Mermaids
Wyatt was not the first little boy to see in mermaid physiognomy a metaphor for their feelings of gender dysphoria nor will be anywhere near to the last. It is a near perfect metaphor: the mermaid looks like a female from the waist up, but what exists below—beneath the fin—is a mystery. Maybe there are girl parts down there, but maybe there are boy parts. The latter case is like the reflection that the gender dysphoric person with born with a penis sees when looking in a mirror.
Another Mirror
Another scene situates what two-year-old Wyatt seems to see when he actually is looking in a mirror. It is not a mermaid, of course, because he is still a little while away from making that connection. It is instead, something much deeper and difficult to pinpoint exactly and therefore cries out for metaphorical imagery:
“But often it seemed as if the little boy was puzzled by his reflection, unsure of the image staring back. There was some inscrutable pain behind his eyes. He seemed tense and anxious, as if his heart was in knots and he didn’t know how to untie them.”
The Real Man Metaphor
There seems to be a bottomless supply of metaphors used to describe being a real man. Just a very select sampling of a few among the horde of many include: “a stand-up guy,” “an okay Joe,” “a real he-man,” and “a man’s man.” When it comes the idea of what a real man is for Wyatt’s dad, however, the metaphor becomes really complex to describe an idea which is anything but:
“Make your first punch count, don’t ever quit on your team, never point a gun at someone unless you’re prepared to use it, try to return things in better condition than when you borrowed them (cleaned, oiled, and tuned up), and never, ever drink while playing cards.”
Before Metaphor isn’t Anymore
The use of “like” or “as” in the book often presents a complication that usually does not arise. Either of those two words conjunctively to make a comparison is the definition of a simile and the use of simile implies metaphor and a metaphor tends to affirm the absence of a literal meaning. In the early developmental years of Wyatt’s life before becoming Nicole, however, certain appearances of simile construction become much more ambiguously complex:
“If they were going to let Wyatt look like a girl and dress like a girl, then surely he deserved a girl’s name.”
How Common is it?
Jennifer Finney Boylan is the first openly transgender woman that Wyatt’s mom ever sees speaking openly about the issue on a national TV show (Oprah Winfrey) and is high motivated by what she hears. There is one particular assertion made by Boylan that she frames within the accessibility of a comparison through simile that is surely bound to trigger any transphobic reader looking for ammunition with which to accuse the pro-transgender community of perhaps exaggerating the density of gender dysphoria for the purposes of propaganda.
“One scholar says that it’s as common as multiple sclerosis, it’s as common as a cleft palate”
Unfortunately, the author does not provide any verifiable evidence of these claims made by Boylan which are, admittedly, rather eye-popping. It is, fortunately, one of the few cases where the ball was dropped in this fascinating and informative text.
