The Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago, a pediatric teaching hospital for Northwestern University's medical school, will launch the ...

This isn't a case of parents trying to exploit their children. My hope is that by sharing our story we will meet other people with kids like Twirl who also start showing who their kids are. Then maybe we can get to a point where a boy playing with girl things is just as normal as a girl playing with boy things.

My family lives in a very conservative area, and we aren't exactly walking into open arms in our community when we go trick-or-treating. This is the second year our son has worn a dress on Halloween. Last year he went as Minnie Mouse.

Some parents have tried to raise their kids without gender stereotypes, only to get accused of being hippies at best and downright abusive at worst. Tell me what's abusive about not shoving your kid into a box that says, "This is how you're supposed to act given your genitalia."

These days, I'm mostly comfortable in my own skin. I enjoy being a man. But the embarrassed little boy who could never be himself will always be part of me. I try to carry him with tenderness, and tell him, always, that it's OK to be just who he is.

What gender-variant youth need are teachers who don't make assumptions, who ask lots of questions and then listen to the answers. Everyone is different. When a kid tells you what's important to them, that's what they want you to do.

I've encountered a barometer for the varying attitudes and preconceptions of the audience. An entire segment of the House of Lies audience dismisses Roscoe as gay. Another jumps to pushing him into a transgender role. Some just think he's weird. How about this: he's just Roscoe.

Instead of assuming I am gay because I was abused, doesn't it seem at least three times more likely that I was abused because I was gay? To me, this is a no-brainer, but it's relieving to have this new science back up what I have been saying for years.

It became evident that I would have to address gender directly in order to make the classroom environment more comfortable for Allie and to squash the gender stereotypes that my first graders had absorbed in their short lives.