Sarah & Ian Hoffman

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What’s Dumb and What’s Not

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“You know what’s really dumb?”

Pink pajama-clad Sam was cuddled up next to me on the bed, his long blond hair freshly brushed and damp from the bath. While Sam won’t admit at school that he likes pink things anymore, he still enjoys his pink pajamas at home. He looked me in the eye before going on: “It’s really dumb that it’s OK for girls to wear whatever they want, but it’s not OK for boys.”

I told Sam that next Friday I’d be speaking at a synagogue about this very issue (in honor of Transgender Remembrance Day, which memorializes people who have been killed because of anti-trans hatred). I reminded him of what we have talked about many times: that standards have changed for girls, and they will also—in time—change for boys. “Good,” Sam said. “Because if they don’t, I’m going to yell at those people who keep wanting it not to change.”

I told Sam I do that for him by writing and public speaking (and that I try to use my inside voice). I told him he’s welcome to do that too when he gets older, and until then I would do it for him. He asked about other parents who were working on changing things too, and we talked about the new book My Princess Boy. I decided to show Sam an interview with the author and a supportive therapist, so he could hear other people talk about making the world safe for pink boys.

Sam and I watched the video together. But when the therapist said, “there’s more than one way to be a boy, [and] there’s more than one way to be a girl,” Sam told me to turn the show off. “That’s wrong,” he said, surprising me—I’ve always liked and used that phrase. “They should say that there are lots of ways to be a kid, and people shouldn’t worry about if you’re a boy or a girl—that’s only important for making babies.”

That was the least dumb thing I’d heard all day.

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The Today Show and My Cloak of Secrecy

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The Today Show this morning featured an interview with mom blogger Cop’s Wife (who has identified herself as Sarah—no relation) and children’s book author Cheryl Kilodavis. Cop’s Wife’s blog about her son’s female Halloween costume had over 40,000 comments and more than a million hits at the time this post goes live, and was publicized on CNN and ABC news. And Kilodavis’ book on her gender-nonconforming son, My Princess Boy, appears in People magazine this week.

I am thrilled to see these two courageous women bringing attention to the topic of gender nonconformity, and so glad to see that tens of thousands of people have come out in support of Cop’s Wife and Kilodavis. They do have critics, nearly all of whom take issue with parents allowing their children to appear on television or in blog photos.

When writing about my son, I have chosen to keep our family’s identity hidden—I write under a pen name for our safety. When I first started writing on the topic, a parent I interviewed told me she had received death threats because she’d allowed her son to dress like a girl. After my first article came out, there were—amid letters from readers offering heartfelt support and gratitude—scary letters from critics who told me I should have my children taken away from me. I did not question my decision to write under a pseudonym.

My fellow pink-boy-parent bloggers Accepting Dad and Girlyboy Mama also use pen names. Perhaps in part because of our anonymity, we have never gotten the sort of attention that Cop’s Wife and Kilodavis have. When I published my first article and essay on pink boys, I got calls from talk show hosts (everyone from Tyra to Oprah), asking if I’d talk on their shows—with my son. When I said I’d be glad to appear, without my son, they lost interest. Some of the media frenzy over Cop’s Wife and Kilodavis is their willingness to expose that which I have stubbornly refused to make public. Do I feel a little pang that I don’t have a million people looking at my blog? I do. Does that make me doubt my decision to maintain our privacy? A bit—though not enough to change my mind. But does it make me judge Cop’s Wife and Kilodavis for their choice to go public? No way.

I’m incredibly grateful to these two women for bringing the issue of gender nonconformity out into the open in ways that I have not. Readers and viewers responded because stories are so much more potent when there are real people attached—otherwise People magazine and the Today Show would not have perked up their ears (no other picture book about a pink boy has made it into People; no other moms of pink boys have made it onto the Today Show). By talking about their sons in the public way that they have, they’ve opened up a necessary national dialog about why gender-nonconforming boys are scoffed at, ostracized, and bullied. By being unconstrained by my privacy rule, these mothers are perhaps paving a way to a time when families like mine do not have to hide—a time when boys like mine don’t have to fear for their safety.

The world I wish for is one in which the mother of a pink boy would not have write cloaked in secrecy for fear of violence against her family. And I’m thinking that Cheryl Kilodavis and Cop’s Wife, each in their own way, brought us one step closer to that world.

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Book Review & Giveaway: Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away with Another Spoon

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Please note: while comments on this post continue to be welcome, the giveaway is now over.

Jacinta Bunnell, author of Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away with Another Spoon, kindly sent me a copy of her book for review—as well as one to give away! To enter to win this imaginitive, gender-bending coloring book, please leave a comment at the end of this post. The winner will be randomly selected and notified by email—so please either friend me on facebook or include your email address in your comment so I can notify the winner.

Sometimes the Spoon, illustrated by Nathaniel Kusinitz, envisions what I am passionate about: a world where everyone can be themselves without fear.

Each page offers a graphic/textual vignette—some re-imagine classic fairy tales, and others come fresh from Bunnell’s broad imagination. The book expands the definition of what it means to be a boy or a girl, as well as explores different family structures, races, levels of physical ability—all the different ways that people can look and act and be when they are simply themselves.

“Our culture ridicules sensitive boys, tough girls and other children who do not fit into gender categorization,” Bunnell writes in the book’s introduction. “If we allow all people to unfold naturally into their true selves, we pave the way for a healthier, more loving world.”

Kusinitz’s drawings are simple, whimsical, and engaging—as my five-year-old daughter attests. Ruby loved the page captioned “Marriage is so gay,” excitedly coloring the pair of brides atop a wedding cake.

I especially adore the very first page, which pictures a furry horned monster with earrings, a bow in his hair, and a diminutive pocketbook—with the caption “Some beasts like pretty things.” There are plenty of pages that will appeal to pink boys (“Prince Charming searched high and low for the owner of the glass slipper…to find out where to get a pair in his size”) as well as tomboys (“Dinosaurs are a girl’s best friend”). And it does a nice job of bringing the two together (“For every girl who throws out her E-Z Bake Oven, there is a boy who wishes to find one”).

My eight-year-old gender-nonconforming son Sam does most of his own drawing these days and isn’t so interested in coloring books—but he studied the text of Sometimes the Spoon intently. As a coloring book, Sometimes the Spoon will light the imagination of kids as young as three, if they have reading help, and will appeal to most older kids as well. I know that if Sam had had this coloring book when he was struggling as the only boy in his kindergarten class who liked to dress up as a princess, it would have made all the difference. And the upper age for this book? The sky’s the limit—I’d color it myself if my kids would let go of it.

Bunnell dedicates the book to “everyone who has ever felt left out,” saying: “May there always be a place in this world for you.” Exactly. Buy Sometimes the Spoon Runs Away with Another Spoon (it’s available here) for all the kids on your holiday list—because what better gift than the message of self-acceptance?

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