David's on the UW list for kids who might be willing to do a study for ten bucks and a stuffed bear, so they called us up recently for a study that wanted to compare kids who are gender conforming with those who are non-conforming. We said yes.

When David was little, he was pretty non gender conforming. The dress up box was full of sparkly dresses, and he wore them just like his sister and cousins. He got his own tea set and threw tea parties with the grandparents. Dolls, oh my yes. And then there was the day he wore a black velvet skirt to preschool.

Now, he's not disparaging of "girl" clothes, games, or hair styles, but he wears sweat pants and Seahawk t-shirts, plays pretend football (though he did spend several years on the monkey bars which were total girl territory when I was a girl), and likes his side burns.

I hadn't told David what the study was about, but they weren't trying to hide it, and we had some fascinating conversations. When I tried to explain what gender non-conforming meant, he said like "Drew." It's one of those "knowing someone who is X demystifies it and normalizes it." Drew is a kid friend of ours who is transgender. I'm not sure I'd call that gender non-conforming because at this point I think of him as him no matter the biology he was born with, but I guess technically, he is a perfect example.

We also talked about Henry who grew his hair out so he could donate it to Locks of Love. He was a boy with long hair, but is that gender non-conforming if he's clearly identifying as a boy? I told David how until recently (and in many places still) there were strict rules about what a boy could do and what a girl could do. Like a boy couldn't have long hair or cook. And then we laughed about the fact that Daddy used to have long hair and does most of the cooking.

At one point they asked David which professions were ok for a girl, a boy, or both: dress maker, airplane designer. . . He said both for them all. This is without prompting by his proud mama.