Little boys are made of slugs, snails and puppy-dog tails, according to the old nursery rhyme, while little girls are made of sugar, spice and everything nice.
So what is Graeme Williams made of?
The seven-year-old local boy behaves like a little girl. As the story by Frank Peebles in Wednesday's Citizen explains, Graeme prefers to wear dresses and play with dolls.
He's just a little boy but he doesn't behave how we normally expect boys to behave. According to his parents, David and Kerry, this is not something that just started or that he's doing to get attention. This is how he's always been and he's showing no signs of changing.
Normal is the problematic word here. Most of the time, it's a safe and comforting word - "your blood pressure is normal" - but when used to describe human traits, the word turns into a weapon. Normal becomes a tool to separate us from them, the right from the wrong, the safe from the threat. Normal and its antonym, abnormal, became words used to justify prejudice and hatred of others who are different.
Graeme's parents, David and Kerry, would be the first ones to admit Graeme is not normal. That's why they've formed a local support group for "gender creative" children. They know their son is not normal but they also know he's not unique, either, not in Prince George and certainly not in Canada (there is a national support group called Gender Creative Kids Canada).
No doubt , however, that Graeme's parents tell him the same thing all parents tell their children. You're special but you're just like everyone else, too. You have to obey the rules, you have to go to school to learn, you have to be a good person and you have to treat others with respect if you want them to do the same to you.
That's all Graeme's parents want from his teachers and his classmates. After some initial hesitation, it appears School District 57 will now recognize gender creative children and take steps to make them feel welcome and included, while also being vigilant for bullying. In other words, the school will now reinforce that important message about how Graeme is special (not normal, if you must) but also no better or worse than his classmates.
Normal isn't the only kind of language that can be a problem for children like Graeme and their parents. In a world of labels, what are kids like Graeme called? The phrase "gender creative" is hyper politically correct, but at least it's better than "gender nonconforming," "gender independent" or "gender variant."
Some like the more relaxed phrase "rainbow kids" or just "rainbows." In segments of the aboriginal community, they are called "two-spirited."
In French, however, the politically correct terminology falls away and they are matter-of-factly called "enfants transgenres" or "transgendered children."
Transgender is a loaded adult word, so it's no wonder many parents avoid it for their children. To make matters worse, transgender gets crossed up with even more explosive words like "transsexual" and "transvestite."
Transgender is more accurate because it takes sex and sexuality out of the equation and focuses on the identity of the individual and what seems like a simple question: what are you?
For most, the equation is a boy or girl, man or woman, one or the other but for some, it's not that simple. For the transgendered, their body may identify them as one gender but their mental sense of self points to the other. That stands in sharp relief to intersex humans, who at the chromosome level aren't clearly male or female and exhibit that difference in a multitude of internal and external physical variations.
Intersexuality, homosexuality and transgenderism are not human inventions. Biologists have observed all of these physical and behavioral variations in other mammals and across the animal kingdom. The more we learn about nature, the more we see the incredible diversity of life on this planet. Humans, like every other living thing, are a product of nature.
In the end, we are all, including Graeme, as nature made us.
