Arlo (ROUND 3)
Let’s workshop this story (extremely rough draft) about a boy who is inadvertently groomed into a transgender identity by his well-meaning but ideologically consumed adoptive parents
scent of the day: Ambra Aurea, by Profumum Roma.—Ambra Aurea (1998, Felice, Luciano, and Maria Durante)—a boozy-smoky oceanic amber, comparatively chewy and unadorned—smells as if one took Ambre Sultan (with its whiskey-syrup infusion of charred-leathery labdanum, fungal-medicinal myrrh, and pine-sap olibanum) and toned down the greenery (leaving mainly the eucalyptus-like myrtle) and dialed back the earthiness (leaving mainly a chocolatey patchouli) and replaced most of the souk spices with the salty musk of non-ambroxan ambergris and the radiant glow of herbaceous cistus oil), a tweaking of Ambre Sultan that yields a seaside composition close enough to Parfum D’Empire’s Ambre Russe to warrant teasing out their differences: (1) Ambra Aurea—despite its civet-like sourness in the opening—is denser and weightier (gooey, chewy, molten), which makes its fire seem primal and eternal, whereas Ambre Russe—due to its resin-thinning cade smoke as well as its bubbly booze and citruses and dry-hay elements (fruity-bubbly champagne, icy-crisp vodka, lemon-pepper coriander, black tea)—is airier and thinner (dry, diffusive, dynamic), which makes its fire seem more flickering and festal; (2) Ambra Aurea, having not only frankincense but also various earthy elements (fungal myrrh, chocolatey patchouli), has a deep mediative—even melancholy—feel of groundedness, whereas Ambre Russe’s incense, mainly frankincense, feels more like the rosy-cheeked festive warmth of a Russian drinking hall; (3) Ambra Aurea seems to have a smokier and more caramelized char (as if resins themselves were burning) whereas Ambre Russe—despite its cade and birch—seems more vaporous and aerated in its smoke (as if hay and tea had just stopped smoldering); (4) Ambra Aurea has a less restrained briny-fungal bite, which makes it feel like you are closer to the sea, whereas Ambre Russe balances its maritime muskiness with a sweet fruits and tea, which makes it feel that you are more removed (like on the deck of an ocean-side villa); (5) Ambra Aurea—more focused on the mastics that make up the fantasy accord of amber—stays fairly linear whereas Ambre Russe—its brightness expanding and contracting over time with all its shifting pizzazz—gives it a livelier trajectory compared to Ambra Aurea’s meditative inertia (Ambra Aurea moving like molten resin solidifying into amber, Ambre Russe moving like steam rising off a cup of tea in winter air)—the overall result being a monolithic amber, more unadorned and ancient in feel than any other I have tried, that transports me to sea-sprayed coast around the charred driftwood of a dying fire whose orange embers stand out meaningfully against the overcast sky, a deep gray sky (much grayer than the sky of Ambre Russe) that nevertheless has this eerie backlit glow of near neon brightness.
* Bolded my work today
Arlo
Arlo is the newest lump of clay in the Thompson household, adopted as a toddler by Becky and Karen. Searching eyes, a gap-toothed grin, dimples like pinkies pressed into dough—he is one of those kids who invites affection as soon as he enters a room. He is the kind of boy who never shoves past others on the slide, who hugs classmates when they fall. He is the kind of boy who, under different circumstances (say, if born in the latchkey era), might have grown into a man—a man, but one who keeps his childhood friends for life (even if those friends fail to validate his “lived truth”); a man, but one who struggles to send back an undercooked steak; a man, but one who flinches at the sight of someone making someone else uncomfortable (even if only in a book). But the 1980s and all its knee scabs are dead, steamrolled by the algorithm of the attention economy. We orbit the gravity well of virality. “We do Botox” signs in the windows of walk-in clinics not just on the coasts but in the heartland too, even the TikTok hands that rock the cradle twitch like cyborgs.
Becky and Karen are progressive—“progressive,” understand, in the modern sense: a jargonistic-doublespeak sense quite detached from more traditional connotations of uncensored thought, of dissent and pushback (no matter whose feelings might be hurt). Their progressivism, of course, is suggested by their lesbianism and by their zip code (just outside of Boston). But in line with the new civic religion, where optics matter most not only for social standing (your employability, what sounds your mouth is permitted to form, and so on) but also for moral standing, their progressivism is perhaps best telegraphed through their car (a Kia, for its humble anti-status) and their neck scarves (tartan, for a male-gaze-thwarting touch of academic rebellion) and—perhaps most vividly of all—their hair (purple, for fearless kicks to the crotch of “white dick energy”). Most in the fight—in any fight, let us be real—are opportunists, if only in the sense that distraction is better than staring down the etch-a-sketch magnet of erasure. But despite the hyper-importance of costume in the fight, Becky and Karen—“no cap,” to use the lingua franca of the day—are involved as genuinely as anyone can be. “In times of upheaval,” so a wise person should have said, “the costume will find you” and Karen’s t-shirt from her Woman’s Studies graduate program, which she still busts out on occasion, says it all: “It’s not what’s under the skirt, it’s the skirt!”
That hair speaks volumes in this partisan age. To an outsider—if such a person still exists—it might seem ridiculous (and one does hope and pray for such outsiders, even if it renders this tale pure baloney). But “deadass,” the hair alone tells us everything. It tells us, for instance, that Becky and Karen believe—and with at least as much sincerity as can be engineered through ideological hypnosis—that January 6th was, in keeping with the shock-means-money economy of cable news, “an organized attempt to overthrow the government—an insurrection.” Despite the lack of governing plan beyond the vague hope of disrupting Congress for a few hours; despite the absence of an organized armed force; despite most of the so-called “coup operatives” meandering around confused and taking selfies like theme-park tourists (as expected by the typical dumb pop-music listening and pop-soda guzzling Americans they are, the same breed that once lined up for midnight Nickelback releases and so in essence the same as those who line up for GloRilla); despite the only death being one of these dolts (no disrespect) shot by a nervous cop, which under any other set of optics might have warranted a hashtag (a hashtag with the orcish subtext “It’s a go to loot TVs”)—yes, the hair alone tells us that Beck and Karen sit teary-eyed around the dinner table, fingers intertwined in the grief-clasp of performative remembrance, murmuring (even years later) about “that darkest day in American history,” that “most destructive act of domestic terrorism the U.S. has ever seen.”
The purple hair, the dyke cut really seals the deal, tells us that Becky and Karen view the BLM riots as—to borrow the media’s required euphemism—“largely peaceful,” largely peaceful despite the infernos licking at the backs of the gaslighting reporters dutifully reciting the phrase; largely peaceful despite the dilated maniac shoving a Gatorade bottle of 87 unleaded into the camera, looking like a cross between Pookie from New Jack City and Bane from the Batman universe, growling “We killin’!”; largely peaceful despite the grim realities hindsight should not have allowed so many to unsee (although, in fairness, their bubble likely never let it be seen in the first place): at least fifty dead, billions in damages, businesses looted and torched—the various rioting factions, all centralized around the race-monger lie (the lie that, given the reactive-spiteful nature of humans, insidiously baits reality into conformity) that white supremacy has reached unforeseen heights and depths of penetration (if only because it has largely become invisible). And this is to say nothing of the long-term aftermath. Sad as it is to say, the spiritual devastation (the attack on black dignity and personal responsibility) is arguably greater than the physical toll: whole districts rendered to third-world lawlessness (“No Justice, No Peace!”) as police—one of the last barriers between order and collapse in these crime cesspools—were yanked under the banner of liberation (“[Bounce dat ass] Defund the po-lice!”), leaving helpless citizens little but their deadbolt and their prayers—the disproportionate hurt here to black communities, neighborhoods deteriorating into something out of a low-budget Mad Max knockoff (only more fentanyl, fewer coherent villains), then insidiously spun (right on job-security-ensuring cue) as further evidence of white supremacy’s throttling grip, and more fuel for the anti-agential victimology narrative whose negative effects (namely, keeping black people down) is then spun by the same voices as even more evidence of white supremacy’s throttling grip (and thus further fuel for more race-mongered protests and books of Kendi grift). But the vicious cycle is fed, the narrative reinforced, and Becky and Karen grieve it all with the piety of true believers.
Becky and Karen both have cushy jobs, which they chalk up (between sips of ethically sourced oat milk lattes) to white supremacy’s rigged game—their white privilege a birthright they solemnly mourn and consciously “pay back” by supporting black-owned business. Becky is a graphic designer who works from home—and yes, she does walk the walk of reparative justice, always setting aside time for pro-bono projects benefiting “vulnerable populations.” Her latest freebie, for example, was designing the typography and layout of the sassy phrase “Nasty bitches over here” for a local black-owned sticker business. Here she fused—with the client’s full blessing, of course—the WAP empowerment aesthetic (a lot of dripping juices) with just a hint of Wakanda Afrofuturism (deep red for resistance, gold for empowerment, green for the land), but nothing too over-the-top because, in her words, “we all know Etsy’s white as hell!”
Becky is the momma bear, so to say. Purple-hands earrings and hipster glasses and bangs self-scissored in that neo-Appalachian aesthetic of the band Mountain Man, she is the one who goes to the PTA meetings. She is outspoken. And her words have impact. Often times they are kind, nothing like the rabidity one would expect from someone demanding that white bread be stricken from the cafeteria menu—and no, not just because of the high glycemic index or bleaching additives. But even though she will try her best to call fellow white people in (like the time when she stopped the mob of her equally self-scissored lookalikes from throwing out of the PTA meeting a mother who merely asked “But isn’t it okay to be white?”), she can—as she likes to say herself (her tone as cringey as Kamala but her heart as true as Malcolm—“stand on business.” She has gotten a “demeaning and offensive” book removed from the curriculum, for example. Why? Well, because it had black characters—characters, to quote her tear-choked words, “whose truths no white author could ever understand!” She also, in her biggest claim to fame, spearheaded the campaign to the retire the school’s sixty-year slogan: “Work Hard, Be Nice.” The twofold rational she wrote up seems worth quoting to give you the gist of her spirit.
(1) “Not only is hard work a white-supremacist value alien to Black bodies, there is also a long history of white people controlling Black bodies with the traumatizing lie that hard work will pay off in some so-called ‘end.’”
(2) “White people have displayed a long history of being offended by the native sass and wild bluntness of Black bodies, and so our school—which encourages Black students to disrupt the white-supremacist system that controls them—should never again participate in the violence of ordering Black students to be kind and play fair.”
Karen is a counselor specializing in youth mental health—and yes, she does walk the walk too. Karen only rarely will take on white patients. The idea is that white privilege makes white people much more able to bounce back from hardship and trauma, much more enmeshed in a support network that guarantees a bright future no matter what. The idea is that, so she might articulate after a few glasses of red, “this country is already structured to promote white health above all” and so—since “whites pose an existential threat” to black lives anyway—“it violates the dictates of equity-oriented healthcare” to devote more energy toward helping white populations: “there are just too many black folk in need!”
Karen thought this way since college. When she was raped as an undergrad by a gang of black men, she refused to report it. Her silence, in her mind, was an “impersonal duty to social justice.” She did not want to become complicit in perpetuating the stereotype of black hyperviolence, let alone become complicit in the “black-inmate industrial complex" of a nation “so hellbent on maiming and killing the black body” that it would “violate [her] conscience” if she further harmed the “true victim in this case” by “taking part in a long history of weaponizing white damsel tears to stoke a modern-day lynch mob.” She actually thought about pinning the crime on her white lab partner, as a form of militant payback, while the perineal trauma—a lightning gash that zagged through muscle and even into her anal sphincter—was fresh. But it was not in her capacity to hurt someone like this, especially considering how—in her words—“hurting white men only spells destruction to vulnerable populations, sooner or later.” (And as she also thought, although it floated largely below the threshold of conscious thought, she did not want to disrupt one of the important counterbalancing stereotypes—encapsulated in the phrase, used later much more freely even in mainstream media, of “white dick energy”—restraining white men from unrestrained genocide: that white men have small penises. Both of her rear-end holes were just too ravaged for her to suggest that her dorky freshman lab partner was the culprit, even though there was likely no way that the detail would get out.)
Becky and Karen’s contributions are small and local, and done from an underlying tragic outlook that “whiteness is a virus that can never be defeated.” But what else can you ask of them? All the people in their neighborhood drink from the same Kool-Aid: sugared just enough to respect “black ways of living” and yet not—lest they be charged with appropriation—to the unbearably sweet point where there is an inch of sediment on the bottom. They drink but what they do with all that glucose energy is mainly talk. Becky and Karen, on the contrary, enact change.
“Becky” and “Karen” are, of course, two extremely unfortunate names in this era where white-bashing enjoys widespread social and institutional sanction—even as the other way around is considered, quite tellingly to the war on black dignity done in the ironic name of “antiracism,” the equivalent of kicking a mentally disabled kid in the face: a no-no of punching down monstrosity. But good allies as they are (trying daily to remind themselves of the white guilt they should have, the way that healthy people try to remind themselves of the gratitude they should have), they roll with the punches by being the hardest punchers of them all—saying things like “I see no lie: Beckys and Karens do have trouble zipping their lips and letting black voices lead” (their tone flirting with black-girl swagger, only held in check so as not to feel like they are committing the cardinal sin of appropriating, of stealing from the down and out).
Becky and Karen pride themselves on “open-mindedness” and “commitment to social justice”—or at least what they mean by these terms, which lucky for them is what the media and Disney and the universities and the rest mean (a good position to be in, no doubt). They attend protests for racial justice and LGBTQ+ rights. Their home is filled with books on diversity, equity, and inclusion. They go to orchestras (complaining the whole time, predictably, about how white the musicians are—the “white” always stressed, in line with the fashion of the times, like it is a pejorative). On the matter of orchestras they agree that meritocratic blind auditions, once considered a major step forward, is a step backwards. As Karen puts it, “Equality was MLK’s dream, but equity—redress for the past and persistent hobbling—demands special treatment. MLK likely could not have fathomed how intense and invisible antiblack racism would become in America” (and, as is clear by how she stresses the “C,” she means triple-K America).
Becky and Karen keep trying, because not trying would be complicity. And yet they expect little from their activism. How could they not? They hold sacred, after all, the two dogmas that have long spread from universities through social media to the world at large, which means warped thinking has actually resulting in warped policy changes and right-think training sessions and purges in the “real world” that make the McCarthy era look like child’s play: (1) whiteness is an illness baked into the very DNA of this country, which implies that the only way to cure this place is to kill this place; (2) white people, even the best-intentioned allies, are likely to spread the disease just by living. Hence why it is imperative, like wearing a mask at the grocery store in the era of COVID, that white allies always follow the lead of black voices. Although not a failsafe since black people too can be stricken by whiteness (as in when black cops shoot black men or as in when Clarence Thomas simply breathes), following the lead of “beautiful Black kings and queens” is the least a white person can do. Never forgetting their place, knowing exactly what is meant when Kendrick Lamar sings “They not like us” at the halftime show—that is what Becky and Karen always do.
Becky and Karen are real allies. If their actions are performative, then everything anyone does must be performative. Their white tears have long ago dried up. They have replaced the tissue box for a notepad, jotting down corrections to their own thoughts before they can fester into something problematic and writing down black wisdom (especially white it concerns the main thing they are entitled to understand of that wisdom: namely, how they are to conduct themselves if they are to be true antiracists). Climbing the ladder of white-allyship, they track their progress like boy scouts chasing merit badges. But rather than some embroidered patch, the true prize is what perhaps less empathetic eyes might call “self-erasure.” There are rungs to the ladder of white redemption, and they know exactly where they stand. “White critical,” their current position, means they have purged denial and now attack the white world order—if not with action, then at least with words. They hope soon to reach “white traitor,” which would mean they proactively refuse all complicity in white institutions. And perhaps—if they try hard enough, if they bleed out enough privilege (and funnel it to those who will never stop being owed)—they might one day close in upon the “white abolitionist” rung, which would mean they devote their lives to eradicating whiteness in all is cunning guises (micro and macro)—the hope being merely to close in upon it, as opposed to actually reaching it, because (1) to think you have reached it supposes a white contentment, a white worthiness, that means you have not reached it and (2) the only real way to reach it, technically, is in death.
But individual absolution is not enough. They know this. True change, real systemic impact, cannot just be personal. It must be generational. It must be ongoing in a great chain since the debt will never be fully paid. If their public activism (which comes with great sacrifice and even self-nullification) were not already admirable enough, they go a step further when it comes to likeability. They prioritize their children, raising them to finish what they have started.
Toward Arlo and Luna, that is where they mainly funnel their activist energies. “Social justice,” Karen likes to say, “starts in the home!” “The children—they’ll be the difference,” Becky adds. Correcting for antiblack racism—well, more accurately (since antiblack racism can never be cured), pulling back on the bridle of antiblack racism—is a biggie, no doubt. Becky and Karen do not just repeat, and repeat, how badly whiteness maims the black body and mind each day in the US—a falsity that enables too great of a gravy train, let alone too many excuses and warm-fuzzy feelings of solidarity, perhaps ever to stop being repeated. As if they were HR coordinators at Disney or the US Navy or any US college, they train their children in all the antiracist dogmas concerning how whites—good whites—must conduct themselves in the face of such barbarity: always let black people have the first and last word; never talk over black people but instead “zip it and learn”; never challenge a black person or make a black person feel uncomfortable (and say “sorry” if you do, but with absolutely no expectation that forgiveness will be given in the absence of tangible amends); always elevate black voices (“it is the least we can do to in the harmful sea of white opinions”); always follow the lead black peers “instead of participating in the age-old practice of controlling the black body” (“otherwise we repeat colonizer sins to ugly to name”); always capitalize the “b” in “black” but never the “w” in “white”; never hold black people to expectations of punctuality or decorum or any other white standards that might prove traumatic to black ways of living and black ways of knowing (“ways of knowing and living no white person can ever understand!”).
Becky and Karen do know, however, to stay in their lane. They know not appropriate, having long ago strangled the inner voice of intellectual conscience that says that the whole notion of cultural appropriation—no more than a bludgeon for bullying—is bankrupt (not just because everyone takes from everyone, but because not human—let alone any culture—is the buck-stopping source of anything they do). They know not to overreach. What that means in this case is that they focus more on the part of the garden they have most control over, as the Buddhist saying goes. They focus on child rearing. In their child rearing an even greater focus is devoted to LGBTQ+ issues. Dismantling traditional gender norms is a key focus. “What healthy parent wouldn’t want to encourage their children to be whoever they want to be, free from societal expectations?”
It is important to understand, channeling Becky and Karen for a moment, the intersectionality of oppression. It is important to understand, that is to say, that the LGBTQ+ cause is not separate from the antiracist cause. For while it might manifest more conspicuously in the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and all the horrible nuances that unfolded afterwards, white hegemony—its heterosexual norm (gay is the wrong way to be), its dualistic framework (white versus nonwhite, man versus woman, heterosexual versus nonheterosexual)—sits ultimately behind all the hardships of LGBTQ+ folk too. Whiteness, using binary logic as an instrument of oppression, is the chief force that has held back and ridiculed and maimed not only black bodies but also those who do not fit within heteronormativity—heteronormativity being “one of the many tentacles of white dominance.” As made clear by what resulted from colonial invasion (binary gender roles and heterosexual family structures imposed everywhere a white ship landed), whiteness is what opposes the indigenous mode of being—a mode of being, so at least goes the talking point, that did not presume that sexual relationships are ideally between men and women and which definitely did not structure institutions and cultural narratives and everyday interactions around this expectation. Whiteness is not just what rapes the black body, but what assumes that children will grow up to be heterosexual and that children will live out a script dictated by their sexual organs. That is the idea anyway.
Becky and Karen’s social circle is similarly progressive. Their friends drive Kias and use neopronouns. Their friends identify as non-binary, trans, or queer—and if not, have demonstrated radical commitment to allyship: engaging in demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience to challenge discrimination and fight for policy changes and secure safe spaces for queer gatherings; providing housing, financial support, or other resources to LGBTQ+ individuals, especially “all the beautiful trans people who face disproportionate economic hardship and violence (who cannot even go to the backroom without feeling safe)”; confronting homophobia and transphobia in public and private spaces, even at great risk to their reputation and relationships; offering their own homes as sanctuary spaces for trans youth or engaging in legal battles on behalf of LGBTQ+ asylum seekers; using their hetero-privilege to amplify queer voices (while always making sure, however, to resist the urge, especially if their allies happen to be infected by whiteness, to tokenize or co-opt their struggles); raising children not only without enforcing traditional binary roles but also with positive representation of those who fall outside of the norm (perhaps the most important work of all to ensure a bright future). Whoever their friends are, whatever their preferred identities might be, through any superficial diversity there is an essential uniformity. Their friends, whether over for dinner or out at the playground or out at a drag brunch, repeat most of all—knowing how oriented Becky and Karen are to child-rearing—that it is “super important” (heads nodding all around) for parents to “always affirm a child’s identity”—“always affirm a child’s identity” being a slogan repeated more often in the Thompson home than even “whiteness is a disease.”
The Thompson home, it goes without saying, is appropriately decorated. Instead of the standard rainbow, they use the progress pride flags (which has the black and brown stripes added to draw attention to the fact that the LGBTQ+ struggle is enmeshed within the BIPOC struggle). They have “act up” bumper stickers that say things like “Silence = Death” and “If you’re not angry, you’re not paying attention” and “Queers Against Police" and "No TERFs, No SWERFs, No Cops."
the number of stickers growing by the year. The bookshelves are packed with radical queer theory (especially works by Judith Butler and bell hooks) and trans survival guides. Above their bathroom is a sign “All Genders Welcome" or anti-cop messaging like "Queers Against Police" or "No TERFs, No SWERFs, No Cops." However performative a critical eye might find all of this, the decorations are not just decorations. They often serve as talking points. And it also goes without saying that the household is rife with discussion of topics like toxic masculinity, gender fluidity, and—most of all—the importance of affirming children’s identities.
Karen and Becky do not explicitly push these views on Arlo or Luna. But while they are more careful than most about letting their children find their own truth, their values permeate the household in various ways. How could they not? Indeed, loaded as they are, their values are spreading even just through these seemingly let-a-thousand-flowers-bloom phrases (“my truth” and “find your truth”), to say nothing about witnesses their mothers pulling out their hair about the importance of hormone access. To be fair, a parent can never avoid spreading their values. And besides, is it not precisely the point to spread their values, at least in some fashion? Otherwise rearing children would be like an artist creating a painting but without letting any of his own personality get in there. The case should not be understated, though. While Beck and Karen do not want to be authoritarian, while they must watch lest they reenact the white supremacist modes of thinking and parenting (thereby perpetuating the cycle of violence to all nonwhite and nonheterosexual populations), they do want to see their children be the change. Can you blame them?
The only boy in the home, Becky and Karen direct extra effort toward Arlo. The extra effort is not a result of crab-finger sit-down machination. It is just organically how it has been playing out. Arlo is the most different from the rest (being a boy) and he is the youngest, age five. Moreover, Becky and Karen feel better equipped and confident to parent now that they have been broken in with the raising of Luna, age eleven.
Arlo is a sensitive child who loves drawing, playing pretend, and building elaborate Lego fortresses. He is quieter than most boys his age and prefers creative activities over rough-and-tumble play. At preschool, he gravitates toward the dress-up corner, where he sometimes wears princess crowns alongside other children, both boys and girls. His teachers note that he is empathetic and gets along well with everyone, but that he occasionally feels left out during more competitive games.
Becky and Karen notice Arlo’s preference for “feminine" activities and are delighted. Becky, in particular, sees this as evidence that Arlo is “breaking free" from toxic masculinity. She shares a photo of Arlo in a tutu on Instagram with the caption, “Raising a boy who isn’t afraid to be himself #BreakingFree #SmashThePatriarchy." The post gets dozens of likes and comments like, “Love this! Let him explore!" and “What a beautiful soul." Becky replies to each with lines like “White world order, watch out!” Karen and Becky make a point to praise Arlo whenever he engages in activities they perceive as gender-nonconforming. When he considers the sparkly pink backpack at the store instead of (as Becky puts it) “that, ugh, so-basic boy color”(stressing the “boy” in the same pejorative sounding way she says “white”), Becky beams and says, “I love how you’re not afraid to choose what makes you happy!" (tucking down any creeping suspicion that the infinitive “to consider” is by no means the same as the infinitive “to choose”). When he plays with Luna’s dolls, Karen says, “It’s so cool that you’re not stuck in boring boy stuff. I just want to take some time out right now and admire you for that. I don’t think I ever met such a brave person!" These comments are well-intentioned, meant to affirm Arlo’s choices. It would be silly to deny, however, that they carry an implicit message: “Feminine" choices are special and worthy of extra praise.
When Arlo shows interest in stereotypically “masculine" activities—like playing with toy trucks or watching superhero shows—Karen and Becky are less enthusiastic. Karen might say (with a kid tone, as if representing the child’s own internal voice), “This show’s kinda violent, huh? Maybe”—she turns the channel away from Ninjago to Powerpuff Girls—“we can watch something more healthy, more creative." Becky, meanwhile, avoids buying “boyish" toys, filling the house instead with gender-neutral or traditionally “feminine" items like art supplies, dolls, and dress-up clothes. No, they do not ever explicitly discourage “boy" activities. But their lack of enthusiasm is noticeable to Arlo. Any child is highly attuned to parental approval. But call it a function of genes or of the early experiences and hormone ratios in the womb, Arlo—his skin extremely thin, his momma’s boy sweetness nearly cloying—was especially attuned.
Arlo’s kindergarten is steeped in progressive ideology. Group games avoid reinforcing competition, hierarchy, or aggression (the key staples of whiteness) instead emphasizing collective play and fluid roles—and, of course, in an extra middle finger to whiteness never at set times. Aside from some key mainstays (like Ms. Carter, the head teacher, starting each class with the static-identity-stomping question “What does it feel like to be YOU today?”), the day is rather unstructured. Kids can move freely between activities based on curiosity, rather than following strict schedules or hierarchies.
The teachers are trained to the gills in gender-inclusive education. And it most definitely shows Aside from bestsellers like Julian Is a Mermaid and I Am Jazz, the classroom has various books that depict chosen families, communal child-rearing, and nontraditional caregiving models. Here teachers encourage children to explore their identities. There is, in fact, a whole half hour of time devoted each day to “Identity Exploration.” This often involves self-portrait mirror work, where kids are encouraged to draw themselves “however they feel inside” (emphasis on the “however”). “You can be a horse even in a world that says you are human. And you can be a boy even in a world that says you are a girl. Because,” so Ms. Carter says (as the class aids mentally take in her modeling for them), you can always change. Did you know that a clownfish like Nemo can become a girl in some situations?”
When Arlo wears a skirt to school one day (borrowed from Luna’s old dress-up bin), his teacher (Ms. Carter) praises him in front of the class: “Arlo, you look fabulous!” She puts a shiny boa around his neck and says “absolutely fabulous” with the same swagger of the drag queens on the YouTube podcast she watches at lunch hour, sometimes in ear-shot of the children. “OMG. I love how you’re showing everyone that clothes are for everyone. Is that what you’re showing everyone?" The other children clap and Arlo feels a rush of pride, especially when Ms. Carter gives him a private look of solidarity and says: “It really fits you!” It could just boil down to a strong dose of caffeine that day, or perhaps it was in the works all along (that would make sense)—whatever the case, Ms. Carter even says “Arlo just gave me a wonderful and beautiful and warm-fuzzy idea. We can make this corner right here,” she says, moving the potted plant, “a zone when you can try on any outfit you want. Can we that Arlo for this wonderful idea, class?” Arlo’s pride, which is undeniable (What kid would not want to be the inspiration for the radical costume zone?)—if we are being honest, it is tainted by a streak of confusion. He lacks the verbal firepower to frame it all this way, but nevertheless he feels it and it the feelings operate inside of him: he liked the skirt because it was shiny, not because he wanted to make a statement.
At home, Becky—perhaps motivated by some of the reports she gets from Ms. Carter—starts reading Arlo books about gender diversity. Introducing Teddy, another bestseller, is the perfect go to, especially since it was already on the bookshelf. Explaining in a kid appropriate way that some people feel they are born in the “wrong body" (using the teddy bear as a metaphor for unshackled self-expression), there perhaps is still no better book at introducing young children to transgender identity in a gentle way. And after finishing the book each night for a good swath of time, Becky repeats “And Arlo, always remember: being yourself doesn’t change how much you’re loved.” Coincidentally enough (or not, depending your frame of reference), Ms. Carter—unbeknownst to Becky (Arlo never says anything)—not only reads this same book in her (and actually couples her reading with a teddy bear), but also ends culminates the experience with nearly the same capstone—as if it were part of some teacher’s manual that came with the book: “remember class, you’re loved whoever, whatever, you choose to be!”
It is one of those sad misconnections, those tragic ironies, in life (like the situation where the boy is getting high in secret in one room while the father is getting high in secret in the other room and wracking his brain, depressed, as to how he could connect with his son): Ms. Carter and Becky do not really know one another (and in fact each one suspects, mistakenly, that the other might not be progressive enough), but they live nearly parallel lives—especially in their pedagogical styles. For example, Ms. Carter asks Arlo open-ended questions, questions that plant seed for later reflection, like: “Do you ever feel different from other boys and if so, how?” and “If you could be any gender for a day, what would you choose?" and “What kinds of pronouns feel the best for you?" and “Do you like it when people call you a boy (or would you rather they call you something else)?" Becky, likewise, asks Arlo these same sorts of open-ended questions like, “Do you ever feel (and it’s okay if you do) like you’re not a boy?” and “When you imagine yourself in the future, do you feel like you’ll always be a boy?" and “Are there parts of you that feel like they don’t quite fit?" She does not push the idea, at least any more than the detective interrogating a little boy about how he has been treated by the parent that the detective is convinced has been abusing the boy. She knows better herself not to be too ham-fisted. A child may not immediately identify as trans or nonbinary, but these questions ensure they have the language and permission to explore those possibilities as they grow. It is important, Beckly knows, to ask without expectation or pressure, making sure that gender identity is what it always already is: a playground (a playground where the child has authority), not a test (not a test where the parent has the authority). Besides, Karen would shoot her a playful-but-serious check-yourself eye anyway if she laid the pressure on too thick. Knowing this is enough to feel Karen’s eye even if she is not physically there.
Arlo, eager to please his teacher and his mom (especially Becky), naturally starts to wonder if his love for sparkly things means he is “supposed" to be a girl. He does not put it that way, of course. It is more latent than that. But latent, preverbal, does not mean unreal: a cat does not say to itself “I want food” and yet that does not mean that it does not want food. Arlo understand gender identity even less. That said, he is aware enough to sense that being “different"—especially in tutu-wearing ways—makes his parents proud. Over the years, the cues—however subtle, however responsibly buried “so that the child retains the say on who or what he is”—add up.
At age seven, Arlo is in the backseat of the Kia as his parents talking about a local family whose child recently came out as trans. Becky says, “It’s so beautiful how they’re supporting her. Kids know who they are so young—we just need to listen." Tears form in Becky’s eyes as she looks back at Arlo through the rearview: “Why can’t we just listen?” Karen adds, “I wish more parents were open like that. Imagine how many kids feel trapped by gender norms. It makes me sick." And then Becky adds, although it draws Karen’s head-shaking smirk of “Now don’t’ be bad,” “I mean, is a boy in a tutu ever just a boy in a tutu?”
Arlo, it goes without saying, internalizes this conversation. With all the priming of the system over the years, the pink flower that starts blooming in Arlo’s brain—well, any sober eyes could have predicted it. Look at it this way. Bombarded by the constant narrative of how victimized they are, seeing all the rewards and social leverage to be gained from accepting that narrative, seeing how it entitles them to special treatment and gives them an out when they fail—in light of all this, countless black people organically develop the idea in their own heads (no matter great they have it, no matte the data) that they have been and continue to be victimized by a white supremacist order. Surely it is easy to imagine, likewise, an impressionable little boy like Arlo starting to think the thought that, at this point, seem like anyone-could-have-told-you-that destiny: “Maybe I’m a girl, and that’s why my mommies are so happy when I wear skirts."
A few weeks later, Arlo shyly tells Becky, “I think I’m a girl." Becky’s eyes light up and she takes on the beaming smile of a gardener who, having planted the seed and patiently watered it just right, now sees it sprout right before her eyes. “Oh, Arlo, I’m so proud of you for telling me.” She hugs him tightly. You’re so brave!" Karen on her shoulder (telling her not to be so outward because it needs to be Arlo’s decision, all Arlo’s decision), she plays it cool. She even throws in a back-tracking “It’s okay to be unsure.” Such autonomy-honoring words of reassurance and postmodern permissiveness are, whether she knows it or not, more effective (right out of the groomer’s handbook, on purpose or not)—more effective than blunt authoritarian command, especially after all the groundwork has been laid: praising his choices to do “non-masculine” things; really praising his choices to do “feminine” things; steering him away from “masculine” things; displaying lack of enthusiasm for his choices to do “masculine” things; all-too-often putting the word “toxic” next to the word “masculine”; framing gender nonconformity as inherently virtuous (“There’s no one braver than a little kid who refuses to let his parts define him”), something thereby any typical child will feel pulled toward (wanting to make parents proud); and so on. First, it makes the identification sink in deeper by means of seeming more like a personal choice as opposed to what seems better to call it (namely, “unintentional” grooming). Second, it makes it easier for the parents to mistake the echo of their own voice as the sound of the child’s own.
Cool as she plays it outwardly, however, Becky gets to business as soon as Arlo goes out to play. Becky opens her laptop and starts researching gender-affirming care (yes, even though she has more than enough resources already on the bookshelf) but gets sidetrack in daydreaming about girl names: Juniper, Opal, or just plan Arla. Soon enough she is joining online forums for parents of trans kids, even buying a book—yet another bestseller—that the household did not already harbor: Raising the Transgender Child. Karen, although initially surprised, supports Becky’s enthusiasm, “You know my view on this. We need to follow Arlo’s lead." Neither parent questions whether Arlo’s statement might be influenced by their own biases—they assume he is expressing his authentic self.
Arlo, starting to use she/her pronouns in the safe space of home, is now called “Lila"—yes, Lila resisted going with Arla, but the two moms (always prioritizing child autonomy) let it be (albeit not without throwing out a few or ten alternatives). Becky and Karen, allies for their children first and foremost, tell his school and the school updates his name and pronouns in the system. Ms. Carter is secretly tiffed that she was not the one that Lila revealed her truest truth to—as Becky would have been if the tables were turned (another of countless parallels).
Arlo enjoys the attention—at least at first. His parents shower him with praise, and his teachers celebrate his “courage." But just as there is with the lovely Instagram photos of couples smiling on vacation, there are always darker parts to the iceberg. Deep down, Lila feels confused. She misses playing with toy trucks. She thinks of them alone in the basement, personified but tucked away gathering dust nonetheless. She cries a little picturing them there. She is not sure, completely at least, if she really wants to be a girl or if she just likes wearing dresses sometimes. And when she tries to say, “Maybe I’m still a boy," Becky’s face reflects a sinking stomach but her words are gentle and affirming. “As I always told you: it’s okay to feel unsure, Lila. Gender can be fluid. Lila, my precious girl, you don’t have to decide now." But the message is clear: staying “Lila" feels like the path of least resistance.
At school, none of the kids tease Lila for wearing dresses. None of them call her “weird." Becky, hearing of the “othering” that happens in other schools around the nation, speaks to Lila as if such transphobia is happening to her: “Many kids will be unable to understand, my sweet girl. But always remember that you’re teaching them to be more open-minded. You have many social duties. This is one—a big one!" Lila feels trapped. She does not want to disappoint her parents or fail in the fight against “the white supremacist patriarchy.” But she is starting to resent the skirts and the new name. She misses being “Arlo." She—or should we say “he”?—misses the old name and yet is afraid to say it, fearing he will lose the approval of his parents.
By age eight, Arlo is showing signs of anxiety. He withdraws from friends, spends hours drawing alone, and has trouble sleeping. His therapist, a friend of Karen and who has been briefed by Karen (and who is already a specialist in gender identity as it is, having helped many children with unsupportive parents find their “glitter families”), interprets the distress as “internalized transphobia." The therapist encourages Becky and Karen to continue affirming “Lila." “This is time of uncertainty. Think of all the pressures pushing Lila to go back to he, to Arlo—to the false shell. If only as a matter of protest, as a matter of diversity, it’s crucial for you two to be the difference, the counterpoint. I’ve seen too many families abandon their children. You two are quite frankly amazing.”
Arlo’s drawings tell a different story. They are filled with images of a boy trapped in a cage, surrounded by smiling adults who fail to see him. He might not understand exactly what is going on. Does any artist when taken up by the muse? It seems quite telling, however, that the cage—and yes, it is a literal cage—is always pink instead of the silver and black that are standard when it comes to Crayola kid cages. Karen and Becky, still unaware of their role in Arlo’s confusion, double down on their support. They attend a trans-youth support group where Arlo meets other kids who seem confident in their identities. He feels out of place but does not know how to articulate it.
With the blessing of the therapist and with Karen (the heel-dragger of the two) in line, Becky starts discussing puberty blockers with a pediatric endocrinologist. She believes that it is the next step to “Protect Lila’s future. It’s now or never." When she says this phrase “It’s now or never” she thinks vaguely—but quite tellingly—of how, after a certain age, the window of imagination and creativity closes down so considerably. She can feel the window closing. If some parents get crazy about making sure their kids starts the piano in such a formative age, just imagine how deeply it hurts Becky to stand before the image of the window closing. It is one thing seeing the window close on your child’s musical talents. It is another thing completely to see it closing on their very spiritual authenticity.
Arlo, sensing the weight of these decisions, feels powerless to speak up. The path, however darker it grows by the second, becomes clearer by the second: puberty blockers at nine and hormone therapy at fourteen and surgery at fifteen, these milestones sanctioned by a society that (perhaps mainly because money-hungry without much foresight into the damage down the line of things like fossil fuels and so on) sees a boy in a tutu as not just a boy in a tutu but a chrysalis waiting to crack into an ice princess like Elsa.
It is hard to demonize Becky and Karen. They are groomers, yes. But we all are. They are manipulators. But even plants are as they dig down for water and reach up to the sun, some even hijacking other plants and stealing their nutrients. Becky and Karen are grooming manipulators, and yet all of it was in line with the social norm—however much they, and others in their network, might have liked to frame it as against the grain to persecutorial degrees (something extremely hard to do once Disney is on board).
A vulnerable child might be caught in their ideological framework, but Becky and Karen are well-meaning. All their massaging of Arlo to identify as a girl was inadvertent, not deliberate grooming but an unintended consequence of their biases. That is important to say. It is also important to say that Arlo is someone to blame, at least in a minimal sense that perhaps takes some of the heat of of Becky and Karen. Being so young and lacking the cognitive tools to fully understand gender identity, Arlo finds it easy as a Sunday morning to interpret the reactions of his parents as a roadmap for earning their love. Being so needy of love and parental validati0n, Arlo finds it easy to follow that roadmap into an identity that feels inauthentic—and even if this mean getting the therapy and drugs and social reinforcement and procedures that will make it harder and harder to feel that this identity is inauthentic, which could lead to various negative results (identity struggles, resentment toward his parents, difficulty forming authentic relationship, depression, anxiety, suicide) at least on the assumption that the drugs and procedures and the like cannot fully eradicate any inner voice that questions the authenticity.
Keeping that inner voice quiet does seem to be crucial in this growing trend of gender dysphoria. It is easy to make fun of the people pulling out their hair and scratching their faces when they are not called by their preferred pronouns. It is easy to demonize these people when they try to hurt others for misgendering them, especially in the wake of the 2016 to 2022 horrors of all the employees and even professors who were fired without due process for just that. But when we empathize with these transformers, empathize with how desperately they need the world to validate their fantasy in order that—since we are all social creatures—that inner voice stays quiet, it is easy to understand why they would rage as if their lives depended on it. Because, in a sense, their lives do. When a fantasy is all that keeps you afloat, the world must play along—or else pay, bigtime, for watching you drown.