with their partner, three kids and a dog named Thunder.Travers applied the “Page 99 Test” to their new book, The Trans Generation: How Trans Kids (and Their Parents) are Creating a Gender Revolution, and reported the following:
Page 99 of The Trans Generation is right in the middle of my chapter on the disabling impact of sex-segregated bathrooms and sex segregated and sex-differentiated sport and physical leisure programs and facilities on trans and gender nonconforming kids. Spaces and activities that many people take for granted place trans kids in crisis. Some trans kids are willing and able to resolve this crisis via binary transition (including accessing affirming healthcare) but for many, this is undesirable (in the case of non-binary trans kids or binary kids who don’t want blockers or ‘cross-sex’ hormones) or inaccessible (for trans kids who lack access to affirming healthcare). I also locate sex-segregated and sex-differentiated sporting spaces and activities in the damaging structures of hetero-patriarchy that take for granted fundamental differences between only two sexes and assumed across-the-board advantages to men over women. This is rather fitting because the first research and writing I engaged in with regard to trans issues concerned sport participation (transgender inclusion in lesbian softball leagues).Learn more about The Trans Generation at the NYU Press website.Seeing the so-called sex differences in gymnastics produced through social practice and repetition gave Sean’s father, Hal, a more critical perspective. Hal observed how sex-differentiated activities in gymnastics actually created gendered bodies. When Sean first enrolled in gymnastics, she was deeply disappointed to learn that she would not be able to work on the rings because they are designated as an apparatus for men and boys. According to Hal, “Sean had her heart set on doing the rings, but the rings are not allowed to her. But she started gymnastics with a Brazilian coach, who came and asked the girls, ‘Can anybody do a chin-up?’ But nobody could. And then Sean came and just ripped off nine chin-ups, and he was so excited he took her to all the other coaches. But she came back to me and said, ‘I dunno what to do because I can’t do the rings.’” Hal observed how this rule reinforced assumptions about sex differences: “The thing, too, that strikes me is that the boys that are struggling. They’re not as strong as her, but they’re doing it every day. And in a few years hence, they will become proficient, strong at this. And if Sean does not end up doing those exact muscle-building things, she will not. So then it will become this self-perpetuating dynamic that’s going on.” This is an example of the way that the “gender continuum” of overlapping sport performance is rendered invisible via social practices, with the result that the natural basis of sex segregation, sex differentiation, and male “unfair advantage” goes unquestioned.The page 99 test works a little well in the case of my book because I started doing work on trans issues with regard to sport. But it's not the most compelling.
Even in integrated community-center dance classes, it is often impossible to register kids without sharing information about their sex. Such information is assumed to be essential and is used to organize children’s participation in gender-appropriate ways. Many feminist parents who actively resist sex stereotyping are deeply troubled by the way sex markers are deployed to socialize children in distinctly gendered ways.
--Marshal Zeringue
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