Welcome to the Rethinking Schools Archives and Website

Become a subscriber to read this article. Already a subscriber? Log in here.

Preview of Article:

As a Mom and a Teacher

By Jody Sokolower

Illustrator: Katherine Streeter

How can we support children who don’t feel comfortable identifying with the gender assigned to them at birth? I enter the discussion from two perspectives: first, as one of Ericka’s lesbian moms. From the time she was a toddler, Ericka, now 19, has struggled with defining her gender identity “both within and beyond the gender binary system,” as she explains it. Second, I am a teacher who has tried, not always successfully, to support students who were struggling with similar issues.

Ericka was a bald baby, and she didn’t grow hair for a long time. In the beginning, I thought that was why people said, “Oh, what a beautiful little boy.” “Thank you, she’s a girl,” I would respond. By the time Ericka was 5, she had stopped wearing dresses and people on the street almost always assumed she was a boy. I almost always told them she was a girl.

One day as we drove through rush hour, she asked from the backseat, “When I grow up, can I decide to be a man?” While I framed an age-appropriate explanation of gender change options, the pit of my stomach turned to ice. I know young children see gender, like death, as changeable, but I also knew that for my child this was different. And that it was time for me to deal with my own issues so I could be there for her.

As someone who had been part of the first consciousness-raising groups, and an activist for women’s and gay liberation since the late 1960s, I was invested in believing that we fought so that women could be anything we wanted. When Ericka wasn’t sure she wanted to be a woman, I took it personally—as a failure of everything I spent my life fighting for. It took me a long time to understand that freedom of gender expression isn’t an attack on women’s liberation. It makes more sense to see putting people in rigid gender boxes as one more aspect of sexual oppression.

To read the rest of this article:

Become a subscriber to read this article. Already a subscriber? Log in here.