Change can be good, and is often needed to improve justice, but we need to be careful of unintended repercussions. As we work to improve the lives of transgender and intersex people, we need to have a broader imagination.
As a child, being conservative Mennonite and all, I was taught a few role differences for men and women. Having babies and keeping house (usually) was for girls. Being a pastor and bringing home the bacon was (usually) for boys.
One thing I was never told by my parents was that I should behave in a more feminine manner. My aunt tried to teach me feminine ways, but then she moved 7,000 kilometres away and thus was no longer much of an influence. As a result, I don't know how to bat my eyes or look down demurely, nor do I step aside for a man approaching me on the sidewalk.
I am protective, combative, frequently argue, find myself in disputes challenging authority and ask pointed questions. A hammer and nails, an oiling jug and bicycle chains, these are the things that kept me busy as a young girl. My favorite colours and patterns are bold, not soft and ruffled.
Barbie? Well, I didn't cry when my brothers bit off her toes, I was angry. Dolls and babies? Well, let's just say it cost me some critical thinking when 17-year-old me found myself marrying a man who loves babies. Sometimes it seems that my sole claim to any shred of "femininity" or female quality is low upper body strength, the contrary ability to bear children easily and my body's ability to squeeze every bit of energy out of every single calorie I consume.
So, if my little self was in school today, what would I be told about who I was? Would I be encouraged to explore my identity on a broad spectrum of acceptable female qualities? Would I be encouraged to identity as potentially male? Would I be told that since my interests lay in non-traditionally feminine stereotypes, I was possibly not a girl? Would I be told that since I love to debate and usually prefer the male conversation in the room that I was likely male? Would the normally confusing adolescent years result in removing my ability to bear children because a well-meaning but ill-informed advocate helped me discover my male identity? Would my parents, trying to support me, and seeing my many male tendencies, agree?
The current clumsy handling of transgender advocacy and awareness is unfortunate. In efforts to create acceptance for gender diversity, we need to be careful to not give girls the message that their non-typical interests and strength are male characteristics. Girls should not ever feel the only solution for a strong, mechanically, minded girl, is to become a man. This would be an insidious form of misogyny.
Let's not revert to narrow ideas of femininity, where strength, boldness, and a preference for Tonka toys over Barbie dolls, will once again be the domain of men and boys. Efforts to accommodate and teach about gender diversity need to be carefully, scientifically, taught, so that we don't damage another generation with incomplete or unscientific ideas about gender. I may not be the one in charge of how this is taught in schools or people's homes, but I do have a right to speak up; loudly, decisively, with authority and boldly, in order to protect the gains of feminism. I may not fit the typical female box, but I am a woman.
I want us all to see women as diverse and strong. Women and girls don't need to be pigeon-holed back into neat and tidy boxes, just because we lack imagination in correcting historic wrongs.
