my heart does kind of die a little when people gender children who are too young to communicate that determination for themselves. it's so normalized as to be practically universal but it's also the first in a long line of decisions taken away from every trans child
"it's safe to assume they're cis" do you not conceive of their transness as a real possibility? if they do turn out to be trans, they now have to make that assertion against what the dominant authorities in their lives have been saying since their brain was at its most impressionable
I miss when this was still even a discussion on the table. I miss when I thought I could look forward to a future where children like me wouldn't have to languish for so long before being able to be our authentic selves
at every step of the way we live in a world that refuses to account for us, and it falls to our shoulders to push to be respected, considered, accounted for. it's exhausting, it's isolating, it's terrifying, and increasingly it seems like fewer and fewer people are willing to come to our corner
i remember a few years there where a bunch of new parents were all they/themming their children and gave them neutral names and neutral clothes until the child took it upon themselves to lean in one direction or another. i remember seeing families with a blue haired 7 year old wearing a pink tutu and a bionicle tshirt.
that lasted all of. like. 5 years max. now youre a pedophile for even considering it.
