Follow Up

From the very second we are born we are declared either a girl or a boy. We are put into a pink onesie or a blue onesie. The baby’s crib and room will be decorated for a boy or for a girl, and presents from family and friends will be picked out based on the gender of the child. Boys will most likely receive toy trains, cars, footballs, baseballs, and trucks—things that are defined as masculine. On the other hand, girls will receive presents such as dolls, dress-up clothes, stuffed animals, jewelry, and play baby carriages—things that are regarded as feminine. As Meghan pointed out, in her post, there are only two boxes that one can check—male or female. And you can’t check both.

What happens when that line is blurry? What happens when a child is born neither a female nor a male? It puts both the doctors and the parents in a confusing place. Should the baby be labeled a male or female? What happens if they pick the wrong sex and the child grows up and feels like a female but has the parts of a male? Then what? Eugenides writes, “I was born twice: first, as a baby girl, on a remarkably smogless Detroit day in January of 1960; and then again, as a teenage boy, in an emergency room near Petoskey, Michigan, in August of 1974 (3).” The confusion that would come with this is immeasurable. To be born one gender and feel like another must be the scariest thing in the world. You don’t know what to do, your parents don’t know what to do, and you’re different than everyone else.

When I was in elementary school there was this girl in my grade who looked a lot like a boy. She had short hair, and a masculine-looking face. She often played sports with all the boys during recess and was constantly mistaken for a boy. As time went on and we all grew up this girl began to dress in a more feminine way, do more girly things, and play less with the boys and more with the girls. Society constructed her. While this girl clearly had a vagina, and wasn’t born a hermaphrodite, she still struggled when she was young. Teachers would constantly be unsure if she was a boy or girl. They were confused about which bathroom to take her to. So while the girl grew out of it, she still seemed to struggle with gender confusion when she was young. While this is nowhere near as extreme as being born with both female and male genitals it’s still a tough way to grow up.

The harassment that gender-confused children, as well as adults, go through is terrible. He or she all ready has enough to deal with; there is enough confusion in their life. They didn’t choose this for this to happen; they were born this way. We should be helping them, embracing them, not making them feel as if they’re not normal. There’s no such thing as normal, anyway.