I read the news today, oh boy...

In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.---Andy Warhol

It all started with a letter. Our principal, well-intentioned--although I believe misguided--decided he had to send a letter to the third grade parents saying, "We recently became informed that one of our third-grade students is a transgender child. Transgender individuals have a biological gender that does not match their gender identity, etc.." He felt he had to let the parents know that the school would be talking to their children, and give them the opportunity to opt out. Do you think the principal would have informed the parents that a child had diabetes? In fact by law he wouldn't be allowed to. The loop hole was that he didn't name names, but it still brought unfair attention to Janet.


Shannon Garcia, of TransYouth Family Allies (TYFA) described the discussion, "The children were simply told that sometimes a person is born in the body of one gender, but feels inside like he or she is the other gender. There was no discussion about sexuality or sexual reassignment surgery. It was very simple, very basic so the children could get it. They're fine. It's the parents who have the issue." As a follow-up the guidance counselor discussed with them why we all need to be tolerant of people with differences. Different isn't wrong, it just is.

That time we walked past the school office on Janet's first day we had seen an anxious expression on the secretary's face. (Janet's First Day) Apparently she had been fielding phone calls from upset parents. Eight parents requested that their child be excused from the education session. Four changed their minds after talking to the principal regarding the content of the pending discussion. Given that the majority was fine with it, it is a shame the newspaper article reported:

Pennsylvania elementary school officials angered parents by giving them one-day's notice of planned counseling sessions with 100 third-grade students to explain that one of their male classmates would soon begin wearing girls' clothing and taking a female name and to ask that they accept him as a girl and not make unkind remarks [per an article in the Delaware County Daily Times.]

Why hadn't the article instead said, "A small minority of parents objected"? What the article also didn't say was that from the first day of school in September, buzz cut and all, L (as boy) had drawn dozens of Disney princess pictures for her new female classmates and played playground clapping games during recess rather than dodge ball. She'd walk across the school lawn in the morning, white stuffed rabbit tucked under arm, singing Ariel's wordless tune from Disney's The Little Mermaid in a high voice "Aaah, aaah, aaah." Later when I bought her first pink t-shirt she wore it for four days straight, after which my options were to a) let her wear a smelly shirt or b) buy her a week's worth. As her clothing became more feminine (except for wearing skirts or dresses) her hair was growing out. Nail polish, butterfly tattoos and stick-on earrings. So when the caller on a talk radio show lamented, "This must have been a traumatic experience for his [sic] fellow classmates, one day a boy, the next a girl," he was way off the mark.

So first it was the Philadelphia Inquirer article where Janet's specific school was mentioned. (The article has since been deleted.)

Why is the school introducing this subject to 8- and 9-year-olds?" wrote an angry parent who started a discussion on the Haverford Township's blog site. "Why were we not notified sooner. We received the letter today, the discussion at school is tomorrow."

What, they wanted a week to stew over it and plan a witch hunt? I'm thinking, how hard is it to make a phone call in the morning? The blog was the way the reporter found out. Apparently journalists prowl townships blogs looking for juicy stories.

The talented women at TransYouth Family Allies deftly dealt with the public and press, extracting a promise from the Inquirer reporter that Janet's school name would not be mentioned due to the fact that this could endanger the child. You might think this sounds overboard, but malicious self righteous jerks will actually travel across the country to protest what they believe are evil events and even approach the child or her siblings, trying to teach them that their parents are bad. Apparently the editor overrode this agreement and printed the school's name anyway siting the fact that it was already public information. Come on! Who but a small group of people had access to the township blog? While we luckily had no protesters, the principal received phone calls from outsiders berating him for his aberrant behavior. On the other hand, he also received phone calls from grateful transgender individuals, in tears because he was so kind and understanding, wishing they'd had somebody like him in their lives when they were young.

TYFA's experience was that if there was no more attention after three days we'd probably be in the clear. Instead on the fourth day we received an urgent call from them. It seems there was a CBS television truck outside the school. Fifteen minutes before school let out I pulled up outside the back door of the school. My four children ran across the playground, confused and not knowing why. Despite anxiety, I also couldn't help but feel a frisson of excitment, like we were in an action movie.

As the television story was being edited TYFA continued to advocate for us. Apparently a reporter had found out that Janet was adopted from China. She asked a local gender expert if Janet might not have become transgender because she was surrounded by girls in the orphanage. (Actually, there were plenty of boys at the orphange. Moreover, no one has ever found an environmental link to being transgender.) The gender expert immediately notified TYFA that the news was aware Janet was adopted  from China. TYFA, fearing that too much information could target Janet, first asked politely but ended up having to remind CBS that they would be held accountable if any harm came to Janet as a result of their revelations. CBS reworked the piece and aired it a day later, omitting reference to the elementary school and Janet's status as a child adopted from China.

During this time we were dealing with an impending substantial decrease in income, our own lingering angst about our daughter's transition, our on-going process of learning to bond with our adopted daughter--then home only 9 months--all a substantial stress on our marriage.

Once a month a transgender person in America is murdered. Let our moment in the limelight be limited to Janet's third grade transition.