International School Parent Magazine - Autumn 2019

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INTERNATIONAL SCHOOL PARENT AUTUMN 2019 | 48
UnderstandingGENDERIDENTITYin the World ofGlobal Nomad FamiliesImagine your son beaming with joy about wearing hisbright purple dress to Kindergarten, his first week in a newinternational school, in a very socially conservative regionof the world. Does your gut clench? You aren’t alone if it does.Even the most open-minded people understand that our world isstill heavily gendered, and that there are consequences for kids whodon’t play by the spoken and unspoken rules about how boys andgirls “should” act. There are also consequences for the parentsof kids who behave in gender expansive ways, and it is the fear ofthe consequences for ourselves as parents and for our kids that leadlots of parents to worry and wonder quietly: “What is all this newgender stuff?”A gender expansive child is a child whose clothing, toy, game,and/or friend choices is different from what is expected of thembased on the sex they were assigned at birth. In a nutshell, theirinterests and tendencies expand beyond the limited “boys do this”and “girls do that” boxes. As you set out to read this, maybe youare a parent whose child is somewhat (or very) gender expansive.Maybe this doesn’t apply to your family at all, but you know otherfamilies on this journey and you’d like to learn to be a good ally.Maybe you are admittedly suspicious of this seemingly new trend,and you are uncomfortable with something that seems unnatural.Statistically speaking, odds are very good that there are genderexpansive and/or transgender children in your communities rightnow. In this Part One of a Two-Part series I hope to shed somelight on “this gender stuff.”First, some definitions:Sex Assigned At Birth: The way the doctors labeled you (mostoften male or female) after a peek at your outwardly visible bodyparts.Gender Identity: Your internal, personal, heart-and-head-feltsense of how male, female, both or neither you are.Cisgender: Refers to the identity of a person whose body parts(Sex assigned at birth) are aligned with their internal heart/head feltsense of gender (Gender Identity).Transgender: Someone for whom their body parts (sex assigned atbirth) are different from their internal felt sense of gender (genderidentity).Gender expression: How we express our internal felt sense ofgender to the world.Parents often have questions as they begin to understand that bodyparts do not determine gender, and that gender is broader than twosimple categories.1Is it normal for kids to be curious and “try on” othergender identities?It is absolutely a healthy part of child development to explorea wide range of interests and clothing. Why else would preschoolshave such wonderful costume/dress-up sections? But trying onclothes or finger nail polish or playing with toys (gender expression)usually associated with “the other gender” is not the same thingas trying on gender identities. We know from research and clinicalexperience that of the children who behave in gender expansiveways, some grow up to be cisgender, heterosexual adults. Othersgrow up and identify as cisgender and gay, lesbian, bisexual orpansexual. Yet others grow up identify as non-binary or transgender(Ehrensaft, 2016).2How will I know if my child is transgender?As you can see above, just because your child is genderexpansive in early childhood, it doesn’t mean that theywill inevitably identify as a transgender child/teen. Dr. DianeEhrensaft (of the UCSF Gender Clinic and The Gender AffirmativeModel) notes that when children are insistent, persistent andconsistent about their transgender identities than it is an indicatorthat their internal felt sense of gender is different from the way theworld expects them to be. We know that many children whose bodyparts are different from their internal sense of gender feel increasingdysphoria (upset) as their body develops and/or as the worldaround them treats them as if they are their sex assigned at birthrather than in alignment with their felt sense of gender. Childrenwho are merely experimenting with gender expression (trying onINTERNATIONAL SCHOOL PARENT AUTUMN 2019 | 49
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