Jeannie Mai Talks ‘Postpartum’ Battle, Child is ‘Gender Fluid’

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*Jeannie Mai and her husband Jeezy have welcomed their first child together, a baby they named Monaco who will be raised “gender fluid.”

Per Industry Blitz, “Sources say Jeannie and Jeezy believe their child should decide what their gender will be. They say expressing one’s gender identity is a personal decision that a child should make on its own.”

On Monday, “The Real” co-host shared photos of her post-baby body and opened up about her new journey into motherhood.

In a candid Instagram post, she admits that the “fourth trimester” has been the hardest trimester yet.

“While being a new mom is the most exhilarating moment I have ever experienced in my life— nothing prepared me for postpartum. NOTHING. No book I’ve read, advice I’ve gotten, that could have compiled ALL the things I’d need just to sit, lay down, walk, or even hold our baby,” she wrote in a candid Instagram post of her wearing a bra, high-waisted briefs and holding a baby bottle.

“The 4th trimester has been the hardest trimester yet, but I’m a happy, healing mom over here 💁🏻‍♀️ #postpartum,” she adds.

Check out the post below.

READ MORE: Jeezy and Jeannie Mai Welcome First Child: ‘Baby Jenkins is Here’

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Jeannie Mai Jenkins 💍 (@thejeanniemai)

In October, Mai got real about her pregnancy and motherhood in an episode of her YouTube series, noting that she didn’t want children because she was abused as a child.

In 2018, Jeannie Mai revealed she was molested by a family member when she was nine years old. For years, she was adamant about not having children of her own, citing the fear of not being able to protect them.

“It still scares me whether or not I can keep a kid safe from someone else who might hurt them,” she said in the video.

View this post on Instagram A post shared by 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐮𝐬𝐭𝐫𝐲𝐁𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐳 (@industryblitz)

“People who’ve really bad trauma, they’re constantly burdened with this fear that something bad is going to happen next. I realize that the reason I didn’t want to have kids is because that feeling when I was a kid was so real and so damaging to the point that I’m 42 today still dealing with trust issues and confidence.”

She took to her Instagram Story this week to praise mothers for going through childbirth.

“Can I just start off by saying I got so much respect for moms… next level,” she writes. “I’m in my first week of postpartum and I definitely don’t feel ready for recovery. That feels like a long time away because I feel like my body is still reacting from what just happened.”

Pandemic transformations: Exploration of gender identity

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The COVID-19 pandemic has been a lonely and difficult time for many students. While classes moved online and many in-person social opportunities were cancelled, solitude has become a regular part of life. With time to quietly self-reflect or access communities with like-minded individuals, this isolation has given a handful of students the unique opportunity to think about their gender identity.

Three York students are now opening up and reflecting on their own personal journeys to gender euphoria.

Prior to the pandemic era, Keith, a fourth-year liberal arts student who wishes to remain anonymous, identified solely as a binary trans man. Now, they present themselves as a genderfluid individual.

“I didn’t feel comfortable with any other gender identity, even though I had experimented with identifying as non-binary and/or genderfluid before that.”

Their discomfort with the way society treated femininity made Keith reject their own.

“I don’t think I was entirely wrong in identifying as trans, but I think that society made femininity leave a bad taste in my mouth. I wanted nothing to do with my AFABness. I didn’t want people to look at me and think ‘girl.’ My mind associated anything other than ‘boy’ with negative connotations.”

Time spent in isolation during the pandemic years allowed Keith to rekindle their relationship with femininity while simultaneously exploring their identity as a genderfluid person. After taking time to research and quietly self-reflect without being influenced by the opinions of others, they are now comfortable using the genderfluid, nonbinary, and trans labels for themselves.

“I still identify with the trans label but it’s not out of fear or shame; it’s alongside my gender fluidity, and that makes me feel more powerful and in control than ever.”

Myles McPhee is a first-year environmental science student. At the start of the pandemic, he identified as a cisgender bisexual fem. After his desire to transition to male was rejected by his mother, he lived as a non-binary lesbian — repressing his initial wishes.

“I identified as non-binary for quite some time, but I always knew it wasn’t fitting to be just non-binary.”

Meeting like-minded individuals in his first semester at York helped Myles regain confidence to present himself as a trans man. “I met some friends who shared my feelings. They gave me the courage to come out as trans.”

Myles expresses gratitude to his twin brother, friends, and partner, who have all aided him in his journey.

Two years later, Myles now lives as a transmasculine unapologetically.

Myles’ twin brother, Oliver McPhee, is a first-year social work student who also explored his gender identity during the pandemic era. He also transitioned from cis female to non-binary to a trans man.

The opportunity to self-reflect during this period provided Oliver with time to figure out how he wanted to present himself to the world.

“I was really unhappy, and greatly struggling with my mental health. It gave me time to figure out who I am.”

Having others purposely misgender him and use his deadname made his journey a challenging one, but he learned to grow past the opinions of bigoted people. Oliver is now confident in his identity as a trans man.

For Keith, Myles, and Oliver, the transphobia they experienced at the hands of family members was, and continues to be, the greatest obstacle in their journey. Myles and Oliver’s mother discouraged them from transitioning. As a result of this rejection, Oliver struggled with his emotional health. For Keith, they do not feel safe initiating conversations on 2SLGBTQ+ topics around his parents for fear of retaliation.

Gender is not static. Some individuals continue to identify with the gender they were raised as. Others come out as trans, or, like Keith, Myles, and Oliver, find comfort in a different label under the trans umbrella than what they used previously.

The pandemic period has proven to not be an easy time for many people, as a lot have lost more than they have gained. However, these three strong students at York remind the community that, even in the most difficult of times, moments of light and discovery can be found.

Gender-inclusive housing part of Rockbridge County’s Nature Camp for first time this summer

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VESUVIUS — As a staff member and former camper at Nature Camp in Vesuvius, June Yurish has always felt the camp’s culture was accepting of everyone.

But they occasionally noticed that at the end of a long day at camp, nonbinary and transgender campers would be forced to go back to a binary space for the night because there was separate housing for boys and girls with no other options.

Yurish said having a space to return to at night where campers can truly be themselves and not worry about interacting with people who maybe socialize differently than them is important.

Yurish knows. The 2016 Staunton High School graduate, who just recently came out as nonbinary, struggled with gender identities growing up, but really confronted those struggles during the pandemic. By 2021 they were identifying as nonbinary.

GLAAD defines nonbinary as a person who experiences their gender identity as falling outside the categories of man and woman, defining their gender somewhere in between those terms or as wholly different from these terms.

Now, Yurish is thrilled to see that Nature Camp, a place they truly love and began attending as a camper during middle school, has added gender-inclusive housing beginning this summer.

“I’m very much over the moon about it,” Yurish said. “I’m very excited. I think it will be a very, very positive change.”

Gender-inclusive housing offers an environment where housing for campers is not restricted to the traditional gender binary of male and female. It’s open to anyone regardless of their gender identity.

Nature Camp is a private, nonprofit summer camp specializing in natural history and environmental science education, per its website. There is a focus on conservation at the camp that began in 1942. It is open to children in 5th through 12th grades.

Registration for this coming summer’s camp opened last week.

Philip Coulling is the camp’s executive director. He’s been thinking of adding gender-inclusive housing for several years, first seriously considering it in 2019. That was the first year an openly nonbinary person was part of the staff.

A suggestion was made that year for staff to put their pronouns on their name tags, kind of a first step toward what is happening this summer. That summer they also gave campers a chance to share their pronouns during daily introductions.

“That’s something not only had we never done before at Nature Camp,” Coulling said. “But I don’t think I had ever been in any other setting where that was done, certainly not done routinely.”

Coulling was surprised by the number of campers that indicated they used nonbinary pronouns in 2019. He said it wasn’t a terribly large number — he guessed under 5% — but many more than he would have thought.

The next year during registration was the first year campers could indicate pronouns on their applications. He estimated about the same number of campers as the previous year chose nonbinary pronouns, but, because of the pandemic, in-person camp didn’t happen that summer.

This past summer, 2021, the number of campers identifying as nonbinary rose to approximately 10%. The most surprising thing to Coulling was that most of those who identified this way did so once they arrived at camp rather than on their application.

“I think that’s a reflection of feeling as though they were in a safe space, a safe environment where they could be accepted for who they really are,” Coulling said.

That kind of solidified for Coulling that a change in housing had to be made.

“To continue things as they have always been I realized would be doing them a great disservice, and would be ignoring the true identity of a substantial fraction of our camper population,” Coulling said.

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This past fall Coulling took a course devoted to gender-inclusive housing for summer camps, then began developing a policy that he presented to Nature Camp’s board of directors.

Initially, he said members of the board had some reservations about the plan, which he understood. It was their job to ask questions. Eventually, he was able to explain the idea behind the changes and get the board behind it. It was early December before the board voted in favor of adding gender-inclusive housing.

Emily Sproul, the senior manager of engagement for Shenandoah LGBTQ based in Staunton, was both a camper and the parent of campers at Nature Camp. She said it provides an amazing opportunity for area youth.

Sproul has seen more and more youth in recent years identifying outside of the gender binary, whether that is gender fluid, transgender or nonbinary.

“This age demographic is at a critical point in their development where they are trying to figure out who they are,” Sproul said. “They’re also incredibly self-conscious, most of them. Same-gender housing can feel really strange for them and really uncomfortable.”

Sproul said deep emotional bonds are built at Nature Camp, so also having it be a place where kids can try on gender roles that maybe they couldn’t at school or home is important.

“It’s a really cool environment to be able to do that,” Sproul said. “Having gender-inclusive housing is a natural next step.”

She said it will help those kids who do identify outside the gender binary feel less stressed and more included, helping them gain the full benefit of what the camp has to offer.

The changes haven’t been without challenges, mostly logistical, although Coulling admits with such a fundamental change there are some cultural hurdles that have to be jumped.

The chief challenge, though, is with facilities. In the past, there were two big bunkhouses, one for boys, one for girls. Almost always more campers identified as female, so there was usually overflow. Those extra campers were housed in an extra wing in the office building.

That office building wing is what will be designated as gender-inclusive housing this year. It also includes a single-use bathroom.

If Yurish had gender-inclusive housing available as a camper, they might have been able to process some things a bit earlier in life. That’s one of the reasons they are excited about the change.

“It really does help kids open up and become a lot happier,” Yurish said, “and a lot more themselves.”

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Patrick Hite is The News Leader’s education and sports reporter. Story ideas and tips always welcome. Contact Patrick (he/him/his) at phite@newsleader.com and follow him on Twitter @Patrick_Hite. Subscribe to us at newsleader.com.

Understanding cross-dressing- The New Indian Express

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Rachel Dammala By

Express News Service

HYDERABAD: Hundreds of new words come our way every day, and it can be a tad bit taxing to understand or even pay attention to what they could mean. Especially when certain words are sensitive to one’s identity and value, it becomes even more important to be aware of and use them well.

Doing just that is city-based model, lawyer and humanitarian Vasuki Punj. Her recent post about cross-dressing and gender-fludity has opened the eyes of many. “Just because I cross-dress once in a while, does not mean I am gender-fluid. Clothing is just one way to express yourself. Someone who cross-dresses can be gender fluid, and vice-versa, but crossdressing by itself does not make someone gender fluid,” she wrote on Instagram.

The model wrote a long caption explaining how cross-dressing doesn’t mean gender fluidity, while sharing pictures of she wearing an elegant sherwani which she paired with her husband’s shoes. “Unfortunately, many people who choose to express themselves by wearing clothing that, for one reason or another society has deemed to be clothing that is to be worn by the opposite sex, wrongly term it as being gender fluid (sic),” her caption continues.

Ask what triggered the post, she explains, “Over the last few months, I had this on and off conversation about the same topic with a friend. She recently told me about a celeb posting a picture of his polished nails and captioning it ‘gender fluid’! The pictures that I posted today are from a wedding in December and as I was sharing it, I saw that it could be an opportunity to talk a little about it.”

“Gender-fluid people, from what I understand, are people who experience changes or shifts in their gender ‘identity’ over time and has nothing to do with what they wear,” Vasuki had said. This wasn’t the first time she cross-dressed, she has been doing that once in a while for over nine years now. “I was a practising lawyer and wore men’s suits to work because I liked the material and the prints. My husband and I share the same shoe size, so I wear them whenever I can,” she tells CE.

“There is a distinction between gender ‘identity’ and gender ‘expression’ and one must understand the difference before throwing these words around loosely, lest we be reductive in our approach toward a larger cause that is fundamental to many people’s lives,” Vasuki said in her post.

About educating oneself better about matters as sensitive as this, she says, “People may not go out on their own to educate people about it, it’s nobody’s prerogative to do it. Also, we are nobody to say this is a more important cause. But what can be done is that those who talk about it or are have a keen interest, put an effort to educate themselves, verify facts about it and those listening, if they can’t add anything positive to it, must refrain from dissing it either.”

The concept of gender fluidity has also been used by several brands to sound appeasing, as a marketing gimmick. Vasuki says, “People have been throwing these words around loosely, not realising it affects the larger cause. We have people in the LGBTQIA+ space fighting for their rights and here we’re being ignorant.” Another problem she observed is the unfair onus people place on celebs to know it all. “People often forget that they’re humans too. But when a celebrity is offered some correction, imagine how classy it would be of them to be humble and correct themselves.”

Lawyer, humanitarian and model Vasuki Punj’s recent Instagram post about cross-dressing is helping many learn and unlearn how it has little to nothing to do with gender fluidity. In conversation with CE, she explains the difference and talks about the need to educate oneself on such matters

‘Some days I feel like a man, but then other days I feel like a woman…’ These stars all changed their gender pronouns

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1. Yes. The higher the case count gets, the more students and staff are at risk. Close down.

2. Yes. Several local districts, including Salado ISD, have closed down. KISD should, too.

3. No. It’s counterproductive to have a stop-and-start school year. KISD should stay open.

4.No. Closing the district would put too big a burden on parents. Keep the schools open.

5. Unsure. It’s hard to say what the right strategy is, especially if case numbers keep rising.

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