Amygdalia's Blog

Gender Spectrum conference

I spent this past weekend at the Gender Spectrum conference. It was an incredible experience, during which I had the opportunity to interact with and learn from families, advocates, and professionals from around the country on the topic of gender and gender expansiveness. I met parents, grandparents, children, foster parents, mentors, and educators, and I met people spanning the gender spectrum . . . all there to teach, learn, support, and be supported.

During the course of the weekend, I experienced a truly welcoming space, where transgender and gender expansive youth and adults could completely release any fears surrounding discovery, discrimination, or violence.

There were parents going through every stage of the process with their children. Some, slightly shell-shocked, had learned this new information about their child’s identity only a week or so prior to the conference. Some were veterans, with children who transitioned a decade or more ago. A few were trying out their child’s new name/pronouns for the first time that weekend. For some, the process was going smoothly. For others, major complications stood in the way of their child being able to transition. But for every one of us, there was community.

I wouldn’t say that I learned anything completely new or earth-shattering at the conference. Rather, I had the opportunity to think about concepts of gender in new ways, and think about ways in which I, personally, can be an ally and advocate not only for my own gender expansive family member, but for the larger community.

The term itself – gender expansive – is a new one to me. I love what it embraces – everyone. As an umbrella term, it seeks to be completely inclusive. One of the sessions - which I did not attend but was able to obtain handout materials from - discussed the ways in which gender expansive youth self-identify. This is such an important concept - that limiting the terms with which we identify others still attempts to put everyone in boxes that can be understood, and will always leave out someone.

Another way to look at the idea of gender expansiveness was described in one of the sessions. Gender is not black and white, not 2 boxes that every person can fit into. Gender is not even a line, across which every individual can place themselves. Gender is, instead, a web. Like a fingerprint, no two webs are the same. Unlike a fingerprint, gender webs are not immutable. They can and do change over time. There are three main threads to an individual’s gender web – nature, nurture, and culture. These three are woven together differently for each person. This was not a completely unfamiliar concept to me, but I had not considered it within the oeuvre of gender. It is a concept that is well understood from a psychological viewpoint – that each individual’s character and personality is unique and formed by all of the experiences they have, as well as their nature (biology). So it is a very small step to recognize that gender is one piece of an individual’s character.

It’s important to stop and recognize the difference between sex and gender. As simply put as possible, your biological sex is the sex you were assigned at birth (which is a very passive description, so let’s make it further passive by adding . . . assigned at birth by the doctor who made a decision after looking between your legs). Gender identity is how you feel inside. Gender expression is the way in which you present your gender to the world. An excellent visual representation of that can be found here: http://dnwssx4l7gl7s.cloudfront.net/trevor/default/page/-/files/resources/coming...

I listened to teens talk about their experiences coming out, and fielding questions from a HUGE audience with poise and confidence. I listened to a pair of 9 year old twins discuss, with just as much poise and confidence, what it was like to be the sibling of a trans kid, and what it was like to be a trans kid with a twin sibling. A HUGE take home from these sessions (not even remotely surprisingly) is that we need to listen to our kids. If we can listen without any agenda other than understanding, our children will tell us so much about what they need and who they are. This is true for gender as well as every other aspect of our children’s lives.

I probably have so very much more than to say on the topic, and to share about the conference, but at the moment none of those lovely concepts and ideas are coming into my stubborn brain. Perhaps more later.