Words With Friends 5

JEN: Hello and welcome. You are listening to In The Den with Mama Dragons. I’m your host, Jen. This podcast was created out of our desire to walk and talk with you through this journey of raising happy, healthy, and productive LGBTQ humans. We are so happy that you’re here with us.

For many parents, learning that they have an LGBTQ child also means they have a whole new vocabulary to learn. So we’re here to give you an introduction to this new vocabulary, just a few new words each time. These definitions won’t teach you everything there is to know about these new words, but they will give you a foundation on which to build your future learning. And remember, this is an area where vocabulary is changing rapidly. We invite you to enjoy how our language changes as our understanding grows.

This time, four of our Mama Dragons have gathered to introduce and explain the following words: Gender Identity, Gender Dysphoria, Gender Presentation, and Stealth or Passing.

Gender Identity shared by Julie Turnbull from Washington

Gender identity is one’s own sense of one's own sense of self and their gender. This is different than gender expression. Gender expression is the gender someone might express outwardly like one’s hair style, clothing choice and other things that might indicate a certain gender while gender identity is not outwardly visible to others. For the majority of people, gender identity correlate with the sex assigned at birth. But for some people it can be different. The two gender identities most people are familiar with are boy and girl, or man and woman, and many think these are the only two gender identities that exist. We hear a lot about this, don’t we.  This idea that there are only two genders and that each individual must be either one or the other. This is called the “gender binary.” But we have many examples throughout human history of societies that have seen, and continue to see, gender as a spectrum, and not limited to just two possibilities. In addition to these two identities, other identities are now commonplace, which is difficult for many people to understand. We have come a long way as a society in accepting the sexual spectrum. And now it’s time to understand and accept the gender spectrum.

The youth and young adults today are not bound by the gender binary, and instead they are establishing a growing vocabulary for gender. It’s more than just a series of new words. It’s a shift in language represents a far more nuanced understanding of the experience of gender. Terms that represent the broad range of experiences of non-binary people are growing in number, for instance Genderqueer. This is a term that is used both as an identity and as an umbrella term for non-binary identities. This is one example of a term for those who do not identify as exclusively masculine or feminine. This evolution of language is exciting And it can also be confusing as new terms are created regularly, and because the meaning of a particular term can vary from person to person.

Gender Dysphoria shared by Arlo Dennis from Florida

What is Gender Dysphoria? In my other life, meaning the one not on Facebook, I sometimes guest lecture to college classes or continuing education programs about “Supporting Transgender and Gender Diverse Youth and their Parents and Caregivers.” As part of that guest lecture I try to help attendees get a better understanding of what gender dysphoria is, and how it affects our kids. I talk them through the basics of the DSM5 definition, and I also share this, written by my son Grayson Moore:

"Have you ever gotten carsick? Carsickness, like many other forms of motion sickness, occurs when your inner ears and your eyes disagree about whether you're moving. Gender dysphoria is like that. Awful, nauseating, headache-inducing wrongness from the disagreement of your mind and body. And you feel it every time you wear the wrong clothes, or are called by the wrong pronoun, or hear your own voice, or someone looks at you and sees something you aren't; every time you look in the mirror, every time you think about yourself it's like a knife in the gut because it's wrong, wrong, wrong. It's not you but it won't go away and it won't stop and it hurts. It hurts like nothing you can imagine and nothing I can describe. It's so bad that I would literally rather die than feel like that again, even for a day."

Lots of times cis people describe gender dysphoria as a mismatch between brain and body, but that understates the reality that many trans people experience. For my son it was distress; it was PAIN. And unlike carsickness, for six years he couldn’t get out of the car.”

Gender Presentation shared by Pannay Guigley from Wisconsin

Gender presentation, sometimes called gender expression, describes how a person dresses, looks, and acts, in ways that might affect how other people view their gender. Someone who wears men's clothing and acts in a masculine way has a masculine gender expression. Someone who wears women's clothes and acts in a feminine way has a feminine gender expression. This is different from gender identity because people can choose to look or behave one way even if that is not how they feel inside, for example, cisgender individuals who participate in drag.

Because people assume gender based on external appearances, many people, especially those who are misgendered often, will make a conscious or subconscious effort to align their external appearance with that which will allow them to pass as the gender they identify as. This is a form of passing, although it can also be seen as a form of assimilation.

Be careful not to assume another person’s gender based on gender presentation or expression alone. For example, a cishet woman can be butch, a pansexual trans man can identify as twink, a genderqueer person can present as femme, a cishet man can be androgynous. There are trans people who, for whatever reason, do not have a gender presentation that matches their identity. Presentation and identity are not the same thing.

Stealth/Passing  shared by Lisa Renaud from Ontario, Canada

Let’s talk about stealth and passing. A transgender person is stealth when they are living as their affirmed gender without publicly stating that they are transgender. A transgender person is passing when it is not apparent in their public life, that they are transgender.

Why would someone be stealth? Does this mean that they are ashamed of being transgender? A transgender person might choose to be stealth for their own safety. Unfortunately we live in a world where violence against transgender people is a real risk. This violence ranges from hateful language, to assault, to murder. In many places transgender people can still be refused service, or fired from their job, simply for being transgender.

A transgender person might choose to be stealth because because having their transgender status brought up regularly makes them feel conspicuously different, or it would be triggering of their gender dysphoria.

A transgender person might choose to be stealth simply because they value their privacy.None of these reasons imply that they are ashamed of being transgender.

So why aren’t all transgender people stealth?
 For some people being stealth is not an option. For many trans people who transition after going through their natal puberty their body is changed in ways that makes it so they do not “pass” as a cis person of their gender. Their height, build, or voice may make it obvious that they are transgender. Other people may choose not to be stealth so they can be agents for social and political change. These people forego “passing privilege” so that they can help broaden people’s understanding of their experience as a transgender person.

DO NOT “out” a transgender person who is stealth. How public they wish to be is their decision, not yours, to make. If you out someone you are potentially compromising their safety. This is particularly important for parents to remember. Your child’s life experiences are theirs, not yours, to tell. Please protect their privacy.

JEN: Thanks so much for joining us here In the Den. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with your friends. We’d also love it if you could take a minute to leave us a positive rating and review on whatever platform you’re listening to us on. Good reviews make us more visible and help us reach more folks who could benefit from listening. But review or not, we’re glad you’re here. For more information on Mama Dragons and the podcast, you can visit our website at mamadragons.org or follow us on Instagram or Facebook. And if you’d like to help Mama Dragons in our mission to support, educate, and empower the parents of LGBTQ children, donate at mamadragons.org or click the donate link in the show notes.