Nobody Should Make Transgender Kid a 'Poster Child' for Anything

There has been a rash of irresponsible decisions by parents and media in forcing public exposure on children who are clearly below an age for any reasonable definition of consent. There was that Time magazine cover last year showing a mom breastfeeding her almost-4-year-old kid in a very unnatural position -- with her name on the cover and the kid looking directly into the camera. There was that issue with an article on Jezebel last year on online bullying by shaming racist kids. And then there's the more recent issue of a transgender child who was named and photographed in a profile by The New York Times.

According to public editor Margaret Sullivan, the decision to name the child was made because "parental approval, along with the child's own willingness, should rule the day" and since there's nothing wrong with being transgender, there were no "privacy concerns" to balance in this case. I think this oft-stated argument that exposure is OK when it's about "something where there's nothing wrong" is a very dangerous view of privacy. All of us have parts of our lives with which there's nothing wrong -- yet we wouldn't want to be subjected to public exposure anyway.

Here's the thing: Privacy is not something to be granted only if we prove we deserve it. On the contrary, there should be a strong reason to violate that privacy at all -- especially in the case of minors or any other vulnerable population. The opposite of "secret" or "shameful" is not "public exposure is OK." Privacy and exposure are not about secrets from everyone but about our integrity as a person and our right to share information about ourselves on our own terms. (Helen Nissenbaum's Privacy in Context and Daniel J. Solove's Nothing to Hide are two great primers on this topic.)

Furthermore, privacy is contextual and different levels of exposure are not the same thing. Being a transgendered kid in a school is a significantly different experience than having national media articles about your transgendered experience as a 6-year-old be the defining feature of your online presence.

While consent can be tricky at times, in cases like these, it's not. A 4-year-old cannot understand the concept of national exposure, let alone consent to it. We can't override that child's privacy interests without a very strong reason balanced by that child's best interests. Parents do not own their children's consent; they are merely entrusted with it -- which means that children's best interests need to be considered by everyone.

My research requires me to talk with and survey two age groups: middle schoolers and college students. While we assume college students are young adults, even they struggle to deal with the ramifications of privacy in a networked world where exposure can be unanticipated and get out of control quickly.

Middle schoolers, on the other hand, often have little thought of exposure beyond their peer groups and also find it difficult to conceptualize the life transitions they may go through. So preschoolers consenting to national exposure? Heck, a 6-year-old will consent to most anything if you promise them ice cream, as sociologist Kieran Healy tweeted.

The New York Times story talks at length about the child's struggles with the gendered architecture of schools, which is a relevant topic for public discussion. However, when it comes to consent, the most important fact here is not that this child desired to use the girl's bathroom -- but that she is not old enough to even go to a restroom by herself in a public place like an airport, let alone consent to such a high level of publicity.

There are indeed a lot of complex, gray-area issues to deal with when it comes to privacy and publicity. What right, for example, do other parties to a social interaction have to reveal its contents? When is an otherwise private matter of public concern? What should consensual privacy decisions look like, and how do we deal with violations? How can we education children and young adults -- and even grown-up adults! -- who are struggling with these issues?

But then there are other issues where we can draw clearer lines.

Let me give a deliberately provocative example: child sexuality. It's normal and fairly common for very young children to have an emergent sense of sexuality; they ask questions, they explore, they touch, they feel. There is nothing wrong with this if kids are allowed to be kids and not drawn into dealing with this on adult terms or being subjected to adult manipulations. Can we or should we nationally expose any one child's emergent sexuality for adult consumption because there is nothing wrong with it per se? No, no and no.

So, let's get back to the case of the transgender child in the New York Times story. I applaud her parents for advocating for her. Schools should help all children feel welcome and destigmatize the spectrum of human experience. That age group often goes through a heightened gender-stereotype period (which comes up in my research) where they become overly rigidly attached to gender categories in ways they will likely grow out of: the attack of the princess period, the crazy overdone makeup of middle schoolers, and so on. This makes it especially difficult for gender-nonconforming children and they deserve consideration.

But this child's parents advocating for her does not mean she has consented to be "quite literally, the poster child" for this issue. Maybe she'll really prefer not to have this issue define her middle and high school experience (which, barring a name change, her parents have all but guaranteed). Maybe she will want to be a poster child in her own terms. I don't know, you don't know and neither do the parents.

The definition of freedom is giving someone space to change their mind. Privacy is what creates this space, and why we should err on the side of caution.

How about kids with Down's syndrome or autism, asks Margaret Sullivan? It's a similar issue but there are obvious differences: For one thing, both of those are more visible so children often don't have a choice on whether peers know their atypical attributes. Even then, parents need to balance children's interests against benefits of potential exposure.

Such privacy questions dramatically impact people's experience growing up in this networked environment. So, here are some questions to help approach this issue in the online and media sharing context:

1. Is the name and photo of the child essential?
2. Is the child too young to appreciate national exposure and therefore cannot consent? (I'd argue that anyone below middle school should be "no consent" and be evaluated case by case after that age.)
3. Is there a very specific, tangible and important benefit to the child from the exposure that cannot be gained without the name and the photo? (For example, a kidnapped child and an Amber alert clearly fit into this category.)
4. Can we reasonably assume circumstances that the child grows up and wishes the exposure never happened? This is the critical question.

As a final note, the argument that someone else did it first -- Katie Couric had the parents and the child on the show too -- doesn't make subsequent exposures OK, either.

Whether parents, editors of national media, highly visible websites or simply participants in social networks, we need to all recognize that exposure is an exercise of power over a vulnerable individual.

There may be cases where there's a good reason to do so, but "the 6-year-old child consented" and "there's nothing wrong with the thing being exposed" are not good reasons. Neither is the dangerous misunderstanding that privacy is something to be granted and not a given.

*Editor's note: An earlier, unedited version of this article appeared on the author's blog. *

Editor: Sonal Chokshi @smc90