Discarding the Binary

I wasn’t intentionally heteronormative with Adi, but in explaining how babies are born, I made the false assumption he’d end up only being sexual with girls, and this was most relevant to his future. In my defense, Adi seemed to prefer girls then and often spoke of his “wife-to-be,” so I assumed, at my peril, he was straight.

Then, at about age 14, Adi went to camp and came home saying he thought he might be bisexual. I nodded warmly, as if he’d told me something utterly benign, like he preferred chocolate chip ice cream to mint. But I also told myself perhaps he didn’t really know. With his generation, kids almost had to be gender- and sexuality-questioning to be cool, right? Maybe he was just mirroring what was happening around him.

I’m comfortable with gender fluidity, but it still caught me off guard when Adi kept shifting. He changed his name to “Jules.” Everyone pronounced Adi wrong anyway, accenting the first syllable, so I went along with it. I loved the name Adi—Hebrew for “jewel”—but I tried to keep my disappointment to myself and act cool and accepting.

Soon, Jules had a couple girlfriends. Then, he announced he was pansexual. Technically, that means you are, or may be, attracted to people of all genders. Silently, I thought, Fine, whatever. That’s just a nice word for doing whatever you want with whomever you want. Most recently, Jules announced he wanted to change his pronouns to they/them. They are now nonbinary: not trans, not changing genders per se, just neither he nor she.

“Some days I wake up feeling feminine,” they told me. “Other days, more masculine. It’s a relief to be who I am. Looking back, I see so many signs of my nonbinary self. It’s freeing to be me.”

I know it’s my job to accept all these changes, and frankly my career background alone should’ve made me into a poster parent for these expansive, modern gender definitions, but I screw up a lot…  And more than once, Jules has snapped at me for saying something inappropriate and unaccepting, like, “We need more good men. You not identifying as a man is a loss for me!”

***

Recently, fidgeting with a rainbow flag container on their keychain that housed a bright blue condom, they asked me, “Did you tell Jamie…”—an acquaintance of mine, who was scheduled to go on a bike ride with Jules —“that I’m nonbinary?”

“Yeah,” I said. I sometimes explain Jules’s pronouns in advance, mostly to save them the trouble. Other times, it seems like their story to share.

“You don’t have to tell people,” Jules said.

“You’ve said you want me to tell; now you say I don’t have to? What exactly am I supposed to do?” I tried to hide my exasperation, but it was coming through.

Jules nodded gently. When they aren’t irritated with me for messing up pronouns, they can be quite compassionate about the whole thing. “Okay, okay, I get your frustration,” they said. “Tell them if you want to. You can say that I’m ‘nonbinary but very male-presenting.’”

I clenched my teeth, glowering at the broccoli I was chopping. Could you just dictate a voice memo I can play when people ask questions? I wanted to blurt out.  Instead, I stayed silent. As much as I moan about keeping up with Jules’s gender/sexual/romantic changes, they have my heart, and I try to get it right.

Many of us parenting this generation, with its embrace of sexual and gender identity fluidity, haven’t been equipped with the cultural scripts parents of heteronormative kids had at their disposal in generations past. In some ways, what’s being asked of us feels remarkable, but mostly it isn’t remarkable at all. It’s simply a matter of ordinary good parenting, which means accepting kids for who they are, no matter who that is, with compassion, care, and curiosity.