I wish that as a culture, we would give kids the information they need and the time to explore and experiment.
In particular, (a) we should stop assuming that every kid is cis, (b) we should start encouraging kids to explore gender, so that trans kids have a better chance to figure things out early, and cis kids have a better perspective, and © we should expose kids to a wider variety of role models, including butch womyn and fem men.
There’s plenty of pictures of me as a kid dressed up as a girl. And having a preference for things “soft” and “pretty” and preferring mom to dad and wanting sisters and not brothers.
I’m still a fairly well-adjusted cishet dude. Because these traits in kids aren’t necessarily signs of actual transgender identity (any more than cross-dressing is). Family stories about how I insisted I was a girl and grew my hair long early in life are often told to prospective dates (and entirely in keeping with my rather stubborn childhood tendencies in general).
Gender identity isn’t a state locked in from birth, it’s something we come to understand as we negotiate the confluence of our biology, our society, and our mental self-image. It can’t help but be bound up in our understanding of what it means to be of a certain gender in the world. Because of that, claims of being one gender or another should largely be treated as provisional until later in life (as in, probably post-pubescence).
Yeah, I’m not disagreeing, I’m just pointing out that an 8 year old’s personal gender choice isn’t necessarily final. It may be. It also may not be. Treating it as an absolute part of their identity would be a mistake in any case. Accepting whatever that choice is and encouraging them to explore what that’s like is good in any case.
Identity is a waste of time, a conceptual phantasm.
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