About a Girl: Coy Mathis' Fight to Change Gender

When Coy Mathis was a year and a half old, he loved nothing more than playing dress-up. He didn't show much interest in the fireman costume or the knight outfit, but would rummage through the toy box to grab the princess dress with the flowery headpiece. His mother, Kathryn, would text photos to her husband of their plump-cheeked blond boy twirling in a pair of pink-and-purple butterfly wings or wearing a frilly tutu.



Cute, Jeremy Mathis would text back. A former Marine who was attending college in Colorado Springs, Colorado, Jeremy agreed with his wife that Coy's fascination with all things sparkly, ruffly and pink was the harmless play of a toddler whose mind was yet untouched by social constructs of "masculine" and "feminine." Coy was one of four siblings – a triplet with a same-age sister and brother, plus an older sister – and so was surrounded by both "girl" and "boy" toys, inside their cramped split-level house, where the living room was covered by a patina of puzzle pieces and stray Legos. Kathryn and Jeremy figured it was just a matter of time before Coy sorted it out for himself.

As Coy hit the terrible twos, though, his preference for all things girly became more insistent. He refused to eat unless his food was served on a pink plate, with pink utensils. He rejected the Matchbox cars and Iron Man figurines his parents gave him for Christmas, telling his brother, Max, "This is for you." And at every opportunity Coy would wriggle out of his jeans and T-shirts and reappear in his sister's dress or, when he could get his hands on it, her Dora the Explorer bathing suit. His parents made concessions to pacify Coy, including letting him remain dressed in girl clothes, but only in the privacy of their home. Living, as the Mathises did, close to five military installations, as well as near the headquarters of the far-right evangelical advocacy group Focus on the Family – and not far from New Life, the 10,000-member megachurch founded by Ted Haggard – Kathryn and Jeremy figured their conservative neighbors might not see Coy's playful cross-dressing as benignly as they did.

"It's a phase," the Mathises reassured each other. Kathryn, however, wondered if it could be something more. She'd noticed the way Coy brightened whenever he put on a dress or a fairy costume. She wondered whether their toddler might be gay. The notion sat fine with her: The Mathises were recent transplants from Austin and considered themselves progressive and open-minded; Kathryn herself had a gay sister. But she told no one of her suspicion about Coy – it felt creepily premature to speculate about the sexuality of a kid still in diapers.

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