We only have boys," Penn always added. "Someone has to play the girl in the skits and the games. It was no big deal.
-- Penn (Things They Told Doctors)

Importance: This statement reflects the attitude that Penn and Rosie initially share toward Claude’s donning of a dress for the skit he performs with his brothers. Confronted with a behavior that makes them uncomfortable because it defies gender norms, they attempt to find a way to rationalize it. Convincing themselves that their house full of sons is in a constant state of chaos, they decide that Claude’s desire to dress like a girl is not a challenge to the gender binary, but rather as random and irrational an action as Roo running around the house shouting, “Penis Maaaan!” Their reaction reflects their assumptions about gender before they come to terms with Claude’s lived experience: there are fixed categories of male and female, and a...