“He hasn’t been engaging in this behavior at school,” said Rosie.
“He hasn’t been dressing up at school,” Mr. Tongo corrected. “Maybe during free choice, though, he’s playing with dolls when the other boys are playing with trucks. Maybe during lunch he sits with the girls instead of the boys. Maybe when the teacher says boys line up on the right, girls on the left, he stands in the middle looking confused. Perhaps his desire to disappear or his sense that he is disappearing has to do not with you but with everyone else in his world telling him to stop acting like a girl.”
Penn was holding his head with his hands and his elbows with his knees. He did not look up. “What does that mean—acting like a girl?”
“Oooh, good question. Well, it means any number of things, doesn’t it? Cultural expectations and proscriptions touch nearly every aspect of our lives but vary, also, for each individual, not to mention the usual social determinates such as—”
“I understand that,” Penn interrupted, “but if it’s so culturally determined and individually experienced, what do you mean when you say ‘dysphoric’? We’ve never said to him that he can’t play with his dolls or bake or wear a dress because only girls do those things. Absent any other influences, it’s obvious to me that any five-year-old faced with the choice of toe-colored toes or rainbow-colored toes would choose the latter. That’s normal. That’s not dysphoric. That doesn’t make him a girl. That makes him a kid.”
“Hear, hear!” The man was starting to bounce again. “Bravo!”
“Isn’t it also,” Rosie added, “what we’re all striving for? Or should be? A wider range of normal and acceptable? Kids who can wear what’s comfortable and play however they like?”
“Yes, oh yes!” Mr. Tongo cheered.
“Then what’s going on here?” The bees behind Penn’s ribs were back. “What’s making this kid feel so … lost?”
“He wore a pink bikini all summer long,” Rosie added, “with great enthusiasm. But now suddenly—”
“Out in public?” Mr. Tongo interrupted. “Or just at home with his family?”
“Mostly at home,” Rosie admitted, “but he wore it to the end-of-summer pool party. The whole neighborhood was there. People were pointing and laughing and whispering, and he didn’t even seem to notice. He was so proud. What’s changed?”
“What has changed?” Mr. Tongo asked quietly.
“School,” Rosie and Penn knew together.
Mr. Tongo nodded. “Children learn many wonderful things in kindergarten. How to line up for lunch. How to use inside voices. How to not push people. Important life skills for sure. I use them every day myself. But they learn other things too: you have to conform, or people might not like you; you have to be the same because different doesn’t feel good. At home, Claude’s loved no matter what. At school, it sometimes feels the opposite: you are not loved no matter what.”
“So we should homeschool.” Rosie was already rearranging her work schedule in her mind. Penn could teach reading and writing. She could do biology and anatomy. Surely, those were mainstays of the kindergarten curriculum? Maybe her mother could—
“Of course not.” Mr. Tongo laughed. “These are not bad things for Claude to understand. These are things we all have grapple with. A five-year-old has much to learn. When people are annoying, it feels good to push them but we mustn’t. Even though it’s often pleasant to shout, others are trying to concentrate. Though we’d always like to be first, sometimes it’s someone else’s turn. And when we behave in a manner other people don’t expect, there will be consequences.”
“How do we teach him that?” said Penn’s bees.
“You don’t!” Mr. Tongo clapped his hands, delighted. “He’s already learned that. You have to help him unlearn it. You have to help him see that if he’s disappearing from the world, that’s too high a price to pay for fitting in. He has to see how ‘You shouldn’t push even though you want to’ isn’t the same as ‘You shouldn’t wear a dress even though you want to.’ None of that’s any different for Claude than for anybody else. It’s all part of growing up.”
Rosie nodded and tried to believe this and ventured to ask, since he’d brought it up, “What will he be? When he grows up?”
“Who knows?” Mr. Tongo smiled. And though Rosie had to admit that of course that was the right answer, the only honest answer there was, the only answer there could be, the question itself was starting to take over her sleepless middle-of-the-night ruminations.
“We’ll have to wait and see.” Mr. Tongo shrugged but not unhappily. “Exciting! But wherever it goes from here, the best thing about gender dysphoria is this. Ready? Claude’s not sick! Isn’t that wonderful?”
“Yes, but—”
“We don’t have to worry yet about who he’ll be when he grows up. He’s only five! But since he’s only five, he can’t fight the entire weight of his culture alone. You know who has to do that?”
“Who?” Penn asked, though he knew.