Becoming Nicole

Nutt explains how the desire to classify and categorize the masses grew as the population grew and urbanized in the 19th century. The categories created tended to serve the status quo and the interests of the people in charge. Classifications such as sex, class, religion, and trade made large groups of people easier to control, Nutt argues. If anything, classifications of gender identity became more rigid. Nutt says that gender classifications have been rigid throughout human history for other reasons as well, including “the creation of economies that depended on the division of labor, inheritance laws, [and] even religious rites” (100). Some people had to be women because the women were expected to cook, clean, and care for the children. Only certain duties were given to men.

Nutt shares several anecdotes of people posing as the opposite gender to gain power or something else of value. A few come from the world of athletics, such as a male high jumper the Nazis forced to compete as a woman in the 1936 Olympic Games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) went on to institute genetic testing in 1968 but halted the practice in 1999 after realizing that “[n]o one test could confirm that someone was 100 percent male or 100 percent female” (101). At the 1996 Olympic Games, seven of the eight women who tested positive for male chromosomes were found to have androgen insensitivity syndrome, the aforementioned condition that causes some people who are genetically male to have female features, mostly female genitalia, and female identities.

While the National Collegiate Athletic Association now allows transgender athletes to compete once they’ve gone through sex reassignment surgery and had hormone therapy for a certain length of time, other athletic decision-makers continue to bar transgender athletes based on incorrect or outdated information. For example, a transgender woman sued CrossFit in 2014 after the organization rejected her application to compete in the women’s portion of its yearly strength competition. She’d had sex reassignment surgery eight years earlier and had been taking female hormones since, but the organization’s lawyer insisted that she would have a physical advantage over the other competitors. He even accused her of missing or ignoring basic science lessons in high school. According to Nutt, “[d]octors and scientists agree that after a year either on female hormones or male hormone suppressants, any competitive advantage a transgender athlete might have had initially is gone” (102).

Nutt concludes the chapter by noting that in 2007, there was only one endocrinologist in the U.S. who specialized in treating transgender children. He worked at the Boston Children’s Hospital, about sixty miles from Maine’s southern border.

Nutt introduces Dr. Norman Spack, the pediatric endocrinologist she mentioned at the end of Chapter 15. She explains how his volunteer work with an organization for homeless youth led him to his specialty. Many of the runaways he encountered were boys who dressed like girls or girls who dressed like boys. He also had a formative experience studying newts, and specifically how hormones could spark the process of metamorphosis in these creatures. These experiences taught him that identity—including sex and gender—is fluid. Nutt says, “The transgender teens [Spack] met during his volunteer work or the intersex individuals he met in his endocrinology practice were as much a part of nature as the lowly newt, and therefore not aberrations or mistakes” (105).

Dr. Spack’s first transgender patient, a Harvard student who was female and living as a man, underscored this point. The student wanted Dr. Spack to give him testosterone, but Spack only had experience treating children. He agreed to do the hormone treatment if the student agreed to teach him about being transgender. During this journey, Dr. Spack met Dr. Louis Gooren, a Dutch endocrinologist who was among the first medical professionals to treat transgender youth. Gooren had found a safe, effective way to suppress puberty long enough for these kids to undergo the psychological testing necessary to determine how deep-seated their gender dysphoria was. Delivering the appropriate hormones allowed the children’s bodies to develop in the direction their brains wanted them to go, gender-wise.

Dr. Spack went on to open a gender clinic at the Boston Children’s Hospital. In 2006, Wyatt becomes one of his first American transgender pediatric patients. The doctor puts Wyatt’s family at ease by highlighting a single point: that gender identity stems from the brain, and that many things can happen to a developing brain that change how a child will develop. He also explains that some kids who prefer to act and dress like the opposite gender aren’t truly transgender. Nutt adds that only a quarter of children who express themselves as the opposite gender keep that gender identity when puberty hits. Those who keep identifying as the other gender face significant trauma if they have to go through puberty in a body that feels like the wrong one. This is why Dr. Spack advises starting Wyatt on hormones when it looks like puberty is beginning for Jonas. Kelly feels relieved that they’ve found someone who understands Wyatt, someone the family can trust. Wayne gains confidence that letting Wyatt transition is the right thing to do, now that he has heard the opinion of a trustworthy expert. He’s still not convinced that Wyatt is transgender, but he’s willing to let Kelly proceed as if Wyatt is.

The part of the building with the fifth-grade classrooms has multi-stall girls’ and boys’ bathrooms, unlike the rest of the school, which has single-stall unisex bathrooms. Erhardt convinces Kelly that submitting a Section 504 form to the board of education would protect Wyatt because his gender dysphoria diagnosis qualifies him for the protections against discrimination students with disabilities receive. Kelly wants to make sure Wyatt is safe at school and that there are trustworthy people he can turn to if needed, so she agrees to move forward with the form. Wyatt, meanwhile, fears that other students will see his penis. Kelly and the school agree that Wyatt should use the girls’ bathroom.

When trying to find a girls’ softball team for Wyatt, Kelly calls different school systems in Maine and finds that they have nondiscrimination policies but that none address gender identity. She does a great deal of work to make sure the local Little League team would let him play, but they require him to wear a cup and athletic supporter. Dr. Holmes asks him why he’s so anxious and upset one day, and Wyatt says he doesn’t like that his softball uniform makes him feel different from the other players. He wants to feel normal. Dr. Holmes tells Wyatt that he is different. This surprises Wyatt, since Dr. Holmes usually goes along with what he is saying. She acknowledges that he has boy parts, which makes Wyatt uncomfortable. Then she tells him how she thinks it’s special that he knows who he—a girl—is, despite this physical evidence that he is a boy. Wyatt feels angry when he leaves the therapy session, but after a few minutes, he returns and gives Dr. Holmes a hug. 

Kelly realizes that Wyatt deserves to have a girl’s name if he is going to look, dress, and act like a girl. She and Wayne ask him what he’d like to be called. He comes up with several names from TV shows and settles on Nicole, the name of a character on the Nickelodeon series Zoey 101. Wayne struggles to utter the new name, so he avoids calling his child by name at all. Kelly is left to sort out the details. The family realizes that Maine law requires name changes to be announced in the newspaper. To avoid this, they’ll have to get a judge to make an exception. Pursuing this option seems necessary to protect Nicole from the ire of the right-wing religious community, especially the local Christian Civic League, which knows how to create controversy and get the media involved.

When the Maineses go to court, their family-law attorney is unable to join them and sends a real-estate lawyer instead. The proceedings begin on shaky ground, with the elderly judge asking the Maineses why they want their child’s name changed and why they want the change kept out of the paper. They explain their concerns about the Christian Civic League and the judge suggests that the league should appear in court to share what its members think. Wayne then takes the stand and does something unexpected: he says out loud that he agrees with Kelly. Wyatt should be allowed to make a full transition as safely as possible. The judge grants the request, convinced that Wayne and Kelly are concerned about their child’s safety. The parents are relieved and somewhat surprised. The day also marks Wayne’s first time showing public support for Nicole being transgender.