Courtney Crowder

ccrowder@dmreg.com

Ryland Kelting pushes his vivid turquoise glasses from the bridge of his nose to his forehead and leans in so close to his mirror that his breath fogs the glass.

Balancing a new palette of glitter eye shadow in one hand and holding the special makeup brush he just received for his birthday like a pair of chopsticks, Ryland applies the silvery hue, quick to wipe away any color that drifts too far from his eyelid. Behind him, the girls he invited to his makeup and dance party-themed ninth birthday party are grousing.

Ryland, can you help me with this blush? Ryland, I messed up my mascara. Ryland, what the heck is this? (It was an eyelash curler.)

But Ryland focuses on his face with rapt attention as he moves from eye shadow to lipstick, silently perfecting his visage. Pushing his glasses back into place, he flashes a smile and poses playfully, performing for the phantom paparazzi.

“OK, I’m ready,” he said, his pink, purple and yellow skirt flying up a tad and his braided silver flip-flops squeaking as he turns to address the girls’ cosmetic issues.

Ryland, of Waukee, was born a boy and still identifies as such, using the pronouns “he” and “his.” But he wears skirts, regularly applies nail polish and loves all things girly. He doesn’t identify as transgender but as gender creative, a person who lives between what is traditionally expected of males and females.

He’s one of the growing number of children who are either coming out as transgender or eschewing the idea of gender as a simple binary, experts said. But despite the growing acceptance of atypical gender expression, especially among young people, these youths “face a whole host of discrimination from the moment they come out,” said Alison Pennington, an attorney focusing on transgender youths at the California-based Transgender Law Center.

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In Iowa, the Civil Rights Act protects transgender people from discrimination in arenas like public accommodations, education and housing. Still, young gender-nonconforming Iowans report facing hardships with unaccepting family members, prejudice at school and the lack of health care services, local advocates said.

“As transgender people are gaining greater rights and greater visibility, they face a backlash across the country in both anti-trans legislation and sentiment,” Pennington said. “And the conversation around transgender youth is of a different tone than that around adults. There’s really a lack of understanding about how someone that young can recognize their gender to be different than their biological sex.”

For some conservative Christian groups like Iowa-based The Family Leader, apprehension about affirming a youth's transgender identity lies in what they believe to be children’s “natural uncertainty as they hit puberty or develop sexually,” said Drew Zahn, the group’s director of communications.

“Our concern is that encouraging them to ignore their own biology and God’s design for healthy sexuality not only deepens their confusion, but can also lead to their harm,” he said.

Not something to 'wish away'

Most transgender Iowans interviewed by The Des Moines Register said their gender identity was apparent as far back as they can remember. Many experts in the field say that sentiment is common.

“The brain is gendered from birth,” said Dr. Katie Larson Ode, a pediatrician who works with the University of Iowa’s LGBTQ clinic (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning). “Normally, children have an innate gender identity when they are toddlers, and they begin to articulate it by age 4 or 5. My gut feeling is that trans kids are the same, except they have an innate gender identity that is different from their birth sex, and when they articulate it, they get negative signals and learn to repress it.”

Other experts also have acknowledged the trend that transgender children are becoming "aware they are transgender at much younger ages than previously considered," as research in the Graduate Journal of Social Science notes.

Receiving a childhood diagnosis of gender dysphoria, the determination many transgender people need to receive health insurance coverage, is not easy, said Dr. Jack Drescher, a New York psychiatrist and expert on gender issues. Clinically, a prepubescent child must manifest six of eight strict diagnostic criteria listed in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders for at least six months to be deemed gender dysphoric. Those criteria include an insistence that one is the other gender, a preference for cross-gender toys or activities and a dislike of one’s sexual anatomy, among others.

“For people to associate the intensity of gender dysphoria in children with the whimsical way children change their minds displays a complete misunderstanding of the two sets of phenomena,” Drescher said. “For children with gender dysphoria, it is not as simple as something that goes away or you can wish away or you can forget.”

Or as the Trans Youth Equality Foundation, headquartered in Maine, puts it: A transgender child is consistent, insistent and persistent with his or her gender identity.

That gnawing repetition and resolution is familiar to many parents of young transgender Iowans, including Amy Miles, whose son, Parker, was born a girl but came out as a boy as a high school freshman.

“As soon as we figured it out, we started transitioning because I knew I wanted him to experience life as the right gender,” she said, “to date and go to prom and graduate as a boy, as himself.”

She paused, collecting her emotions: “His goals didn’t change because his gender did. And I was — I am — going to do anything in my power to help him achieve those goals.”

‘I tried to be a girl’

When Kelley Kelting, Ryland’s mother, and Jessica Brown, whose son, Bryan Brown, 10, has transitioned to male, dissect their kids' earliest days, the signs of gender nonconformity pop out like breadcrumbs on a forest floor, they said. The mothers met through Little Rainbows, a local support group for gender-nonconforming children and their parents, and noticed the similarities in their experiences right away.

Ryland started gravitating to girls' toys at 18 months, and Bryan demanded all things boy from about the same age. Even when Jessica could coax Bryan to wear a dress, he’d insist on boys' underwear.

In the second grade, a family member told Bryan — out of earshot of his mother — that God made him a girl, so he should act like a girl. It was the first time anyone had said anything that direct to his face, and it was humiliating, both Browns said.

“I tried to be a girl for a year after that,” Bryan remembered. “I didn’t want to be different. But every time I wore girls’ clothes, I felt like I was doing something bad, something really bad.”

Throughout that year, Bryan would write his mom oft-misspelled notes in bold, black Sharpie that read, “I feel like I’m a boy, but I don’t know what to do,” or “I’m a girl on the outside, but a boy on the inside.” He’d deliver them to her as she soaked in the bathtub, then run away.

“It crushed me to see my child that unhappy,” Brown said. “But I just kept telling him it would be OK. We would figure it out. I loved him no matter what.”

Family acceptance is a key part of transgender children’s mental health, said Dr. Nicole Nisly, a practitioner at the LGBTQ clinic. Kids who lack that support “suffer tremendously,” she said.

“They have anxiety disorders and mood and personality disorders,” she said. “In some cases, they can go on to suffer from substance abuse issues or resort to sex work to pay for hormones, which they purchase illegally and inject based on dosages they find on the internet. It’s just terrible for those kids.”

Nisly’s clinical evidence is borne out in social research. Teenagers who experienced family rejection were more than twice as likely to have "depressive symptoms" and more than 90 percent as likely to have attempted suicide within the past year, a 2012 Canadian report showed.

Still, being loving and supportive doesn’t mean it’s easy to parent a transgender child. It can be scary and daunting, yes, but it’s OK not to have all the answers, said Lisa Kenney, executive director of Gender Spectrum, a California-based educational organization focused on gender and youth.

Kelting, Ryland's mom, is the first to admit she wasn’t ready for this gender journey. An interior designer by trade, she has gay friends, but this, this was hard, she said.

“When you see the sonogram or they hand you your baby and say, ‘It’s a boy,’ you have expectations,” she said. “You expect him to be a boy the whole time, forever. So when this came up, I felt a sense of loss, like I lost my boy.”

“And when we decided to redecorate his room from boy to girl, I had a total meltdown,” she continued. “He was at school, and I took his boy stuff down, and I just cried. But the next day, we all woke up and bought his girly stuff and I was fine. It took a momentary breakdown, but now I am completely, 100 percent behind it.”

They're not an 'invading force’

All around the Browns' house in rural Orient, Iowa, cutout photos are taped to the glass of family pictures. Bryan makes sure every photo of him as a girl is covered by a photo of him as a boy, his way of real-life "Photoshopping" his new self into old family memories.

In his room, reminders of his transition are strewn from wall to wall. The artwork he has framed on his dresser is the first thing he drew after cutting his long hair. The folders he brought home from school have the name BRYAN written in all capitals. And the ball next to his bed is a baseball, not a softball, he stressed.

Bryan just finished the fourth grade, and it was his best year of school so far, he said, because he went as a boy. His mother agreed. Sometime in the past 12 months, she watched her shy, angry girl grow into an outgoing class clown. She has never seen her child as happy as he was this year, she said, and his school's accommodation to his needs was a large part of why.

Brown credits Nodaway Valley Elementary Principal Connie Lundy for setting the positive tone. On the first day of class, she spoke to the fourth-grade classrooms to tell them that Brynn was now Bryan, a boy who uses male pronouns. That fact surprised none of his classmates because Bryan had been dressing and generally acting like a male for the previous school year, Lundy said. The school also allowed Bryan to use the boys' bathroom and added his preferred name to his official records.

"The change was taken up and accepted by the entire school, from art to music to other teachers to support staff," Lundy said. "The kids embraced Bryan wholeheartedly. I have a daughter in that class, and it was no big deal to her, either."

Neither Bryan nor Ryland said they have experienced bullying from their classmates, which is consistent with research surrounding Generation Z, the generation after millennials, which generally includes those ages 20 and younger. More than 50 percent of Gen Z children said they know someone who uses gender-neutral pronouns “they” or “ze,” and 74 percent said they are more accepting of "nontraditional gender identities" than they were a year ago, according to a recent survey from marketing firm J. Walter Thompson.

But as the debate on transgender rights rages nationally, school boards across Iowa are facing more questions from parents about transgender students, said Drew Bracken, a lawyer at Ahlers & Cooney, which represents about half of the state’s districts.

“These questions and issues are arising all over the state in small and large communities alike,” he said. “For a lot of people, the idea that their children could be going to school with transgender children was something that folks hadn’t thought too much about, (so they are) asking questions.”

Most questions have focused on access to locker rooms, bathrooms and overnight accommodations, Bracken said, but concerns range from use of a student's preferred name in official records to bullying, playing on gendered sports teams and possible instances of discrimination.

Recently, a group of residents in the Fairfield Community School District attended a school board meeting to protest the U.S. Department of Education’s federal mandate allowing students to use facilities that align with their gender identity. Angela Fulton, a community member who spoke out against the federal mandate at the meeting, said she had received 936 signatures on a petition that asked the board to “rebuff this (mandate) that will compromise our children’s safety, security, privacy and modesty.”

Bracken, however, said in his opinion the petition's request "was not in compliance with Iowa law, and it may not have been in compliance with Title IX federally.”

After a more than four-hour meeting, the district did not change any school policies but voted to create guidelines to ensure that all students receive the privacy they deserve.

They “treated transgender students like some outside entity,” said Nate Monson, executive director of the LGBT advocacy group Iowa Safe Schools, who attended the meeting. “But they are not a foreign, invading force. They are friends, family members, and kids that other kids have grown up with, and, actually, when you ask the kids, the vast majority don’t care.”

‘I will do whatever it takes’

Bryan is going to middle school next year, and he’s nervous. Just thinking about it, the naturally ebullient child gets quiet and casts his eyes downward. At 10, he’s on the cusp of puberty. The prospect of going through it as a biological girl is tantamount to a living nightmare, but he’s hoping to start hormone blockers this summer.

Hormone blockers have almost no adverse qualities, said Larson Ode, the UI LGBTQ clinic pediatrician. They are “completely reversible” and “essentially put puberty on hold, so that transgender children don’t go through the wrong puberty.”

But they don’t come cheap. Bryan’s mom said she is hoping to get a second job to pay for the $3,000-a-month shots. After insurance, she estimates her out-of-pocket cost to be $423, but she has to reach her $2,500 deductible first.

“For people around here, that is a lot of money,” she said. “When you add up the car payment and the house payment and feeding my children, we spend what we make, but I will do whatever it takes to help him.”

Large swaths of Iowa lack resources for transgender youths, Monson said. Even though the internet has been a “savior” for LGBT kids living in rural communities, not having role models available in real life takes its toll, he said.

That lack of resources directed at youths, especially young children, is why Kelting started the Little Rainbows, the support group for Des Moines metro-area gender-nonconforming children and their parents. It’s been a miracle for Ryland to have a place where he can be himself without judgment, she said. It’s helped him feel comfortable in his own skin, and safe to celebrate his birthday with makeovers and dance competitions.

Back at the birthday gathering, Ryland finishes his partygoers' makeup and the group moves to the living room to practice their dance, set to Beyoncé’s “Run the World (Girls).”

Eating leftover party pizza, Ryland’s dad, Brian Kelting, fake coughs and says he’s “breathing in glitter” as the kids run past.

“Whatever makes my kid the happiest he can be is what I want him to be doing,” he said.

“And who am I to stop him from doing anything that’s not illegal or harmful?” he continued. “I mean, what if he becomes one of the best makeup artists in Hollywood?”

Soon, the living room becomes a makeshift stage, and the dancers line up, turning to face the audience on cue and bouncing their hips in place.

Ryland, in the center, is the last to turn. His skirt flips up a little, his face bursts into a big smile as he shakes his hips, and in the shadow of a colorful disco ball, the silver glitter perfectly placed on his eyelids sparkles.





More to come

This is the second of an occasional series looking into the lives of transgender Iowans. Read the rest of the series at DesMoinesRegister.com/transiowa.

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