Tolerance of ambiguity

I'd have labeled this post "Multiple shades of grey"but a title close to this has been used in a best selling raunchy novel recently, so that phrase is off limits, temporarily at least. I believe I have always had a high degree of tolerance of ambiguity. Should I leap into this current topic of discussion to demonstrate my tolerance? Probably not, but I'll do it anyway. An anatomically and physiologically female person who is psychologically male had gender reassignment surgery; then he and his partner decided to have a child.  The only feasible way for this to happen was for the gender reassigned male to stop taking testosterone and become pregnant. After a normal pregnancy and birth, the psychologically male "mother" has successfully breastfed his son for 18 months, and has been providing emotional support and practical advice to other mothers at the MCH clinic he attends. He had breast reduction surgery but fortunately at least some breast tissue and mammary glands were left in situ, apparently enabling him to produce copious amounts of breast milk. Now he wants to volunteer as a counsellor to mothers who are having difficulty breast feeding.  He has run into road blocks from La Leche League, the voluntary organization that promotes breast feeding.  La Leche League is quite a progressive organization in many ways. When I used to set up a range of community services, agencies, organizations, etc, to which I could send medical students, La Leche league was among them, and in my experience they seldom advocated positions that I'd have vetoed as reactionary. However, they evidently can't accept the notion of a trans-gender person who is now reassigned as male but is successfully breast-feeding his 18 month old infant son who is thriving on his father's breast milk. Admittedly it's a hard notion to assimilate. But in the increasingly tolerant, laid-back nation that is Canada in 2012, I think they ought to get used to the notion.

Gender identity was explored on CBC radio several times today, in news reports and discussions on talk radio about the breast-feeding "father," then in the Ideas program, which reran a program about gender identity in infancy - and attempts by well meaning parents to avoid what they regard as gender stereotyping. I was reminded of the appalling Irene in Alexander McCall Smith's perceptive tales about the occupants of the flats at 44 Scotland Street in Edinburgh. Irene made her 6 year old son Bertie wear pink dungarees as one of many actions aimed at avoiding gender stereotyping.  A new book in the 44 Scotland Street series awaits my attention on my bedside table; it's probably too much to hope that Irene gets her comeuppance in this new book, but I hope Bertie has a chance to escape Irene's relentless attempts to prevent him becoming a small boy. Well-meaning but I think misguided parents in Toronto have named their children Storm, Jazz, and Kio, in an attempt to avoid labeling them with names that identify their sex.  When David was about 9 months old, he dismantled his pram, managed somehow to unscrew every nut and bolt that was unscrewable. Was this a typically small boy or small girl action? Would he have refrained from this and other boyish acts like climbing ladders, trees and the rotary clothes hoist if he had a gender-neutral name? What about the father who wouldn't allow his toddler son to play with a pink soccer ball, insisted that he kick only the blue ball? That sort of  parental behaviour is just absurd.

Ambiguous gender identity in adolescence and early adult life is a very heavy burden to carry. I wish I could do more to help a young person I know who is coping with this burden - coping rather well now I believe, but other than some counselling I don't think anything much is being provided or offered to help my friend, who at least knows I'm ready, willing and I hope able to help whenever I'm asked.