“GIRLS JUST SIT AROUND and talk about being friends, but the boys go on daring adventures!” Arkansas first-grader Evan’s less-than-feminist argument for joining the Boy Scouts became the title of his mother’s book. Rachel A. Cornwell wrote Daring Adventures: Helping Gender-Diverse Kids and Their Families Thrive for kids exploring gender identity in unsupportive communities and for families seeking to support them. A United Methodist pastor, Cornwell emphasizes that full acceptance of transgender and gender-diverse people is entirely compatible with a life of faith.
At a time when Christians are championing anti-trans legislation, it is critical that cisgender, heterosexual Christian leaders publicly affirm trans and gender-diverse people. With the high rate of suicide among trans youth who experience rejection from family or community, books like Cornwell’s save lives.
For Daring Adventures, Cornwell draws from her own family’s experience with Evan’s gender transition and shares insights from interviews with nearly 20 other families of transgender and gender-diverse children. I was particularly touched by the high schoolers who started an online group for younger kids: They talked about favorite animals, transgender celebrities, and drew pictures of their future selves.
Cornwell aims to help parents make their communities safe, affirming places for gender-diverse kids. Essentially, Daring Adventures says, Your kid will be okay, your faith will too, richness awaits, but you need to learn a few things first. Cornwell’s questions for faith communities made me consider how my denomination, the Anglican Church of Canada, can do better. Her writing is accessible; her tone, reassuring. She writes, “Do you remember when you realized you were a girl or a boy? If you are cisgender, you probably don’t, because your assigned gender matched up pretty well with who you knew yourself to be.”
Criticizing this book feels a bit like complaining about the color of a lifeboat. Despite Cornwell’s accomplishments, I wanted to like Daring Adventures more than I did. While trans and gender-diverse individuals and our families need lifeboats, we deserve more and better. Better includes critical analysis and compelling stories, and Daring Adventures is weak on both.
Trans women and femmes of color experience the deadliest forms of transphobic violence, but the book has no racial analysis or mention of transmisogyny. Cornwell conflates transgender and nonbinary identities in unhelpful ways and ignores many tenets of anti-trans propaganda — gendered bathroom debates are mentioned exactly once, for instance, and predator stereotypes, not at all.
Cornwell is a white woman pastor in the Bible Belt raising a trans-masculine child who came out in first grade. I want to hear more about that! For the knowledgeable, the book offers little that is new, and for the uninformed, it glosses over complex issues with vague positivity: “I tell you that your children will all thrive, no matter what their gender identity.”
I am glad this book exists but, like Evan, I want more than just “talking about being friends.” I want actual daring adventures told with fierce vulnerability, and race and class front and center. I want the honest admission that while not every story is a tragedy, trans and gender-diverse kids and families don’t know everything is going to be all right, and we keep on existing anyway, weird and wonderful, broken and triumphant.
Laurel Dykstra is an Anglican priest and climate justice activist. Their latest book, Wilderness Congregations, will be out in the fall.
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