Picture this: A chalkboard with rainbows drawn on it propped up on an easel made for children. Crayons and other props are spread out on a desk. A stuffed bear sits at attention ready for class.
“Welcome to Queer Kid Stuff! I’m Lindsay, and this is my best friend Teddy,” the host says.
This is how YouTuber Lindsay Amer begins each of their sex education videos for children.
Just after finishing their study of theatre for young audiences, Amer, who goes by they/them pronouns, fell in love with children’s storytelling. After coming out as non-binary and reflecting on their own experiences, they wanted to alleviate the lack of LGBTQ+ representation in the media for kids.
“I wanted figure out how to marry these two things that (were) coming out in my life the same time, this love for storytelling in theatre, performance and media and also my queer identity,” they said in an interview with the Toronto Observer.
Amer’s series fills a niche by educating grade school students on same-sex issues, which has been largely missing from Ontario’s public school curriculum since the provincial government made cuts in 2018. Much LGBTQ+ representation disappeared, including references to gender identity, sexuality and more.
Many LGBTQ+ students have to resort to outside sources for their sex education. A study by MediaSmarts in 2014 reported that 23 per cent of teens sought out pornography online, an unreliable source for education on this topic.
However, certain content creators are working to change the narrative for LGBTQ+ youth who are disadvantaged by the education system by making reliable information available to them in relatable terms, just as Amers is doing with Queer Kids Stuff.
Their web series “aims to eliminate stigma by properly educating future generations through entertaining video content,” according to the website.
Similar to the way Ontario’s sex education curriculum has been a topic of controversy, so has Amer’s content. The conservative censorship rules that platforms like YouTube require users to follow have affected Amer’s content, by means of demonetization and even blacklisting, a term used when a video will no longer appear in the platform’s “suggested” pages.
“I’m actually part of a lawsuit suing Google and YouTube over discrimination of the LGBTQ+ community,” said Amer. They could not comment further on the topic.
Amer’s stance is that representing diverse people means including diverse people in the conversation about representation. They believe sex education is more than just a curriculum because it shapes the lives of LGBTQ+ and non-LGBTQ+ youth alike. They want to see the schools’ sex education curriculum reflect that.
“It’s important that when you’re writing these curricula that you are consulting queer people, that you are consulting women, that you are consulting intersex folks, who are very underrepresented in sex education,” said Amer.
“It’s so important to include those marginalized voices.”
There’s a divide between those who supported the inclusivity of the 2015 sex education curriculum versus those who commend Doug Ford for the changes made during the summer of 2018 to reduce LGBTQ+ representation.
“If you look at what is provided in terms of elementary grade level discussion of LGBTQ+ issues, it’s practically non-existent. The curriculum is really too late in terms of when it starts to address LGBTQ+ issues,” said Alex McKay executive director of the Sex Information and Education Council of Canada (SEICCAN), a not-for-profit charitable organization.
McKay said that in order for a sex education curriculum to be successful, it must be relevant to all kinds of students.
In a report titled “A call to action: LGBTQ Youth need Inclusive Sex Education,” the Human Rights Campaign specifies on their website that “well-designed and well-implemented sex education can reduce risk behavior and support positive sexual health outcomes among teens.”
Egale Canada, the country’s leading organization for LGBTQ+ people and issues, released a study called Every Class in Every School that looked further into what LGBTQ+ students face in secondary schools. These were some of their findings:
55 per cent of sexual minority students have reported being verbally harassed in school.
One in five LGBTQ+ students reported being physically harassed in school.
“It’s very important that, from the very beginning, when we’re providing developmentally appropriate information to children and youth, that we are being inclusive. Kids in elementary school, for example, are aware of diversity of sexual orientation,” said McKay.
“The fact that sexual health education in schools often just ignores that sends a very negative message not only to LGBTQ+ children and youth, but it’s also sending a message to the whole school community, and it’s not being inclusive.”
Limited sex education is not only an issue for Ontarians, but an issue widely seen across the world. That’s where online educators where Amers and Nadine Thornill come in.
Thornhill, a Toronto-based expert in adolescent sexuality, is host of her own sex education web series. #SaveSexEd is a collection of videos tackling sex-related topics in an educational manner so that anyone – parents, caregivers, teachers, educators, community leaders or even youth themselves – can have positive conversations about sex and sexuality.
“If I had $1 for every time somebody said to me, ‘This is something that I did not know and never learned in school,’ I would be doing very well,” Thornhill said.
She started her journey to becoming a sex educator when she realized how insufficient her own sex education had been.
Topics like diversity of gender, of sex, or of sexual orientation are not beyond a child’s comprehension, she said.
“Those are things that young children are certainly capable of, being aware of and of knowing, it’s not going to destroy them” Thornhill said.
“By saying, ‘Okay, we have to wait until [age] 13 to have any kind of public discussion about this’ implies that there is something inherently sort of dangerous and child inappropriate about gender diversity.”
Thornhill is willing to create the content that she does if it serves the greater good, but her primary intent is to give adults the resources they need. She wants adults to have is to become responsible and trustworthy figures who can facilitate young people’s education.
“I think a lot of us don’t have a framework for how you would have this conversation in a child-appropriate way,” she said.
Content creators amongst the likes of Amer and Thornhill share one common belief that the public education system does not: LGBTQ+ youth deserve the same relevant sex education as their heterosexual, cisgender counterparts do.
“Even if children don’t have the language to express to us or even explain to themselves who they are, there is an instinctive understanding that almost all of us have,” Thornhill said.
“And so, when what they’re being taught is incongruent with what they are experiencing internally, or even what they’re seeing of the world, there’s going to be a lot more confusion that can be much more deeply entrenched.”
When Tuck Malloy transitioned into their nonbinary/transmasculine identity, they wanted to use their position as a sales lead and in-house educator at She Bop to help other people experiencing their own gender transitions and explorations.
“There were a lot of things I wanted more insight and community around,” says Malloy, “particularly in relation to the fact that a lot of those [gender-related] realizations for me came from sexual or sensual experiences.”
In addition to being a sex toy shop, She Bop also offers classes and workshops on a regular basis. So Malloy crafted a class called “Exploring Gender Identity” that centered on “exploring those questions of gender through our sensual experiences.” They built the class around two questions: “How can we heal in our bodies if bodies that are not cisgender are often places of trauma for people?” And: “How can we move towards our affirmations of gender, rather than just moving away, like ‘That’s not my gender’?”
Malloy’s class is one example of how She Bop lives up to its tagline of being “A sex toy boutique for every body.” While gender and sexuality are two different things, gender identity can play a big role in how one relates to their sexuality, and vice versa—and for people who are trans or fall outside the gender binary, navigating a sex toy shop can be alienating. Gretchen Leigh, She Bop’s education coordinator, says sex toys are often designed and marketed with cisgender people in mind, but She Bop’s staff practices “a lot of creative thinking about how our products can be used.”
Tuck Malloy (left) and Gretchen Leigh (right)
“We really try to stay away from saying, ‘This is a g-spot vibrator, and no one else with any other body parts can use it,’” Leigh adds. “We’re always thinking, ‘Who might be excluded by this packaging and this language? How can I create more room for you for the joyful exploration of your body?’”
In addition to practicing generally inclusive practices—like using gender-neutral pronouns for new customers by default and incorporating customer feedback about language and class topics—She Bop also caters directly to trans and nonbinary people by stocking a gender expression section of its store. The section includes chest binders and packers that create a bulge in the crotch area. Transmasculine people commonly use both these items, but they can be difficult to find in a brick-and-mortar shop.
“I think we’re the only place in town where you can actually try on a binder before you buy it,” Malloy says. “That is a really huge loss, particularly because binders can have a big impact on someone’s physiology.”
Like most sex toy shops, She Bop places an 18-and-older age limit on customers during regular hours. But they allow parents with underage kids to make after-hours appointments for binder fittings. Often, kids who experience gender dysphoria but don’t have access to safe binders will bind their chests in unsafe ways, using ACE bandages and other constrictive materials.
“So many kids come in and have been binding in really unhealthy ways,” Malloy says. “We’re able to offer a safe opportunity for them to try it on. It’s very sweet and very rewarding, and very adorable.”
Youth binder fittings are also an opportunity for She Bop’s staff to educate parents who are confused about gender identity and pronoun use. “We’ll get emails from parents like, ‘My kid wants a binder and I don’t know what’s up with that, but can you help?’” Leigh says. The staff will then point those parents toward books and other resources for parents of kids who are transitioning.
While the gender expression section might be separate from the sex toys, Malloy and Leigh make the point that all the products at She Bop can fulfill multiple overlapping purposes: To help someone feel empowered in their identity and give someone the tools they need to feel sexually confident.
“For a lot of people coming in here for the first time and putting a binder on—whatever their gender is—it can make them feel so good and sexy and empowered,” Malloy says. “Gender is a huge part of people’s sexual lives, and it’s a really important part of a healthy sex life—having a good relationship to one’s gender.”
It’s really not all that complicated … even though it is.
Gender identity, orientation and expression are increasingly common topics of discussion among just about everyone currently living in the U.S.
As we continue to gain have a greater understanding of LGBTQIA+ terminology and the spectrum of human sexual orientation and gender identity, it should be no surprise if the term “cisgender” has popped up in the mix of new words you’ve seen that seemingly lack clear definitions.
What does referring to someone as “cis” or “cisgender” mean?
Cisgender is a word used to describe someone whose gender identity (i.e., woman or man), gender expression (i.e., feminine or masculine) and biological sex (i.e., female or male) all align. “Cis” is simply a shortened, gender neutral version meaning the same thing.
For example, if someone is born a female (biological sex), identifies as a woman when they grow up (gender identity/orientation), and presents as a woman to the outside world, she is a cisgender woman. The same goes for someone who’s born a male, identifies as a man, and presents as a man to the outside world.
A cisgender woman may also be referred to as a cis woman, and if she is both cisgender and heterosexual, she may be be referred to as cishet.
Likewise, a cisgender man may be referred to as a cis man, and if he is both cisgender and heterosexual, he may be referred to as cishet as well.
Think of the word cisgender as an equivalent of the word transgender.
In Latin, the prefix cis- means “on this side of,” where trans- means “on the other side of.”
A transgender woman may be referred to as a transwoman, a transgender man may be referred to as a transman, and as is the case for people of any gender, their sexual orientation may fall into any of the number of identities on spectrum of human sexuality.
While it’s difficult to find a statistically reliable record of how many people in the U.S. are cisgender, transgender, neither or other, it’s been estimated that about 1 in every 250 adults, or almost 1 million Americans (0.39% of the population), identify as transgender. That figure is believed to be underestimated, and is expected to rise in the future.
It should also be noted that the percentage of people who identify as transgender is higher in international studies, nor is it necessarily inclusive of people whose identifies aren’t either cis or transgender — such as genderfluid, gender non-conforming, agender, non-bindary, genderqueer, etc. — or those born intersex, for whom the constructs of biological sex and gender may be even more fraught.
Julia Serano, writer. performer. musician. scientist and author of the book “Whipping Girl.” says the best way to understand the seemingly new nature of these gender orientations is by considering the parallel use of homosexual and heterosexual as terms.
“There was a time when there were homosexual people and everyone else was considered to be the ‘normal’ people,” Serrano explains. “Now, people think of themselves as straight or heterosexual,” but they don’t necessarily think being so makes them any more “normal” than anyone else.
That doesn’t mean cisgender people are “normal” and everyone else isn’t, but it does mean many have thought that way until recently.
And since being transgender isn’t as simple as being either a woman or man living in the body of the opposite biological sex, no discussion of gender is as simple as black and white.
Cisgender has now been added to major dictionaries, and social media forums are continually expanding the options provided for users when selecting their gender identification.
And while some cis people see the label as an insult, it’s not. The thing is, it’s really not about you.
For Mara Keisling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, a better understanding of what it means to be transgender is criticial in the fight against transphobia and the violence too frequently encountered by trans men and women.
“The lack of understanding of our humanity continues to cause us to face disrespect, discrimination, and violence, and is actually killing us,” Keisling says. “And when trans people face that and other issues like racism, ableism, and xenophobia, the disrespect and violence can be so much worse.”
And Serano believes learning about about the spectrum of human sexuality and gender orientation should be a given for us all.
People who are cisgender and have never had to consciously label themselves as such still have a gender identity, Serano says, “it’s just not one that is challenged or questioned.”
“People don’t go around all the time thinking of themselves as a straight woman or a heterosexual man,” she continues, “but it becomes useful when you’re talking about the ways in which people are treated differently in society.”
In the end, of course, we’re all human.
Neither our sexuality nor our gender define the totality of who we are as individuals, and we should treat others as such, no matter how they identify.
One day, your toddler will point to a pregnant woman, cock their head, and ask, “How did that baby get into that lady’s tummy?”
You might think it’s too soon to start teaching your innocent preschooler about sex at that point, but it’s not. In fact, some experts say, it might even be on the later side.
“Human beings are sexual beings from the time they are born,” said Dan Rice, interim executive director of Answer at Rutgers University, an organization that promotes access to comprehensive sexuality education to young people.
That’s why sex ed actually should start at a young age. Developmentally, kids are already trying to process their worlds, and their bodies are a critical part of that.
But it’s not just teaching about how their bodies develop and how babies are made. It’s crucial to start offering up lessons about boundaries, and who can — and can’t — touch them.
What many adults fail to realize is that consent begins with hugs with relatives, high fives with teachers, and tickles from parents.
“Children are trying to make sense of their body parts, and their feelings” Nora Gelperin, director of Sexuality Education for Advocates for Youth, a group that advocates for access to sexual health education and services, told Insider. “It all feels overwhelming.”
If you have young children at home, here are the important lessons you can start teaching them, and how to communicate them in an age-appropriate way.
If you can teach a child to not spread germs, you can also teach them about physical consent.
In preschool, parents are starting to have conversations about what it means to be a good friend. This helps to build a solid foundation for developing healthy relationships now, and later in life. But there’s more to the discussion than just using nice words and not pushing others. It’s important to delve into bodily autonomy, too.
“When you teach a child to cough or sneeze into their elbow,” Rice said, “you’re teaching them disease prevention and having concern for not spreading disease to others.”
Children can just as easily understand that they don’t have to embrace anyone who comes close, even if it’s a loving cousin or aunt.
“It’s a really reassuring message for a child that you are in control of your own body,” Rice said, “and that you don’t ‘owe’ someone a hug or a kiss just because they want it.”
Use accurate terminology to name body parts from the beginning, so your child doesn’t feel shameful.
Parents might be tempted to use cutesy terms to refer to genitals. Some parents will call a penis a “doodle” or a vagina a “minnie.” This isn’t a protective measure. In fact, using euphemisms sends the message that the accurate terms aren’t OK to use and that a child should feel ashamed of those body parts.
The goal is to teach children that while genitals are private, they can be talked about among parents and trusted adults.
“You call your nose your nose and your elbow your elbow,” Rice said. “So when you talk about the vulva or the penis, you should call them those things.”
Start early, before your child is even old enough to speak. Gelperin recommends using diaper changes and bath time as opportunities to practice naming body parts with your little one.
That way, she explains, as your child continues to grow and get more verbal, they already will already have the vocabulary to have open conversations about their bodies.
Referring to body parts by their correct names also plays a critical role in preventing sexual abuse.
Teaching your children to name their body parts appropriately is a safety measure since predators often prey on compliant kids who may not know the words for “vagina” or “penis.”
Kids who can’t accurately name these body parts are less likely to report abuse, Gelperin noted.
“You don’t need to go into graphic detail,” Gelperin said. “Just name them and explain that it’s normal, natural, and OK to ask questions about how their body works.”
Identify a trusted adult for your child to turn to in every situation.
It’s essential for young kids to know that they can always turn to a trusted adult during a time of need. A helpful exercise is to have them identify one reliable adult at school, at home, and one outside both of those environments. From there, it’s all a matter of emphasizing that there are grown ups available if someone has harmed them, has approached them in an inappropriate way, or if they have a difficult question to ask.
“Kids naturally have curiosity, and sexuality is a natural and normal part of being human,” Gelperin said. “When you trigger a discussion around those things, this will help communicate to your kid that you value this part of who they are and that you want them to have happy and healthy relationships.”
Dispel gender stereotypes from a young age to show that men and women are equal.
Gender-based violence and sexual violence is often rooted in a sense of inequality between genders.
That’s why it’s important to teach children from a young age that everyone is equal.
“We all deserve to be treated the same,” Gelperin said. “If we can start teaching that lesson to children when they are much younger, we’re all better off for it.”
These lessons can begin with conversations around how there’s no such thing as “boy colors” or “girl colors.” It’s helpful to emphasize there are no activities just for boys, or just for girls. These conversations can extend to toys, clothing, and costumes too.
Educating about self-esteem and self-worth teaches children that it matters how they are treated.
Another critical component is instilling in children a sense of self-importance, and the idea that taking care of themselves is just as crucial as how they treat other people. This is a foundational principle before learning other concepts related to sexual health, and consent, according to Rice.
“A truly comprehensive sex ed curriculum includes things like self-esteem, self-worth, and body image,” Rice said, “since those things all impact how we see ourselves as sexual beings as well.”
If you need help starting these conversations with your children, consider turning to Amaze Jr. It’s an online-platform developed by sexual health educators to help young children and adults communicate effectively about these topics.
So, treat the queer, queer-adjacent or curious bookworm in your life to one of these books by trans, including non-binary, authors.
Juno Roche – Trans Power
Juno’s last book, Queer Sex, was a landmark exploration into queer and trans people’s sexuality. A series of intimate interviews that delved into, well, intimacy in the trans community, and how gender identity and sexuality feed into our experiences of that.
For their latest book, Trans Power, Juno used a similar technique – a series of warm, nuanced conversations between them and other people in the trans community. Some of these were conversations with our most prominent thinkers and activists – like Travis Alabanza and Amrou Al-Kadhi – and all of them contained revelations about how gender is constructed, layers of identity and being trans.
Juno’s also breathtakingly honest about their own feelings towards their gender, an insight that is rare in an era of hot-takes and carefully crafted narratives about ‘the trans experience’.
Dr Meg-John Barker – Gender: A Graphic Guide
Author of too many books on gender, relationships and sex to name, Meg-John’s latest is a very accessible and beautifully illustrated guide to gender.
It’s perfect both for family members in need of a little education and queers wanting to learn more about how our current conversation on trans issues fits into a wider context. Written from a staunchly feminist, anti-racist and intersectional perspective, Meg-John goes deep into gender non-conformity and trans history, without assuming the reader has prior knowledge of any of those things – truly a gift.
Buy it online here or head to your local bookshop.
Glamrou – Unicorn: The Memoir of a Muslim Drag Queen
A mandatory read for anyone on the queer and/or gender spectrum who’s had a less-than-perfect coming out.
Amrou tells all our queer stories of self-acceptance and learning to celebrate every part of ourselves in some of the most heart-breaking and heart-warming pages of the year. Readers will be finding immense affinity with Unicorn and thanking Amrou for sharing their story for many years to come. – Charlie Leslau
Non-binary, Muslim drag queen Amrou Al-Kadhi sees queerness as a part of their faith.
Andrea Long Chu – Females
Short, unconventional debut book/essay/investigation from a New York Times-published writer on what it is to be female.
Chu spends this essay trying to defend the statement that “everyone is female, and everyone hates it”. She draws guidance and inspiration from the SCUM Manifesto (1967) and its author, Valerie Solanas – the radical feminist best known for shooting Andy Warhol.
In a similar style, Females is also an uncompromising and at times intense read, but rewarding.
Buy it online here or head to your local bookshop.
Samantha Allen – Real Queer America
If you buy one book on this list – and you made it this far – make it this one. We hear so much about homophobia and transphobia in the States, but that masks a truer (and better!) story about queer resistance in small towns and cities, away from the national media.
Samantha is a trans journalist, and Real Queer America weaves her own personal story of coming out, finding love and creating family with the stories of other trans people who she meets.
In a road trip across the country, she talks to activists, old friends, legislators and – most compellingly – with young trans people who are staying put in the places they were born, rather than moving to the nearest big city when they turn 18.
This book is a way of getting outside the bubble, for city queers, and it’s a non-patronising lesson in hope and resilience for all.
In much the same way that people can identify as asexual and demisexual, gender is just as fluid as sexuality. While some people may view themselves as agender (not having a gender), bigender (some who fluctuates between traditionally ‘male’ and ‘female’ identities) and gender queer (one who does not subscribe to conventional gender distinctions), others may see themselves as cisgender.
Earlier this year, for example, singer Sam Smith opened up to actor and activist Jameela Jamil about how he identifies as neither male or female. ‘I think I float somewhere in between,’ he told the British star on her I Weigh Instagram series.
Meanwhile, Queer Eye’sJonathan Van Ness and Pose star Indya Moore have both addressed their view of gender in recent years.
‘The older I get, the more I think that I’m non-binary — I’m gender nonconforming,’ Van Ness told Out magazine in June. ‘Like, some days I feel like a man, but then other days I feel like a woman. I don’t really — I think my energies are really all over the place.’
As a result of gender dysphoria (whereby a person experiences discomfort or distress because there’s a perceived mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity), several areas of society – be it a workplace, university campus or public facilities – are recognising the importance of welcoming myriad binary gender identities into their vernacular and practices.
In the ever-evolving terminology of gender identities, it has never been more crucial to understand and distinguish between them.
Here is everything you need to know about cisgender:
What does it mean to be cisgender?
According to the National Health Service’s Gender Identity Development Service (NHS GIDS), being cisgender means that you identify with the gender that you were assigned by birth.
For example, if you are born a woman and you decide that you agree with that definition, it would meant that you are cisgender.
The Merriam-Webster dictionary defines cisgender as ‘of, relating to, or being a person whose gender identity corresponds with the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth’. Meanwhile, the word itself originates from German sexologist Volkmar Sigusch, who is believed to have coined the term in the 1990s during his work on transgender experiences.
In 2014, trans and bi activist Julia Serano told TIME magazine that defining as ‘cis’ helps some individuals in society, as ‘people don’t go around all the time thinking of themselves as a straight woman or a heterosexual man.
‘But it becomes useful when you’re talking about the ways in which people are treated differently in society.’
It’s important to remember that cisgender applies solely to gender, as opposed to sexuality, and that both heterosexual and homosexual people can be cisgender. As a personal identity category, it is self-defined and not something attributed to a person from others.
Additionally, LGBT rights charity Stonewall states that the term ‘non-trans’ is also used by some people to describe cisgender individuals.
Is cisgender a new term?
Despite its 1990s origins, the term cisgender was only added to the Oxford Dictionary in 2013.
While there is no reliable statistic for how many people in the UK identify as cisgender, the number is presumed to relatively large given that the percentage of trans people is estimated at 0.0003-0.0007 per cent of the UK population, according to the Government Equalities Office 2018.
Defining cisgender as the opposite to trans, Transstudent.org states that ‘in discussions regarding trans issues, one would differentiate between women who are trans and women who aren’t by saying trans women and cis women’.
Why can cisgender be problematic?
The term cisgender has caused controversy in recent years.
In 2014, the New Yorker published an article titled ‘What Is A Woman?’ which referenced a dispute between radical feminists and transgenderism.
‘To some younger activists, it seems obvious that anyone who objects to such changes is simply clinging to the privilege inherent in being cisgender, a word popularised in the 1990s to mean any person who is not transgender,’ journalist Michelle Goldberg wrote.
In it, Goldberg alludes to activist Alison Turkos who said: ‘It may not feel comfortable, but it’s important to create a space for more people who are often denied space and visibility.’
Meanwhile, the Sunday Morning Herald states that it the term can also falsely imply that only transgender people feel the difference between their gender and sexual identities, when in fact many queer people are also conflicted with their gender and their expectations in society.
‘Others have identified the term does not properly account for intersex people,’ it explains. ‘Because intersex people have atypical sex characteristics (for example genitals, hormones, reproductive glands and/or chromosomes), it is problematic to define their gender identity in relation to the sex they were born.’
In an interview with LGBT news site Advocate.com, transgender scholar and assistant professor of English and women’s and gender studies at College of the Holy Cross K.J. Rawson, says the word is ‘not meant to be dismissive, but rather descriptive’.
What is cisgender privilege?
According to Everday Feminism, similarly to other forms of privilege (think white privilege or male privilege) cisgender privilege reflects the uniquely advantageous position that cisgender people have as the default gender identity in society.
‘We live in a society which deems transgender people (those who identify as a gender other than that which they were assigned at birth) as being a type of “other,” which results in incredibly unjust obstacles,’ its website explains.
According to the Health Line, gender privilege comes in many forms, including easy access to all forms of healthcare and a government system for official papers that correctly identifies this gender category.
However, remember that just because you are cisgender does not mean that you may not experience other forms of discrimination, such as misogyny, racial profiling or religious discrimination.
While understanding the term cisgender is fundamental, it is also crucial to shine a light on the definition of other gender subjects such as trans.
Stonewall defines trans as: ‘An umbrella term to describe people whose gender is not the same as, or does not sit comfortably with, the sex they were assigned at birth.
‘Trans people may describe themselves using one or more of a wide variety of terms, including (but not limited to) transgender, transsexual, gender-queer (GQ), gender-fluid, non-binary, gender-variant, crossdresser, genderless, agender, nongender, third gender, bi-gender, trans man, trans woman, trans masculine, trans feminine and neutrois.’
Sinai Torrejon, program services coordinator at Girls Inc., leads a class discussion on gender and sexuality at Western High School in Anaheim, California, on September 20, 2019.
It’s the second meeting of the Informed and In Charge program at Western High School, and today’s activity is called the “sexuality wall.”
The gist is pretty straightforward: At one end of the classroom is a big sheet of paper with “Sexuality?” written in blue marker. “Write down as many different terms regarding sexuality, regarding identity, regarding gender, as you may have heard,” the instructor, Sinai Torrejon, asks the class.
A mix of around 20 students from different grade levels — wearing tank tops and wide-legged pants, ripped jeans and hoodies, false eyelashes and no makeup — grab markers and get to work. They chat among themselves. “I wrote pan — pansexual,” one says. “Asexual means you don’t like nothing, you don’t have those feelings,” explains another.
The students seem calm and comfortable. Though they take the activity seriously, they’re also having fun with it: One of them uses several different markers to write “bisexual” and “lesbian” in letters that look three-dimensional, like they’re popping off the paper.
In fact, the whole classroom has a relaxed feel. The students sit on plastic chairs, not traditional desks. A table at the front holds prizes the teens can win in icebreaker games, like makeup brushes and stickers. One girl casually eats from a container of instant ramen. This is Southern California after all, where open-mindedness and chill are branded exports.
When they’re finished, Torrejon helps the students — all part of a dropout prevention program at Western called the Independent Learning Center — define the terms on the wall. LGBTQ+, she explains, “is a term that is trying to be inclusive of all the other identities and sexualities that there are.” Queer, she says, “can be used as a slur or as a derogatory term,” but now some in the LGBTQ+ community are “taking ownership of that word.”
Next, they move into a discussion of the differences between gender identity, gender expression, and sex.
“Can someone else tell you what your gender identity is?” Torrejon asks.
“No,” several students say.
“Is it okay to not be 100 percent sure yet?”
“Yes!” is the enthusiastic response from the class.
A bit later, Torrejon tells the class, “You are your own person. You are unique. You are perfect the way you are.”
Welcome to the future of sex education in America. California wants to lead the way.
But even in one of the bluest of blue states, where just about 32 percent of voters cast their ballots for Donald Trump in 2016, programs like the one at Western are getting backlash. In 2016, the state passed a law requiring that schools offer LGBTQ-inclusive sex ed with lessons on gender identity and expression as well as materials on HIV prevention and healthy relationships. Last year, the state released draft guidelines aimed at helping schools put the law into practice, and since then, parents have been pushing back — with some even taking their kids out of public schools so they don’t receive the new sex ed.
The day before Torrejon gave her lesson about gender and sexuality, parents, advocates, and even students protested outside their legislators’ offices around the state, demanding a repeal of the law. One parent, Shanda Ellsworth-Lobatos, called it “a cognitive behavior modification program to sexualize and groom your children” at a protest not far from Western.
What’s happening in California is a version of a conflict that’s likely to ramp up around the country in coming years. What some parents and conservative groups call “indoctrination,” sex education advocates call changing the world: teaching students to respect each other’s identities and autonomy in ways they hope will lead to less sexual assault, harassment, and homophobia in society at large.
As Jennifer Driver, vice president of policy and strategic partnerships at the nonprofit SIECUS (until recently known as the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States), told me: “We like to frame sex education as a vehicle for social change.”
The movement toward an education based on acceptance over abstinence
For many people in their 30s and older, the phrase “sex education” probably conjures up images of an awkward assembly in a high school gym, if it conjures up any images at all. Picture Kevin Arnold on The Wonder Years, watching his gym teacher trying to draw a diagram of the female reproductive system, but instead scrawling something that looks like a cow.
In the 1980s, the AIDS epidemic inspired states to get more serious about sex ed, and by the 1990s, most states required some form of HIV/AIDS education. But conservatives almost immediately pushed back, calling for sex education to focus on abstinence, and the messages students got about sex could be confusing — even in California.
A teacher at the High School of Fashion Industries teaches AIDS prevention in her hygiene class in New York City, on November 27, 1991.
As a high school student in Los Angeles in the 1990s, I remember getting a classroom visit from a man living with HIV who helped demystify the virus and talked about prevention. I also attended an assembly led by a woman who said that every time you have sex, it’s like putting a piece of tape on your arm and ripping it off, until the tape — which represents you — is covered in hair, disgusting and useless. This, I later learned, is a common abstinence-based lesson.
Today, 39 states and the District of Columbia require some form of sex or HIV education. But only 17 require it to be medically accurate — meaning educators can teach that condoms don’t work or that innate gender differences govern everything from how people look at their fingernails to how they carry their books. And abstinence-based education (now sometimes described as “sexual risk avoidance education”) has become more common, not less, since I was in high school, thanks to support from Republican administrations. By 2014, half of middle schools and a three-quarters of high schools focused on abstinence. The Trump administration has also been a strong backer of the abstinence-only approach — in 2018, it issued new funding rules favoring abstinence-based programs.
One big problem with abstinence-only, though, is there’s no evidence that it works. As Aaron E. Carroll reported at the New York Times in 2017, several studies have found no effect of such an approach on teen sexual activity. It also doesn’t teach students what they need to know about contraception and sexual health if they do decide to have sex.
That’s why sexual health advocates around the country have backed comprehensive sex education for years. Truly comprehensive sex ed should include information on abstinence, but also on sexually transmitted infections and contraception, Driver told me. Lessons should be inclusive of all sexual orientations and gender identities. And it’s not just about avoiding pregnancy and STIs — comprehensive sex ed, Driver said, should also include lessons on healthy relationships, consent, and decision-making, as well as analysis of cultural norms and values around sex and sexuality.
Sex education can be a “powerful vehicle to change societal norms,” Driver said (SIECUS recently made this concept part of its name, rebranding as SIECUS: Sex Ed For Social Change). For example, the rise of the Me Too movement has sparked “a lot of conversations about consent,” she said. But “very few people can articulate what consent looks like.”
By contrast, “what would a world look like if everyone had comprehensive sex education?” Driver asks. “How would the Me Too movement look very differently?”
California might be about to find out. The state has been on the forefront of the movement toward more comprehensive sex education for years. In 2003, the state passed a law requiring that HIV prevention be taught in public schools, and that all sex education materials “be appropriate for use with pupils of all races, genders, sexual orientations, ethnic and cultural backgrounds, and pupils with disabilities.”
But critics said the law was too vague, and in 2016, the state implemented the California Healthy Youth Act (CHYA), which requires that students get sex education that includes information on HIV and pregnancy prevention, healthy relationships, gender identity, and more — including abstinence — at least once in junior high and once in high school. All course materials must be medically accurate, and discussions of relationships must be inclusive of same-sex couples.
Since then, school districts around the state have been updating their curricula to comply with the law. For example, Anaheim Union High School District, which includes Western High School and about 16 other junior high and high schools, added lessons on human trafficking and gender identity expression to its high school health curriculum to comply with the law, said Patty Hatcher, a health curriculum specialist with the district.
In many districts, like Anaheim Union, California students get sex education from their health teachers. But some districts also bring in visiting teachers from groups like Planned Parenthood and Girls Inc., a nationwide nonprofit dedicated to fostering the health and education of girls. In many cases, the visitors supplement what the district is already doing. But when there’s no one trained on staff, the outside groups may provide all the sex education required by the state.
Over the course of about 12 class periods, the Girls Inc. program teaches students about menstruation, birth control, STI prevention, sexual harassment, consent, dating violence, and more. Classes are open to anyone who identifies as a girl, no questions asked, according to Jessica Hubbard, director of program services for the Orange County branch of Girls Inc. The organization doesn’t offer an equivalent program for boys, but at Western Independent Learning Center, where most classes are online, students of all genders may also take an online health class that includes sex education.
About 25 miles away in Irvine, also part of Orange County, the district adopted Teen Talk, a research-based curriculum for students of all genders that covers anatomy, STIs, pregnancy prevention, and body image, among other topics. It also includes one lesson specifically devoted to sexual orientation and gender identity, which “does a great job in dispelling myths and stereotypes” like the idea that being gay is a choice, Kelli Bourne, who is in her 14th year of teaching health science at Lakeside Middle School, told Vox. But it also uses language throughout that’s inclusive of all orientations and identities: “Teen Talk does not favor one type of relationship over another,” she said.
Overall, the goal of Teen Talk is to “drive home to kids that there is a range of values” when it comes to sex, Bourne said. And values — whether something is okay or not okay — are at the root of a lot of questions students ask in class, she said.
When it comes to sex and sexuality, Bourne explains to students, some people believe one thing, and others believe something else. Ultimately, “it’s up to you to decide what you believe,” she said, “with input from your parents and your family.”
Conservative pushback is mostly about LGBTQ inclusivity
About a month into the school year, around 20 people gather outside Assembly member Tom Daly’s office, about 10 miles from Western High School. These are the families in Orange County who feel that, despite what programs like Teen Talk say, they’re not getting enough input. They feel their kids are learning values at odds with their own.
At the latest of several “Sex Ed Sit Outs” to protest the law, parents hoist handmade signs with messages like “education not indoctrinate” and “no gender ID ideology.” Some have brought their kids, who play on the grassy median strip next to the sidewalk. A few older students take a more active role.
One first-year high schooler, for example, holds a cardboard sign reading, “AB 329 is a sexual grooming program.” He is here with his mom, but he tells me he also believes that the sex education law violates freedom of religion. “It’s either you’re a girl or you’re a boy,” he says. “That’s what I agree with.”
Meanwhile, many parents say CHYA violates their parental rights. “This law doesn’t respect our beliefs and rights as parents to teach our children how they should behave and live,” one mom, Ofelia Garcia, tells me.
“Even if I didn’t have any grandchildren or children, I would be doing this,” Garcia says. “As a daughter of God, this is to speak for my faith.”
Parents protest the California Healthy Youth Act (CHYA) outside Assemblymember Tom Daly’s office in Anaheim, California on September 20, 2019.
Garcia says she’s against “the gender ideology” put forth by CHYA, and that she hopes the law will be revoked because “because otherwise our children are going to be against us.”
The fear that sex education will pull kids away from their parents is a common theme. So is a concern about lessons involving gender identity.
Shanda Ellsworth-Lobatos, for example, tells me she started homeschooling her son, a third-grader, after she found out his Anaheim elementary school was planning a Diversity Week but had not notified parents of content involving LGBTQ or gender-nonconforming people.
Students were going to read Jacob’s New Dress, a children’s book about a boy who wants to wear a dress to school, she said. “They had a whole series of things that they were going to do with the children but they were not going to disclose to the parents.”
Ellsworth-Lobatos also said teachers had been told “if a child is struggling with gender identity, not to notify the parents.” On the whole, she said, the school was “lack of transparency” and “parent alienation.”
The Anaheim Elementary School District (separate from Anaheim Union, which includes only junior high and high schools), however, says alienating children from their parents is the opposite of what it intends. “Clear communication with our families is paramount,” Elsa Covarrubias, the district’s director of communications, told me. She said it was absolutely not district policy to keep parents in the dark about children’s gender identity. “We are in contact with parents regarding anything that impacts their children,” she said.
Girls Inc. says it encourages students to talk to their parents about what they learn, and the group hosts evening events where parents can be more informed about the program. Also, CHYA requires that sex education in California encourage each student “to communicate with his or her parents, guardians, and other trusted adults about human sexuality.” And the law allows parents to opt their children out of sex education if they choose.
But parent protests have continued, heating up last year with the release of a state document called the Health Education Framework. The framework isn’t law or a required curriculum — instead, it is intended as guidance to help school districts develop curricula in line with CHYA. But parents soon began protesting My Princess Boy, a picture book about a boy who wears dresses and a tiara, and S.E.X: The All You Need to Know Sexuality Guide to Get You Through Your Teens and Twenties, a book by the founder of the popular sexual health information site Scarleteen. Parents said the material was too explicit, and objected to teaching younger children about gender identity.
In May, the state removed six books, including My Princess Boy and S.E.X., from the framework, a final version of which is slated to be released early next year. But some parents were unsatisfied, and with the start of a new school year, protests began again.
California’s Orange County, where Anaheim is the largest city, has been one of the biggest hubs of pushback against CHYA (other counties in the blue state where parents have protested include Santa Clara, just south of San Francisco). The county is historically Republican territory. Ronald Reagan launched his political career with a speech in Anaheim in 1965, and Richard Nixon’s presidential library is in the nearby city of Yorba Linda, where he was born. A majority of residents voted for John McCain for president in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012.
However, Orange County is changing — the county went for Hillary Clinton in 2016; in 2018, Democrats flipped four congressional seats there, turning the county entirely blue. But in some ways, Anaheim feels more like middle America than like Los Angeles, less than 30 miles to the northwest. Near Assembly member Daly’s office, a Hooter’s restaurant advertised “Military Mondays.” And as protesters against the sex ed program lined the sidewalk, more than a few passing drivers honked in approval.
Orange County has always a specific brand of conservatism, though: It’s not the type of place where overtly anti-LGBTQ messages are always spoken out loud. Residents are used to having to curb their language for surrounding progressives. And Republicans in California aren’t known for holding particularly socially conservative views — residents sometimes use the term “California conservative” to refer to someone who’s liberal on social issues but favors low taxes and small government.
All that is to say that some of the anti-LGBTQ rhetoric espoused by Republicans around the country — like former Virginia attorney general and recent Trump appointee Ken Cuccinelli, who has said that acts of homosexual sex are “against nature and are harmful to society” — are less common here. Aggressiveness is not the norm.
For example, most of the parents on the sidewalk on this September day say their opposition to CHYA is not about homophobia or transphobia, but about their desire to choose what their kids learn. “It’s not about hate or disliking or anything like that,” Ellsworth-Lobatos says. “It’s about my parental rights and what I want to teach my child.”
Then again, there is a minority that imparts a more direct message. At a forum on CHYA held by the Anaheim Republican Assembly the night before the protest, Arthur Schaper, an activist with the “pro-family” group MassResistance, referred to the law as the “California Unhealthy Perversion Act.”
“There has to be a culture shift in this state,” he told the crowd of a few dozen at a German restaurant not far from Daly’s office. “Being gay is not okay. Yes, I just said that. If I can’t say that in Anaheim, we’ve got a problem.”
The benefits of comprehensive sex education are well-documented
What proponents of laws like CHYA have on their side is research and numbers. In California, a large majority of parents have historically supported comprehensive sex education — 89 percent, according to one 2006 survey. Nationally, most parents also support comprehensive sex education.
According to one 2017 study, more than 93 percent of American parents think it’s important to teach sex education in middle school and high school. Meanwhile, 92 percent of Democratic parents and 75 percent of Republican parents said high school sex education should include discussion of sexual orientation.
Unlike the abstinence-only approach, education like the kind students at Western and Lakeside get is also supported by research. Comprehensive sex education programs have been shown to reduce sexually transmitted infections and increase use of contraception — as well as reducing sexual activity, the goal of abstinence-only programs, Carroll reports at the Times.
And the benefits go beyond those typical markers of sexual health. “We know that comprehensive sex ed can help people develop healthier relationships” as well as helping them have “honest conversations with their parents about values,” Driver said.
There’s also evidence that sex education can help reduce sexual assault. One 2018 study found that students who received sex ed that included discussion of how to say no to unwanted sex were significantly less likely to experience penetrative sexual assault once they got to college. Abstinence-only sex education did not have the same effect.
While anti-sexual harassment advocates often emphasize teaching people not to commit harassment and assault, rather than teaching people to avoid it, there’s evidence that education can help in this way too. A 2015 study found that a middle-school program that taught communication and emotion management reduced instances of sexual harassment and homophobic name-calling at school.
Sex ed can also help to dismantle gender stereotypes. “With comprehensive sex ed, young people are able to reject or unlearn the harmful stereotype that depicts boys as constantly working to ‘score’ by having sex with girls and, conversely, depicts girls as non-sexual beings who are responsible for managing the behaviors of boys,” SIECUS communications manager Zach Eisenstein told me in an email. Some abstinence-only programs, he said, reinforce these stereotypes by comparing girls to Crock Pots (because they supposedly take a long time to “heat up”) and boys to microwaves (which heat up quickly).
When students learn that there are a variety of gender identities and expressions, they “are better suited to identify, question, and reject feeding into harmful gender stereotypes from the start,” Eisenstein said.
After the students at Western wrote terms on the sexuality wall, the class moved on to a discussion of the idea that girls like dolls and boys like action figures, or that girls should be pretty and boys should be strong.
“That language really does have an effect on us,” Torrejon told the class. “We absorb that and we internalize that, and then as we get older we kind of put those stereotypes on other people.”
Inclusive sex education can be especially protective for LGBTQ young people, Driver said. Research shows that when a school has an LGBTQ-inclusive sex education program in place, LGBTQ students are less likely to experience depression, drug or alcohol abuse, and bullying, she added.
Such education has benefits for all students, Driver said, including those who don’t identify as LGBTQ. “Students learn to value other people’s perspectives,” she explained. “They learn to value and have empathy for people who are different from them.”
For proponents of inclusive sex ed, this is the goal: for students to learn not just to protect themselves from STIs and unintended pregnancy, but to treat each other — and themselves — with care and respect. And if they get education like this now, the thinking goes, maybe when these kids become parents, they will be more accepting of their children’s identities and help them make informed choices. Homophobic views like those expressed by Schaper will be less common in the future.
While most parents are in favor of comprehensive sex ed, change is slow.
Despite the research supporting it, and the parents who want it, comprehensive sex ed still isn’t the norm in many places around the country. In part, that’s because education in America isn’t federally controlled. Even with a more supportive president than Trump, the White House only has so much influence over what goes on at the state and local levels. And at those levels, there are enough parents opposed to sex education — and enough conservative groups to back them up — to block a lot of attempts at change.
In other words, implementing comprehensive sex ed remains an uphill battle, but one a growing number of states feel is worth fighting.
If history is any guide, California has often helped lead the way on progressive legislation, from a law loosening abortion restrictions in 1967 to one legalizing medical marijuana use in 1996. And with state legislatures turning increasingly Democratic in 2018, some see a coming “blue wave” that could bring with it more socially liberal reforms around the country.
Then again, if California has taken years to fully implement its 2016 law, change elsewhere in the nation is likely to move even more slowly. For example, when an Arizona school district considered implementing a comprehensive sex education curriculum called Rights, Respect, Responsibility in 2018, the conservative legal group Liberty Counsel sent the district a cease and desist letter. The group said the school district was in violation of an Arizona law banning HIV/AIDS education that “promotes a homosexual lifestyle.” The state repealed that law earlier this year, but such restrictions are still on the books in several states.
Because schools tend to be locally controlled, “there’s so much variation among what young people will receive” not just from state to state but from district to district, Driver said. In California, for example, while Anaheim has been on board with CHYA from the beginning, other nearby Orange County School districts delayed implementation, according to EdSource. And while Girls Inc. used to teach sex education across the county, districts started dropping the program when protests against CHYA started heating up. Now Anaheim is the only one left.
For opponents of CHYA and of LGBTQ-inclusive sex education more generally, these delays are a good thing. Education about sexual orientation and gender identity “should be done in the privacy of your home,” Ellsworth-Lobatos said.
But supporters of inclusive sex education say they’re not teaching kids ideology. They’re just respecting who their students are: nonbinary, male, female, gay, straight, asexual, or any of a variety of the above and beyond.
Sometimes sex education is a two-way street. During the class I visited at Western, students taught Torrejon the meanings of several terms, including “demi girl” and “demi boy,” which refer to people who are nonbinary but with some identification with the female or male gender. People who identify that way “use she/they pronouns or he/they pronouns,” a student explained to the class.
Torrejon says she sees the impact of the Girls Inc. program on the students she teaches: “They’re just so much more confident and comfortable within themselves” after the program, she said.
Like Bourne’s class, the program includes an anonymous question box, but students sometimes leave positive feedback instead. “Just hearing how appreciative they are for being able to learn all this, when they know the stigma on it otherwise, is the best feeling ever,” Torrejon said.
After the September class, I asked a few students what they’d learned. “I learned different types of sexualities and different pronouns,” one told me. “I didn’t really know that there [were] that many.”
Another student, a 17-year-old senior, told me he’d done a lot of online research about gender and sexuality in previous years because for a time, “I wanted to be male.” Today, he uses he/him pronouns but says, “I don’t label myself right now.”
Talking about sex and gender identity always makes him nervous, he told me. After class, he was still “a little bit” nervous, he said — “but a lot less.”
Pansexual, skoliosexual, asexualbiromantic. How young queer people are identifying their sexual and romantic orientations is expanding—as is the language they use to do it.
More than 1 in 5 LGBTQ youth use words other than lesbian, gay, and bisexual to describe their sexualities, according to a new report based on findings from The Trevor Project’s National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health. When given the opportunity to describe their sexual orientation, the youth surveyed provided more than 100 different terms, such as abrosexual, graysexual, omnisexual, and many more.
While many youth (78%) are still using traditional labels like gay, lesbian, and bisexual, another 21% are exploring new words to describe—in increasingly nuanced ways—not only their sexual orientation but also their attractions and identities as well.
Young queer people are redefining sexuality and attraction in their own terms, and are leading the way in how we talk about them.
Why words matter
Finding a word to describe your sexual identity can be a moment of liberation. It can be the difference between feeling broken and alienated to achieving self-understanding and acceptance. And when specifically describing one’s sexuality to others, labels can help create a community among those who identify similarly and facilitate understanding among those who identify differently.
Words to describe the specifics of one’s sexual and romantic attractions (affectional orientation) are becoming more important to younger generations. Anticipating The Trevor Report’s findings, the trend forecasting agency J. Walter Thompson’s Innovation Group found in 2016 that only 48% of youth in Generation Z identify as exclusively heterosexual, compared to 65% of millennials.
How do you define sexual orientation?
Whether you’re within the queer community or not, we all have a sexual orientation, or “one’s natural preference in sexual partners”—including if that preference is to not have any sexual partners, as is true of many in the asexual community.
Sexual orientation is a highly individual and personal experience, and you alone have the right to define your sexual orientation in a way that makes the most sense for you. Sexual orientation is also a complex intersection made up of different forms of identity, behavior, and attraction.
Identity
Gender identity may influence your sexual orientation, but it’s important to remember that sexual orientation and gender identity are not the same thing. A person has a sexual orientation, and they have a gender identity, and just because you know one doesn’t mean you automatically know the other.
But in discovering your gender, you may redefine your sexual orientation in new ways. This experience can be true for transgender people, who may undergo changes in their sexual orientation after their transition—or who may change their labels, such as a woman who adjusts her label from straight to lesbian to describe her attraction to other women after transitioning.
Our identities cannot be put into one single box; all of us contain many different types of social identities that inform who we are. This is, in part, why Dr. Sari van Anders, a feminist neuroendocrinologist, proposed the Sexual Configurations Theory to define sexual identity as a configuration of such factors as: age and generation; race and ethnicity; class background and socioeconomic status; ability and access; and religion and values. Anders’s theory takes into account how our many identities factor into our sexual identity, and recognizes that our sexual identities can be fluid too.
Behavior
Sexual behavior also influences how we discover and define our sexual orientation. But, who you’re currently dating or partnered with, or who you’ve had sex with before, does not dictate your sexual orientation. Nor does it fully define who you are and who you can be.
Someone may have sexual experiences with a certain gender without adopting any label for their sexuality. Someone may have had a traumatic sexual experience, such as sexual assault, with a gender that has no bearing on how they self-identify. A person may have attractions they’ve never acted on for various reasons. An asexual person may have engaged in sexual activity without experiencing sexual attraction. Sexual and asexual behavior all inform one’s sexual orientation but do not define it.
Attraction
We most often think of attraction purely in sexual or physical terms, but it also includes emotional, romantic, sensual, and aesthetic attraction, among other forms. For example, a sapiosexual (based on the Latin sapiens, “wise”) is a person who finds intelligence to be a sexually attractive quality in others.
Attraction also includes the absence of attraction, such as being asexual or aromantic, describing a person who doesn’t experience romantic attraction. (The prefix a- means “without, not.”) Unlike celibacy, which is a choice to abstain from sexual activity, asexuality and aromanticism are sexual and romantic orientations, respectively.
Why is there a new language of love and attraction?
Sapiosexual and aromantic highlight ways in which people, especially LGBTQ youth, are using newer words to express the nuances of sexual and romantic attractions—and the distinctions between them. Many assume a person’s sexual orientation dictates their romantic orientation, or “one’s preference in romantic partners.” But romantic and sexual attraction are separate, and sometimes different, forms of attraction.
While many people are both sexually and romantically attracted to the same gender or genders, others may have different sexual and romantic desires. Someone who identifies, for instance, as panromantichomosexual may be sexually attracted to the same gender (homosexual), but romantically attracted to people of any (or regardless of) gender (panromantic, with pan– meaning “all.”)
Asexuality is not a monolith but a spectrum, and includes asexuality but also demisexuality (characterized by only experiencing sexual attraction after making a strong emotional connection with a specific person) and gray-asexuality (characterized by experiencing only some or occasional feelings of sexual desire). And, quoisexual refers to a person who doesn’t relate to or understand experiences or concepts of sexual attraction and orientation. Quoi (French for “what”) is based on the French expression je ne sais quoi, meaning “I don’t know (what).”
While asexual people experience little to no sexual attraction, they, of course, still have emotional needs and form relationships (which are often platonic in nature). And, as seen in a word like panromantic, the asexual community is helping to contribute a variety of terms that express different types of romantic attractions. Just like all people, an asexual person can be heteroromantic, “romantically attracted to people of the opposite sex” (hetero-, “different, other”) or homoromantic, “attracted to people of the same sex” (homo– “same”). They may also be biromantic, “romantically attracted to two or more genders.”
As more people identify as trans or nonbinary, words like androsexual (andro-, “male”) and gynesexual (gyne-, “female”) describe sexual attraction to gender expressions or anatomy, regardless of how a person identifies their gender. Someone who identifies as androsexual is attracted to masculinity or male anatomy. Someone who identifies as gynesexual is attracted to femininity or female anatomy.
Androsexual and gynesexual do not define the gender of the person being labeled the way the words lesbian (a female homosexual) or gay (a homosexual person, especially a male) do. These terms can be easier for gender-fluid people to use. Sexual orientation can be fluid, too, as describes the experience of an abrosexual person, whose sexuality could be fluid, for example, between bisexuality and homosexuality.
Certain genders and body parts may play a large role in many people’s sexual orientations, but others may be specifically attracted to people with nonbinary genders. The word skoliosexual is defined as an attraction to people who identify with a nonbinary gender. Skolio– is based on a Greek root meaning “bent” or “curved”; negative associations with these words have compelled some to use the term ceterosexual instead, with cetero– based on (et) cetera, cetera meaning “the rest.”
Defining relationship types
Some young people are beginning to clarify not just their sexual orientation, but also their preferred relationship type. For example, a person who identifies as pansexual nonamorous is sexually attracted to all genders (or regardless of) gender (pansexual) and does not seek any form of committed relationship (nonamorous).
The importance of clarifying the relationship type that you prefer can help dispel common misconceptions that the genders you are attracted to dictate the number of partners you desire, such as the myth that all bisexuals are polyamorous.
In the write-in portion of the The Trevor Project’s survey, youth used nuanced language to explain the complexity of their sexual orientations and desired relationship type, such as one youth who replied “I’m a [grayromantic] polyamoroushomosexual.” This young person identified their romantic attraction (grayromantic, or “occasionally experiencing romantic attraction”), sexual attraction (homosexual), and the number of partners they prefer (polyamorous, “involving multiple consensual romantic or sexual partners”). Grayromanticpolyamoroushomosexual paints a far more specific picture than just gay does.
One may also prefer solo sex and romance, such as those who identify as autosexual or autoromantic (auto-, “self”). A person may desire many sexual partners of any gender, but zero romantic relationships, which can be identified as non-monogamous aromantic pansexual.
You don’t have to be queer to use more specific terms to describe the number of partners you prefer or the relationship type you desire. An individual whose identity more closely conforms to current societal norms, such as a straight, cisgender, married woman, could also describe her sexuality in more specific terms, such as a monogamousheteroromanticheterosexual woman. This means she desires one partner of the opposite gender, to whom she is both sexually and romantically attracted.
Beyond labels
Despite the proliferation of labels, there are still many who choose not to identify. Of the 52% of Generation Z that doesn’t identify as specifically straight, many eschew labels altogether.
For many whose identities are fluid, living without a label can be more liberating than adopting one. For others who are questioning or exploring their sexuality, going without a label is more comfortable than committing to one that doesn’t quite fit.
Defining yourself
Unique labels—including the lack thereof—allow us to speak to the differences in our lived experiences. We do not all experience the world in exactly the same way, and we should feel free to describe our individuality using the words that do that best.
You are the expert of your experience, and know better than anyone else how you feel, what you value, and what you need. You deserve to use as many or as few words as you want when describing your unique understanding of your sexuality.
And it’s OK to use different labels depending on the situation, too. If a person is concerned for their safety, they may choose to disclose very little or nothing about their identity. Or, if someone is speaking to a person unfamiliar with the LGBTQ community, it may be easier for them to use labels such as gay, lesbian, or bisexual.
Sexual and romantic relationships are a huge part of our lives. These relationships are often the most important ones we have, building the foundations of our families and support systems. New words are an exciting way to help you discover, understand, and express your sexual orientation and attraction—and new words help give us the freedom and power to define ourselves.
“This work highlights the fluidity that many adolescents experience in terms of how they label their sexuality and who they feel sexually attracted to,” says lead author J. Stewart, a PhD student at North Carolina State University.
For this study, researchers looked at data from 744 students from rural high schools in the southeastern United States; 54% of the students were girls, 46% were boys. Students filled out surveys each year for three years, spanning either their freshman through junior years or their sophomore through senior years. Researchers collected the data between 2014 and 2016.
The researchers found that at some point during the three-year period, 19% of students reported at least one change in their self-labeled sexual identity—for example, classifying themselves as heterosexual in year one and as bisexual in year two. Some students reported multiple changes, such as switching from heterosexual to bisexual between years one and two, and then back to heterosexual in year three.
There were also notable differences between male and female students, with 26% of girls reporting some change in sexual identity over the three-year study period, compared to 11% of boys.
In addition to how teens labeled their sexualities, researchers looked at the extent to which teens reported being romantically attracted to boys and/or girls. The study found that 21% of students reported changes in who they were attracted to over the course of the study. As with sexual identity, some students reported changes in romantic attraction between years one and two, and again between years two and three.
Again, there were notable differences between boys and girls, with 31% of girls reporting changes in romantic attraction, compared to 10% of boys.
“Some adolescents shifted between sexual minority identities and/or attractions—gay or lesbian, bisexual, etc. as well as varying degrees of same-sex attractions—across all three years,” Stewart says. “Others fluctuated between heterosexual and sexual minority groups. And when we looked at the extent to which sexual identity, attraction, and sexual behavior aligned, we saw some interesting trends.”
The researchers found that the majority of people who identified as sexual minorities also reported some degree of same-sex attraction—and most had engaged in some form of sexual behavior with a person of the same sex.
However, there was more variability among students who identified themselves as heterosexual—particularly for girls.
For example, 9% of all female students labeled themselves as both heterosexual and having at least some attraction to girls. And 12% of girls who reported being both heterosexual and having no sexual attraction toward girls also reported engaging in same-sex sexual behavior.
“The results for boys mirrored those for girls, albeit to a lesser degree,” Stewart says.
“Adolescence is a time of identity exploration, and sexual orientation is one aspect of that. One takeaway here is that the process of sexual identity development is quite nuanced for a lot of teens. And based on research with young adults, we expect these patterns will continue for many people into their late 20s and even beyond.
“To be clear, we’re talking about internally driven changes in sexual orientation,” Stewart says. “This research does not suggest these changes can be imposed on an individual and does not support the idea of conversion therapy. There’s ample evidence that conversion therapy is harmful and does not influence anyone’s sexual orientation.”
The researchers are already considering future directions for the work.
“The data in this study comes from kids growing up in the rural South,” Stewart says. “It would be interesting to see if these numbers vary across different sociopolitical environments. Additionally, we weren’t able to identify how these patterns looked among trans and other gender minority adolescents. That would be an important direction for future work.”
You suspect your child is questioning their gender. You’re starting to pick up some clues, but what’s the next step? Should you approach your teen? Wait for them to come to you?
Gender-questioning conversations can be difficult for caregivers. Pediatric endocrinologist Julia Cartaya, MD, discusses gender identity and offers five conversation-starting tips to support and guide teens.
What is gender questioning?
When someone isn’t sure where they are on the spectrum of gender identity, they may be gender-questioning.
“A teen may feel like their body was formed in a way that doesn’t fit who they are,” says Dr. Cartaya. “They may be exploring whether they’re fully one gender or another, or if they’re somewhere in between genders.”
Many kids have known for a while that there is something different about them, she explains. They have done a lot of research and investigation to get a better sense of what they are feeling. “When they’re ready, most of them will come out to their caregiver if they feel comfortable and know they are supported,” she says.
While some parents and caregivers say they’ve suspected for a while that their child doesn’t conform to their birth-assigned gender, others are blindsided. “Others may realize, in hindsight, that there were clues along the way,” Dr. Cartaya says.
Brush up on the terms
Terminology matters to gender-questioning teens — and that goes beyond pronouns and names. “It’s important to get the vernacular correct,” Dr. Cartaya says.
It’s also important to understand the difference between gender identity and sexual orientation, and to recognize that everyone has a sexual orientation that is separate from their gender identity. Dr. Cartaya explains it this way: Sexual orientation is who you go to bed with, but gender identity is who you go to bed as.
Gender identity terms
These terms help describe the scale of feminine to masculine:
Gender identity: A person’s deeply held internal sense of being male or female or somewhere else on the gender spectrum.
Sex assigned at birth: The classification people are given at birth regarding sex and, typically, gender, usually based on genitalia.
Transgender: A person whose gender identity is different, and often fully opposite, from their sex assigned at birth.
Cisgender: A person whose gender identity is the same as their sex assigned at birth.
Gender nonbinary: A person who identifies as both male and female, or somewhere in between male and female.
Gender fluid: Your sense of where you are on the spectrum of male to female can change over time, even from day to day.
Sexual identity terms
When talking to your child about what gender interests them sexually, these terms are appropriate:
Lesbian: A woman who wants to be in a relationship with another woman.
Gay: A man who wants to be in a relationship with another man (though sometimes lesbians also use this term).
Bisexual: Someone who is sexually attracted to both men and women.
Pansexual: Someone who is interested in having relationships with all genders.
How do you create an environment where teens feel comfortable talking?
Subtleties, like using the right terminology, help your teen know you’re in their court. So avoid the temptation to ask the child outright, Dr. Cartaya advises.
Instead, create space for your child to bring it up when they are ready.
Here are some do’s for helping a teen have conversations about gender identity:
DO talk in generalities about gender and sexuality. “I often suggest using TV, film or news articles to initiate conversations,” Dr. Cartaya says. “You might say, ‘I think it’s great that different types of people are represented on the big screen,’ or ‘I just saw that so-and-so came out. If you or your sister ever questioned your gender or sexuality, I hope you would feel comfortable talking to me about it.’”
By talking positively about gender identity, your child will hear that you are supportive. They may be more inclined to speak to you when they are ready.
DO use trusted adults or friends to help you talk with your teen. Some kids may not come out to a caregiver if they are concerned they won’t be loved and supported. But they may come out to a friend or a trusted adult, like a teacher.
“If you hear from a teacher that your child is gender-questioning, let the teacher know you are open to having conversations with your child. Hopefully, they will encourage your child to talk to you,” says Dr. Cartaya. “A discreet approach to communicating with your child is acceptable and often effective.”
DO talk with a healthcare provider ahead of time. If your child’s behaviors concern you, consider talking with their provider before a scheduled appointment. Let the doctor know your child may be gender-questioning and that you’re willing and open to talking with your teen.
“This is also an effective strategy if you’re concerned your teen is experiencing depression or anxiety,” says Dr. Cartaya. “The provider can bring up the subject carefully and make a referral to a counselor if need be.”
Other clues your child may benefit from a doctor visit include:
Struggling in school.
Socially isolating themselves.
Drastic behavior changes.
DO use the right names and pronouns when your child comes out. When your teen confides in you, observe how they refer to themselves, and try to use that same language. They may prefer a different pronoun or an entirely different name. Using those terms demonstrates your support.
But, before using your child’s preferred name and pronouns with others, make sure your child is comfortable with it. You do not want to be responsible for outing your child to someone they are not comfortable being out to.
DO write your child a love note. Dr. Cartaya advises not mentioning anything about gender identity in the letter. Letting your child know you love them unconditionally gives them the green light to approach you when they are ready.
After all, who doesn’t enjoy a good love letter? “I highly recommend sending your child a note listing all their wonderful attributes and telling them you’ll love them forever, no matter what,” she says.
It’s a message preteens need to hear as they navigate puberty, friendships, bodies, attraction, and the sticky mess of being a person. This short graphic novel, written by Scarleteen founder Heather Corinna and illustrated by friend of A-Camp Isabella Rotman, is out now through Limerence Press, the same publisher that gave us A Quick and Easy Guide To They/Them Pronouns. It covers the anatomical nuts and bolts of sexuality, sexual health and puberty and also dives into social aspects like consent, how to get support from adults you trust, sexuality and gender identity.
The story features five friends: Rico, Malia, Max, Sam and Alexis. This group of middle schoolers are having a range of experiences with and feelings about sex and their bodies. They talk to each other about some of the tricky topics they’re facing, challenge each other’s biases and shame, and help pump each other up as they face different challenges.
Rotman and Corinna hope the book will help fill gaps in sex-ed curricula and be a resource for parents and other trusted adults to help walk pre-teens through these essential conversations that neither adults or kids are always comfortable having. The book models language around how to have these conversations by, for example, letting the kids talk about gender and sexuality on their own terms.
“I do think the majority of the education around gender at this point is being done by sex educators and I want to give them credit for that!” Rotman said. “But when you go and try to look for a sex ed guide you’re going to find a lot of really binary language and it was really important for this to be an exception to that. We have trans and nonbinary characters that talk about that in language that is accessible to the age group.”
In fact, Corinna said they believe Wait, What? is the first sex ed guide that does not use any gendered language to talk about menstruation, especially targeted at the preadolescent age group.
The book deftly acknowledges that each of its five main characters is different in their experience of their bodies, sexualities, genders, romantic interests, and overall development. It allows each kid to define their experience on their own terms and shows a little of their process of becoming comfortable with their unique selves, while promoting kind and thoughtful behavior toward all peers.
“I came up a punk kid, a queer kid, [in] the 70s and 80s, so normal was never my god that I worshipped,” Corinna said. “It’s tricky because when people ask us if something is normal, you want to reassure them because you don’t want them to feel fearful or shameful or embarrassed. But as the platypus represents, a lot of stuff is weird! It’s weird by any standard! There’s nothing wrong with saying ‘of course it’s normal,’ to help reassure someone, but we should also make room for people to get more comfortable with things that aren’t normal! When you talk about people with… quite uncommon gender identities or orientations, there don’t have to be a billion people like that for someone to not have something wrong with them.”
Of course, this book is aimed at young people themselves, but it’s also a perfect conversation opener for any adult that works with, or frankly knows, any young people. It is non-judgmental and at times truly profound. As a 28-year-old queer, trans adult, I found phrasings and ideas that felt new and resonated, like when the kids talked about how genitals are kind of weird, but so are ears! and toes! As a person who cares deeply about the queer and trans kids coming after me, it feels valuable to have new, age-relevant language to help empower them with information and give them tools for exploration and discovery. Wait, What? is a quick read that packs a lot in, using dialogue, narration and images to share information for all types of learners.
Corinna and Rotman hope the book will make its way into homes and libraries as well as be a helpful supplement for classrooms and sex educators. It’s available online wherever books are sold and making its way into real live bookstores too. So far the reception has been very positive, although Corinna acknowledged some nervousness around putting out a sex-positive, gender-affirming book about sex for middle schoolers, because “this age group isn’t buying their own books. If the adults aren’t ok with it the kids aren’t going to see it!” So it’s up to all of us adults to get Wait, What? into the hands of kids who need it.
As Rotman put it, “this is very much the book a queer aunt buys you.” Hear that, queer aunts?
Assigned one gender at birth, we’d felt like the other since childhood. That feeling—which had nothing to do with sexual desire—grew until life in the wrong gender seemed not worth living. So we came out as trans women or trans men to loved ones and health-care providers, who gave us the courage, the hormones, and maybe the surgery to live as who we always were, and then we were fine.
That story describes many transgender lives; parts of it describe mine. It’s also a relatively easy narrative for cisgender (non-transgender) people to follow, and it’s the only one that popular culture supplied until recently. Many health-care providers required an even narrower story. Until 2011, widely accepted medical standards mandated that we prove we were really trans by living in our genuine gender for three months or more without hormones. They also stipulated that we try to look conventionally masculine or feminine, and that we not identify as gay.
Such stories exclude people whose experience of being trans has shifted over their lives. (Some regret or reverse their transitions; many more do not.) They exclude people with more complicated experiences of gender and sexuality. And they exclude nonbinary people, who live as both genders, or neither, often taking the pronouns they/them. We can hear more stories now—not only life stories, but fiction, poems, comics, films, essays, both about trans people and by us. Some of those stories may reassure trans readers, or help cis readers accept us. Other stories aim to disrupt and unsettle the narratives we already know.
Andrea Long Chu is one of the disrupters. A doctoral candidate in comparative literature at NYU, she’s a writer and critic whose work has appeared in n+1, Bookforum, and The New York Times. In early 2018, she published an essay called “On Liking Women” that lit up trans Twitter: The piece championed the 1960s playwright and provocateur Valerie Solanas, the author of the SCUM Manifesto (SCUM = Society for Cutting Up Men) and the would-be assassin of Andy Warhol (she shot him in 1968). Chu hit back hard against the unitary, easy-to-understand trans story I sketched at the start of this article. She also took aim at a subset of radical feminist activists who regard trans women as interloping men.
“I have never been able to differentiate liking women from wanting to be like them,” Chu confessed. She described her young self not as a child who was already a girl, but as “the scared, straight boy whose life I will never not have lived.” As for the SCUM Manifesto, it implies—according to Chu—that trans women transition “not to ‘confirm’ some kind of innate gender identity, but because being a man is stupid and boring.”
Coming out, announcing her womanhood, was—for her and for trans women like her (and, to be honest, like me)—an exhilarating, empowering choice, not an act of simple survival. That perspective wasn’t a breath of fresh air so much as a mountaintop’s worth. “Some of us … might opt to transition,” she concluded, to climb out of the cage that radical feminists take “heterosexuality to be.”
How did Chu come to such views? What is it like for her to live with them? You won’t find clear answers in her first book, Females, a short, exasperating volume that is nothing like a memoir and not much like a manifesto. It’s more like a provocation, thick with what Chu herself labels “indefensible claims.” “Everyone is female,” Chu writes, “and everyone hates it”: We are all female in this special, philosophical sense because we all “make room for the desires of another.” You, too, let “someone else do your desiring for you.”
Males, in Chu’s terms—that is, men who behave “like men”; men who fit archetypes of masculinity—know what they want and how to get it for themselves. But expanding on what she takes to be Solanas’s view, Chu argues that no one is totally independent, totally dominant, totally satisfied—which means that anyone trying to be “male” has signed up for continual failure. If femaleness means vulnerability and dependence, then we are all female, and “the patriarchal system of sexual oppression” works “to conceal” that universal truth. Men feel they have to be male, but they cannot be. They find relief from this double bind in porn, where passive, humiliated, masturbating viewers may find permission “not to have power, but to give it up.”
The logical question, if you see maleness this way, is not “What makes some people trans?” but “Why would anyone want, or try, to be male?” One answer is that guys have no choice. Another answer is that masculinity feels that painful and that limiting only if you don’t want it—if, like me, you’d rather be a girl. (“I hated being a man,” Chu remembers, “but I thought that was just how feminism felt.”) A third is to say that we might try to redefine maleness, to tell other stories about it. Trans guys might lead the way.
Cyrus Grace Dunham—the younger sibling of Lena—has written a coming-out memoir, and a celebrity memoir, and a well-off young writer’s memoir of a quarter-life crisis. It’s also an anti-memoir, set against the idea that Cyrus, or you, or I, must believe one consistent story about our life. After months of flailing and drinking and fighting depression, Dunham has come out as nonbinary and as transmasculine. They take they/them pronouns in professional contexts, and do not exactly feel like a man but take he/him pronouns among friends: “I am appalled by how much I love it.” They have also had top surgery (a double mastectomy).
A Year Without a Name can come off as recovery literature, addressing the tough row they feel they had to hoe—their sister’s fame (“a toxic substance”), as well as their adventures with “alcohol, ketamine, cocaine.” But we have other memoirs that work that terrain. This one’s much better read as an account of generational and intellectual good fortune. Dunham can build on terms they have inherited from earlier trans people, and can also talk and write about the vicissitudes of erotic desire, about how desire affects what gender means.
For Dunham, exploring gender and sex means exploring embodiment and uncertainty. They live in—and have sexual feelings within—a body that won’t settle down, that does not seem to want to take clear form. It’s a body, Dunham discovers, that needs to be valued as a kind of chrysalis, ready “to turn into goo, and then re-form.” In bed, before transition, Dunham was “always more in tune with my partner’s desires than my own.” Crushing on a magnetic party girl, Dunham once “felt like a little girl, too self-conscious to get anything right.” Their current lover, by contrast, sees and accepts Dunham as a kind man, a real man, a hot man. Dunham found that experimenting with bondage and domination helped clarify how it felt to wield power, and to give it away—paving the way to seeing themselves as a man.
Maybe you, too, have had to embrace uncertainty before you could grow and change. I’m told many people, even cis people, do. Trans people like Dunham, or like me, have to work our way out of false certainties that insist we are now and forever the body our genes assigned us, the gender we were handed at birth. Some of us have to work our way out more than once. “My value,” Dunham concludes, “is not in my permanence, but in the resilience with which I recover, and re-recover, and re-form after the deluge.”
How do you know you’re trans and need to re-form? Can you be trans (the way you can be diabetic, or have perfect pitch) before you know it? Opponents of trans acceptance maintain that trans identities are new and trendy, that trans teens today are jumping on a bandwagon. The claim is in one sense obviously false—many cultures, from Samoa to South Asia, have gender-boundary-crossing identities—and in another sense irrelevant: Our right to acceptance shouldn’t depend on how long ago we showed up. We are here now.
Yet this question of origin has inspired useful history. Anne Lister (1791–1840) loved and had sex with women, and dressed and acted very much like a man. Her Yorkshire neighbors called her “Gentleman Jack,” though someone who behaved like her today could be an aristocratic butch lesbian, rather than a trans man. Dr. James Barry (1789–1865), by contrast, consistently presented himself as a man throughout his adult life, from his student days in Edinburgh to his decades as a military medical officer, improving sanitation in outposts of the British empire.
Like Lister, Sullivan kept extensive diaries. To read through them now—in the abridged edition We Both Laughed in Pleasure, prepared by Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma—is to find sentiments that trans readers might recognize. “I wanna look like what I am,” he muses early on, “but don’t know what someone like me looks like.” “I’ve spent my whole life dreaming I was someone else, but no one else would believe me.” Sullivan had the sense—as I did, for decades—that coming out as trans was both inevitable and impossible, right up until he decided to take the step. “It’s too good to be true,” he reflected. “It’s so nice to allow myself to say I am a man.” First he had to move to San Francisco, and leave his tender, difficult, long-term lover: “Had J not been around,” he mused, “I would definitely go towards being male.”
Once Sullivan chose the story he wanted to tell about himself, he could help others find their own. In California, he saw the well-known trans man Steve Dain “counseling an 18-yr-old female who says she feels like a gay man … so we do exist!” Not everybody agreed. “A reputable clinic” in the late 1970s “wouldn’t touch [Sullivan] with a 10-foot pole … Because I don’t have the typical transsexual story they want to hear.” Yet Sullivan was undeterred in his quest to “just ‘be there’ for new F➞M’s,” telling them they’re “NOT the only one.” As his death from HIV/AIDS approached, he wrote: “They told me … that I could not live as a gay man, but it looks like I will die as one.”
You could paint Sullivan’s life as a tragedy, but the diary feels full of joy, in part because it’s also full of sex—a manual of sorts from a time when trans people had to educate ourselves. “I made myself a good strap-on cock out of socks & wore it to sleep. Good masturbation.” “I want to have sex with a man as a man.” With the power of imagination, of socks stuffed in pants, of testosterone, and later of top surgery, he did. His most evocative writing conveys the desire at the core of his being. “In my search for the perfect male companion, I find myself. In my need for a man in my bed, I detach myself from my body and my body becomes his.”
Trans acceptance should not depend on our having to hide or lie about our sex lives. (Chu describes a trans woman whose therapist rejected her on the basis of her sexual tastes: “Real MTFs don’t do that.”) Nor should acceptance depend on whether we pass, whether we feel the same way every day, whether we match strict binary definitions of male or female. Our stories can change, and they interact with the stories that others tell us about ourselves.
In that sense Chu is right: Almost all of us in various ways try “to become what someone else wants.” We seek both the other people who can accept us (as Sullivan did in San Francisco, as Dunham does now) and the imagined future self that we want to, and try to, become. If that search feels like a problem, it’s also a solution, the one that Dunham’s quarter-life memoir, and Sullivan’s voluminous journals, record. “Is wanting enough?” Dunham asks. Can they be “a real man,” or will they always and only be “a girl obsessed with men”?
Am I a real woman? Was Sullivan a real man? Why do I care how other people answer that question? But I do care. So does Dunham, and so—I think—does Chu, and so did Sullivan, who made himself, even while dying, into the Bay Area’s proud transmasculine historian. “I can never be a man,” he wrote, “until my body is whole and I can use it freely and without shame.” Such a goal might be the kind you never quite reach. Still, so many of us try to get there, whether the effort looks like one great change or a string of smaller moments. We share our stories, and we make new ones if those we find don’t fit; and then we send the new stories out into the world to see whether what resonates for us, what might save us, could help others too.
These days in countries like the U.S., it’s a lot easier than it has been in the past for girls to pursue hobbies, careers, and preferences once thought exclusive to boys. There’s, of course, still much work to do in creating truly equal opportunities and access, but the good news is that there’s much less of a push to shove all girls into traditional caretaking and homemaking roles. Some parents may even be eager to support and celebrate their daughters’ interest in sports, science, adventure, and the like.
How about our sons?
Ask yourself this: How would you feel about your son wearing skirts and makeup, joining the cheerleading squad or ballet, and spending a lot of time giggling on the phone talking with his friends about schoolyard crushes?
Why many parents struggle to let their boys be “feminine.”
A 2018 study in the Journal of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity found parents tend to be more uncomfortable with their child having gender-nonconforming behaviors when their child is a boy than when their child is a girl. Parents were also more likely to try to change boys’ gender-nonconforming behaviors than to try to change girls. In other words, parents are way more OK with girls doing “boy stuff” than with boys doing “girl stuff.” (Those words don’t actually mean much, of course, but we’ll get to that.)
That discomfort from seeing boys display traits we associate with femininity stems from a combination of sexism and homophobia, explains Jesse Kahn, LCSW, CST, director and sex therapist at the Gender & Sexuality Therapy Center in New York.
“Sexism is rooted in the belief that men are superior to women and masculinity is superior to femininity,” they tell mbg. “As such, ‘male qualities,’ or masculinity, is inherently more acceptable and desirable. Boys deviating from masculinity are then viewed as offensive and inferior.”
The above study also found that parents who showed more “warmth” toward their son were more likely to try to change his gender-nonconforming behaviors. The researchers posited that this finding suggests parents who intervene to guide their sons back toward traditional “boy” behaviors might be doing it because they think it’s good for him. For example, perhaps these parents feel like their son will get bullied or shamed for their “girly” behaviors, and so they believe steering him away from those behaviors is the right thing to do for his well-being.
But in truth, denying a child’s authentic self can create major physical and mental health problems for them down the line: everything from social alienation to lack of proper health care access to increased suicide risk.
“Protective instincts are rote and innate, and they tell us that when something feels dangerous, we should take the easiest and quickest route to restore safety,” sex educator and crisis counselor Cavanaugh Quick, LMSW, tells mbg. “The problem is that restoring safety isn’t inherently the same as eliminating the threat. Confronting the negative behaviors from others, reinforcing positive reception and love with our young people who experience them, and encouraging an expanded possibility for this kind of expression in our boys both restores safety and targets the threat directly.”
Kahn adds, “A lot of research has shown us the power of acceptance from one’s parents. The strongest protection a parent can offer is supporting their child, which begins with examining their own judgments.”
How to raise sons without pigeonholing them into gender stereotypes.
1. Remember that “boy” doesn’t really tell us anything specific about someone’s interests or habits.
Don’t assume you know what your son will like or how he’ll act just because he’s a boy. “Boy” doesn’t really mean anything in particular, after all—we have associations about what being a “boy” and a “man” mean, associations that we’re taught growing up and that get reinforced by our culture and by the media. Then we start teaching them to our children. Research has shown us time and time again that parents treat girls and boys differently, affecting everything from their color preferences to their emotional intelligence to their STEM skills and much more.
“Listen to and stay curious about your child’s interests; if they deviate from your gendered expectations, challenge yourself to both allow your child to engage in that activity as well as be supportive (as supportive as you would be of something you deem more acceptable),” Kahn says. “If a parent is nonresponsive, appears uncomfortable, less interested, or less excited about something their child is doing that is considered nonconforming, the parent is reinforcing their beliefs regarding gendered expectations. Kids pick up on that information.”
Do your best to avoid making assumptions—or being outwardly surprised if your son does something outside of your assumptions. Just remember this: There’s nothing innate about boys liking blue, trucks, sports, girls, or action movies, nor is there anything innate about boys being unemotional or bad at cooking and cleaning. If most boys are like that, it’s because we’ve collectively taught them to be like that. There’s nothing wrong with them developing those traits, of course, but there’s no reason to actively push your child into any of them just because he’s a “boy.”
2. Actively offer your son the “feminine” options.
Just like with the word “boy,” the word “girl” doesn’t really mean anything unless you make it mean something. Whatever it is you typically associate with girlhood, make sure your son has a real opportunity to choose that if it appeals to him.
“That means not just saying ‘I’m OK with it if you want to do this’ but actually making stuff available and actively participating in offering expanded options to your young people,” Quick explains. “Take them down every aisle in the clothing/toy/school supply/etc. store when you’re shopping and just ask them what they like. Make space for them to make decisions when possible, instead of being directive. Support and encourage them when and if they pick stuff that you think isn’t masculine.”
3. Watch your gendered language.
Watch out for things like “man up,” “be a man,” “tough guy,” and “boys will be boys.” And when boys and men around your son do something that conforms to your familiar definition of masculinity, try to avoid making comments about that behavior that imply it’s inherently masculine. (Some examples: “Boys always play so rough!” or “Of course all the dads stayed home to watch the game tonight!”)
“When speaking to children, parents unconsciously use feminine adjectives to describe their daughters and masculine adjectives with their sons,” Kahn adds. “Don’t use language that boosts gendered expectations about how people of specific binary genders are ‘supposed’ to act.”
4. Introduce your sons to people who are gender-nonconforming.
Kahn also recommends introducing your kids to gender-nonconforming and trans people, whether in their lives, in history, or in the media or TV shows. That exposure can help kids start to understand gender for what it really is—not something set in stone based on body parts but rather something that’s just about what behaviors and traits feel comfortable and authentic to any individual.
“Teach [your] children that gendered constructs are not facts, and successfully communicate that their interests, identities, [and] presentations don’t have to be confined to an assigned gender or role,” Kahn explains.
5. Keep educating yourself.
“You can’t teach what you don’t know,” Quick points out. “Talk with yourself about what your gender (nonconforming or not) means to you and why it’s important. Why do you make the choices you make? How do you feel when someone forces you into something different? … Asking and exploring these things for yourself gives you more insight and helps you model that exploration for your young ones.”
If you have no idea where to start, pick up a book about gender to read in your downtime. Kahn adds that seeing a gender-affirmative therapist can also be a really helpful way for parents to educate themselves and figure out how to best support their child, especially if their child is queer or trans.
6. Be an advocate in your community.
Your son might have the most traditionally “boyish” gender expression ever (whatever that means); that’s totally cool. Just remember it still doesn’t give you a pass to go back to passively or actively supporting stereotypes. No matter your kids’ gender identities, raise them so they know how to actively question the gender norms they’ll inevitably encounter outside the home, so they can choose for themselves who they want to be. Support their growth into open-minded and accepting young people who’ll be able to support the gender identities of their peers, whatever they may be. That also means correcting your kids when they’re making gendered comments about their classmates or about TV shows.
You should also stay engaged in conversations around gender, especially around your children’s schools and your family’s larger community. Does your kids’ school have a weird, gendered policy about girls being allowed to wear nail polish but boys aren’t? Or about which uniforms or bathrooms trans kids are allowed to use? Use your voice to advocate for freedom, expression, and inclusivity.
“I believe in focusing on changing the environments we live in so that a gender-nonconforming child doesn’t have to fear being teased, bullied, or have to change as a means of protection from judgment,” Kahn says. “That change starts at home.”
Twine is a powerful game development engine embraced by queer developers, adult content creators, and interactive storytellers. Contemporary Twine games push the engine’s boundaries, while older ones are still a fresh breath compared to the mainstream games industry’s hyperfixation on cisgender and heterosexual relationships. And yes, that extends to adult Twine games, too.
Whether you want to hook up with a shy spider boy or serve a domineering office mistress, itch.io has you covered. Listed below are our top recommendations for 18+ Twine games, especially for queer players.
Care, boundaries, and consent are vital parts of any bondage, dominance, sadism, and masochism (BDSM) play session. But most games with kinky sex sidestep realistic depictions of domination/submission (or D/s) play. Dragons-bondage’s A Bunny and Her Mistress challenges that norm. The game stars players as “Bunny,” a submissive girl serving her mistress one step at a time. But instead of railroading players through the game’s BDSM encounter, dragons-bondage lets players choose to continue on with a scene or pause and ask for aftercare. So if spanking isn’t quite your thing, or if you’re not into hardcore D/s play, you can tap out at any time and let Mistress praise you for your obedience. Well written, blatantly queer, and ridiculously hot, A Bunny and Her Mistress is an easy choice for BDSM practitioners getting started with Twine.
Sent to the Office is a dream come true for furries, queer trans girls, and monster girl kinksters alike. The game stars players as the lowly, subservient plaything of a domineering dog girl (or “sexy, curvy bitch,” as the game says) sitting in a short skirt with her “fat bulge” visible and “so much… cleavage” exposed. From there, players embark on a journey filled with ogling, degradation, and everything from pet play to lactation. Clocking in at 15,000 words with over a dozen different endings, Sent to the Office is available as a pay-what-you-want Twine game on creator ikksplicit’s itch.io. Players can also test the game’s opening and try out some of its endings with the Twine’s free demo.
There’s something beautiful about Big Armadillo Boyfriend. Developed by Colin Spacetwinks, the game focuses on the player character’s long-distance relationship with his boyfriend Gene. Like the name implies, Gene is an enormous, adorable armadillo. He’s also a great boyfriend with his own complicated life story to share. With the player in town for the weekend, the two go on dates together, learning more about each other and sleeping together. Featuring a “novel length” story with “no ‘bad ends,’” plenty of date scenes, and several 18+ scenes, Big Armadillo Boyfriend is a wholesome and realistic portrait of gay love and dating in Anytown, U.S.A. The game is available on itch.io for $3 or more, along with a free demo of the first day.
Before gamers debated Cyberpunk 2077’sgender options, Twine developers were giving players the option to choose their gender and junk separately. AzureMagician’s Night on a Web is a perfect example. The Twine game follows an anonymous protagonist visiting an abandoned mansion where an introverted spider boy lives by himself. Before starting the game, players are allowed to experience the game as either a man or a woman, along with deciding whether they have an “innie” or “outtie” (that is, a penis or a vagina). It’s a pretty inclusive option, letting players star as canonical trans women and trans men (albeit nonbinary options are sadly missing).
Part exploratory adventure, part romance, Night on a Web is a slow burn compared to some of the other games on our recommendation list, but that’s part of its appeal. Expect some tender, erotic human/monster boy segments filled with kissing, headpats, bondage, and bottoming for a cute, powerful boy.
Paper Waifu’s The Godhood Chronicles is incredibly hot. Part role-playing game, part erotica tale, the player stars as a god brought down into the world and desired by the women around him. Sex scenes are incredibly well written, and they also come with a lot of interactivity. Players can be as gentle or as rough as they want with their mortal lovers, whether that’s kissing your priestess softly or forcibly ripping off her clothes.
For the time being, The Godhood Chronicles is on hiatus while Paper Waifu plans to port the game to a new engine. For the latest public build, fans can head on over to the game’s itch.io, or they can access the patron-only version by pledging to Paper Waifu’s Patreon.
ANDRO/GYNE is an intimate photo essay that without words and through an alluring, artistic lens, gives voice to a large group of strong individuals that deserve a platform in mainstream discourse. The mysterious black and white, nude photo series juxtaposes a man and a woman who has undergone a mastectomy without reconstruction. This passion project is shining a light onto the taboos surrounding reconstructive surgery through illustrating the power that resides in vulnerability.
Recently, certain silicone breast implants were recalled due to the fact they are known to cause lymphoma. This prismatic photo story explores the fluidity that resides in femininity. The power the results from choosing health, and being confident in that decision, versus feeling the need to transform oneself because of underlying mainstream beauty pressures is effortlessly portrayed.
You are very quick (and correct) to point out that gender and sexuality do not originate in the breasts. Why do you think that society places such a huge importance on breasts?
Breasts instantly communicate to the male gaze the fundamental desirability of the female: her ability to produce children and provide sexual gratification. The degree to which the semiotics of breasts is defined in our culture by the male gaze became glaringly apparent to me when I lost mine due to cancer.
The sexual and nurturing power of the breast is not part of that definition, especially in the US. Rather, that power, which is the feminine power in the equation, is controversial. Bra-burning, rappers flashing or grabbing their breasts, the rows over public breast-feeding and the bizarre practice of strippers covering their nipples with tassels all attest to this.
Culturally we like breasts to be large and prominent but devoid of active female sexuality, i.e. nipples. It is total objectification. Showing cleavage is sexy. Showing nipples is slutty.
Oftentimes, doctors who prefer breast reconstruction following mastectomies push the narrative of “restoring femininity.” What are better hallmarks of femininity that we should place more value on?
Ultimately femininity is part of sexual identity and drive, regardless of your assigned gender or physical appearance. When women are objectified it serves to negate their sexual agency. So the cultural ideal of a woman, as defined by a male objectifying gaze, is a woman who is a recipient and mirror of male desire but has none of her own.
The hallmark of a feminine woman, to me, is her sexuality, and until we come to terms with that, culturally, nothing will likely change.
What offended me in the discussions with doctors around reconstructive surgery was that it was solely focused on how others experience me sexually and completely left out how I conceive of and experience my sexuality. Having lumps of numb silicone installed in my chest will not do anything for my sexuality. If anything it will detract, because it would destroy the recovered sensitivity of my chest.
The subtext in much of this discussion was that I would not be able to have sex, if I did not have breasts. No doubt many men would pass on a woman with no breasts, but they might also pass for any number of other reasons. In the end, those who pass me up are not relevant to the vitality of my sexuality.
Why is it important to picture both a man and a woman in this photo series, rather than placing the sole focus on the woman?
For a couple of reasons. We wanted to contrast femininity and masculinity to offset my femininity in a way that is readily understandable, posed next to a classically beautiful male. The nude couple is a classic genre, and we wanted to have the series work within that genre and at the same time push the boundaries of the genre. We wanted the scars to be fully visible and yet not be the main focus. We wanted the focus to be on me interacting fully as a woman, in spite of the scars, and age for that matter.
But it also had to do, more generally, with the narratives around cancer survivorship. Especially with breast cancer, it tends to be all about the lone “cancer warrior” overcoming tragedy. I don’t see it that way. I am not a survivor. I am alive in every sense of the word and, to me, being alive is all about my relationships and connections with others. Foivos happens to be a talented actor and performer, so he had the chops to do this, but he is also a good friend. I wanted that human connection and dialogue in the photographs, because that is how I know that I am alive.
What do you believe should be considered the root of female sexuality?
As with any person’s sexuality, the root has to be how you yourself experience and live your sexuality, not how others try to define it. LGBTQ people know this very well, but living a lifetime as a cis woman, I had never fully realized how much social norms interfered with my sexuality. Losing the breasts was enlightening in many ways, because it forced me to engage with my femininity and sexuality in a whole new way, liberated, in a sense, from the objectification that had been part of my life from the time I grew breasts. Rather than detract from my sexuality, the surgery led me to reclaim it as my own.
What is one thing you wish more people knew about breast amputation?
Just one thing? I would have to say that reconstructive surgery is more complicated than most people think. The amputation itself is a relatively simple and easy surgery for most people. The pain and complications start with reconstructive surgery, which, by the way, is typically a minimum of two surgeries and often more than that. Many women are very pleased with their results, but many women are not. The reconstruction will allow you to remain within the normative boundaries for a cis woman, but finding your center as a woman will take work with or without reconstructed breasts.
How did Chu come to such views? What is it like for her to live with them? You won’t find clear answers in her first book, Females, a short, exasperating volume that is nothing like a memoir and not much like a manifesto. It’s more like a provocation, thick with what Chu herself labels “indefensible claims.” “Everyone is female,” Chu writes, “and everyone hates it”: We are all female in this special, philosophical sense because we all “make room for the desires of another.” You, too, let “someone else do your desiring for you.”
Like Lister, Sullivan kept extensive diaries. To read through them now—in the abridged edition We Both Laughed in Pleasure, prepared by Ellis Martin and Zach Ozma—is to find sentiments that trans readers might recognize. “I wanna look like what I am,” he muses early on, “but don’t know what someone like me looks like.” “I’ve spent my whole life dreaming I was someone else, but no one else would believe me.” Sullivan had the sense—as I did, for decades—that coming out as trans was both inevitable and impossible, right up until he decided to take the step. “It’s too good to be true,” he reflected. “It’s so nice to allow myself to say I am a man.” First he had to move to San Francisco, and leave his tender, difficult, long-term lover: “Had J not been around,” he mused, “I would definitely go towards being male.”
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