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Psychology Today

July 8, 2011 by Sarah

I’m honored that clinical psychologist Samantha Smithstein recently interviewed me for her blogs on Psychology Today and the San Francisco Examiner. We discussed my advocacy work for gender-nonconforming kids, what it means to be a pink boy, and school bullying prevention.

Responding to Dr. Smithstein’s questions was a good opportunity for me to articulate something I’ve long felt: that writing and speaking about raising a gender-nonconforming child is a form of social activism. I never imagined that the advocacy work I’d long participated in in other forms would someday look like this—but it turns out that we don’t always get to choose the shape our work takes.

And that’s okay. Because not only is this the most important thing I can think of to do with the energy that I have for social justice—it is, I hope, making my son’s and other children’s lives better—but it’s personally gratifying and often even fun.

So thank you for being my readers, for commenting on what I write, for telling your awesome and inspiring and heartbreaking stories, and for being your own activist selves in your own communities in so very many ways.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: "gender variant" "gender nonconforming" "gender spectrum" "parenting", "Psychology Today", "sarah hoffman", bullying, pink boys, samantha smithstein

Pink Boys: Another Way

December 6, 2010 by Sarah

I am, quite honestly, beside-myself-excited about this essay, up today on Bioethics Forum and Psychology Today.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a letter to bioethicist Alice Dreger about an essay she posted on her blog at Bioethics Forum. Alice, Professor of Clinical Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwestern University, is well-known for her frank, thoughtful, and sometimes unconventional views on how the medical community approaches intersex people, conjoined twins, dwarves, and other people born with bodies that challenge cultural norms. I was quite curious to hear what this prominent bioethicist had to say about gender-nonconforming kids.

While Alice spoke eloquently in that essay about what can only be called the “warring” factions in the medical community—should we force pink boys to conform, or launch them on the transgender path?—I told Alice that there was a third, quieter point of view. What if, I suggested, instead of concluding that all gender-nonconforming kids need medical treatment (though acknowledging that some in fact do), we instead work to change how society views them? What if we shift our efforts from “fixing” these children to fixing a world that allows girls in soccer uniforms but not boys in tutus?

Alice was kind enough to listen, and we entered into a dialog which became the basis for this follow-up essay. I discovered that Alice is not only an engaging, provocative conversationalist and critical thinker, but she is open-minded, deeply curious, and, I gratefully discovered, willing to have an ongoing dialog with me—a layperson who appeared out of the blue to challenge her assertions.

The conversation—both the one between me and Alice, and the broader cultural one—is by no means over, and we invite you to chime in both on Alice’s blogs and mine.

And Alice is now my most-favorite-ever bioethicist. It’s worth delving into her website and checking out the other things that she is curious and passionate about. Let’s all give her a big hand…and I’m giving her my humblest, warmest thanks for working to forward the dialogue about how to best care for our kids.

Please read the essay and share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: "Alice Dreger", "Bioethics Forum", "gender fluid", "gender variant" "gender nonconforming" "gender spectrum" "parenting", "Interview with Sarah Hoffman", "Kenneth Zucker", "Psychology Today", "sarah hoffman", "transgender", pink boy, pink boys

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