Let Them Play
Our other child
I don’t often write about our other child. My daughter, Parker, is the one you may have read about, and I say how proud I am of her in print all the time. But there isn’t enough space in an essay to describe how I feel about my son, Xander.
Xander has always been our “easy” child. He gets good grades, follows the rules, stays out of drama, and has never given us much cause to worry. In a strange twist, that is exactly what worried me. When things with Parker got difficult or complicated, they took so much of our time and energy that I feared we were overlooking him. Parenting is hard, and you never stop second-guessing yourself.
When Parker came out as trans, it was hard for Xander too. It took him time to understand, and to get comfortable with having a sister instead of a brother. Sometimes he misgendered her by accident, and sometimes on purpose, the way siblings push each other’s buttons.
The question he asked
Xander has played soccer for sixteen years, from rec games at age 4 through varsity in high school and back to rec games in college. He loves the game, and he knows what it means to be part of a team. So when Parker, who had been on the middle school boys’ soccer team, was about to join the girls’ team, he asked the question you would expect: how was that fair?
We talked around and around it. In his quiet Xander way, he let it go, but I don’t think I convinced him. It was my first foray into talking about trans kids in sports, and I had an open, earnest partner in the conversation. If I couldn’t convince my own son that his sister belonged, how would I ever convince someone outside our family?
Xander’s question was a fair one, and I want to say so plainly, because many people carry some version of it. I still wish I had answered him better, so here is what I would say now. Most kids who play school sports are not chasing records or scholarships. They are chasing a place on a team, friends, and a reason to show up every day. For a kid like Parker, being kept off the team does not make the game fairer for anyone. It makes her the one kid in her grade told she can’t take part. The cost to her of being excluded is real and immediate. The cost to everyone else of her being on the field is, in the cases I know, a few minutes of playing time.
In Parker’s own case, it was not even that. She didn’t make the varsity team her last year playing soccer, and she took no one’s spot. I don’t claim that settles every case, and I understand why people feel differently about elite competition, where scholarships and records are at stake. But for children of school age, I come down on the side of letting them play.
Since then
Since that conversation, I have made so many attempts at persuasive arguments for trans kids in sports, and I still don’t know if I’ve convinced anyone. It has become a lightning rod of a topic.
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The night before the election, I texted my son to ask how he felt about Parker playing soccer these days. He is a junior at UNH, majoring in engineering, and I’m sure he was a bit confused to get such a random text from his mother on a Monday evening. I clarified that Parker isn’t considering joining a team right now. But after living with her all this time, I wondered whether his perspective had changed. Did he still feel uncomfortable with the idea of Parker playing on girls’ teams?
He wrote back: “No, she belongs on girls teams.”
Xander was never a bigot. He asked a fair question, and what answered it was time and knowing his sister as a whole person.
The roommate
I can’t ask all of you to move in with us and live with Parker for five years. But let me tell you what you’d find.
She is messy. You’ll hate sharing a bathroom with her because she never puts away her makeup. She leaves her socks wherever she takes them off. She’s a great cook and a terrible cleaner-upper, so the kitchen is a disaster zone when she’s done. If you like scary movies, you’ll get along great, and you get bonus points if you also play Marvel Rivals and Overwatch. She is the roommate you will love and also wish would learn to pick up after herself.
Eventually, I think you would see what Xander saw. She isn’t out to get anyone. She’d love to share hairstyling tips with you, she might borrow your favorite sweater and forget to give it back, and she will try to convince you that her cat, Lord Marmalade, is the sweetest boy who ever lived.
What’s on the ballot
Today, voters in Colorado and Washington are deciding whether to ban transgender girls from girls’ school sports. Washington’s measure would require a health care provider to verify a student’s sex using “reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.” Supporters call that a simple checkbox. I think deciding who gets to play should not rest on examining children’s bodies.
I hope voters remember that we are talking about children. Children like yours or mine. They are sweet and funny, energetic and sometimes a little too boisterous, and at the end of the day they want to live their lives like the rest of us. I believe kids like Parker should be able to belong, to a team, a class, a group of friends, the same as anyone else.
I have spent every spare minute of the last five years thinking about my daughter, about how to keep her safe, and about how to convince the rest of the world she is not a threat. I don’t know that any of the words I’ve written, interviews I’ve given, or speeches I’ve made have changed a single mind. But I do know that meeting her, talking with her, sitting in class or playing a game with her could change yours, if you are willing to listen.
When this election cycle is over, I hope we can take a collective breath and turn to the things that affect every family: housing, health care, utilities, groceries. My daughter’s safety and rights will always matter to me. But it would be better for all of us if kids like her weren’t used as a distraction from those problems.
If you have doubts, I understand. Xander had them too. Come meet Parker.
Sara Tirrell is Parker and Xander’s mother. You can read more of Parker’s story in the Concord Monitor, the New York Times, ESPN, and the Boston Globe.
