Here’s another podcast to add to your playlist: “How to Be a Girl,” a single mom’s exploration of life raising her transgender daughter.Marlo Mack’s child, assigned male at birth, said at age three that she was a girl. She’s chronicled their journey in a podcast that has been picked up to run on KUOW public radio in Seattle, and named a Best Podcast of 2016 by The Atlantic and The Guardian.
What I love about this podcast is that Mack delves into questions about gender that both underlie and go beyond having a transgender child. As she says in the introductory video below:
Other than letting her wear pretty dresses and using different pronouns, what has actually changed? What does this newly minted girl need to know? What do I need to teach her about how to be a girl? Do I even know how to be a girl? And if a girl can be a senator or an astronaut or a plumber, if a girl can wear pants and have short hair, if a girl can even have a penis, what is a girl anyway?
This makes it a wonderful listen not only for trans people and those with trans kids, but for anyone interested in what gender means today. Mack also shares what it’s like seeking out information and community to help her parent her child; the impact of “bathroom bills” on her family; and the options when her now-eight-year-old grows up and wants to be a mother herself, even a genetic one.
Listen at the show’s website or your favorite podcasting app. (And don’t forget the other great podcast I mentioned recently, This Is Home, about the many different types of families today.)
How to Be a Girl from gendermom on Vimeo.