Gender and binaries are central to Laurie Frankel’s This is How it Always is. When Penn and Rosie discover their son Claude has gender dysphoria—the term given to the stress one feels when their internal gender identity does not match their outward gender appearance—gender and gender binaries quickly become a big part of their lives, just as those things have always been a big part of Claude’s life. By way of highlighting Claude’s differences, Mr. Tongo, Rosie’s friend and a social worker specializing in gender dysphoria, suggests Rosie and Penn keep lists of Claude’s behavior and then place each individual behavior into either a male or a female category. Penn and Rosie quickly discover that putting everything into either/or categories isn’t so simple. To them, some of Claude’s behavior, like wearing a dress, is clearly feminine, and some behavior, like wrestling with his brothers, is clearly masculine; however, some behavior seems to be neither, like playing with LEGOs. Through This is How it Always is, Frankel implies that gender is not always—if ever—a clear choice between male and female, and she argues that gender and people are “both-and,” not “neither-nor.”
Claude is not the only character who doesn’t fit neatly into either a “boy” or “girl” category, which speaks to the idea that many people, not just those struggling with gender dysphoria, aren’t entirely male or female. Rosie is a doctor, and Claude and his brothers constantly tell her that she works a “boy job.” A doctor is a scientist, they reason, and scientists are usually men; therefore, Rosie has a “boy job.” Rosie clearly identifies as a woman but her job is undeniably masculine. Penn, on the other hand, is a writer, and his children see his profession as much more feminine. From their perspective, being a writer is romantic and mysterious, not masculine and rough. Plus, since Penn doesn’t make any money, and Rosie is at work all day at her “boy job,” Penn has to cook, clean, and raise kids, which, his children argue, is definitely a “girl job.” Penn, too, is quite certain that he is a man, but his role in life is considered stereotypically female. When Rosie goes to Thailand to work in a Burmese refugee clinic, she is surprised to find that K, the mechanic, is a woman, since most people in that profession are men. Furthermore, Penn and Rosie’s oldest son, Roo, plays the flute—an instrument that is usually viewed as feminine—and is also the quarterback of the football team. Gender and people are complicated in Frankel’s novel, and they don’t easily fit into categories.
Even after Claude transitions into Poppy and starts living as a girl—the way Poppy truly identifies—life is still difficult, which further suggests people and gender are not “neither-nor.” Before Claude transitions fully to Poppy and starts using female pronouns, he begins to wear a dress to school and is made to use the bathroom in the nurse’s office. Claude uses the bathroom in the nurse’s office for a while, but he eventually goes back to the boys’ bathroom. His teacher, Miss Appleton, catches him and firmly tells him that if he is boy, he can’t wear dresses, and if he is a girl, he must use the nurse’s bathroom. Claude says girls use the girls’ bathroom, but Miss Appleton says Claude “is not a little girl.” For Claude, it seems, he is neither a little girl nor a little boy. As Poppy grows up and moves closer to puberty, Penn and Rosie consider “hormone blockers” to keep Poppy from growing facial hair and developing a deep voice as she ages. With the medication, Poppy will remain a girl, but she won’t grow into a woman like her friends—no matter what Poppy does, her body won’t naturally grow and develop like her female friends’ bodies will. However, Penn and Rosie know that even if they don’t allow “hormone blockers” and Poppy goes back to living as Claude, he will never be entirely a boy. A part of Claude will always be Poppy, and he will always be “a girl with a penis.” Again, no matter what Poppy does, the discrepancy between her female gender identity and her male anatomy dictates that she doesn’t fit neatly into either a male or female category.
Penn explains Poppy’s gender in a fairytale he writes about a prince named Grumwald, who, after being cursed by a witch, is forced to live as Grumwald by day and as Princess Stephanie by night. When the witch goes to lift the curse and asks Grumwald which gender he wants to be, Grunwald wants both, and he wants to be both at once. Grumwald is “betwixt,” the witch says. He is not merely “in between,” but is more complicated and layered. “Betwixt a prince and a night fairy is neither-nor as much as both-and,” she explains. Poppy is “both-and” just as Grumwald is, and, Frankel thus implies, so are many others.
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Gender and Binaries Quotes in This Is How It Always Is
In all, a successful bedtime and an accomplishment on par with finishing a particularly difficult chapter or a tax return. It wasn't diagnosing a pulmonary embolism, but it was not unimpressive, and it allowed a pulmonary embolism to be diagnosed. It could not, unfortunately, be followed up by work or by house cleaning, dish doing, lunchbox packing, exercising, or any of the other things that needed doing. Bedtime could only be followed by TV. Or drinking. On the night Claude became—the fruition of which, of course, would only make bedtime worse—Penn thought both at once sounded best and gave it a good try but was asleep on the couch before he was very far into either one.
“Girls in fairy tales are losers,” said Roo.
“No they aren't,” said Claude.
“Yes they are. Not like losers. Losers. Girls in fairy tales are always losing stuff.”
“Nuh-uh,” said Claude.
“Yuh-huh. They lose their way in the woods or their shoe on the step or their hair even though they're in a tower with no door and their hair is like literally attached to their head.”
“Or their voice,” Ben put in. “Or their freedom or their family or their name. Or their identity. Like she can't be a mermaid anymore.”
“Or they lose being awake,” said Roo. “And then they just sleep and sleep and sleep. Boooring.”
Claude started crying. “A princess could do cool stuff. A princess could be better than Grumwald. She wouldn't have to sleep or lose her shoe.”
“You’re a scientist, Rosie. Women aren’t scientists. So that goes in the boy column. You’re a doctor—an ER doctor, not a girly one like pediatrician or gynecology. So that goes in the boy column too. Your so-called husband is a writer, an artist, and not the kind who makes money. The other kind. He cooks dinner—” [...].
“Why are you using the boys’ bathroom?”
“Because I'm a boy?”
She took another deep breath. “Then why are you wearing a dress?”
Claude was confused. They'd been through this. “I like to wear a dress.”
“Little boys do not wear dresses.” Miss Appleton tried to channel her usual patience. “Little girls wear dresses. If you are a little boy, you can't wear a dress. If you are a little girl, you have to use the nurse’s bathroom.”
“But little girls use the girls' bathroom,” said Claude.
“But you're not a little girl,” Miss Appleton said through her teeth.
“Meaning if he thinks he is a girl, he has gender dysphoria, and we will accommodate that. If he just wants to wear a dress, he is being disruptive and must wear normal clothes.”
“I’m not sure either Claude or I even understand the distinction you’re making up as you go along here,” said Penn.
“It’s confusing,” the district representative acknowledged, “for Miss Appleton and for the children and clearly also for Claude. No one knows how to treat this child. Do we say he or she? Does Claude line up with the boys or the girls? Why is his hair still short? Why hasn’t he change his name?”
“He cannot be all of the above in kindergarten, and he cannot be none of the above in kindergarten. In kindergarten, a child can only be a he or a she, a boy or a girl. Kindergartens are not set up for ambiguity.”
“Maybe they should be,” said Penn. “The world is an ambiguous place.”
“Not for a five-year-old. For a five-year-old, the world is very black and white. It’s fair or it’s unfair. It’s fun or its torture. There are not disgusting cookies. There are not delicious vegetables.”
“Poppy,” he said. “I want my new name to be Poppy.”
“Poppy?” Rosie whispered.
“Carmy says Jews name their babies after dead people they love. I never met Poppy, but I love her anyway.”
“You do?” Rosie was full of wonder.
“Yeah. Because she liked dolls. And because she was your favorite. I like dolls. And I want to be your favorite.”
“You are my favorite.” She nuzzled into his neck.
“Do you think Poppy is a good name?”
“I think Poppy is a perfect name.”
Rosie hated that calendar. Penn adored it. To Penn, it represented a triumph, difficult things overcome and implemented. Maybe the transition from Claude had been daunting and fraught, but here was Poppy, loved, friended, present, no longer disappearing off the page. He considered the calendar a hard-won trophy. To Rosie, it bespoke people's cloying, pandering, PC bullshit and a strange Poppy cachet. Having status, she warned Penn, was not the same as having friends. Maybe parents just wanted their kids to invite Poppy over so they could gossip to their own friends or make a big show of being open-minded and tolerant. Maybe the kids wanted to play with Poppy because they were curious about him rather than because they liked him. And what would they do about invitations to sleepovers? What would they do when these kids stopped being sweet little kindergarteners and started being hormone-crazed, mean-spirited, cruel-intentioned, peer-pressuring, pill-popping, gun-toting teenagers?
“Did you threaten him?” said Penn.
“Who?”
“Poppy.”
“Ain’t a him, friend.”
“Did you threaten our child?” Rosie did not want to get diverted into semantics and pronoun battles. There was something more at stake here.
“I told him we don't play with faggots, we don't play with girls, we don't play with boys dressed as girls, and he was no longer welcome in our home or anywhere near my kid—not at the park, not at school, not on the playground, nowhere.”
The instant after that Chad’s hand recoiled and then all of him. He stumbled up and back and away. His look in that moment wasn’t anger. It was pain. He was hurt. That she’d lied? That she’d tricked him? That he’d liked someone—something—as disgusting as she was? Maybe he was hurt that he’d lost her. Maybe he didn’t have to. She reached out to explain. The words on her lips were, “I’m…” What? I’m sorry? I’m Jane? I’m not what you think?
But she didn’t get them out. Whereas every moment leading up to this one this night stood crystalline and perfect, what happened next was a blur. He hit her across the mouth. He hit her face. He called out and lights went on in the house and guys came, guys arrived, one after another. They laughed. They yelled. They spit. They pushed her to the ground. They kicked her. She struggled. She fought back. She was strong. She had a single moment—just one—where she thought: I’m as strong as you are. One of them, maybe, but all of them together, no. Still, they must have been scared of her because feet turned to fists, and then someone pulled the knife out of the spent watermelon.
“Well, it certainly doesn’t sound like any else’s business, does it? Don’t think of Poppy as Claude under wraps. Think of Poppy as girl with a penis, a girl with an unusual medical history. Do you usually discuss what’s in children’s pants with the other moms on the playground?”
They had four and a half boys, plus Penn, but in some ways, Aggie was maler than any of them. She was a girl who dug holes and ran hard and liked bugs and all that other tomboy shit, but it was more—or maybe less—than that. She'd dismantle toy trucks to build spaceships to fly dolls to day spas built inside killer volcanoes. You just couldn't nail the kid down.
“We couldn't be best friends.” Aggie flung her arm across her eyes. “If your parents didn't beat the fifty-fifty and you were a boy, it would be the worst thing ever.”
Poppy opened her mouth, and everyone waited. Roo looked at his feet. Ben looked at his feet. Rigel and Orion looked at each other's feet. Cayenne narrowed her eyes at all of them. But Poppy swallowed and agreed wholeheartedly: “It would be the worst thing ever.”
“You know, it used to be there were no transgender kids. Your son would come to you in a dress, and you'd say, ‘No son of mine!’ or ‘Boys don't wear dresses!’ and that would be the end of it. That kid would grow up, and if he made it through childhood and if he made it through puberty and if he made it through young adulthood, maybe, if he were lucky, he’d eventually find his way to a community of people who understood what no one ever had, and he would slowly change his clothes and hair, and he would slowly change his name and pronouns, and he would slowly test the waters of being female, and over years and decades, he might become a she. Or he might kill himself long before he got there. The rate of suicide for these kids is over forty percent, you know.”
“The rest of us manage to balance work and family.” He wasn't yelling; he was scolding, which was worse. “It's not fair that we should suffer because you are incapable of doing so.”
Rosie rolled her eyes. “How are you suffering, Howie?”
“I have to recap Monday Morning Meeting before I've even gotten through it. And I have to take shit if you're asked to do one thing outside seeing patients.”
“I'm pretty sure I'm the one taking shit, but I'll be in charge of breakfast again.”
“Attagirl.”
“I’m not a girl.”
“I don’t want anything. I want . . . I only want to do whatever’s best for her.”
“Me too. Of course mc too. If we knew what that was. But unfortunately that exceeds my skill set. That's not prognosis. That's prognostication. We need a seer, not a doctor.”
“Then that’s my skill set,” said Penn.
“You can see the future?”
“It's the stuff of fairy tales, not hospitals.”
“That's a nice place to be,” Rosie admitted, “but it’s not real.”
“Sure it is,” said Penn. But Rosic rolled over and went to sleep.
“I thought maybe it would be like when you do an experiment in science and you make it so the results are fair.”
Penn's eyebrows reached for each other. “Blind?”
“I thought since they were little kids and they never met me before if they could tell I was a boy I must be a boy, but if they thought I was a girl, then maybe...”
But Claude felt better. He realized this was what his father had been up to all these years, not entertaining his children but perfecting his world. If you wrote your own characters, they didn’t disappoint you like real people did. If you told your own story you got to pick your ending. Just being yourself never worked, but if you made yourself up, you got to be exactly who you knew yourself to be.
“Very shelter life in palace so ignorant of poverty, sickness, old age, death. Then he go out into world and learn. Then he help. That is important part. Once he learn, he listen and tell, he help. He leave family, leave palace, leave being a prince.” Rosie nodded along. This part sounded familiar. “He learn about the world and the people. He meditate to learn to be. He give up all food and water and house, but then his body too loud to achieve peace so he learn again: too little as bad as too much. He teach, tell his story, help people see truth. He say be kind and forgive, honest and share. He say everything change so okay. He say middle way. He enlighten. That is the story. Learn mistake and fix and tell. Not-knowing to knowing. Even the Buddha You see?”
What was clear, however, was that the Buddha was born male, then cut off all his hair one day and got enlightened, then ended up looking like a girl. And as if that weren’t enough, the Buddha also seemed to feel that even things as unalterable as bodies were temporary, and what mattered was if you were good and honest, and forgiveness solved everything. That was how, whatever else they were, Claude and Poppy became Buddhists for life.
“Betwixt?” Grumwald was skeptical. “Isn't betwixt just a witchy way of saying in between?”
“Betwixt is more complex, more twisted threads, more layers than in between.” She smiled at him through rheumy eyes. “Betwixt a Prince and a night fairy is neither-nor as much as both-and. You see? Something new. Something more. Something better.”
“You have to tell. It can’t be a secret. Secrets make everyone alone. Secrets lead to panic like that night at the restaurant. When you keep it a secret, you get hysterical. You get to thinking you’re the only one there is who’s like you, who’s both and neither and betwixt, who forges a path every day between selves, but that's not so. When you're alone keeping secrets, you get fear. When you tell, you get magic. Twice.”
“Twice?”
“You find out you're not alone. And so does everyone else. That’s how everything gets better. You share your secret, and I'll do the rest. You share your secret, and you change the world.”
