Sissyboys and tomboy girls unite

You should never trust the New York Times to identify a genuine trend. They're in the entertainment business, after all, and must exaggerate the cultural significance of things in order to get those eyeballs sticking.But...How cool is this article on gender-variant children? An excerpt:Shortly after her son’s third birthday, Pam B. and her husband, Joel, began a parental journey for which there was no map. It started when their son, J., began wearing oversized T-shirts and wrapping a towel around his head to emulate long, flowing hair. Then came his mother’s silky undershirts. Half a year into preschool, J. started becoming agitated when asked to wear boys’ clothing.En route to a mall with her son, Ms. B. had an epiphany: “It just clicked in me. I said, ‘You really want to wear a dress, don’t you?’ ”Thus began what the B.’s, who asked their full names not be used to protect their son’s privacy, call “the reluctant path,” a behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant child — a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly identifies as a girl, requests to be called “she” and asks to wear pigtails and pink jumpers to school.In the olden days, sissy boys and tomboyish girls were teased and pressured to conform. Undoubtedly, this is still the reality for the majority of alternatively-gendered kids. But is it possible that we are loosening the stranglehold of our largely arbitrary gender definitions? Maybe. Just maybe.