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This is a rather engaging story from NPR about two young boys, and two different approaches to their rather obvious self-identification as young girls.

The basic error made by Zucker (and others) is in conflating sex identity and gender. The two are not interchangeable. An effeminate boy is not necessarily a girl at heart. A masculine girl does not necessarily feel attracted to fellow girls. A transwoman will not necessarily express her identity in a feminine way. And -- this especially irritates the gender traditionalists around this country-- a transgender person might not find it necessary to undergo medical transition!

How a child expresses hir identity is certainly subject to influence, from hir parents, hir peers, and the society sie lives in. Gender, however, seems to be far more malleable. The available genders, and how each particular gender is expressed, is going to change from culture to culture. Sex identity, in contrast, isn't as much an identity as in outward expression; it's an identity as in inward knowledge.

Zucker seems to fear that any allowed deviance from a culture's set norms for whichever sex would permanently confine the "deviant" to whatever gender is being expressed. Quite the opposite; allowing more of these so-called deviancies would put to rest the idea of "deviance" altogether, thus freeing us to conduct our lives however appropriate -- confines be damned.