At birth, and usu­ally even be­fore that, we take a peek at our ba­bies’ gen­i­tals.

“Is there a hole, or is there a pole?” we ask, be­fore loudly ex­claim­ing

for the world to hear: “It’s a boy!” or else, “It’s a girl!” and cer­tainly

never any­thing else.

Then, it’s a mad race to buy the toys and the jam­mies and cel­e­bra­tory cakes—all color-coded,

of course. We would­n’t want any­one to get con­fused. A boy? It’s all in blue!

A girl? Pink pink pink!

Be­fore they are even born, we be­gin push­ing them into the gen­der roles which

we ex­pect them to oc­cupy. In time, they’ll grow and learn how to be proper men or

proper women.

And the best part? They do most of the work on their own! They, see­ing the other

lit­tle boys and girls around them, shape them­selves to be like the oth­ers.

Why? Be­cause they want to fit in. Who does­n’t? Our daugh­ters see the other

girls around them, and want to be like those other girls.

They i­den­ti­fy with those girls, and when one iden­ti­fies with a group,

one can’t help but de­sire to fit in. It’s hu­man.

But what hap­pens if a boy does­n’t iden­tify with all the other boys?

What hap­pens if he in­stead iden­ti­fies with all the other girls?

We can brain­wash a lot into our chil­dren, and it is a good thing we can: we can

teach them right from wrong, to be po­lite, to fol­low the golden rule.

But we can­not con­trol which gen­der they iden­tify with.

Be­fore they’re even born—per­haps even while we’re rush­ing around try­ing to

find the pink or blue toys and cakes—our chil­dren get their gen­der iden­tity

hard­wired into their brain.

Gen­der iden­tity is­n’t mag­i­cal. It is­n’t some weird force. A boy who iden­ti­fies

with girls is­n’t go­ing to au­to­mat­i­cally love pink, want to play with dolls, want to be

a princess and dream of rid­ing uni­corns.

Then again, be­ing a girl does­n’t mag­i­cally do any of those things ei­ther.

But when an ap­par­ent boy who iden­ti­fies with girls sees the other girls lik­ing those

things… he’ll won­der why he does­n’t, too. And when this “boy” thinks that

girls are sup­posed to do cer­tain things or act in cer­tain ways, “he” may won­der…

should­n’t he be do­ing those things too?

Imag­ine his con­fu­sion when we tell him that no, he must­n’t do those things,

for he is a boy! He un­der­stands that we say he’s a boy, but he does­n’t

un­der­stand why he feels like he should be like the girls!

One group could pos­si­bly em­pathize with him, but that group is the very

one he is for­bid­den from be­ing a part of: girls. He feels the same need

that all of the other girls feel; that of­ten-un­rea­son­able need to meet, or

at least come close to, so­ci­ety’s ex­pec­ta­tions for girls.

Those ex­pec­ta­tions are al­ready of­ten im­pos­si­ble to reach for those

we do ac­knowl­edge as girls. But for the poor “boy”?

He can’t even get in the neigh­bor­hood. Not even on the same planet. And if

he but makes the slight­est at­tempt, to at least con­vince him­self that

he’s do­ing some­thing right, he’s torn to shreds by those who think he

should be male.

If we truly value what is in­side, rather than what is out­side, then how

can we say this “boy” is in fact a boy?

She’s no boy. It’s ob­vi­ous.

She is who she is: a girl.