General Discussion

demmiblue

(36,911 posts) Mon Dec 19, 2016, 11:16 AM Dec 2016

Why We Put a Transgender Girl on the Cover of National Geographic

Source: National Geographic

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These comments are a small part of the profound discussion going on right now about gender. Our January issue focuses mostly on young people and how gender roles play out around the world. For one of our stories, which we also turned into a series of videos, we went to eight countries and shot portraits of 80 nine-year-olds, who talked to us in brave and honest ways about how gender influenced their lives.

One of them was Avery. She has lived as an openly transgender girl since age 5, and she captured the complexity of the conversation around gender. Today, we're not only talking about gender roles for boys and girls—we're talking about our evolving understanding of people on the gender spectrum.

The portraits of all the children are beautiful. We especially loved the portrait of Avery—strong and proud. We thought that, in a glance, she summed up the concept of "Gender Revolution."

Like her, all of us carry labels applied by others. The complimentary ones—“generous,” “funny,” “smart”—are worn with pride. The harsh ones can be lifelong burdens, indictments we try desperately to outrun.

The most enduring label, and arguably the most influential, is the first one most of us got: “It’s a boy!” or “It’s a girl!” Though Sigmund Freud used the word “anatomy” in his famous axiom, in essence he meant that gender is destiny.