When it comes to gender and children, writes Fordham Law Professor Ethan Leib in this Boston Globe essay, there is so much said in private that needs to be expressed in public. For parents of trans kids, that conversation is more important than ever.
Behind closed doors, plenty of colleagues, most of whom have children of their own, are willing to debate how we should comport ourselves as we watch the next generation reset gender roles and expectations. Few are hugely invested in sustaining or reinforcing conventional scripts for masculinity and femininity. most concede that “patriarchy,” understood as foundational structures and practices that lead to the domination and exploitation of women, is a malignant force we all have a responsibility to resist. In part for that reason, many are allied with a trans politics that seeks to destabilize gender fixity and gender binaries.
For those of us with children who identify as trans, however, the political is personal: We aren’t just weighing abstract arguments about bathroom access and sex segregation in sports. People doing the actual trans-parenting don’t have an epistemic monopoly, of course, but it probably behooves the culture warriors to be somewhat more deferential to those of us who have firsthand experience navigating a relationship with someone in their care who asserts a trans identity.
The essay was also printed in the Boston Sunday Globe on Dec. 22, 2024.