During a visit to lobby legislators on transgender issues, Senator Carden Summers ® knelt down and told a child he would protect her. When he learned she was trans, he backed away.
On Feb. 6, a group of families met to lobby senators on issues affecting the local transgender community in Georgia. One mother, Lena Kotler, decided to take her two children with her to give the topic a human face. While waiting to meet with Democratic Sen. Kim Jackson, who they had heard was a big supporter of LGBTQ+ rights, another senator passed by — Republican Sen. Carden Summers, the primary sponsor of the state’s bathroom ban bill. Little did he know that one of the children he would be interacting with, Aleix, 8 years old, was a transgender child.
According to Kotler and other families who were present, the senator stopped to say hello. That’s when Kotler spoke to Senator Summers about how she was there with her kids to “talk to legislators about keeping her kids safe.” Although she did not mention that one of her children was trans, they were present with LGBTQ+ signage - something the Senator apparently missed when he knelt down in front of Aleix and said, according to Kotler, “Well you know, we’re working on that and I’m going to protect kids like you.”
Kotler then replied, “Yeah - Alex is trans, and she wants to be safe at school, she wants to go to the bathroom and be safe.”
That is when, according to multiple witnesses, Sen. Summers stood up and fumbled his words, repeating, “I mean, yeah, I’m going to make sure she’s safe by going to the right bathroom,” continuing to use the correct pronouns for Aleix. When asked if he would make her go to a boy’s bathroom, he then allegedly backed away, saying, “You’re attacking me,” turned around, and walked off quickly.
How can an 8 year old know if they are trans? That seems awfully young.
It’s a gender thing, not a sex thing. You don’t have to hit puberty to know.
What about you – did you know you were cis* by the time you were 8? Are you sure?
If you could be that sure, why would a trans person be any different?
(* making a statistically-likely assumption)
I am not personally on board with the the “pick a gender to define your identity”, but there are several traits I embraced that would have been “trans”-y when I came into my own self. When I was 8 I rolled with others perception and assumed everyone around me was right and I should like aspire to be a man and reject anything not manly. This has reinforced cisgender identity in most people, but there’s one kid of a couple I knew who, as soon as they wanted to explore the question of gender identity, the parents went into full “I support my trans kid” and pushed their kid hard trans. They meant well, but kids are kids and shouldn’t be held too hard to their stated choices. Putting the kid on parade in a very visible political display limits their ability to “back out” if they choose.
In short, I don’t think people should be told they “know” their gender status before they grow into themselves a bit more.
This sounds very much like your own perception and has nothing to do with the kid. It’s the adults in the room politicizing things that should be complete non-issues: how the kid identifies, how certain they are, and whether either aspect changes over time.
Did you not know your gender in 3rd grade? Some trans kids do too, especially now that there’s more awareness.
8 years old is also an extremely low stakes age to be trans, because it’s literally just clothes, name/pronouns, and haircut differences at that age.
My ex’s kid came out as trans to usat 11 or so, and like… Yeah. This is exactly the time to play with your sense of self when it doesn’t fuckin matter. We’ve been doing for generations, but all of a sudden feeling and wanting to present more masculine just gives everybody a fucking aneurysm.
Never mind the people who have nothing better to do than go to war with children grew up with David Bowie and Eurythmics and shit. 🙄
It’s so funny to me this new posturing of denial that kids can know their gender at a young age, when derogatory terms for this exact thing like “tomboy” and “sissy” have been around for generations. We have always known that some kids don’t act like their gender assigned at birth.
The only thing that’s changed is that we now know that this is actually normal and healthy, not some pathological problem that can be “solved” through abuse and shaming.
I understand, but I also thinnk things swing differently bad. If you imply a “tomboy” must be a man, because they like traditionally manly stuff, and a “sissy” should be a girl because they aren’t violent, well, that seems rough too.
Also, people evolve. Fluidity should be the emphasis at that age.
Heck, I’m not particularly on board that you should pick one and align your whole identity with your choice, whether that’s being cisgender as aggressively squishing down unfitting choices, or going trans and feeling compelled to leave all the traits of your physiological gender behind.
I don’t think it can be rigidly defined for everyone, nor should it be. Some people are fluid in that sense, some people aren’t.
Wow, what a concept! People could have a gender identity that doesn’t match traditional conceptions of ‘man’ or ‘women’! We could call it something like…‘non-binary’.
/s
Your concern trolling completely ignores points the LGBTQ+ community have already thought of and explictly accepted. Nothing you have to say points to any meaningful problem whatsoever. You’ve been posting this drivel all over the thread. Go elsewhere.
You can also be cisgender and like things the other gender likes, you know. It’s not like every man who does ballet is trans or nonbinary.
Unfortunately, America runs on abuse and shaming - not Dunkin, as previously theorized.
I often think how wild it is that there was not a single (out) gay or trans kid in all my years in primary and secondary school (graduated in '94). I wonder now how many were and either didn’t understand it enough to know it or were (justifiably) afraid to be who they were.
You’ve got a few years on me but this is very close to my thoughts whenever I hear someone decry the increase in youth who identify as LGBT+. Could it simply be more teens are more comfortable identifying because there is more acceptance?
There is still a long way to go, but it is better than it was.
I still know people my age who are hiding who they are sexually, in unhealthy or unsatisfying relationships, and that’s just those I know about.
First thing I think of is the sharp increase in left-handedness that happened once it was no longer stigmatized by society.
My youngest knew they weren’t a girl at age seven. They are 15 now and been very happy for the last four years using they/them pronouns and a chosen name.
It was always possible that one day they’d have changed their mind…hell, their cousin is non-binary as well and used he/they pronouns and a male name for six years before reverting back to the name and gender she was assigned at birth (she’s 16 now).
The important thing is to listen to your kids (and anyone who is trans, really) and trust that they know themselves infinitely better than you ever could. Let people tell you who they are, and believe them. They may refine their understanding of who they are at a later time, and you should believe them then, too. When someone decides to change their major, you don’t tell them “C’mon now…you’re a psychology major…you’ve always been a psychology major.” It’s not entirely dissimilar.
I knew I was a boy and that I liked girls when I was 8 years old. I just project that same sense of identity I felt onto others and it becomes very easy to understand why others just know who and what they are and who and what they like. The world really needs a touch more empathy.
I’m a trans woman and I started to express my self femininely when I was just a toddler. I grew up in a rural area where I was always told that I am a boy and that I will grow up into a man who will have a wife and many children. I genuinely had never heard of queer people until I was tween, when my peers started using gay as an insult. If I had been taught about queer people when I was a kid, I definitely would have realized that I am trans then, and I wish I had been because being raised as a boy when you are a girl is extremely traumatic.
People can be born with all sorts of strange and terrible conditions, but somehow there are people who think babies can’t be born with a brain that is a different sex than their body. Either that or they think the body should take precedence over the brain which is insane considering only one of those is sapient.
Just out of curiosity, how does a toddler express either femininely or masculinely?
Toddlers model behavior of the adults in their life. It can be as simple as whether they echo the behavioral quirks of the women more than the men, or vise versa.
Please be careful with this line of thinking, and don’t push children into one direction or the other.
I spent more time in my early years with my mother due to my father traveling for work, so I naturally echoed her behavioral quirks more than his. I also showed a ton of interest in traditionally feminine toys and playsets. I had a baby doll and I’d play pretend parenting. I outright demanded a little play kitchen, back when all of them were clearly decorated/colored/coded “for girls”. I wanted and they got me a barbie doll, and I played a shit ton of dress up. Never was one for rough and tumble play, sports, climbing trees, etc. More in touch with my emotions than my peers and not afraid to show them.
All that said, I’ve never had any issues with my own gender identity as a cis male. One of my earliest “writings” was “I’m going to be a dad” with a very scribbly drawing of a family.
There’s another comment on this post about a mtf telling their parents that they were a butterfly and going to be a girl, at an early enough age that the commenter didn’t remember saying it.
So kids can absolutely know, but we should be careful to never assume. If gender is a social construct, then we should also be working ourselves away from the idea that certain behaviors are masc or fem, not doubling down by saying they have any indication of a person’s gender/potential to be trans.
Masculine and feminine are useful concepts with long roots in every culture on earth. The problem is when people impose a positive or negative connotation to them. It should be considered normal and healthy for someone who identifies on the male side of the spectrum to exhibit feminine traits, and so on.
It’s just a conceptual framework that simplifies understanding. Our problems arise when we oversimplify, and forget that it is just an artificial construct we made up to explain our world.
I have a few memories from when I was somewhere between 2 and 4. One is of my sister getting some makeup (I think it was eyeshadow) for Christmas and I remember being very interested in it and trying to put it on.
Another is that I always loved hanging out in my sister’s room and I remember liking to watch her put on nail polish and I would always ask her a million questions about it while she was doing it. I also liked playing with my sisters old toys more than some of my own. My parents got me toy cars, dinosaurs, and that type of stuff, which I did play with occasionally, but my most played with toys were my sister’s old dolls.
Growing up with an older sister, I did much of the same stuff. I don’t think those activities are limited to those that grow up to identify as “female”. I think it’s perfectly fine if an adult carries that over without having to declare themselves trans. Why shouldn’t a “guy” get to like makeup and a bit more interesting clothes and like tallking to girls about stuff that “guys” don’t talk about? If they think life is easier to go wholly into transgender once they tally up the totality of their existence, cool. But early life should be about flexibility and choices being open and not having to “pick a side”.
I mean, be who you want. You can totally be AMAB and feminine and not be trans. I’m not telling people to “pick a side” or anything, just because we share similar experiences and I’m trans and you’re not (I assume), that doesn’t invalidate your existence or anyone else’s.
Idk I think if someone kept telling me one thing and my experience was different I think I could tell something is up.
Some people just know at a young age. It’s a spectrum, so some people don’t experience dysphoria until puberty, some know when they’re very young, some don’t experience dysphoria and instead solely experience gender euphoria (in this context, euphoria from presenting as a gender other than their assigned gender at birth (AGAB)). It’s complicated and not well understood.
The puberty situation was my general experience… But I also didn’t really know trans people existed when I was young and my parents really didn’t enforce any kind of gender stereotype upon me at all. I also just didn’t care about clothes because my options were just hand me downs from my cousins. Aside from just feeling like my friends were somehow operating from a different playbook I had no clue.
Then puberty hit. It registered as a mild body horror because I basically still passed but I couldn’t do the hand me downs anymore and I did some pretty unhealthy things like develop something of an eating disorder to avoid developing… I also started getting anxiety symptoms including heartburn so bad I thought I was literally dying. Life was generally so shit I didn’t where to try improving so I just clung on with my fingernails because I knew my death would destroy my family.
I am glad that being trans is on the parental radar these days. It took me til I was 21 to figure out what was happening basically in a near complete vacuum of information pmuch less to figure out what to do. I often wonder where my experiences would have differed if I actually knew transness was a thing and at what age that realization would have happened.
8 is old enough to know a lot of things about yourself. Personally I knew I hated the idea of “being a man” at that age, i just wish i had realized sooner that growing into something else was a option. My mental health would certainly be about 1000x better if I had been able to transition then instead of as a overwhelmed, forsaken and misunderstood 19 year old…
Most people know their gender about 2.5 years old. It is pretty impressive when you are parent and see that lightbulb click. One day they have no opinions at all about clothing or toys and the next day they do.
Well, in some sense they know what they are supposed to be correlated with their physiology, but “gender identity” is a bit much, and it would be a mistake for someone to close the door on that question so early in life. Now I understand “but we use gendeered pronouns on 5 year olds, so obviously it’s not open ended”, and it’s not ideal that there is a default, but ultimately, that kid is way too young to commit to that position. There’s a whole lot of mental and physical development coming their way and they should be encouraged to keep an open mind, either way.
Once again, I will point out that people only have these concerns when somebody is trans, not when they’re cis.
Also, do you think that a parent who is accepting of their kid being trans is going to be intolerant if the kid changes their mind? Of course not. No one is locking this kid into their gender identity; that’s the entire frickin’ point of the trans movement.
Your ‘concerns’ are either extremely misguided or a shield for transphobia, so you should probably knock it off.
But aren’t some people concerned about folks oppressively pushing cisgender on their kids? Rightfully so, too.
I don’t think the parents would be intolerant, I’m saying an eight year old may not have the maturity to recoginze, particularly if the parents made a huge production it of backing their coming out. For the same reason an 8 year old might be uncomfortable admitting they are trans, they may be uncomfortable after declaring trans to walk that back. Hell, I knew people who only felt comfortable admitting that wasn’t their life after all choice until college, because they were afraid of losing the social dynamic they constructed by walking back such a huge thing. I also knew people who clinged hard to “normal” until later, so it cuts both ways. My goal as a parent has been to make it clear that I will be supportive, but either choice should be “boring” and subject to change. Saying that to a currently cisgender child can change their mind and declare trans is likely considered progressive, but to make it clear that a trans person can change their mind would be transphobic.
There’s no easy answer, I think so much of the world is pointlessly gendered (interests and activities that are arbitrarily divided by apparent happenstance of genitals). I wish it wasn’t the core of identity, that something as stupidly fundamental as pronouns didn’t have to be decided based on acceptance or rejection of your default physiology.
Now… I am trans so this is my supposition and based on my discussions to cis people about the cis experience but I think there’s somethings that we actually assume about cis people.
While some cis people seem to have a very solid gender identity that is in line with the tran experience of gender euphoria that seems actually kind of rare. I think a majority of cisness is actually defined by a lack of strong feelings about their body and their experience of gender. Their assumption of gender is simply the path of least resistance. Their experimentation when they have it is out of curiosity but it doesn’t really resonate.
Do you think you would be upset at a foundational level if you woke up tomorrow in the body of the opposite sex and everyone had always known you as that way? Aside from maybe an uncomfortable adjustment of role and some interest in experiencing something different would you think that you would be terribly bothered? These sentiments can sometimes be construed as being a non-binary sort of thing - but the more I discuss the topic intimately with cis people to try and understand their experience the more that feels like the difference and particular advantage being cis represents. If you do not experience the pull and certainty of euphoria or dysphoria informing your cultural and biological needs that could be because what defines the majority of cis people is a fluidity and adaptability because of a near complete lack of preference rather than a preference that specifically matches a sex phenotype. Meanwhile transness can almost be defined as a surplus and rigidity of preference so we find ourselves trying to explain something like why we can’t easily force ourselves to choke down food we detest to someone who maybe doesn’t even experience taste.
A trans gender identity isn’t exactly always subtly experienced. A correct gendering when you don’t expect it might literally make your week. Disgust at your own body can make you run past the bathroom mirror so you don’t have to look. It’s not so much an “keep an open mind” kind of deal. You get a pack of stimuli like something entirely independent has a shock and reward system hardwired into your brain and you don’t really control how you feel about it. When you talk about worrying about fluidity I think you are kind of concerned from the cis standpoint where being nebulous in gender is quite natural. From a trans community perspective we know we are on a journey where we are essentially learning the nature of the internal reward system. Our genders are reflections of that and we generally want to ditch whatever isn’t working and update our coping mechanisms to account for changes or if we realize we didn’t actually fully understand the exact nature of the trigger that was setting us off and can change our tactics accordingly to maximize functionality and happiness.
To further the parable a kid might after years of hating olives so much they spit them out whenever they eat them decide to try them again to see if their tastes have changed… but it’s not on parents to keep putting olives on the kids plate for them to “keep options open” when the kid can basically decide at any point to just reach across a the table and get their own olives if they want them. Maybe the kid knows they don’t like olives because whenever they accidentally eat one it still tastes bad.
If someone keeps trying to hand you something you know you don’t like and you keep having to passively or actively reject it… it can be really annoying and you generally stop wanting to be around that person.
I mean, when I was a kid some girls toys looked fun. Like easy bake ovens, who wouldn’t want to eat food‽
Sure. Turns out not all humans fall into neat little boxes perfectly all the time.
Society drills gender roles into your head from birth. The more yours don’t match, the easier it is to tell at an early age.
Gender identity is very dependent on external influence, such as society and language, but is usually well established by age five. I wish I had sources for you, but there was a study done on how gender use in native language influences awareness of gender. The more gendered words are present, such as in romance languages, the earlier gender identity is established.
Eight year olds don’t need to know the definition of trans to know if they’re a girl or a boy (gender).
I understand that it is difficult to grasp when you have been indoctrinated to believe one thing that has turned out to not be true. Most people go through life never truly knowing the interior life of another person. But parents know their children.
Good question, I’ll link my comment to someone else asking the same thing: https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/comment/6550308
idk i didn’t find out until i was a grown ass adult who was sexually mature so i don’t understand how a kid could possibly know these things for sure
I imagine it is a contrast issue is why you don’t understand. Which is fine.
No one ever told me I am a fire squid wearing a human suit. Not once. If someone had decided to tell me at say 8 years old I am pretty confident I wouldn’t have been convinced. If you also asked 8 year old me if I was human I am pretty confident he would have said yes. If the world is telling you what agrees with your understanding of the world then you don’t even note it. It is a grass is green type statement. If however the world is telling you what you know to be false you will remember how strange this experience was.
Makes sense now?