Understanding Gender Identity

As increasing numbers of transgender learners are transitioning in schools, Deborah Herd finds out how to understand and support children grappling with gender identity

- Deborah Herd

Earlier this year, when Charlize Theron explained to the world that her eldest child, seven-year-old Jackson, is living as a girl, the response was divided. Some people were confused (Jackson had been introduced to the world as a boy when Charlize adopted him in 2012), while others were relieved that the South African-born Hollywood star was speaking so frankly about gender identity.

‘Yes, I thought she was a boy too,’ Charlize told the Daily Mail. ‘Until she looked at me when she was three years old and said: “I am not a boy!’” So there you go! I have two beautiful daughters who, just like any parent, I want to protect and I want to see thrive.’ The actress went on to point out: ‘My job as a parent is to celebrate them and to love them and to make sure that they have everything they need in order to be what they want to be. And I will do everything in my power for my kids to have that right and to be protected within that.’

You don’t have to be living in California to be aware that we no longer live in a world where gender definitions are rigid, or binary; that is, 100% male or female. We live in a gender-fluid generation, where increasingly identity is expressed on a spectrum from 100% male to 100% female. Some people identify as non-binary (neither exclusively male nor female), others as gender-neutral (neither male nor female) and others as transgender, where they identify usually as 100% with the opposite sex to the one assigned at birth, but could also be anywhere on the spectrum.

CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHT

My daughter attends a girls’ high school in Cape Town’s southern suburbs where a group of students recently proposed that teachers no longer address the learners as ‘girls’ because some of them no longer identify as female.