It is okay to be gender-defiant and to load the dishwasher wrong.

My morning routine hasn’t changed much during COVID-19. I wake up between six and seven, check on my plants, take the dog out (the dog is new), make coffee, clean up the kitchen. This morning, I was loading the dishwasher and noticing how much anxiety I experience when someone else who lives here loads the dishwasher differently from how I do it. I have a strong belief that the way I load the dishwasher is objectively correct and efficient and that other ways of loading the dishwasher are wrong and probably wasteful.

My dishwasher beliefs are based on nothing, empirically speaking. It is utterly possible that my way of loading the dishwasher actually puts dishes too close together and increases the chances that something will come out still-dirty. I have never checked. I have not done a google search for Actual Best Dishwasher Loading Method. I have never asked anybody why they load the dishwasher their way. I almost wrote wrong. Because I know, deep down, that my way is right.

A lot of people struggle with partners and housemates and children about how to properly load a dishwasher. Many arguments in homes with dishwashers are about how to correctly load the dishwasher, because many people (especially people who grew up with dishwashers in their home) have a very strong sense that there is one correct way to load one, and their partners and housemates and children, maddeningly, refuse to do it.

Our anxiety—my anxiety—is not actually about whether all the dishes get clean. It has never once led me to evaluate whether my method of loading actually results in less water use or cleaner dishes or whatever. The anxiety is about getting in trouble for doing chores not-well-enough. Even though, in my house, I am the only person who corrects anybody about not doing chores well enough. And I hate doing it. And I do it.

Loading the dishwasher wrong brings up fears in me about not doing enough, being enough, doing things right. I have a strong desire to avoid confrontation with those feelings, and it leads me to want everybody to do chores the way I want them done. I don’t think I am allowed to dictate that, so I don’t actually correct anybody’s dishwasher game but I do, secretly and resentfully, re-load the dishwasher when somebody else does it wrong because actually, my way is objectively correct.

Did I mention I have no reason to believe this?

My parents do not live here. Nobody is checking our dishwasher. We don’t even check our dishwasher, in the sense that nobody who lives here is saying “well, we loaded it X fashion and now there are six plates that need to be washed again, that’s one more reason to load Y fashion next time!” If the dishes don’t all fit, we wash some by hand or save some for the next load. If the dishes don’t all get clean, we wash some by hand. Both happen routinely, regardless of how the dishwasher is loaded, because our dishwasher isn’t great at washing dishes anyway. Or because I insist on a system that’s inefficient. Really there’s no way to tell.

Critically, having dishes come out still-dirty feels fine. It is mildly annoying because it means another step, but it doesn’t trigger the anxiety of wrong-loading. Having dishes left over for the next load also feels fine. This also doesn’t trigger the anxiety of wrong-loading. I have never once been worried about the inefficiency of needing to run the dishwasher twice, even though this is hypothetically why my method of loading is so important.

Knowing that my anxiety about dishwasher rules has literally no connection to actual dishwasher outcomes does not make me less anxious about having the dishwasher loaded wrong, in the same way that knowing my rules have no basis in objective outcomes doesn’t actually motivate me to read up on objectively optimal dish-loading. It’s not about that. I have completely internalized my childhood rules about how dishes may be loaded into the dishwasher, and I have an intense desire to avoid confrontation with those rules. The easiest way to avoid that confrontation is to ensure that the rules are followed.

I live with other adults, and I am clear that it would be inappropriate for me to insist that they do the dishes in the manner of my choosing, because I am abstractly aware that my rules are completely arbitrary. I stop myself from instructing housemates on the correct dishwasher loading procedure but I often rearrange the dishes in a fashion that demonstrates that I know how dishes are correctly loaded and I for one am a civilized person.

This morning, as I load the dishes (correctly, of course), I recall a conversation I had with a therapist in a gender 101 training where I talked about the role of parental fears about bullying in suppressing kids’ gender expression. I described a common pattern in which parents have a sincere commitment to supporting their gender-exploring, gender-nonconforming, or trans child but assume that nobody else will. In their fear about kids experiencing gender punishment from others, they make rules that, rather than creating safe spaces for gender exploration, send strong messages that gender exploration is shameful and unlovable.

Rules like “you can wear a dress here but not to grandma’s house.” “We will call you this name, but when you start school you have to switch back.” I described this pattern as naturalizing transphobia (i.e. treating transphobia as if an unavoidable part of the landscape, something that just is and always will be) by setting an expectation that everyone else will reject the child, and parents are the only people whose love can be expected to survive encountering the child’s behavior or identity.

One of my colleagues was horrified and I think a little angry. He asked if I had considered that maybe the parents legitimately believed that the world was transphobic and honestly wanted to protect their kids from bullying. And I said, of course they legitimately believe that! Of course they honestly want to protect their kids!

Somos Familia, a Bay Area organization that helps Latinx families and communities create a culture embracing diverse genders and sexual orientations, beautifully addresses the sincere fear and love of families that turn to gender policing as a response to kids coming out in their YouTube telenovela, Entre Nos. In episode 10, gay teen Miguel’s parents debate sending him to a church that promises to “cure” him. The episode shows Miguel’s father talking with an adult he knows who was sent to conversion therapy about his anxieties that being gay will mean Miguel cannot live a good life. Somos Familia educators stress that the urge to punish and erase kids’ sexuality and gender is always rooted in a belief that this will help the kid live a better life and avoid frightening outcomes like violence, discrimination, suicidality, and HIV.

Redirecting kids’ gender expression and sexuality toward normative ones is deeply related to parents’ overall mission of teaching kids how to live a good life and avoid bad outcomes. Because parents socialize all kids about norms of gender and sexuality, they feel beholden to the rules about what proper gender and sexuality look like, and the biggest break from that imaginable for many parents is “you can break rules at home, as a secret, but you can’t break rules in front of other people.” The message kids receive is that it’s wrong to break gender rules, and that school friends, grandparents, other adults might not love them enough to put up with a wrong this big.

Dr. Johanna Olson-Kennedy, a leading specialist in trans pediatrics, and husband Aydin Olson-Kennedy, a trans youth social worker, teach that fear about grandma’s rejection is often the biggest fear for parents… and that grandma is rarely a source of rejection for trans and gender nonconforming youth. They say that parents often hide kids’ gender exploration and identity development from their own parents for a long time, terrified of the heartbreak of rejection, only to discover that grandparents adjust more easily than they did themselves.

I think the dishwasher tells us a lot about why that happens.

When children break gender rules, it brings up anxiety about punishment in parents. It is an anxiety that children may not have in themselves yet. A parent’s anxious response about gender correctness mirrors a housemate or partner’s anxious response about dishwasher correctness. They were told there was a correct way and a way that gets them in trouble. They see their child as precious and don’t want others to punish them needlessly. Moreover, they see the rules about gender correctness as some degree of legitimate. They may (or may not!) view their child as a reasonable exception to the rules, but fear and trust others won’t.

Commonly, gender rules are transmitted to a trans child’s parents via their own parents correcting their behavior. Fears about a trans child being rejected by grandma often points to memories about the parent’s gender socialization as a child. Parents teach children what it means to be a woman or a man, a boy or a girl, through modeling and correction. Parents of trans children may not have thought much about how their parents corrected their gendered selves, and these deeply internalized rules can emerge only as vague anxiety about what parents will think of their children and their childrearing.

My gender socialization was largely very permissive, but I nevertheless received messages about the value of being ladylike that sometimes reflected fears of adults who knew me that I was never going to get a husband. The person who was most concerned about whether I would get a husband someday was legitimately anxious about whether my personality made me unlovable to heterosexual men. The woman who warned me about never getting a husband was speaking from a deep love for me, a desire for me to live a happy life, and from generational gendered wounds of mothers and mothers’ mothers. This was a message about shame and terror, about divorce and incest and alcoholism and poverty and bruises and rejection and loneliness she could not speak into the ears of a child except by saying keep your legs closed. She was trying her best to give me a life where I could be the very specific kind of woman that can be happy and safe, because nobody else in our family had really gotten to be that kind of woman.

Anxieties about kids being rejected at school likewise point to parents’ experiences of the violence of gender socialization at school, whether that includes being bullied or corrected in smaller ways, seeing other children be bullied or corrected, participating in bulling or correction of other children. Most often, a mix of all three. Corrections ranging from overt attack to teasing to heartfelt, “you know you really shouldn’t…” said in absolute love.

We are so afraid for ourselves and each other. We have been told, explicitly and implicitly, that there is a right way. Learning to support gender defiance in kids asks for some deep breaths, and realizing that it’s okay for everybody to load the dishwasher in a different way. There could be consequences to doing it your way, but there could also be consequences to doing it my way. Either way, we can stay on the same team and clean up as needed. When we notice the roots of our own rule anxieties, we can start to tease out what kind of behavior is really unacceptable and what’s an uncomfortable reminder of being unaccepted ourselves.

When kids of all genders know that they have adults in their corner no matter what, they are more able to survive gender censure. They will encounter the rules and the rules-anxieties of people who have not reflected on why gender rulebreaking makes them so anxious, and who will compulsively correct to their parents’ specifications. We all will. But even one single adult who inhabits defiance, who says “you load that dishwasher baby, if something goes wrong we can clean it up together,” is an irreplaceable shield against the shame of correction. Instead of “you can wear it at home, but don’t tell grandma,” try, “you get to decide who to tell. I’ll be here for you no matter what.”

More on this:
The Will to Change by bell hooks talks about roots of men’s anti-woman violence in psychic self-mutilation, which I think is a powerful model for understanding the relationship between internalized gender rules and externalized gender policing and abuse.

The largest study ever on trans children found that their outcomes were virtually indistinguishable from their cis siblings when supported by family.

How to Be a Girl is a podcast about a mom’s experience with her trans daughter, focusing on her experience as a mom. Like Somos Familia, this is a great resource for learning about parenting with trans kids, rather than learning about trans kids themselves. Her navigation of anxiety and rules, and her reflections on this with her ex-husband and coparent, are really valuable models of parents doing their best, making mistakes, and remaining committed to learning. One Bad Mother also has some great episodes on parenting trans kids. Their episodes on parenting during COVID-19 may also be a balm right now.

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