Interview on Gender: Thanael Flynn

by Erin Hagen

Nathanael Flynn (who goes by Thanael) had a wonderfully unique upbringing for many reasons, mainly that he was raised by an entire community. Thanael recalls, “There were a lot of queer women and men in my life growing up. It created a sense of family. I’m a first generation American (my mom’s a British citizen) so she knew we wouldn’t have related family around. She wanted to find a sort of adopted family.” This distinctive upbringing created an accepting environment for Thanael’s search for a gender identity. For Thanael, having transgendered adults in his life made his life much easier. Thanael was born a girl but didn’t really identify with either gender: “I wasn’t the strangest thing out there; I wasn’t unknown to myself. Growing up with lesbian, gay, and bisexual people in my life gave me an outlet for being gender queer as a child. For girls, the tomboy thing is out there, but that was something that didn’t shift when I was ten, yet I felt it was always ok for me to be masculine.” Thanael didn’t find himself thinking in terms of gender: “I didn’t have a sense of myself as male or female (a boy or girl) except that other people said I was a girl.”

The earliest memory that Thanael ever had of being gendered is, interestingly enough, a conversation among some of the kids he grew up with: “I have this distinct memory of talking about what the difference between a boy and girl was. My brother’s friend said, ‘Well girls and boys are the same, just girl parts are tucked inside.’ And I thought, ‘Ok, the same, but different. My family is the same, but different. I get the idea of same, but different.’” The language that he developed during his childhood to describe his gender identity was simply, “You can’t tell me I can’t do that because I’m a girl.”

Thanael’s personal experience with gender and the work he does in early childhood education gives him a unique perspective on some of the misconceptions of gender. He told me, “One of the biggest gender misconceptions that affects the work that I do is the lack of understanding of how someone could be trans or think that it will freak out kids. And for kids it makes more sense that sometimes the body is wrong and you can go to the doctor and change things than the concept that it never changes, ever. Gender permanence is something that we learn.” Gender is less a natural law, and more something we have to be taught as children.

Because Thanael has had so many experiences with gender and those of all different generations (children in his early childhood education class, peers, as well as the LGBT community that raised him), he has an important opinion on why gender is seen differently by different generations. He thinks “gender roles for people are a lot stronger the older they get. This is partly because the older generation didn’t analyze gender roles. If you asked my grandmother why she doesn’t take my brother shopping, it wouldn’t occur to her that she doesn’t. My mom’s generation still had a sense of women’s space and men’s space, but saw it as acceptable for people to want to do things differently.”

Progress is slowly being made in the sphere of gender and gender role understanding. Thanael has seen these both in his own life and that of the children he works with.

“There have been some early formations of ‘well you don’t always know if someone is a boy or a girl by just looking.’ The liberal, progressive education is definitely doing a lot of learning and unlearning of gender stereotypes.”