Charlie Glickman on How We Identify Ourselves, Outside of the Gender Binary

Part of what got me to read this article was the title, Cisgenderfluid. For those outside the gender studies world, cis refers to a biological male or female, while trans refers to a a person who has adopted their natural gender in opposition to the one in which they were born. The terms cis and trans come from the world of chemistry.

I was drawn to this article because I have often identified myself over the last 2-3 years as cisgenderfluid, not knowing this was not an actual term in use. I live as a cis gendered man but experience myself as gender fluid:

Sometimes we feel male, and sometimes female. Often, we're someplace in between...or else we're both or neither . . .

Charlie Glickman wrote a brief but interesting post on this topic, and I guess he gets credit for adding the term cisgenderfluid to the lexicon of gender studies.

Cisgenderfluid

Charlie Glickman
Mar, 08, 2014

“How do you identify?”

That’s often a tough question for me to answer. As a general rule, I’ve shifted away from identifying as anything because I’ve found that when I do, it can be hard to let go of that self-identity when things change. In my experience, life brings lots of surprises that are difficult enough to navigate without adding the challenges of changing an identity. When I hear people say things like “I can’t be attracted to that person. I’m straight/gay/queer/lesbian/kinky/vanilla/etc.”, I see how their identity crisis is complicating their situation and I try to avoid setting myself up like that.

At the same time, there are words that I sometimes use to describe myself because they convey some useful information. Some of them are: queer, kinky, poly, able-bodied, white, Jewish, pagan, atheist, male, and cisgender. But many of these have been mutable over time.

In the last couple of years, I’ve been playing more with gender. I’ve always run a lot of yin energy and I’ve had a lot of fun exploring how that plays out in my life. On an energetic level, I feel very balanced between male and female and I like how that works for me. At the same time, using words like “genderfluid” to describe myself hasn’t felt accurate. I’ve called myself cisgender because it seems to accurately describe my baseline. I’m very present in my masculine body and in being a man. I’m also very aware of how I move through the world and that I receive the privilege that cisgender folks accrue. I know that receiving cisgender privilege feels like a misgendering to some people, but it doesn’t feel like that to me (even while I resent living in a world that gives me that privilege while denying it to so many others). I don’t experience tension or conflict between how I feel physically and how I feel energetically and emotionally, and I don’t think that transgender fits how I feel. So how do I describe myself when I’m simultaneously a cisgender man and genderfluid?

Obviously, by creating a new word: cisgenderfluid. It honors the cisgender aspects of my life while making room for the gender-creative parts of my psyche and my life. It acknowledges that I don’t face the same challenges that most trans* and other gender-transgressive folks do, and recognizes that I don’t fit into the standard box that masculinity comes in. It gives me the freedom to play with gender and to queer it, and it provides a foundation on which to stand. It makes room for the fact that my baseline is cisgender while creating space for me to step away from that when I feel like it. It expands the conversation about gender in some ways that I really enjoy, and it recognizes that I often occupy the space of both/and.

I’ve been talking with friends about this over the last few weeks and the more I have, the more this word feels like a good description for where I am at this moment in my life. I think there’s a lot of room here to play in and I’m going to check it out for a while. And if you’re curious about these terrains or if you think you might want to explore them, I invite you to come and join me.

Gender Fluidity: Gabrielle Burton at TEDxColumbus

This is a nice, though TED-style brief talk on one of my favorite gender-related topics - gender fluidity. Burton explores the notion that gender is fluid, revealing insight into a culture that makes us question social roles and assumptions we may not even be aware we are promoting.

Gabrielle Burton: Gender Fluidity (TEDxColumbus)

At one point a few years ago, Gabrielle’s worlds of being a filmmaker, conscious observer and parent collided. Fueled by her upbringing by thoughtful, feminist, and creative parents and being in business with her four sisters, her current project has put her ‘out there’ in ways she’d never imagined. By challenging presumptions and misunderstandings, Gabrielle will explore the notion that gender is fluid, revealing insight into a culture that makes us question social roles and assumptions we may not even be aware we are promoting.

Gabrielle Burton
Filmmaker. Writer. Activist.

Gabrielle’s Website
Facebook
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About Gabrielle:

Gabrielle is a writer/director/actor whose current project is as director of Kings, Queens, and In- Betweens, a documentary about the fluidity of gender identity as seen through the window of drag queens and kings in Columbus, Ohio. Her feature and short film credits include: Manna from Heaven (MGM/Sony), Temps (Netflix), Just Friends (AMC/We Channel), The Happiest Day of His Life (MTV/Logo), Letting Go of God (Showtime), as well as nationally released commercials and PSAs. As a director, Gabrielle got her training in film school at the Ecole Superieure d’Audio-Visuel in Toulouse, France, where she received a DEUP degree with High Honors. Gabrielle worked on the television program Law and Order in their director training program. After an Isobel Briggs scholarship to study music at Berklee College of Music, she won a Rotary Scholarship to study film in France. Her short, Sage and Time, was selected for the La Corrida International Film Festival in France, and Gabrielle was invited as the opening night speaker to show Manna from Heaven at La Corrida’s 10th film festival. A graduate of Harvard/Radcliffe, Gabrielle is a published poet, and also wrote and directed the full length plays Sage and Time and Club Venus at the ART’s Loeb Ex theater. She was featured on the Voice Of America program and in the Harvard CRIMSON. She just received the Thomas A. Milhelmus Editor’s Award for an essay she wrote on the giant turtles in Malaysia, which will be published this fall by the Southern Indiana Review.

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Ms. Burton's next project, Kings, Queens, and In- Betweens (see here for more about the film), also looks very interesting and fun.

Kings, Queens, and In-Betweens (to be completed this year) is a documentary on the fluidity of gender identity as seen through the window of drag queens, kings, and transgender performers in Columbus, Ohio. Perhaps surprisingly, Columbus has one of the most imaginative, diverse drag scenes in the country, set in the middle of Ohio as a complex, politically important swing state. Drawing on interviews and performances by entertainers (from those who only do drag as a form of show business to those who use drag for personal exploration), KQIB challenges common assumptions about drag and gender.

KQIB will be the first film to include the whole gender performance spectrum — queens, kings, and transgender performers.

Twenty years since the groundbreaking film “Paris is Burning” was shot, this is a chance to move the conversation forward, showing how drag both entertains and pushes the envelope — making us question binary categories of male/female, gay/straight, butch/femme. KQIB captures how these terrific performers tackle the complexities and pathos of gender expression, personal identity, and human rights — all with humor, great music, big hair, and duct tape.

Have We Entered the Era of Gender Fluidity? Quite Possibly . . . .

I have written quite a bit on this blog about the idea of gender fluidity (see here, here, here, and here, as a start), but I did not believe there would be any cultural apparent move in that direction for quite a while. I was - I am very pleased to say - incredibly wrong.

That is what I learned in this short clip from NPR's All Things Considered.

A growing number of young people are standing in solidarity with their transgender and genderqueer peers. They do so in a number of ways, one of which is to answer (when asked about themselves) with their name, their age (or year in school), and their preferred gender pronouns (he/his/him or she/hers/her). To do so is to acknowledge that cisgender (see this page for an explanation of gender terminology) is only one of many possible gender identities, to stand against the traditional notions of a gender binary. Better still, some young people are rejecting gender labels of any kind.

The nature of gender fluidity transcends and includes gender normative structures - all forms of gender expression become available to each person, either one at a time or simultaneously. In this model, the need for labels on gender expression ceases to be relevant.

Young People Push Back Against Gender Categories

by MARGOT ADLER
July 16, 2013 4:53 PM



All Things Considered
7 min 50 sec | Download

As society has become more accepting of gays, lesbians and even transgender people, a new generation of young people is challenging those categories in favor of a more fluid understanding of gender. They refuse to be limited by notions like male and female.

Brian Mustanski, Ph.D. - What Is Sexual Orientation (and Bisexuality and Sexual Fluidity)?

This comes from Brian Mustanski, Ph.D., at The Sexual Continuum on the Psychology Today blog site. He asked Meredith Chivers, Assistant Professor at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. She runs the Sexuality and Gender Laboratory (SageLab), and is "dedicated to understanding gender differences and similarities in sexuality, including sexual psychophysiology, sexual orientation, and sexual functioning."

In addition to the video embedded in the post, I have added a couple of additional videos from her on the topics of sexual fluidity and bisexuality.

What is sexual orientation?

by Brian Mustanski, Ph.D. in The Sexual Continuum
Published on March 30, 2013

We asked Dr. Meredith Chivers, "What is sexual orientation?"

It may seem obvious what it means to be gay (attracted to the same sex) or heterosexual (attracted to the opposite sex), but what does sexual orientation mean?

We asked that question to Dr. Meredith Chivers at a Special IMPACT interview series at a SpeakOUT event at Center on Halsted, Chicago, IL.

Dr. Meredith Chivers says that everybody has a sexual orientation and sexual drive that we don’t consciously think about. Who we are attracted to is an automatic process.

Dr. Chivers has appeared on numerous TV shows, published extensively on topics of sexuality, and even shared sex column advice for Savage Love. She is an Assistant Professor at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada. Her Sexuality and Gender Laboratory, SageLab, is dedicated to understanding gender differences and similarities in sexuality, including sexual psychophysiology, sexual orientation, and sexual functioning. Here's what she had to say:

(Note if the video below doesn't load you can view it here: http://www.impactprogram.org/youth/dr-meredith-chivers-what-is-sexual-orientation/).

~ Dr. Mustanski is the Director of the IMPACT LGBT Health and Development Program at Northwestern University. You can follow the Sexual Continuum blog by becoming a fan on Facebook. He periodically live tweets from research conferences on sexuality and you can follow him @sexualcontinuum.

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Bonus videos:

What Is Sexual Fluidity?



What Is Bisexuality?

This article comes from NPR's 13.7 Cosmos and Culture blog. Barbara King reports on an incident that happened in Virginia (where she lives) in which a transgendered woman was asked to leave a spa (with sex-segregated baths) because of five complaints that she didn't look feminine enough (she is a marathoner and happens to be muscular). The complaints had nothing to do with her genitalia, only her muscular appearance.

From this story, King moves into the complex world of fluid gender identities, something this culture is going to have to deal with as more and more people become gender-queer (whether they identify that way or not).

Flexible Gender Identities Confound Expectations Of A Male And Female World

Riya Suising

by BARBARA J. KING
March 14, 2013

Last month, a traveler from California named Riya Suising came to Virginia (where I live) on business. While here, Suising decided to visit a spa and relax in its communal, sex-segregated baths, something she, a marathon runner, often does at home.

iStockphoto.com

What happened next shocked her. The spa's manager asked Suising to leave, based on what he said were five complaints lodged by other spa customers. For some people, Suising — who, by her own description is tall and muscular, with broad shoulders — did not look feminine enough to be sitting in the female baths.

Suising, a transgendered person, told The Fairfax Times: "None of the complaints, as they were described to me, referenced my genitalia in any way. I can't believe that they would discriminate based on physical appearance. I was not doing anything but keeping to myself."

It's that comment of Suising's — I was not doing anything but keeping to myself — that I find most poignant. And this was no momentary lapse in judgment for which the spa subsequently apologizes. No, as The Fairfax Times article makes clear, it's the spa's policy to not accept what it terms "any kinds of abnormal sexual oriented customers," a policy that's been interpreted as legal in Virginia.

I learned about what happened to Suising from my daughter, Sarah Hogg, after discussing with her a book we'd both just read: Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinberg. In this novel, a young person named Jess Goldberg, born female, struggles for many years with gender identity.

As an adolescent, Jess identifies as butch in a butch-femme culture, and later takes steps, including hormone therapy and breast-reduction surgery, to pass as a man. Later still, Jess embraces an identity that is neither wholly female nor wholly male.

Repeatedly, Jess loses hir job (this pronoun is meant to adress Jess' blended identity). Jess is also attacked and beaten. The attacks occur not only when police raid the bars Jess visits in the 1960s and 1970s (both before and after Stonewall), but also when Jess is out in the everyday world, shopping or waiting for the subway. In other words, harm comes to hir even when Jess is not doing anything but keeping to hirself.

There was something different about Jess. For some people, being unable to categorize hir as male or female upon sight was disconcerting enough to trigger discrimination, or worse.

Author Feinberg, a political journalist and gender activist, notes in an afterword that, though fiction, the book is "Real all right. So real it bleeds."

I asked my daughter Sarah — who thinks about these things in the course of her leadership role with James Madison University's Madison Equality organization — two questions: Was it believable that someone who just looked different would be the target of such discrimination in the everyday world, even when keeping to hirself? And even if that result had occurred decades ago, weren't people more informed, aware, and accepting now?

That's when Sarah showed me the article about Suising. While Suising wasn't physically harmed at the spa, the incident clearly and understandably has caused her much emotional pain. What happened at that spa was wrong. Suising identifies as female: end of the story (or it should be). As with anyone, she should be judged on her behavior, not her appearance.

I've written it here before: there's so much gender variety in our world, beyond a strict, imagined born-male versus born-female dichotomy. Some people identify as female, some as male, some as both male and female, some as neither. Feinberg has the character Jess speak this truth through fiction:

Who was I now, woman or man? I fought long and hard to be included as woman among women, but I always felt so excluded by my differences. ... Who was I now, woman or man? That question could never be answered as long as those were the only choices; it could never be answered if it had to be asked.

~ You can keep up with more of what Barbara is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape

Men and Women Are Not so Psychologically Different After All

Well, imagine that, men are not from Mars and women are not from Venus. Turns out that the reality is, as many of us have been arguing for many many years now, that the differences within each gender are far greater than the differences between genders when it comes to a variety of psychological facets of personality. In essence, the gender binary is false - gender is a spectrum.

This comes from Raw Story.

Study debunks notion that men and women are psychologically distinct

By Eric W. Dolan
Monday, February 4, 2013

“Although gender differences on average are not under dispute, the idea of consistently and inflexibly gender-typed individuals is,” Bobbi J. Carothers of Washington University in St. Louis and Harry T. Reis of the University of Rochester explained in their study. “That is, there are not two distinct genders, but instead there are linear gradations of variables associated with sex, such as masculinity or intimacy, all of which are continuous.”A first-of-its-kind study to be published in the February issue of the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has dealt a devastating blow to the notion that men and women are fundamentally different when it comes to how they think and act.

Analyzing 122 different characteristics from 13,301 individuals in 13 studies, the researchers concluded that differences between men and women were best seen as dimensional rather than categorical. In other words, the differences between men and women should be viewed as a matter of degree rather than a sign of consistent differences between two distinct groups.

Numerous studies have examined gender differences between men and women. Carothers and Reis were able to find a whopping 3,370 articles on the topic in 2011 alone. The vast majority of the research examined the average differences between men and women. The research can easily be misinterpreted as finding that “Men are better at X” or “Women are worst at Y” — ignoring the fact that the studies are comparing averages and contain variance.

“The world presents us with a huge amount of information, so we often take shortcuts to help process it all (this is known as the ‘cognitive miser’),” Carothers explained to Raw Story in an email. “One of those shortcuts is a tendency to categorize things — it’s easier to think of 2 things (men are one way and women are another) than it is to think of all of the nuances of overlapping distributions, particularly if they’re not brought to our attention when we hear about an average difference.”

Many researchers, particularly those who were “evolutionarily oriented,” appeared to “favor a more categorical interpretation of gender differences,” Carothers and Reis wrote. They speculated this was because no research had actually addressed the specific question of whether gender differences were categorical or dimensional.

If men and women were psychologically distinct from one another, then their scores on psychological measures should form large clusters at either end of a spectrum with little overlap between the two groups.

This is the case for physical characteristics such as height, shoulder breadth, arm circumference, and waist-to-hip ratio. Men tend to be tall, have broad shoulders, large arm circumference, and a small waist-to-hip ratio, while the inverse is true for women. A man is extremely unlikely to be taller than a woman, yet have narrower shoulders, for instance.

Yet the same could not be said for the myriad of psychological characteristics examined by the two researchers, including fear of success, sexual attitudes, mate selection criteria, sexual behaviors, empathy, and personality. A man could be aggressive, but verbally skilled and poor at math, for example, combining stereotypical masculine and feminine traits.

“It’s not enough that men, on average, score higher than women on a scale of masculinity,” Carothers told Raw Story. “Nearly all of the men would have to score higher than nearly all of the women on nearly every item of the scale. We did not see that level of consistency with the psychological variables we had.”

Layers of Sexual Identity - A Meditation

[The picture is of the gender-pop band, Girlyman.]

For many years there has been an interesting phenomenon in my life wherein my "straight" identified friends believe without hesitation that I am, like them, a straight male, and likewise, my gay friends believe that I am a gay man who simply has not decided yet to fully embrace my true nature. I've always found this amusing.

Generally, I do not much think about it until someone asks me if I am straight or gay. Someone asked me that the other day, someone who does not yet know me very well, and I actually had to think about the answer. Often, if asked if I am gay or straight, I answer, "Yes." This time, however, I answered, "No."

For most of the rest of the day, I thought about the various layers of sexual identity in my life. It seems that interpersonal context, social environment, and a host of other factors all play a role in how I perceive my sexual identity and how others perceive it. The reality is that the two seldom are in sync, except among close friends. What follows are a few reasons why that may be so.

(1) Culturally Straight: As far as the mainstream culture is concerned, I am a straight white male who loves sports, who is in a committed relationship with a woman, and who has none of the style skills often associated with gay men (I like athletic shorts or cargo shorts and a plain solid color tee-shirt, and getting me to dress up is on par with getting the GOP to increase taxes on the wealthy). I like to lift heavy weights, break stuff up with a sledge hammer, and watch Sons of Anarchy and Breaking Bad. Sounds pretty straight.

(2) Culturally Gay: Maybe this is less true now that metrosexuality has been invented, but there was a time when a male who keeps his hair pretty short, stays very physically fit, uses hair care products, uses moisturizer, and prefers to smell like something other than body odor was, by default, gay. Then there is the enjoyment of museums, cooking, poetry, and art films - none of which says straight American male. Oh yeah, AND I am a psychotherapist - a field that is 80% women and involves talking about feelings and holding space for people who are often in severe emotional pain. Sounds pretty gay (and not "gay" in the way kids use the word today).

(3) Not Bisexual: I used to identify as bisexual when I first accepted that I am attracted to men as well as to women. Over the years, however, that label has been inaccurate in a couple of ways.

(A) It feels limiting and it accepts that there are only two sexualities, gay or straight. I reject the notion of binaries in the realm of gender and sexuality (and other areas as well). It's not an either/or choice and it should never be presented as though it is. Sexuality is fluid, as is gender identity (if we allow it to be).

(B) Most of my significant relationships (with a couple of exceptions) have been with women. For a variety of reasons, I find, in general, that I am more compatible with women, probably because I am comfortable with emotions while men (even gay men) often struggle in this realm. I also tend find many more women to be attractive than I do men.

For other men, coming to the point of being able to affirm their bisexuality is a monumental moment in their lives - see this Single Dad Laughing blog post for how difficult this can be. In whatever form people "come out," and in whatever label they choose in the process, revealing a whole other part of ourselves to others is often frightening. When that part of us is still subject to shaming and inequality before the law, it is that much more challenging. Deep bow of respect to Single Dad (Dan) for the courage it took to make his coming out part of his blog.

(4) Gender Fluid: I am clearly and unambiguously a man, biologically. However, I manifest feminine energy as much as masculine energy in my daily life, both of which are context specific. I also experience myself as more gender fluid in my interpersonal relationships, as well as at work (when I am at my psychotherapy job, I sometimes forget I am male unless it becomes part of the conversation [which it does from time to time]).

I am beginning to believe that the masculine/feminine binary is more damaging than helpful. These are poor descriptors of behaviors or traits (all of the psychological or emotional traits assigned to either M or F are essentially human qualities that are available to both sexes).

[By the way: sex is the biological makeup of an individual's reproductive anatomy; gender is an individual's lifestyle, often culturally learned - just so we are clear.]

So What's My Point?

I'm not sure that I have one - but I do think that it's useful to cogitate or meditate on these ideas from time to time. It's also useful to see ourselves and our various identities as objects of awareness rather than being so embedded in them that we are unaware.

My guess is that more and more people have experiences similar to my own these days. Although the mainstream culture is only now warming up to the idea that lesbians, gays, bisexuals, and the transgendered (LGBT) are all real people who deserve equal rights, there are a lot of people on the leading edge of cultural transformation who are beginning to grasp the fluidity of gender and even of sexual identity.

[Another by the way: transgender is not simply transsexual, it's a much broader tent that includes anyone who feels left out by the traditional gender binary (including intersex, the third recognized sex type beside male and female): "The category transgender has no singular, fixed meaning. Rather, it is inclusive of identities and experiences of sex and gender variance, changing, and blending. Although no consensus exists about exactly whom this category includes, nearly all definitions share the use of a metaphorical umbrella, which activists agree is a useful tool for political organizing outside current understandings of binary sex and gender divisions."]

 All of this makes me wonder . . .

I do not believe in the soul or any on-going personal essence that survives death (although I will not go as far as to say there is no such thing - I'm agnostic, so sue me), but I tend to think we all have some form of intangible awareness that is available to us if we seek ways to experience it. Maybe it is a soul, or buddhanature, or higher self, or Atman, or Christ Consciousness - different worldviews have different names for it - but my sense is that it is not gendered.

Okay, this is sounding like dualism, and I reject dualism (I once proposed Singularism back in grad school in the 1990s, before I knew anything about the Singularity hype proposed by Ray Kurzweil and others). So please allow me to clarify: I think we are evolving toward a time when our bodies will be male, female, or intersex, but our identities will not be defined exclusively by our biology (which is largely the case these days for a majority of people). Identity (awareness?) will be influenced or even shaped by our biology, but it will not be defined by it. We will become gender fluid, and with that, sexual identity will be seen as a continuum, not a binary.

I hope . . . . 

Born This Way - Being Trans Is Not a Mental Disorder

Finally, after decades of effort, the APA has changed the status of transgender from a disorder (Gender Identity Disorder) to gender dysphoria, a more neutral designation that does not imply mental illness. This is great news for all of the trans folk carrying the GID diagnosis, and it's progress toward accepting that transgender is real, that human beings are not confined to an either/or gender binary.

First up a report from Slate on the change from the APA which will be official with the May 2013 publication of the DSM-5. Them, from All in the Mind, a podcast on transgender identity.

Being Transgender Is No Longer a Disorder

The American Psychiatric Association salutes the T in LGBT. 

By J. Bryan Lowder | Posted Monday, Dec. 3, 2012

A transsexual person displays a poster with the picture of a transsexual person who was murdered in Uruguay. In May 2013, gender identity disorder will be replaced with the more neutral term gender dysphoria.

The Associated Press reported that the American Psychiatric Association’s Board of Trustees approved certain notable changes to that body’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders on Saturday. The story began with the controversial announcement that Asperger’s syndrome will now be included in the autism spectrum disorder category, but another change buried at the bottom of the piece may prove to be even more divisive—and, if historical precedent is any indication, more influential on society at large.

Since the third edition of the DSM was published in 1980, some version of the diagnosis gender identity disorder has been included to describe patients whose subjective experience of gender does not match their biological sex. The common contemporary term for this group is transgender, the T in LGBT. Sources within the APA now confirm that in the DSM-5, which is due to be published in May 2013, GID will be replaced with the more neutral term gender dysphoria.

Approval of this revision has been years in the making and reflects a narrowing of psychiatrists’ focus to those who experience personal distress over their gender incongruity. Those patients who feel like they need psychological help dealing with their feelings can still seek it out, while those who feel fine need not be marked as ill.

Jack Dresher, a member of the APA group dedicated to considering this issue, explained to the Daily Beast back in 2010 that his subcommittee’s recommendation came from a desire to stop “pathologiz[ing] all expressions of gender variance just because they were not common or made someone uncomfortable.” Moreover, in a recent interview in the Advocate, Dresher acknowledged that “all psychiatric diagnoses occur within a cultural context,” adding that “We know there is a whole community of people out there who are not seeking medical attention and live between the two binary categories. We wanted to send the message that the therapist’s job isn’t to pathologize.”

As any student of the history of LGBT civil rights can attest, being deemed pathological by the medical establishment is considered to be one of the biggest obstacles to social and legal progress. Indeed, the removal of homosexuality from the DSM in 1973 was a watershed moment for the early gay-rights movement, as it neutralized the argument that gay men and women did not deserve equal treatment because they were somehow sick. Unsurprisingly, many in the transgender community see the label “disorder” as having a similarly restrictive effect on their fight against discrimination. But leaving the fraught term behind may bring some harm along with the good.

As Dresher points out in his thorough analysis (PDF) of the parallels and contrasts between the gay and trans campaigns to escape the bonds of medical judgment, one important difference is the desire of many (but not all) transgender people for hormonal or surgical intervention to better align their bodies with their internal identity. Currently, insurance coverage for these procedures can be justified on the grounds that GID is a medical problem—a disorder—needing treatment. Without that argument, some transgender people—a group that already suffers from a great deal of social and economic marginalization—may now find it more difficult to finance their transitions.

For those gender-variant individuals who do choose to seek treatment, the APA practitioners may soon be prepared to offer more organized care. While Dresher and his subcommittee were debating the differences between disorder and dysphoria, another APA group, called the APA Task Force on Treatment of GID, was busy deciding if enough empirical and clinical data existed to justify the creation of a standard set of “APA Practice Guidelines” for treatment. According to a report published over the summer, the answer was a strong yes. If the APA agrees with the recommendations, guidelines could soon be established for adults, adolescents, and even children. The task force additionally recommended that the APA begin making position statements supporting the “rights of persons of any age who are gender variant, transgender, or transsexual.”

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Born this way: gender identity

• Listen now
• Download audio
• show transcript

Broadcast: Sunday 11 November 2012

Image: Craig Andrews at 8 years old (Supplied by Craig Andrews)

For some people the sex they are born with doesn’t correspond to the way they feel. 

Researchers now know there are areas of the brain that differ among men and women and those who are transgender, and new psychiatric guidelines in the upcoming DSM V, due out in May 2013, are expected to acknowledge that.

We hear the moving stories of Craig Andrews and Julie Peters and how their transition to the opposite sex has improved their mental well-being.

Julie Peters: from childhood to now

 

Guests

• Julie Peters: Born male, lives as a woman. Doctoral candidate in the school of health and social development at Deakin University
• Craig Andrews: Born female, now lives as a man. Co-ordinator of the FTM Australia network
• Dr Fintan Harte: Psychiatrist, Head of the Southern Health Gender Dysphoria Clinic Monash University, Melbourne
• Professor Milton Diamond: Researcher in sexual development and identity, School of Medicine, University of Hawaii 

Further Information

• Southern Health Gender Dysphoria Clinic
• Pacific Centre for Sex and Society University of Hawaii
• FTM Australia
• I dream therefore I am - a transgender photobiography by Julie Peters
• Julie Peters Video 

Credits

Presenter: Lynne Malcolm

Living with Your Gender Fluid Son

Last week, The New York Times Magazine ran a story called What’s So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress? Very interesting stuff . . . and no doubt challenging for any parents who have a son who likes to wear dresses.

I know a young man in his 20s who is gender fluid - he wears make-up, fingernail polish, and feminine shirts, but usually pants or shorts. When he goes out, he'll wear a dress and a wig. I can't imagine him being any other way - this is who he is and he is comfortable with it.

As the author of the article points out in an interview below, this is the first generation of boys who have been given ANY freedom to dress how they desire. And even though more parents are open to allowing their sons to express their gender fluidity, many, many more are not.

Hopefully this will continue to change and there will be a day when we can all be free to express our gender however it feels comfortable to us, without fear or judgment.

Here is the beginning of this very interesting article, followed by an interview with the author, and hen a Dads Unplugged podcast about the article.

What’s So Bad About a Boy Who Wants to Wear a Dress?

Above, a boy prepares for a fashion show at a camp for gender-variant children and their families. More Photos »

By RUTH PADAWER
Published: August 8, 2012
The night before Susan and Rob allowed their son to go to preschool in a dress, they sent an e-mail to parents of his classmates. Alex, they wrote, “has been gender-fluid for as long as we can remember, and at the moment he is equally passionate about and identified with soccer players and princesses, superheroes and ballerinas (not to mention lava and unicorns, dinosaurs and glitter rainbows).” They explained that Alex had recently become inconsolable about his parents’ ban on wearing dresses beyond dress-up time. After consulting their pediatrician, a psychologist and parents of other gender-nonconforming children, they concluded that “the important thing was to teach him not to be ashamed of who he feels he is.” Thus, the purple-pink-and-yellow-striped dress he would be wearing that next morning. For good measure, their e-mail included a link to information on gender-variant children.

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When Alex was 4, he pronounced himself “a boy and a girl,” but in the two years since, he has been fairly clear that he is simply a boy who sometimes likes to dress and play in conventionally feminine ways. Some days at home he wears dresses, paints his fingernails and plays with dolls; other days, he roughhouses, rams his toys together or pretends to be Spider-Man. Even his movements ricochet between parodies of gender: on days he puts on a dress, he is graceful, almost dancerlike, and his sentences rise in pitch at the end. On days he opts for only “boy” wear, he heads off with a little swagger. Of course, had Alex been a girl who sometimes dressed or played in boyish ways, no e-mail to parents would have been necessary; no one would raise an eyebrow at a girl who likes throwing a football or wearing a Spider-Man T-shirt.

There have always been people who defy gender norms. Late-19th-century medical literature described female “inverts” as appallingly straightforward, with a “dislike and sometimes incapacity for needlework” and “an inclination and taste for the sciences”; male inverts were “entirely averse to outdoor games.” By the mid-20th century, doctors were trying “corrective therapy” to extinguish atypical gender behaviors. The goal was preventing children from becoming gay or transgender, a term for those who feel they were born in the wrong body.

Many parents and clinicians now reject corrective therapy, making this the first generation to allow boys to openly play and dress (to varying degrees) in ways previously restricted to girls — to exist in what one psychologist called “that middle space” between traditional boyhood and traditional girlhood. These parents have drawn courage from a burgeoning Internet community of like-minded folk whose sons identify as boys but wear tiaras and tote unicorn backpacks. Even transgender people preserve the traditional binary gender division: born in one and belonging in the other. But the parents of boys in that middle space argue that gender is a spectrum rather than two opposing categories, neither of which any real man or woman precisely fits. 

“It might make your world more tidy to have two neat and separate gender possibilities,” one North Carolina mother wrote last year on her blog, “but when you squish out the space between, you do not accurately represent lived reality. More than that, you’re trying to ‘squish out’ my kid.” 

Read the whole article. So far, the article has generated 853 comments - and a follow-up interview with the author of the article. Here is a big chunk of that interview, which I think is helpful in understanding the article.

Behind the Cover Story: Ruth Padawer on Parenting Boys Who Dress Up As Girls

By RACHEL NOLAN

 

 
Tala Al Ramahi

Ruth Padawer, who teaches at the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, wrote this week’s cover article on boys who like to dress up as girls. Her last article for the magazine was on reducing a pregnancy with twins to a single fetus.

___

What was your first impression when you went from reading about gender-variant kids in forums online and talking to their parents to meeting the kids themselves?

I learned a lot from these kids. Their conviction — that it was fine to be a boy and do things typically restricted to girls — felt very deep-seated and compelling. It forced me to examine my initial disorientation at seeing a boy in a glittery “girly” outfit while insisting he felt like a boy. These pink boys offer us an opportunity to think about what gender is, what purpose it serves and why it’s been a central way of identifying someone.

The children you quote in your article seemed to find their behavior totally natural, and it was the parents who had to adjust. But aren’t there kids who crumple under pressure from their parents to behave in a more “normal” way?

I didn’t talk to kids who yielded to their parents’ pressure to conform, though surely they’re out there; just look at Catherine Tuerk — whom I wrote about — whose son tried to fit the bill. The data suggests that whether or not their parents pressure them, most “pink boys” will become significantly more gender conforming by age 10. It’s hard to know whether that’s a natural development or if it’s because they’re yielding to social pressure. Researchers themselves are uncertain.

Even the parents who consider themselves very liberal were still uncomfortable when their boys reached for dresses. Was there any factor that seemed to lead parents to accept and even encourage gender-variant behavior?

I don’t think there was any one thing. For many, it was seeing how miserable their kids were when forced to conform — and seeing how peaceful their children were when allowed to be themselves. Of course, finding support from therapists and other parents helped a lot, not only with the big picture questions — do I suppress or support this? — but with smaller decisions too. Do I let my son wear a dress to Aunt Susie’s Thanksgiving dinner so he’ll be happy, or do I prohibit it so Grandpa will be happy? Whose needs should be given more importance? What compromises are possible?

Have therapists who counsel parents on this become more accepting of gender-variant children because of changes in society, or was it some kind of theoretical shift in the field of psychology?

Therapists live in the same world that parents do, and I suspect they’ve both been quite affected by the greater visibility and acceptance of gays and transgendered folks over the last few years. Also, as more clinicians published articles and essays questioning the industry’s status quo, more of their colleagues became aware of the debate in the field.

Have gay rights advocates become actively involved in this issue?

Gay rights groups have gotten increasingly involved in the fight to expand legal protections to other sexual or gender minorities. But the change on the ground level — the social acceptance part — seems somewhat more organic, as the culture has become increasingly aware of the diversity in our society.

Finally, the Dads Unplugged podcast also decided to discuss this article - and here is that post.

What If Your Boy Likes To Wear A Dress?

Posted on 15 August 2012

The first time you laid eyes on your son, what went through your mind? Have you imagined playing together? Have you imagined playing with dolls, dressing up and having tea parties? No Dad imagines that but many find that is what happens when their boys grow up wanting to be like a girls. In a recent NY Times article, this issue was discussed at length. Todd and Kent had their own chat about what to Di when your son wants to be like a girl.

Do you force your child to be something they’re not? Do you let them go to school in dresses and wear wigs? Much of this episode focuses on this, while there is also a larger discussion about how we as Dads can be even better.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Jill Dolan - Do We Need a More Nuanced View of Sexuality?

Writing for Alternet, Jill Dolan responds to the latest LGBT controversy that arose when Sex in the City actress Cynthia Nixon said in an New York Times Magazine interview that she chose to be a lesbian. Here is a brief summary of the issue:

LGBT, feminist and queer theorists such as UC-Berkeley’s Judith Butler and University of Michigan’s Gayle Rubin propose that gender and sexuality in fact aren’t innate, but are chimeras constructed as indisputable fact by ideology and long-established cultural norms. Nixon’s announcement follows their logic. She had a long-term relationship with a man; now she’s in a committed relationship with a woman. She says jokingly that “gay is better,” but that she chose among sexual practices and relationships is most important. 

Here is what she actually said in the interview and, for the record, I agree with her 100%.

“I gave a speech recently, an empowerment speech to a gay audience, and it included the line ‘I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better.’ And they tried to get me to change it, because they said it implies that homosexuality can be a choice. And for me, it is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me. A certain section of our community is very concerned that it not be seen as a choice, because if it’s a choice, then we could opt out. I say it doesn’t matter if we flew here or we swam here, it matters that we are here and we are one group and let us stop trying to make a litmus test for who is considered gay and who is not.” Her face was red and her arms were waving. “As you can tell,” she said, “I am very annoyed about this issue. Why can’t it be a choice? Why is that any less legitimate? It seems we’re just ceding this point to bigots who are demanding it, and I don’t think that they should define the terms of the debate. I also feel like people think I was walking around in a cloud and didn’t realize I was gay, which I find really offensive. I find it offensive to me, but I also find it offensive to all the men I’ve been out with.”

The LGBT community is afraid - and rightfully so - that for Nixon to declare that her sexual relationship is a choice is to allow the conservatives to say, "See, it is a choice, and it's an immoral choice that deserves no recognition under law.

The gay community holds to the biology argument as strongly as the conservatives hold to the immorality argument - both are essentially fundamentalist arguments that hold to the belief that sexual identity is a binary, you're either gay or you're straight, and it's not a choice.

But it's not a binary - as noted in the article from Dilon, there is a large part of our gender identity and sexual preference that is socially constructed. When identity is socially constructed, there is a uniqueness to each person's relational experience, environmental influence, and biology. There are no either/or constructs in this wider perspective.

Dilon's article includes the following passage in support of Nixon:

Nixon’s insistence that she’s making a choice about her sexuality is doubly radical. She’s refusing to submit to conservative constructions of sexuality that make heterosexuality the only appropriate expression of desire and she’s advocating for a rights-based argument that isn’t rooted in biology but in practice and experience. The old models of lifelong, unwavering sexual orientation no longer adequately describe the multiplicity and fluidity of sexual practices and choices.

Exactly. Sexual preference and expression is much more fluid than most people know or - in the case of conservatives - are willing to accept about themselves.

Feministe - The Sexual Appeal of Non-Gender-Conformity

Rebecca Katherine Hirsch penned this guest post for Feministe on her sexual attraction to men who are not so gender conforming - i.e., guys who like to wear female clothes, and so on, but who are still heterosexual. Very cool of her to write this and feel that way.

The Sexual Appeal of Non-Gender-Conformity

by GUEST BLOGGER on 11.17.2011 

This is a guest post by Rebecca Katherine Hirsch. Rebecca Katherine Hirsch is an acclaimed art model, cat-lover and solo psychoanalytic discussant amongst herself and no one else. In the past she was an NFT editor, UCB comedy person, NYU graduate, Freud apologist, Minnesotan and so much more, like that one time she was THIS CLOSE to being a Babeland sex educator. She is presently hard at work on her first novel to be completed in the summer of 2085, in honor of her centenary! She is a proud member of the gender-blending, sex-positive, self-determination-respecting Barbarism collective, found here. Barbarism also makes exciting experimental videos. She is a Scorpio.

Hello! Have I a disclosure for YOU (and you and you and you):

I am attracted to men who do not hew unbendingly to unrealistic–that is to say, “traditional”–templates for male behavior. I am similarly heartened by all gendered people who work to find the courage to map out their own internal and presented identities in the face of omnipotent, implicit and explicit gender stereotypes!

I love this picture. (above)* And I would like to return to its significance momentarily.

But first! Masculinity as defined by our lovably open-minded, calmly acceptive, live-and-let-live culture is one of—oh wait, let me rephrase: Masculinity as defined by our anal-retentive patriarchy is one of EXTREME STOLIDITY and INTENSE NOTHINGNESS, big braggadocio and mind-numbing manipulativeness born of fear of emotions we demote to “women’s roles.” I do not appreciate these male stereotypes any more than I appreciate the female stereotypical mandates to be passive, sexy-not-sexual, stupid and performatory.

This is frustrating because I am attracted to men. Yet we’ve all have been taught so well to adhere to gender stereotypes. I’m constantly kicking myself for my shyness or my more socially-sanctioned sexual attitudes, only to then kick myself again for kicking myself in the first place because, after all, I’m doing my best! Now thoroughly bruised by my own kicking (what am I, some kind of archetypal female masochist?!), I must remind myself that we’ve all been manipulated by a corrupt patriarchal system. At least I’m trying to reclaim myself and unlearn the old lies. My shyness exists and my sexual attitudes are constantly in flux, so it’s cool! I’m trying.

But it’s also frustrating that so many men buy into the gender myths. Because I am attracted to men and I like male bodies. A lot. I’d intellectually like to be attracted to female bodies. After all, I am attracted to myself. Who would’t be? Look at this body. Yeah. That’s what I said. When I saw myself in the mirror. But alas, I appear to be more moved by the appearance of male-bodied creatures than female. Sexually. My loins are into it. My mind approves. All this leads me to believe I am straight. Now what?

I’m thinking about dudes. I’m into dudes; hot dudes wearing.. I don’t know: Dresses? Lace booties? My bras? A pretty hat? Jewelry? Lipstick! And… a dirndl? SO HOT. The images that just flashed through my head were resplendent.

Look at that picture!

Read the whole cool article.

“TWO SPIRITS”, Story of Murdered Navajo Teen, to Air Nationally on PBS: Independent Lens

This looks like a good film - and it's important to get the message out about hate crimes against transgender and intersexed people. This was posted at (and the film supported by) HRC Back Story, an LGBT equal rights organization.

PBS began showing the film on June 14, so it may be too late to see it on television, but I think we can watch it on the Independent Lens website.

“TWO SPIRITS”, Story of Murdered Navajo Teen, to Air Nationally on PBS: Independent Lens

By Charlie Joughin
June 9th, 2011

TWO SPIRITS is a film about Fred Martinez, a Navajo teen who didn’t want to have to choose between being a boy or a girl– he wanted to be both. According to the ancient Navaho culture, it was a gift to be born with a male body and a feminine nature. In an earlier era, he would have been revered. Instead, he was brutally murdered at the age of sixteen for embracing his identity and living the life he was born to live.

From the director of the film, Lydia Nibley:

Making the film TWO SPIRITS began when I sat with Fred’s mother at his grave and she poured out her heart to me.

The experience transformed me from someone who had very little awareness, to someone who fully embraces gender diversity, because I see how much it adds to all of our lives.The tragic story of a mother’s loss of her child to a brutal murder has challenged us to answer the question she raised, “Why are people killed for being who they are?” And learning that there was a time when the world wasn’t simply divided into male and female, and that there is a place of honor in many Native American cultures for people across a spectrum of sexuality and gender expression, has been a gift.

Vote for the film for PBS’ Audience Award here and give it 5 stars: http://www.pbs.org/independentlens/award/

Visit Two Spirits for information on ways you can help spread the word about this truly remarkable story, or to purchase your copy of the DVD. You can also purchase the video for download on iTunes.

HRC is proud to be an Outreach Partner Organization of such an amazing film.

About the Film

Two Spirits interweaves the tragic story of a mother’s loss of her son with a revealing look at the largely unknown history of a time when the world wasn’t simply divided into male and female and many Native American cultures held places of honor for people of integrated genders.

Fred Martinez was nádleehí, a male-bodied person with a feminine nature, a special gift according to his ancient Navajo culture. He was one of the youngest hate-crime victims in modern history when he was brutally murdered at 16. Two Spirits explores the life and death of this boy who was also a girl, and the essentially spiritual nature of gender.

Two Spirits tells compelling stories about traditions that were once widespread among the indigenous cultures of North America. The film explores the contemporary lives and history of Native two-spirit people — who combine the traits of both men and women with qualities that are also unique to individuals who express multiple genders.

The Navajo believe that to maintain harmony, there must be a balanced interrelationship between the feminine and the masculine within the individual, in families, in the culture, and in the natural world. Two Spirits reveals how these beliefs are expressed in a natural range of gender diversity. For the first time on film, it examines the Navajo concept of nádleehí, “one who constantly transforms.”

In Navajo culture, there are four genders; some indigenous cultures recognize more. Native activists working to renew their cultural heritage adopted the English term “two-spirit” as a useful shorthand to describe the entire spectrum of gender and sexual expression that is better and more completely described in their own languages. The film demonstrates how they are revitalizing two-spirit traditions and once again claiming their rightful place within their tribal communities.

Two Spirits mourns the young Fred Martinez and the threatened disappearance of the two-spirit tradition, but it also brims with hope and the belief that we all are enriched by multi-gendered people, and that all of us — regardless of ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or cultural heritage — benefit from being free to be our truest selves.

Tags: Two Spirits, Fred Martinez, nádleehí, male-bodied person, feminine nature, transgender, gender fluidity, culture, hate, Navajo, documentary, film, PBS, Independent Lens, two-spirit people, gender diversity, multi-gendered people, murder, hate crime

Do Pink Nails Make a Boy Gay?

This J. Crew advertisement has created a furor among certain crowds who think it is wrong for a mother to paint her paint her son's nails pink - or for a clothing company to use that image in their ads.

As you might guess if you have been reading here for any length of time, I think this is silly - pink nail polish does not make a boy turn gay. But that isn't how the wacky social conservatives see it. Erica Brown, of the conservative Media Research Center Network, asserts that this advertisement "features blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children."

Uh, yeah, sure, you betcha. And then there was this:

Dr. Keith Ablow, a conservative psychiatrist said, "These folks are hostile to the gender distinctions that actually are part of the magnificent synergy that creates and sustains the human race."

Ablow bills himself as American's Psychologist - although his TV show only lasted a season. He is a regular commentator on Fox News and has co-authored a book with Glenn Beck. Here is a little more of his perspective from his Fox News column:

Yeah, well, it may be fun and games now, Jenna, but at least put some money aside for psychotherapy for the kid—and maybe a little for others who’ll be affected by your “innocent” pleasure.

This is a dramatic example of the way that our culture is being encouraged to abandon all trappings of gender identity—homogenizing males and females when the outcome of such “psychological sterilization” [my word choice] is not known

The gender fluidity he thinks is so toxic is a good thing - rigid sex and gender roles are stifling and repressive. The majority of children have no question about who they are and will identify their gender identity with their genitals. But there are also many kids who do not fit neatly into traditional gender norms - girls who are tomboys and boys who are more effeminate. Ablow would force these kids into roles and behaviors that do not fit their felt sense of self.

But Ablow was not content simply to be annoying, he goes on to be ignorant:

Well, how about the fact that encouraging the choosing of gender identity, rather than suggesting our children become comfortable with the ones that they got at birth, can throw our species into real psychological turmoil—not to mention crowding operating rooms with procedures to grotesquely amputate body parts? Why not make race the next frontier? What would be so wrong with people deciding to tattoo themselves dark brown and claim African-American heritage? Why not bleach the skin of others so they can playact as Caucasians?

Let's start with the false conflation of sex (biological) and gender (social and cultural construct) - this has been worked out extensively over the last 50 years. Choosing one's gender role does not make one transsexual or even transgendered. There is only a very small percentage of the population who feels uncomfortable with their birth sex - and the best estimates suggest that this number has been pretty static over the last century.

And contrary to what Ablow implies here, no one is born (to my knowledge) feeling as though they were born in the wrong racial body - but at least 5-10 people out of 1,000 feel that they were born in a body that does not match their sex identity and desired gender role. My guess is that NONE of these trans men or women see it as a choice, no more so than LGB people see their sexuality as a choice.

My guess is that every one of us knows someone who would self-identify as LGBTIQ - they are family, friends, coworkers, neighbors, and people we meet as we go about our daily lives - and we often to not know that they have an alternate gender or sexual identity - they are simply members of our community - a diverse and wonderful community.

Dr. Tyger Latham, a clinical psychologist practicing in Washington, DC, who specializes in men's issues, trauma, and LGBT concerns, has written about the controversy at Psychology Today in his Therapy Matters blog. He was asked to comment on this issue by WUSA in Washington DC, and here was his view:

Dr. Tyger Latham, a psychologist with D.C.'s Dupont Therapy, said, "I can tell you un-equivocally that there is no connection, scientific or otherwise between painting your toe nails and your sexual identity."

At his Psychology Today column, he elaborated:

What Is This J. Crew Controversy All About?

Painting your toenails does not make you gay.

Published on April 15, 2011

By Dr. Tyger Latham

Last night as I was preparing to leave my office, I received a call from Ken Molestina, an investigative reporter for the local CBS-news affiliate, asking me if I had any thoughts about the recent controversy sparked by a J. Crew advertisement. If you've been following the news this week, you probably know what I'm referring to, as the image of a mother and her son has gone viral on the internet.

For those who have not already seen it, the ad (pictured above) features Jenna Lyons, a designer for the preppy clothing company posing with her 5-year-old son Beckett. I almost missed it the first time, but if you look carefully you can see that Beckett's toenails are painted pink. Underneath the photo reads the caption, "Lucky for me, I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon."

The image has outraged some social conservatives who claim that this kind of behavior torments children and confuses them about their sexual identity. Erica Brown, a writer for the conservative Media Research Center Network, wrote that the ads such as J. Crew "features blatant propaganda celebrating transgendered children."

Many people - myself included - don't see anything wrong with the ad. Personally, my first reaction was, "Isn't that a sweet photo of a boy and his mother sharing a moment together," followed by, "Huh, that boy's toenails are painted pink... that's kind of different." I'm guessing my nonchalant reaction is exactly the reason so many conservative pundits are so upset about the image, as it suggests there is nothing wrong with a child expressing himself in a gender non-conforming manner.

Gender identity comes from inside, not from something that you paint on your toenails. Nowhere in the scientific research is there any evidence that I am aware of that a child who engages in non-conventional gender activities - like a girl playing with toy soldiers or a boy playing with Barbies - predicts their eventual sexual orientation. It's just not the case. Research on gender development has shown that many children have gender preferences in the way they play, however, there is also a broad range of children who do not fit nicely into neat gender categories. True, some boys who play with Barbies will "turn out gay," but many, if not most, will grow up to be straight.

As for Beckett, the little boy in the ad, we're just going to have to wait and see if he grows up to be straight or gay. Should it be the latter, I can guarantee you that it will not be a result of his mom painting his toenails pink. Regardless of his sexual orientation, I bet Beckett will tell you when he grows up that he felt pretty fortunate to have a mom who accepted him as he was. And, isn't that after all what is most important?

~ See the Ken Molestina interview here.

Tags: media, culture, transgender, gender roles, gender fluidity, J. Crew, Erica Brown, Keith Ablow, Controversy, Tyger Latham, Psychology Today, Therapy Matters, Jenna Lyons, 5-year-old son, Beckett, pink, nail polish, gender identity, stereotypes, social conservatives