What Do You Say When Your Child Says I Feel Like a Boy/Girl?
Ephesians 2:12 (ESV)
“Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ . . . having no hope and without God in the world.”
Romans 15:7 (NIV)
“Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”
Upon learning about “Klinefelter syndrome”—an abnormal male genetic condition—I wondered whether a character called “Klinger” from the old ‘70s hit TV show M.A.S.H. was maybe named to sound like this syndrome. Sergeant Klinger, desperately seeking a military discharge, habitually wore women’s clothing to feign mental illness. Affecting one in every five hundred male births, those affected have an extra X chromosome in addition to the normal male match XY in the 23rd chromosome that determines sex. They are “phenotypically males but with tendency toward femaleness” (e.g., enlarged breasts, underdeveloped body hair, long legs and hands, etc.). Then there is “Turner Syndrome” that affects 1 in 2500 females. Missing the X in the usual female pair of XX, the adult females “have virtually no ovaries, lack most sexual characteristics and are sterile.”
So, do these people with genetic abnormalities struggle with transsexual tension? Not according to the “best-selling text[book] look[ing] at gender entitled, Women, Men, and Society. According to two leading sociologists who authored this widely read college textbook, “despite the absence of [female] sex hormones . . . research with Turner syndrome females reveals stereotypical femininity in their behavior and personalities” (p. 36). As for men with Klinefelter syndrome, “many XXY men are no different from XY men in terms of social and emotional characteristics” (p. 36).
Nevertheless, there are certainly people who do struggle with transsexual tension. Consider, for instance, those genetic males who, because they were “unresponsive to the androgens its testes secrets” during the prenatal stage, are “born with the external genitalia of females. They look like girls at birth, so they are typically raised as girls by their parents” (p. 38). “Because of presence of normal testes, however, at puberty, when the testes begin to produce large amounts of testosterone, the external genitalia change. The penis grows, the scrotum descends, and the body becomes more muscular” (p. 39). In today’s world, telling these individuals to live as boys (after having been reared as girls) would be a hateful thing to do. Nevertheless, according to Julianne Imperato-McGinley, an endocrinologist at Cornell Medical School who studied eighteen males reared as girls in a particular Dominican Republic village (where intermarriage was common), “[these] individuals experience little difficulty in changing their sex and gender identities at puberty when their external genitalia become masculinized” (p. 39). To rebut this finding, the best the authors of Women, Men, and Society can muster is: “[The] attempts to change their sex and gender identities at puberty or in adulthood are sometimes not as smooth as Imperato-McGinley and others maintain” (p. 39). That, in my opinion, is neither strong nor very convincing rebuttal.
But enough about the exact science of these conditions. How do we minister to people afflicted with looking one way while feeling another? If most of you are like me, who have never struggled with sexual identity, we hardly know how those genuinely struggle with this feel; but, looking wistfully to our own past, perhaps we can recall a moment that can bring us closer to understanding their pains. While obviously I could never truly identify with how they must feel, I imagine that it can be a bit like how I felt at my predominantly white college in Virginia, where I began to feel very self-conscious about Asian physical features. My self-loathing for my Asian-ness was so intense that more than once I would hate myself for it. Looking one way but feeling another, I wanted to be white on the outside so much. Once, to appear like my taller Caucasian friends, I carved out the sole of an old shoes and stuck it inside my Nike high tops to gain an inch. Before long I was so enslaved to appearing taller that I couldn’t go anywhere without wearing those shoes.
Later, while studying at UCLA, I met a professor of clinical psychology, Stanley Sue (of Chinese descent), whose study of Asian-Americans with similar experiences as mine identified them as “marginal men,” to whom rejecting their Asian heritage in order to be accepted by whites is the key to happiness. That was once me when I was young, unsure of myself, and easily influenced. Pejoratively dubbed as a “banana”—yellow on the outside, white on the inside—I often felt frustrated, anxious, and hyper-sensitive when people didn’t perceive me the way I preferred. I wonder if that’s anything remotely similar to how young men or women who want to identify themselves as the opposite sex feel. That’s my own story, and I would gently tell it to those struggling with how they appear on the outside versus how they feel inside, to convey that I empathize, however tangentially, with them.
I’d then point out that the rejection of our own selves stems from the brokenness within, because of our willful separation from our Creator for wanting to live independently from His guidance (Rom. 3:11-12). Then I’ll share the following from my heart: Thirty-eight years removed from those miserable days, I haven’t struggled with that sort of confusion for a long time. How? First, at age 20, my Creator found me. It was a powerful encounter that began the process of accepting myself the way God uniquely made me. Second, I found a Christian community in which my worth wasn’t tied to my looks or ability but to Christ’s unconditional acceptance of us; so I was accepted on that basis, and in time I ditched the shoes. Third, my maturation in Christ gradually helped me take my eyes off myself, and instead focus on others who felt alienated from themselves, because they were separated from their Maker.
This is how I’d speak to those confused over their sexuality, who believe that self-acceptance and happiness are waiting to be found through becoming someone else. Now find your own story, and share with those who feel the same way.
“Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ . . . having no hope and without God in the world.”
Romans 15:7 (NIV)
“Accept one another, then, just as Christ accepted you, in order to bring praise to God.”
Upon learning about “Klinefelter syndrome”—an abnormal male genetic condition—I wondered whether a character called “Klinger” from the old ‘70s hit TV show M.A.S.H. was maybe named to sound like this syndrome. Sergeant Klinger, desperately seeking a military discharge, habitually wore women’s clothing to feign mental illness. Affecting one in every five hundred male births, those affected have an extra X chromosome in addition to the normal male match XY in the 23rd chromosome that determines sex. They are “phenotypically males but with tendency toward femaleness” (e.g., enlarged breasts, underdeveloped body hair, long legs and hands, etc.). Then there is “Turner Syndrome” that affects 1 in 2500 females. Missing the X in the usual female pair of XX, the adult females “have virtually no ovaries, lack most sexual characteristics and are sterile.”
So, do these people with genetic abnormalities struggle with transsexual tension? Not according to the “best-selling text[book] look[ing] at gender entitled, Women, Men, and Society. According to two leading sociologists who authored this widely read college textbook, “despite the absence of [female] sex hormones . . . research with Turner syndrome females reveals stereotypical femininity in their behavior and personalities” (p. 36). As for men with Klinefelter syndrome, “many XXY men are no different from XY men in terms of social and emotional characteristics” (p. 36).
Nevertheless, there are certainly people who do struggle with transsexual tension. Consider, for instance, those genetic males who, because they were “unresponsive to the androgens its testes secrets” during the prenatal stage, are “born with the external genitalia of females. They look like girls at birth, so they are typically raised as girls by their parents” (p. 38). “Because of presence of normal testes, however, at puberty, when the testes begin to produce large amounts of testosterone, the external genitalia change. The penis grows, the scrotum descends, and the body becomes more muscular” (p. 39). In today’s world, telling these individuals to live as boys (after having been reared as girls) would be a hateful thing to do. Nevertheless, according to Julianne Imperato-McGinley, an endocrinologist at Cornell Medical School who studied eighteen males reared as girls in a particular Dominican Republic village (where intermarriage was common), “[these] individuals experience little difficulty in changing their sex and gender identities at puberty when their external genitalia become masculinized” (p. 39). To rebut this finding, the best the authors of Women, Men, and Society can muster is: “[The] attempts to change their sex and gender identities at puberty or in adulthood are sometimes not as smooth as Imperato-McGinley and others maintain” (p. 39). That, in my opinion, is neither strong nor very convincing rebuttal.
But enough about the exact science of these conditions. How do we minister to people afflicted with looking one way while feeling another? If most of you are like me, who have never struggled with sexual identity, we hardly know how those genuinely struggle with this feel; but, looking wistfully to our own past, perhaps we can recall a moment that can bring us closer to understanding their pains. While obviously I could never truly identify with how they must feel, I imagine that it can be a bit like how I felt at my predominantly white college in Virginia, where I began to feel very self-conscious about Asian physical features. My self-loathing for my Asian-ness was so intense that more than once I would hate myself for it. Looking one way but feeling another, I wanted to be white on the outside so much. Once, to appear like my taller Caucasian friends, I carved out the sole of an old shoes and stuck it inside my Nike high tops to gain an inch. Before long I was so enslaved to appearing taller that I couldn’t go anywhere without wearing those shoes.
Later, while studying at UCLA, I met a professor of clinical psychology, Stanley Sue (of Chinese descent), whose study of Asian-Americans with similar experiences as mine identified them as “marginal men,” to whom rejecting their Asian heritage in order to be accepted by whites is the key to happiness. That was once me when I was young, unsure of myself, and easily influenced. Pejoratively dubbed as a “banana”—yellow on the outside, white on the inside—I often felt frustrated, anxious, and hyper-sensitive when people didn’t perceive me the way I preferred. I wonder if that’s anything remotely similar to how young men or women who want to identify themselves as the opposite sex feel. That’s my own story, and I would gently tell it to those struggling with how they appear on the outside versus how they feel inside, to convey that I empathize, however tangentially, with them.
I’d then point out that the rejection of our own selves stems from the brokenness within, because of our willful separation from our Creator for wanting to live independently from His guidance (Rom. 3:11-12). Then I’ll share the following from my heart: Thirty-eight years removed from those miserable days, I haven’t struggled with that sort of confusion for a long time. How? First, at age 20, my Creator found me. It was a powerful encounter that began the process of accepting myself the way God uniquely made me. Second, I found a Christian community in which my worth wasn’t tied to my looks or ability but to Christ’s unconditional acceptance of us; so I was accepted on that basis, and in time I ditched the shoes. Third, my maturation in Christ gradually helped me take my eyes off myself, and instead focus on others who felt alienated from themselves, because they were separated from their Maker.
This is how I’d speak to those confused over their sexuality, who believe that self-acceptance and happiness are waiting to be found through becoming someone else. Now find your own story, and share with those who feel the same way.
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