to have never transitioned from the stage of adolescence to truly meet the
demands of parenthood, which involve making room for a child who is a not-me.
Jesse was 15 when he came to see me. He and his mother, Marlene, heard me
interviewed on a radio program on transgender children and he looked at his mother and
said, Thats me. Can we go see her? His mother contacted me, and so began our work
together. Gender-wise, Jesse had always been a child who played outside the box, both
literally and guratively. Ever since early childhood, Jesse always preferred things
feminine. All of his friends have been girls, and through midchildhood, he reveled in
playing dress-up in girls clothes. Both of his parents were accepting and supportive of his
gender nonconforming self, but at age 8 his father suddenly died. Left with two young
children to support, Marlene quickly got involved with an acquaintance of hers, Samuel,
who moved into the home with his teenage son. Samuel was subject to violent outbursts,
as a result of having been abused as a child. These outbursts scared Jesse and his younger
sister, Claire. Whereas Jesses mother and father had always been accepting of his gender
nonconformity, he was not so fortunate with Samuel and Samuels son, Michael. Jesse
latched on to Michael, a new older brother whom he idolized, but Michael in turn teased
Jesse mercilessly for liking girl things. As Jesse reached puberty and began to express
himself alternatively as gay, gender queer, or transgender, Samuel, too, started laying into
Jesse, calling him faggot for prancing around the house in boxer shorts over leggings
and accusing him of bestiality for liking boys. Regretfully, Marlene, never recovering
from the sudden and traumatic loss of her husband and the resulting nancial downward
spiral, was now emotionally spent and totally dependent on Samuel both economically and
psychologically. This meant that Jesse lost not just one but two allies, mother and father,
as Marlene did nothing to put a stop to either Michael or Samuels harassment, becoming
instead a passive bystander to Samuel and Michaels taunting of her son. By age 15, Jesse
showed up for treatment angry and deeply gender dysphoric.
Marlene came in for regular collateral sessions while Jesse was seen individually, and
occasionally I would meet with both of them together. Samuel, however, declined
participation in the treatment, as he did not want to have anything to do with all this sick
stuff about Jesses gender. Whereas Marlene was doing her best to support Jesse in his
explorations of his gender identity, she demonstrated both impotence and unwillingness to
intervene with Samuel, either to allow me to have contact with him, to insist herself that
he attend our sessions, or to demand that he stop his verbal abuse of Jesse at home. She
defended Samuel, saying he really was a good man, and felt he was doing enough already
to support her family so she did not want to rock the boat.
During the course of the treatment, Jesse transitioned to being female, simply adding
an i to Jesse to make it a girls name. As one could well imagine, the situation at home
did not get easier. Jessie found herself angry all the time. Samuels animosity grew in
proportion, and it was during this time that Samuel accused Jessie of bestiality and called
Jessie a fag. Jessie reported these behaviors to her teachers and counselor at school, and
told them that his mother did nothing to stop them. The school, which was supportive of
Jessies gender transition, wondered whether they should report the family to child
protective services for emotional abuse. Although Samuel was the one harassing Jessie,
Jessie also expressed rage toward her mother: She just wasnt ready to have a trany. If
she was, I wouldnt have been so confused about who I ama boy or a girl. Trany babies
are like mentally retarded babiesparents should be prepared for whatever.
I never had the opportunity to either meet or speak with Jesse/Jessies stepfather, but
by all reports Samuels actions indicated that he was consumed with transphobic rejection
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of his stepchild. I think it is a fair hypothesis that the bonds of love were never secure
enough to counterbalance the vitriolic hatred this man had for anybody who dared to
transgress binary gender norms. Had Marlene been able to intervene in placing demands
on Samuel to at minimum cease and desist his verbal abuse and at best enter a therapeutic
process that would allow some dialogue on their parental experience of Jesse/Jessie,
perhaps this could have offset the transphobic process. Instead, Samuel, riddled with angry
and anxious transphobic reactions, was unavailable for treatment or reection. Marlene
colluded by nding excuses for Samuels unrelenting negativity: You have to understand,
hes had a hard life and hes going through a lot. Like many widowed parents who nd
themselves suddenly alone and nancially strapped, Marlene was caught between the
needs of her child and the dependency on a man who, ironically, she originally brought
into the family to try to make it better for her children. Marlene obviously loved her child
and made that phone call for her child to come see me, but yet was unable to de-center
from her own reliance on Samuel and center on Jessies needs to be protected from harm
at home. Thus she became complicit in the transphobic attacks on her child within her own
family. In the formula of the seven Ts, Jessies family did not stand a chance of arriving
at transcendence, a transcendence that might only proceed if Samuel was either mandated
to participate in the treatment or asked to leave the home. Yet to date there is no treatment
mandate for transphobia, as there is for other forms of abuse, so Jessies family remains
in the ranks of the transphobic.
Transporters
The transporters are a set of parents who are insidious in presentation. By all outward
appearances they appear to have completely purged themselves of any transphobic
remnants and fully embrace their transgender child. Yet, on closer examination, we
discover a ight into health or a manic trajectory toward acceptance.
When Sammi rst came to me, she was Sam. Sam had just turned 16. A late developer,
Sam looked in the mirror and noticed the beginning of peach fuzz on his face. So did his
parents, Maria and Nicco, and they began publicly acknowledging, with pleasure, the
physical signals of his budding, albeit somewhat late, transition to manhood. Rather than
feeling buoyed up by his parents glowing praise, Sam was wracked with agonizing
anxiety. He silently contemplated suicide. Maria grew alarmed, observing how withdrawn
Sam had become. She approached him and asked him what was going on. In a state of
desperation, panic, and turmoil, he blurted out, Because Im a girl. Sobbing, he told her
that he did not want to become a man; he wanted to become a woman.
For years prior to this startling announcement, Sam had hid in his room painting his
nails, looking in the mirror, and envisioning his girl self. He had known since preschool
that he was different, but mostly kept it from view, particularly in the context of the
strict Catholic school he attended. His parents noticed some of the behaviors, such as his
interest in dolls, and simply told him that he could not do those things because he was a
boy. When he persisted in these activities, his parents punished him, sometimes physi-
cally. As he grew older he became a social isolate and began to act out at school. By the
time he entered high school he was showing signs of major depression, spending most of
his time in the basement doing chemistry experiments or locked in his room surng the
web for transgender sites and joining chat room discussions with other transgender youth.
The onset of puberty was what catalyzed Sams disclosure to his mother. Before that,
behind closed doors, he could live out the fantasy of his girl self. Now his body was
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betraying him and destroying his dreams. This is not an uncommon experience for
transgender youth, with puberty experienced as a nodal point of trauma rather than a
celebratory transition to adulthood (Ehrensaft, 2009).
Sam and his family were referred to me for psychotherapy by a psychiatrist who did
the initial evaluation and determined that Sam was transgender. The psychiatrist had also
referred the family to a pediatric endocrinologist so that Sam could begin hormone
blockers forthwith to staunch the ow of an unwanted male puberty, and the psychiatrist,
the endocrinologist, and I continued to collaborate as a team throughout Sams treatment.
The psychotherapy involved a combination of individual sessions for Sam, parent ses-
sions, a sibling session for Sams younger brother to explore his reactions to his brothers
gender transition, and family sessions as needed.
When Maria rst contacted me, she reported that she and Nicco were in shock. In their
rst parent session Nicco asked, What if its just a phase? What if he comes back years
later and says, This was a mistake. Why did you let me have surgery and everything?
In their minds, both parents had already jumped ahead from hormone blockers to sex
reassignment surgery. They also were worried that Sams elite private school would
demand that Sam leave, once it was disclosed that Sam was transgender. They shared their
worry with Sam.
When I rst met with Sam, who was now asking to be called Sammi, my initial
reaction, written in my notes, was, This young person is like a train that left the
station. There appeared to be no holding back on Sam/Sammis unbridled full-
steam-ahead approach to transitioning to female. I wondered whether this was a
honeymoon period following the relief of nally revealing to his parents his
identication as a girl and whether a set of more complex feelings about his gender
transition would emerge later.
Within a matter of weeks, Sammis parents had hopped on Jessies fast moving
gender journey. Aside from expressing their initial shock, there was no exploration of
the range of feelings brought up by Sammis afrmation of a female gender. Maria and
Nicco were now providing complet family support for their child to fully live her life
as a girl, which included signing off on parental permission for Sammi to have sex
reassignment surgery before age 18. During this time Maria reported: When I look
at my child, I see a girl. Not a boy being a girl. Sammi actually had some complaints
about her mothers zealous embracing of Sammi as a daughter: Now she gets on my
case to clean my room, and says that a daughter should be neater than a son. Nowhere
on the transgender sites she had been surng on the Internet did she read that once you
became a girl, your parents make you abide by a higher state of cleanliness. Every
time I attempted to explore with either Sammi or her family the full range of emotions
they were experiencing during this transition period, I was met with either a blank
look or a closed door.
Early in the treatment, Sammi was approached by a local gender education and
advocacy organization and asked if she would be willing to tell her story publicly.
Sammi and I thought about this together, particularly because she was adamant about
not being part of the transgender community but just a girl. Sammi, with a streak of
what felt like inauthentic altruism and intellectualizing, explained to me, That would
be okay to do if its growth building for other kids. There was no reection on how
the experience of going public would feel for her own self. During that same period
Maria was eager and willing to be interviewed with Sammi for an article in Sammis
school newspaper, written sympathetically to give recognition to and support for the
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rst transgender student at their school and for transgender people in general.
3
In the
article, Maria, in words echoing Marlene Shyer, spoke of seeing Sammis identity as
a gift: God gave me my child back. This is an interesting choice of words,
suggesting the child she had had before, Sam, did not feel like hers. My own work
with Maria certainly made me wonder whether Sammi fullled Marias wishes for the
daughter she never had so rather than mourning the loss of her son, she could now
celebrate the good fortune of nally having a daughter. From shock and doubt,
Sammis parents had quickly catapulted themselves into the position of poster family
for transgender youth.
As our work progressed, I found that Sammis parents focused on myriad other issues in
their family life and made less and less reference to their childs transgender journey or their
feelings about it, simply treating it as a fait accomplidone is done. Indeed, even though
I estimated that Sammi was only at the early stages of being able to even dip her toe into the
pool of feelings about her gender transition, Maria wondered why the therapy needed to
continue: Sammi had completed all of the steps in the transition, was living fully as a girl, and
what else was there to address? Rather than transcending their initial genderist or transphobic
reactions to Sams gender nonconformity, Maria and Nicco, as well as Sammi, simply
transported themselves to a plane of existence in which all was well and we do not speak,
think, or feel of such things as mourning, confusion, angst, or conict about this gender
journey. It was my experience that this family suffered from a folie a trois, with each family
member lacking the emotional resources, reecting ego, or psychological stamina to transcend
their own personal defenses of denial, delusion, or perhaps even reaction formation. It was this
that made them transporting rather than transcendent.
As a postscript, I would add that life did not turn out to be so ne for Sammi and the
transporting came at a very high price. Unlike other transgender children and youth who
appear to settle down and develop a more cohesive and integrated core after being allowed
to transition to their authentic selves, Sammi began to spin more and more out of control,
culminating in a hospitalization and placement in residential treatment. Could this have
been averted if more effort was made to halt the transporting and move at a slower pace
toward transition, transformation, and potential transcendence? Most likely so; but the
persistent manic defenses and almost hysterical avoidance of depressive feelings cancelled
out any opportunity for reection and reverie for Maria, Nicco, and for Sammi as well.
They operated from a binary formula, transphobia 3transporting, which is never a good
substitute for a process that includes full consideration of each of the seven Ts and allows
for family exploration of the full scope of feelings, both negative and positive, that may
surface when a transgender or gender nonconforming child just shows up.
Toward Gender Acceptance
Each of these schematic familiesthe transcendent, the transphobic, and the transporting
will have work to do if they are to afrm their transgender or gender nonconforming child.
Transphobia runs through the family, yet it also can seep into the family and be bled out of it
as well. Psychoanalytic psychology has a vital role to play in facilitating this process. To begin,
we who treat transgender or gender nonconforming youth and their families need to go through
3
Interesting enough, rather than expelling Sammi from their school, as the parents feared, the
school fully embraced Sammi as a transgender student and sought out training and consultation for
both students and staff to ensure that their school community would be one of gender acceptance.
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our own process of self-reection and scrutiny of our own biases and feelings about children
and youth who go against the gender grain. We also need to unlearn theories of gender that
bound us to a binary notion of normative masculinity and femininity. Only then can we
provide the therapeutic space and emotional safety for family members to explore their
feelings and reactions to a child who comes to them as gender nonconforming or transgender.
For the families, this will not just be an opportunity to emote. Parents or other family members
will be invited to scrutinize the effects of their feelings on the children and the source of those
feelings within themselves. In the cognitive dissonance model, when there is gender negativity,
which will prevaillove for their child or gender beliefs? It is not for the parents to be blamed
but for the parents to consider what it would mean to accept the child they have rather than the
one they either thought they had or wished they could have. Some families can go through this
process on their own, others will need the help of a professional. Either way, albeit this process
takes both considerable time and emotional energy and allows for no short cuts, transphobia
can be transcended and trauma or tragedy averted. The goal is to facilitate the parents
afrmation of their childs authentic gender self and help them overcome deeply embedded
negative attitudes that stand to tatter the bonds with their child if not actually tatter their child.
In achieving this goal, our best allies and teachers will be the children themselves, as they
continue to just come to us.
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