This morning, my daughter and

This morning, my daughter and I were snuggling on the sofa talking about some of our friends. It seemed like ìthe right time,î so I told her:

S: The next time you see [our friend] sheís going to look different.
H: What do you mean?
S: Sheís decided that she wants to be a man.
H: How do you do that? Whatís going to look different?
S: Thereís some hormones our bodies make ñ a kind of chemical ñ and boy bodies make a lot of one kind, and girl bodies make a lot of the other kind. You have to go to a lot of doctors to get permission. Our friend is now getting shots of the kind that boys have. Sheís already started to grow more facial hair. At some point weíre going to have to start calling her a he.
H: Why does HE want to be a boy?
S: I think she, he, feels like inside herself she is a boy, and her body just doesnít match.
H: Oh. Do you know other people like that?
S: Yes, Iíve met people who were once girls and are now boys, and boys that have changed to girls. It works both ways.
H: Do you want to change to be a boy?
S: No, I like being a girl.
H: Me too. ÖHow does [her girlfriend] feel about it?
S: She's having a hard time. She wants to be with a girl, not with a boy. But she's hanging in there and will see what happens...
S: I think Frankie (our dachshund puppy) always knew that our friend is really a man ñ remember how she (the puppy) always barks at men but not (as much) at women? And she always barked at our friend, even before any of us knew she was thinking about changing.
H: Sometimes I know that people are really what they are on the inside, not the outside.
S: Yeah, itís kindof confusing when we talk about someone being ìreallyî a girl or a boy according to what their body is ñ because inside themselves they always felt they were ìreallyî one way, even if their outside body doesnít match their inside picture. Anyway, itís kindof private, I wanted to tell you now to give you time to think about it and ask questions, to get used to the idea.

We spend a lot of time talking about whatís right/wrong, how appearances can be deceiving. Harry Potter is one of our constant frames of reference. Professor McGonagal seems mean but sheís got a soft spot in her heart for all things Gryffindor. Snape flirted with the dark side, and even though his personality is still creepy, seems to have come around. Hagrid looks scary, but we know about his compassion for weird and wild beasts! Then thereís the folks who look pretty but are mean and selfish (we have some of those in real life, no need for fictional characters).

The whole thing about diversity has so much to do with appearance. Most Caucasion Americans imagine a ìwhiteî person as the quintessential American, despite the fact that non-European immigrants (voluntary and otherwise) helped build the country from day one. And this weekís Newsweek proclaims the end of deafness as a victory. I was writing about media framing yesterday, this one is almost beyond the pale, asserting as it does to speak on behalf of members of American Deaf Culture. According to Jim Reisler, itís a good thing to eradicate American Sign Language since it is not ìa shorthand version of English.î Yeah, why not? Who needs another distinctive language? Who needs the heterogeneity? Why fight to keep a unique form of human communication, whose use might yield insights into human capacities and potentials we have yet to tap? Herald the age of technology ñ through which we can all become the same!