A Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing

Don’t read this book to children

“Gender inclusion” sounds good, at first, especially to those who remember the 1980s AIDS epidemic in New York. Much of the tragic story is told here and here. Fear and misinformation drove many New Yorkers to keep a wide berth from gay men, at that time the chief AIDS demographic. Hospitals often refused visitors who were not family, and since gay marriage did not exist, the nearest and dearest friends and lovers could be barred from visiting. Kicked out of their homes by landlords, dying horrible deaths, AIDS patients sometimes languished without proper nursing care. After disappearing for weeks, my neighbor, a charming lawyer, tottered out of our building with a cane, a young man suddenly old, a robust man skeletal. His vacant stare told me his mind had begun to fail—I am not sure he recognized foolish me, asking how he was. At a neighborhood restaurant sat the suits at the next table; I peered from behind my menu, deciding which was the cutest, until one turned to his companion and said, “my doctor’s given me six months.” Guys waiting in line at the supermarket had purple patches of skin from Kaposi’s Sarcoma; they might not live long enough to finish eating their groceries. A character in Tony Kushner’s Angels in America whistles in the dark: “my troubles are lesion,” he says, pointing to a first telltale symptom. (see especially from 2:11 on). Bestselling physician Abraham Verghese (lauded by Oprah) wrote a poignant memoir about his work as an infectious disease specialist treating young man coming home to die in Johnson City, Tennessee, men whose parents said—in disbelief, in their dying child’s hospital room—“my son’s a queer?”

The indifference, the contempt of the Reagan administration, resulted in needless suffering and the further spread of the disease. It took the death of Rock Hudson in 1985 for Reagan to begin to take the illness seriously.

That’s some of the history behind the current term “inclusion.” We want no one to feel so rejected, ever again for being sexually non-traditional. Katherine Locke, the author of What Are Your Words? describes experiencing such feelings as a child: “I had no language for the feelings inside of me . .  I could only assume–because I couldn’t find it around me–that I was the wrong one. This led to so much pain, so much confusion, so much hurt . . . And I never never want any kid to feel like that.” To feel rejected for their gender identity, but wow, is that term a hot potato. The feminist philosopher Kathleen Stock* comments on the wrong assumption of many trans people “that the existence and recognition of their political and legal rights depends upon gender identity theory’s correctness”—i.e. the theory that everyone has an innate sense of their gender.

Since no child should grow up feeling excluded because of race, sexual orientation, or disability, most Amazon and Goodreads reviewers welcome Katherine Locke’s What Are Your Words?  Blurbed as a “sweet, accessible introduction to gender-inclusive pronouns that is perfect for readers of all ages,” What Are Your Words is actually a set of instructions about pronouns, grammar, masculinity and femininity. This one’s guaranteed to make nervous children even more nervous, and, at best, confuse placid ones. No child will feel stronger after reading it. It’s anything but a children’s book.

A children’s book speaks to the typical experiences of children, for example losing mommy or feeling dumber or less talented than the other kids or getting into trouble without any idea why or being afraid of the dark or coping with a brand-new sibling. What Are Your Words?  is instead an indoctrination into the idea that everyone has something called a gender identity that might be constantly changing (an unfalsifiable notion--like that of the existence of the soul).  Children, like adults, like privacy along with their own theories. Telling children there’s a range of terms they can use about a sense of self they may not have is intrusive. They do not know how to process this information. Although they may sense how sexually close their parents feel, they don’t get the depth or range of adult sexuality. But again, like adults, they enjoy having their own worlds, their own secrets; they may ask where babies come from and look interested when you tell them babies grow inside mommies, but they may prefer to think a mommy eats something special and then poops it out.

Even so, children are prone to believing most things you tell them. If you want them to think there’s a Santa Claus, regale them with tales of the cheerful mythical being who slides down the chimney or zips through the window at Christmas. If you want them to go for the virgin birth and the father, son and holy ghost, better zap them with that before they’re eight. People like me—who learned that story only in art history—class it with science fiction. If you let your kids tune in to Blues Clues, watch out—they’ll end up singing along with drag queen Nina West about every new gender identity she could squeeze into the song. That goes for most children’s TV, which is now about anything but a mommy, a daddy, and a child. The focus is on learning new things about gender, often from a drag queen. There are drag queen kids now, too. I don’t think sexualizing children is good—not in beauty pageants for little girls and not in the case of this eleven-year-old Desmond. Don’t rely on You-Tube; picture book content for four-year-olds can be breathtakingly inappropriate. Although I usually find Matt Walsh crudely harsh in his judgements, I wholeheartedly concur with this assessment of yet another picture book about gender.

Drag queens are adult entertainment. They absolutely do not belong in schools or children’s libraries or story hours.

So if you want your child to believe his gender and his sexuality are in constant flux, that he can be a boy one day and a girl the next, or the same afternoon, then tell them all that when they’re very, very young (and have it reinforced by kiddy TV). My worries when my children were young seem quaint: I didn’t want them to see commercials for candy and toys, or watch anything violent, so for a long time all they got was Broadway musicals, educational videos and traditional Disney DVDs. I controlled what they saw, since smart phones hadn’t yet been invented.

The theory behind reading books like What Are Your Words? appears to be that children will automatically grow up to be bigots unless they are drilled in the many ways they could become "inclusive" by learning about pronouns and gender identity (not to mention disabilities, race, class).

All this is nonsense--if the parents are racists, it wouldn't be surprising if the child is, too. If the parents are nervous nellies terrified of inadvertently passing on an inherent or unconscious set of, say, racist or sexist beliefs, then small wonder if the kid develops into a nervous nelly terrified of inadvertently passing on an unconscious set of socially unacceptable ideas to his kid, too.

In What Are Your Words? the kid refers to his uncle as "they" and is told he can choose his pronouns--and has a hard time doing so, and becomes obviously anxious. Why wouldn’t he, with the cafeteria array he's given, including ze/zir and xe/xir? Children who really do have gender dysphoria should feel comfortable enough to tell Mommy or a teacher, but even if such a child does grow up feeling different from all the other kids, or scared, that's still better than transitioning him or her before puberty. Everyone has a right to go through puberty!

Children the age of the main character—Ari appears to be about four—are not typically interested in the term “pronoun” or in its use to denote a sexual or a gender identity, or in the term “identity” in any adult sense, or in the notion that everyone has a mysterious thing called a gender identity that only that person knows about and that can change from day-to-day or within the hour.

Grown-ups invented this idea. And invent it they did. Which one of the main characters of this picture book, Ari’s uncle Lior, a biologist, presumably knows. As every high school biology student learns, human beings are mammals and mammals evolved with two sexes—to reproduce—and all variations on sexuality known as intersex still fall biologically into male or female, a fact having nothing to do with transgender rights: anyone can defend the rights of adults to live as their gender of choice without denying biological realities.

Ari is a child who is asked to “use words” to describe his gender—and he’s anxious enough to say he doesn’t know which words to use, the poor kid, life not being made easier for him by the uncle who repeats, “they’re your words!” Putting the kid in the position of having to choose—Ari finally he takes “they/them” because he’s watching fireworks (plural) and he’s got to tell his uncle something—is just cruel.

The author goes by “they/them” pronouns. Which is the author’s business. If all this is depressing you as much as it depressed me, watch this.

*If your teenager melts down and calls Stock a “terf” and a “transphobe” please be aware that Stock is one of the most fair-minded, scholarly, witty writers you could hope to read on this topic—and she neither hates nor fears trans people nor wishes to harm them.