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Lazy Lesbian’s Guide to Sex-Ed for Kids

One night in the bath, my five-year-old son poked at his testicles. “What are these things called again?”

“They’re called testicles, but sometimes people call them balls,” I said.

He seemed momentarily satisfied, but the next night, on the toilet, he returned to the subject.

“These tentacles…” he started.

“Testicles.”

“Testicles,” he repeated. “What are they for?”

We’ve always talked about bodies and used correct language for anatomy. But this conversation felt different. Waylon’s questions were self-initiated and specific. After offering a hastily constructed answer, I consulted my parenting books. They counseled me to offer my child correct, technical, and honest information and to avoid overwhelming him with any information that wasn’t age-appropriate and that he didn’t need to know yet.

Sure, that sounds easy. Just like walking a tightrope. My son has the disposition of an attorney. His favorite questions are “Why?” and “What about…?”

I thought it would make things easier to keep the conversation factual and age-appropriate if I had some nice, feminist, LGBT-affirming book for talking to kids about their bodies. So I did the laziest thing in the world. I went to Amazon.com and searched for children’s books about sexuality.

My first search turned up several books from Concordia’s Learning About Sex for the Christian Family series and books from Navpress’s God’s Design for Sex series. These books featured dialogue like this line from Where Do Babies Come From?:

“It was God who thought of putting us into families,” Daddy said. “Wasn’t it a good idea?”

Christians, I realized, have been busy imagining the needs of parents and families and thinking about ways to meet those needs while simultaneously operationalizing their values about gender, sexuality, and the family.

But gender, sexuality, and the family are equally important and contested terrain for feminists. Critiques of patriarchal families and reproductive sexuality have been a feminist staple since the 19th century. Surely, I thought, some feminist authors have penned children’s books about bodies and sexuality that operationalize feminist values for parents and kids.

Scrolling through the secular offerings on Amazon, I found my way to, What’s the Big Secret? by Laurie Krasny Brown and Marc Brown. School Library Journal calls this book “the gold standard for sex ed for young children.” I ordered a copy and read the first sentence with high hopes.

“From the moment your life begins, you are either a boy or a girl.”

Hmm. My partner, Katy–Waylon’s other Mommy–identifies as somewhere in the middle of gender. Waylon has grown up in a feminist, genderqueer community. He has aunties and uncles and auntie-uncles with multiple gender identities. The kid is a bigger critic of binary gender paradigms than most adults. (I’ve been trying to teach him old protest songs like “If I Had a Hammer,” but he won’t let me sing the line about “love between the brothers and the sisters” without throwing in a couple of other identities to make it more inclusive.)

To be fair, What’s the Big Secret? does spend several pages deconstructing gendered ideas about children’s play, clothing, and emotions. Ultimately, however, the book locates differences between boys and girls firmly in biology:

“Actually, the only sure way to tell boys and girls apart is by their bodies.”

And, like a lot of the secular children’s books I looked at, What’s the Big Secret? explains binary gender as natural and necessary to reproduction. In fact, the section called “Why Boys and Girls Differ” is subtitled “A Little Lesson in Reproduction.”

I knew this book was not going to work for my queer family (we made Waylon with a friend, a plastic syringe, and a Mason jar). And it probably wouldn’t work for other LGBTQ families either. Moreover, as a queer feminist dedicated to questioning biological narratives about the naturalness of gender and reproduction, I was hoping for something more.

At the very least, I was hoping for a children’s book about bodies that didn’t assume heterosexual reproduction as the alpha and omega. Was that too much to ask?

The time had come to do something slightly less lazy. I visited my local feminist bookstore, Bookwoman.

At Bookwoman, I found several copies of A Very Touching Book by Jan Hindman. Written from the perspective of preventing sexual abuse, this book has several things to recommend it. It’s body and sex positive. Using touch as the central concept, the book leads children through decision-making processes about good and bad touching. In the process, it discusses physical attributes without resorting to reproduction as the ultimate explanation.

In fact, A Very Touching Book does not reference reproductive sex at all. Rather than explaining adult sexuality as a function of reproduction, Hindman (who passed away in 2007) defines adult sexuality in terms of safety, pleasure, and informed decision-making:

“The second reason that the sharing of those parts is such a big deal is that grown-ups need to spend a lot of time thinking about who the special person will be that they decide to share their bodies with.”

Throughout the book’s discussion of adult sexuality, Hindman uses gender-neutral language. In the text and the pictures, heterosexuality is not assumed. With a few slight adaptations, this book could work for my family.

There are, however, a few things I don’t love about A Very Touching Book. The illustrations are distractingly busy. The jokes are cheesey. And Hindman sometimes illustrates her points with longish analogies (like the one comparing private parts to Christmas) that detract from the main point.

Although I don’t expect to find the perfect book, I was curious whether other feminist writers had addressed the need for children’s books about bodies and sexuality. In keeping with my lazy mode of inquiry, I decided to have lunch with a feminist librarian. So I made a date with Dr. Kristen Hogan, an expert on women’s bookstores and feminist publishing.

The woman brought a bibliography to our lunch date. I really, really love that.

Kris’s book list, which I will reproduce below, helped me see that feminist authors and presses are producing books about bodies and sexuality for young people. However, the majority of these books were for children approaching puberty. In the category of books for young children, Kris suggested the book I’d found at Bookwoman, A Very Touching Book, and a book about sexual abuse, Not in Room 204.

Kris’s List

Sweet Secrets: Stories of Menstruation
Kathleen O’Grady and Paula Wansbrough
Second Story Press, 1997

Growing Up: It’s a Girl Thing: Straight Talk about First Bras, First Periods, and Your Changing Body
Mavis Jukes and Debbie Tilley
Knopf Books for Young Readers, 1998

On Your Mark, Get Set, Grow!: A ‘What’s Happening to My Body?’ Book for Younger Boys
Lynda Madaras
Newmarket Press, 2008

My Body, My Self for Boys
Lynda Madaras
Newmarket Press, 2007

Not In Room 204
Shannon Riggs and Jaime Zollars
Albert Whitman & Co., 2007

Your Body Belongs to You
Cornelia Maude Spelman and Teri Weidner
Albert Whitman & Co., 2003

Changing Bodies, Changing Lives
Ruth Bell
Three Rivers Press, 1998

I’m still thinking about why children’s books about bodies and sexuality have been such productive terrain for religious conservatives and (seemingly) neglected terrain for feminists. I suspect it comes back to what’s viable in the publishing industry. In the introduction to Harmful to Minors: the Perils of Protecting Children from Sex, Judith Levine talks about her struggles to publish an adult book about cultural anxieties surrounding children’s sexuality. In the arena of children’s publishing, narratives about reproductive families and child protection function to contain discomfort about children’s sexuality.

Although we never found the perfect book, I think my partner and I are managing to answer my son’s questions about his body through improvisation, recurring dialogue, and a mish-mash of the available resources. But the lazy part of me still hopes that feminist, queer-affirming, sex-positive children’s writers will add more and more options to the available resources.

4

The Chaos, Hubbub and Order Scale

6:30 comes early when you go to bed at 2. Last night, my wife’s heavy metal band played to a packed house of head-banging lezzies. Of course we had to go out for triumphant post-show pancakes. Now it’s my turn to take our son to school, and I’m feeling decidedly less celebratory.

On the clock radio, an NPR announcer is explaining, for the umpteen billionth time, about credit default swaps. I think I understand: as a mother, I’m always struggling to balance love, work, creativity, and the mundane obligations of domestic life. I know the temptation of a little creative accounting. Right now, I’m trying to leverage the possibility that I might know the location of my son’s shoes for ten more minutes of sleep.

I roll out of bed, start the coffee, and search the living room for my hat. Blue hair seemed like a great idea when I was plotting to be the belle of the freak fest, but this morning I have to walk the gauntlet of parents between the car and the door of my son’s kindergarten class. Four hours of sleep have not prepared me to make small talk about my hairdo with friendly straight people.

After the drop off, I call the dentist’s office and reschedule my son’s appointment. I tell them Waylon has the flu, which is a lie; I don’t want to pay the $25 cancellation fee. I feel a tiny tickle of remorse for not prioritizing dental hygiene, but I have to get some writing done today. If I don’t, maternal martyrdom will inevitably lead to greater crimes and grander regrets.

Earnest Hemingway wrote 500 words a day. Once Papa reached the magic number, he was free to drink, fuck, visit Gertrude Stein, whatever. I was immediately drawn to this measure of creative productivity. It’s a humane yardstick for when to say “enough” and move on. Once Mama hits 500 words, I’m free to do all the other shit I have to do.

At 468 words, I stop to put the dishes in the dishwasher. As I’m bending down to pour detergent in the little trough, my gaze hovers for a moment at the baseboard, where layers of congealed dust are threatening to become fur. I don’t allow myself to intervene, even though I recently read a study that found a positive correlation between an orderly home and childhood literacy. The authors asked mothers to rank their homes on the “Chaos, Hubbub, and Order Scale”–an instrument that I had previously imagined to exist only in the sadistic arsenal of my superego.

Intellectually, I consider this study ludicrous, its biases completely transparent. However, now that the “Chaos, Hubbub, and Order Scale” has been confirmed to exist outside my mind, its Victorian standard keeps coming back to haunt me. “What about the child?” it whispers as I walk past the mountain of unfolded laundry. Waylon’s blue eyes seem to plead from every dust bunny.

I don’t want to succumb to a full-blown domestic project, so I escape upstairs to check on my wife, Katy. She’s still in bed, totally spent from last night’s show. The blinds are drawn, and the floor is littered with cough drop wrappers. I sit on the side of the bed and try to stroke her brow, but she recoils. It’s as if rock-n-roll has flayed her skin and exposed raw nerves. Attempts at conversation elicit pained grimaces and a few faint moans. Then she pulls the covers over her head and goes back to sleep.

I’m frustrated and self-conscious. When Waylon was born, Katy’s hometown paper ran a front-page story titled “SHOULD WAYLON HAVE TWO MOMMIES?” Although I am generally not in favor of public referendums on my family, on a day like today, when I’m cancelling pediatric dental appointments and Katy is in a musically-induced coma, my mind tends to compose its own headline: “SHOULD SLOVENLY ARTISTIC TYPES HAVE BABIES?”

I have to remind myself that performance consumes energy in violent, catastrophic bursts rather than moderate daily units. Around here, the impact is brief, albeit extreme. In a couple of days, Katy will be taking Waylon to school and loading the dishes while I’m holed up in my room, trying to churn out 500 words.

Since grocery shopping is usually Katy’s chore, tonight’s dinner will be take-out. I grab some tacos on the way home from work. As we unpack the food from greasy paper bags, we discuss the big news from kindergarten: Waylon got his conduct card changed from green to yellow for kissing Tina in the reading loft. In Waylon’s recounting of the story, it’s Joseph who was really at fault, for “telling everybody.”

“Who else have you kissed?” Katy asks.

“Oh…just Joe, and Charlie…and Frank.” A few minutes later, I get a text from Frank’s mom: “Rumor has it that Waylon got in trouble for kissing Tina. LOL.” I contemplate telling her that Tina’s not the only one, but decide to wait until after she babysits for me next weekend.

We eat dessert in the back yard; Waylon takes a bite of ice cream, swallows, runs to the playscape, climbs the latter, jumps to the trapeze, swings around 180°, and then comes back to the picnic table for another bite. His path is cluttered with plastic toys and garden tools. All the junk Katy shoveled out of the car in order to transport equipment to the rock show last night is jumbled in a trash bag on the doorstep. The bag might sit there a week or even a month before its contents are missed and sorted.

Surveying our disorderly domain, I force myself to focus on the bright side of that study about childhood reading and household order: at least one of the questions on the Chaos, Hubbub, and Order Scale asked about a regular bedtime routine. In my optimistic moments, I choose to interpret routine as ritual. I can’t promise Waylon cleanliness, but I can promise him ritual.

7:30 is story time. Waylon snuggles against me in the bed, and we take turns reading to each other. After that, Katy leads the bedtime song, a customized version of “The Farmer in the Dell.” In this version, the wife takes a wife and all kinds of strange pairings ensue: a block with a Lego, a horse with a worm, and (in a nod to E.B. White) a pig with a spider.

The song has to end the same way every night, or else Waylon won’t go to sleep. The spider takes the cheese. And then there’s a Freddie Merucury-style chant:

“Hi-ho the derry-o, the spider takes the cheese and makes a holey-wolly, holey-wolly, hole, hole, hole.”

Holey-wolly, holey-wolly, hole, hole, whole.

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Genderqueer Mommy

Lately, when I’ve been blogging about my wife, Katy Koonce, it’s been about her role as dynamic front man for the “silicone cock rock” band Butch County. In honor of Mother’s Day, I asked her to talk with me about mothering from beyond the gender binary. In the course of our conversation, we touched on t-ball, chest surgery, field trips, and bathrooms.

Paige: Although people on the street tend to call you “sir,” around our house, you’re known as “mommy.” Can you talk about your identity and how motherhood figures in?

Koonce: My identity is trans-genderqueer-butch-dyke-mommy. “Mommy” is the word I used as a kid to describe the person who could take all the pain away or support me when I needed it. To say “I want my mommy” meant “I want a kind of omnipotent force to swoop down and take care of this problem.” So, when our son Waylon was born, I chose “Mommy” as a name because I loved the idea of being that force for someone in this crazy world of ours. When I found myself really attached to the idea of being someone’s mom, I realized that my gender identity was–at least for this time–landing squarely in the middle and I really love it that way. I love to hear the word “mommy” and to be called “mom” sometimes. But that has no real bearing as to how I feel in my body. For I am often not at home there.

Paige: You had top surgery when our son was 18 months old. It strikes me that there are still so few resources for transgender parents, and especially few stories about parents who transform their bodies without the goal of full transition. Can you talk about what it was like to get chest surgery as a mom?

Koonce: Well, getting chest surgery was way more anti-climactic than I anticipated. Waylon did not look up and say, “Are you my mommy?” There were no marked changes in the amount of “sirs” I receive. My psychotherapy clients did not decompensate without the breasts; they seem to have stayed latched on to the metaphorical breast. The biggest change has been the absence of my private bathroom struggle with the mirror. Tight t-shirts are now my friends and my happiness with my physical presentation has by far made me a happier mommy.

Paige: What is it like being genderqueer in places like elementary school hallways or the t-ball field?

Koonce: Now we are getting into space that feels challenging. My extroverted, jovial personality, which earned me the title of Class Clown in high school, has served me well in uncomfortable situations. Before I was ever conscious of being an outsider, I was defending with humor. So, the elementary school and t-ball field are challenges that I meet in a counter-phobic way, by diving in to what seems least comfortable. I am the field trip chaperone for Waylon’s class. I help coach his t-ball team. Waylon loves this. He seems to actually (so far anyway) love how I stand out from the crowd. Lately, he relishes in literally trying to expose my “soft under-belly,” by pulling up my t-shirt in public, to see if I feel shame. He wants to know I stand strong in who I am even though I have shortcomings like everyone else. He needs reassurance that I/he can tolerate our self-perceived flaws and celebrate our differences. This is why, in a queer, gender diverse family, a trip to the ball park is really always a social experiment. My usual defense is to act like I belong and laugh a lot. The song in my head is from Dreamgirls, “You’re gonna love me!” All in all I suppose it is challenging but pretty awesome.

Paige: But I think you’re doing more than seeking acceptance. By being present and involved, you’re actually transforming people’s assumptions and expanding their gender vocabulary. Just to cite one funny example, I know Waylon’s friends like to create genderqueer characters when they play video games now.

We’ve done a fair amount of LG family events and activism. What is it like to participate in those events where the paradigm is “same gender” parents?

Koonce: I really think I am blessed to feel comfortable as someone who transgresses or transcends gender. Other people might be freaking on me but they can’t sway my feeling of belonging in these spaces.

Paige: Since Mother’s Day was originally an activist holiday, will you say a little bit about your recent activism?

Koonce: Lately I am have been working with staff at local Austin inpatient mental health facilities to improve access and quality of care for trans people. And I just testified to the Texas legislature about adding gender identity and expression to the hate crimes act. Last but not least, I still use the women’s restroom. Word!

Paige: Thanks for sharing from your personal experience. Happy Mother’s Day, baby!

2

Keep Parenting Queer

A while back, I attended a workshop for LGBT families. At lunch, the organizers asked parents to break into small groups and talk about “things that sustain us.” My group was chewing its sandwiches in awkward silence, so I decided to plunge in: for me, one of the most sanity-preserving practices has been staying connected to my queer communities.

“You do that?” asked a gay dad in his late thirties. “How do you do that?”

His incredulity got me thinking. Chosen family and subcultural networks are two of the great blessings of being queer. For many LGBT folk, our queer communities have sustained us through better and worse, richer and poorer, sickness and health. So why is it that, after they have kids, so many people end up missing from the potluck and the film festival, the protest and the dance floor?

Is it exhaustion? Fear? Finances? Some kind of internalized oppression that says queer spaces are not kid spaces?

I have to admit, when Katy and I decided to have a baby, some of our friends were less than excited. They thought they weren’t going to see us anymore. It felt like they were mourning just when we were celebrating, which was hard to take.

In spite of my friends’ skepticism, I was determined not to disappear from their lives. It took me a long time to come out, and there was no way that I was going to trade my hard-won multi-generational queer subculture for a re-run of the nuclear family with two moms at the helm. It sounded boring, and it went against everything that I wanted to teach my son about community, engagement, and survival.

We’ve been parenting for six years now, and even our most dubious, anti-breeder friend has had to admit that things are turning out really different than she expected. These days, I feel closer and more connected to the people who really matter to me, but it’s taken intention and effort to maintain those connections. With that in mind, I offer the following tips about what has worked for us:

  1. Include your queer friends in your parenting. Dykes and fags love a good softball game, right? Well, recently we’ve found that they love a good t-ball game too. Our son, Waylon, has chosen “aunties” and “uncles” of various genders and orientations. They show up for his games, take him on adventures, and even babysit on occasion.
  2. Include your kids in queer community events. Waylon is an old hand at rallies, vigils, and protests. (As long as he gets to make and hold his own sign, he’s pretty happy.) He’s been to conferences like Gender Odyssey (hooray for Gender Spectrum Kids Camp). He has attended innumerable concerts, festivals, and parades. Last year, at Houston Pride, people were so excited to see a gayby that they were just handing over their beads, glow sticks, and other swag. By the end of the parade, Waylon looked like 80’s-era Madonna, completely weighted down with necklaces and bracelets. (Now, I know that some of you are worrying that parts of the parade might not be appropriate for young children. It’s true: one year a bunch of purple-robed gay evangelicals who were marching in the Houston parade tossed Waylon a coozie with a picture of the crucifixion and the words “He Died For You.” I thought that was a bit graphic.)
  3. Have your friends over after the kids are in bed. Sometimes you need grown-up time with your friends. For the past five years, an evolving group of friends has come over on Sunday nights to watch L Word. It’s not because we love the show (love to hate it, maybe), but because it gives us a chance to hang out and catch up with our friends without having to pay for a babysitter. Now that L Word is finally over, we’re transitioning to a Sunday night salon/potluck with a different theme every week.
  4. Get a sitter. This one takes a little planning and prioritizing, but it doesn’t have to cost loads of money. We regularly trade with the parents of Waylon’s friends for free babysitting. Waylon likes this system, because it means that he gets to have extra play dates and even the occasional sleepover. We like it because we get to know Waylon’s friends and we get to go out without draining our bank account. We also factor babysitting costs into our budget. Paying a good babysitter is expensive, but I think of it like one of those cheesy Visa ads; Babysitter: $13/hour. Staying in touch with your queer community: priceless.

To be perfectly clear, my queer communities include people who are gay, bi, and straight, people who are gender non-conforming and people who are (mostly) gender conforming. What’s queer about these networks of friends and chosen family is not necessarily the identities of the individuals. It’s the commitment to forging new ways of being together. It’s the creativity to look beyond the nuclear family and to find new ways of caring for each other. My friends have helped helped me survive illness, career change, political depression, bio-family drama, and the ups and downs of being a parent. Nurturing those networks is a skill I hope to pass on to my son.

The tips above have been helpful for me. I hope other parents will pass on what works for them.

0

My Family Gender Odyssey

Lesbian and gay family events are not always comfortable spaces for me and my fam.

That’s partly because some folks don’t know what to make of my genderqueer sweetie, with her man-chest and her female pronouns. It’s partly because the “same-gender parenting” paradigm may or may not describe us, depending on the situation, our moods, and the alignment of the planets. But it’s mostly because there aren’t always other trans parents and partners at gay family events, and the programming doesn’t always reflect our interests and needs.

So I was ecstatic last year when I read the Gender Odyssey program and saw a workshop titled “Fierce Dyke Seen Doing Husband’s Laundry.” Here, finally, I would find folks whose passions and preoccupations were–if not exactly the same as mine–at least in the same neighborhood. While I processed with other partners about identity and inference, Katy found her niche in sessions like “What’s the Rush?” where participants explored new paradigms and time-lines for transition.

But the most amazing thing about Gender Odyssey is that it’s fun for the whole family–even the kids.

Last year was the first year that Gender Odyssey shared time and space with the Gender Spectrum Family conference for people raising gender variant children and transgender teens. The brilliant folks at Gender Odyssey and Gender Spectrum decided to organize a kids camp for children whose parents were attending either conference. Which means that, while I was sitting in the town hall meeting on Dyke/FTM Community Relations, my son, Waylon, was happily gluing googly eyes on a family of sock puppets.

This year, Katy and I proposed a workshop for parents. The conversations in our session were wide-ranging — more often than not, the group’s parenting concerns were not related to gender at all. But while the topics might have been similar in any parenting workshop, it was such a relief that we didn’t have to explain our family or worry about other people’s assumptions. Talking about child-rearing in that context, with other trans parents and partners, was like finding something I didn’t really know I was missing.

Now I’m hooked. I can’t wait for Gender Odyssey 2009, but I’m also interested in broadening my horizons. I hope readers will use the comment space below to suggest other trans family events or to plant the seeds for new ones.

P.S. This year at Gender Odyssey, Waylon made two stick puppets named “Sweetie” and “Smiley,” who seem to have a penchant for scolding George Bush and John McCain in chirpy little voices.

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