🧵 Here is a tale of two boys who loved to dress up:
Written by @thepeacepoet99
The boy on the left, named Styles, loved Spider-Man so much that he thought he was Spider-Man.
The boy on the right, named Jaron, loved princess dresses so much that he thought he was a girl.
1
Little Styles, was playing outside & wearing his beloved Spider-Man costume, when he was hit by a car in front of his home.
The seven year old believed that his Spider-Man suit made him become ‘Spider-Man’, & gave him the ‘superpower’ to jump out of the way of the car.
2
The older sister of the little boy who thought he was Spider-Man, agrees that the boy’s ’Spider-Man’ powers allowed him to save himself from being hit by the car.
She credits his survival to his vivid imagination. She does not, however, think that he is *literally* Spider-Man
3
This little boy named Jaron, loved to play dress up. He loved sparkles & pink. He loved to dance & sing. He wanted his bowl cut placed into two ponytails.
Because he was a toddler, Jaron thought that this made him a girl. His parents panicked, & tried to turn him into one.
4
Jaron was a happy toddler who enjoyed dressing up as a princess.
Jaron’s parents did not enjoy their son’s love of pink & sparkles. His mom could hardly speak through her own tears when describing her son’s love of pretty things.
So, she took him to the doctor.
5
Instead of seeing the boy’s love of twirling in princess dresses, as a sign that he may grow up to be a fashion designer or a dancer-
This boy was conditioned by his parents, doctors & by one news crew after the next that he was really a ‘special girl born with a penis’
6
The little boy who dressed up as Spider-Man & even thought he *was* Spider-Man was not told that something was wrong with him.
On the contrary, his family celebrated affirmed his love of dress-up because they knew that the child had learned valuable life skills through play.
7
The boy on the left believed that his ‘Spider-Man’ powers saved his life.
Adults didn’t tell him that his human body was wrong. There wasn’t an entire industry built to surgically alter him into embodying a fiction.
The same can’t be said for the boy on the right.
8
Instead of allowing Jaron to play dress-up and to learn valuable skills through imaginative play, his parents re-named him ‘Jazz’.
Jazz’s parents & doctors made millions by convincing the beautiful boy that he was born so wrong that only removing his genitals could ‘fix’ him.
9
Kids often play dress-up as the ‘other’ in order to understand the ‘self’.
When we celebrate imaginative play, our kids learn, grow & thrive.
When we pathologize normal play & stunt it by medicalizing a temporary fantasy into a permanently embodied reality- our kids suffer.
10
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