Topic: Transgender 7 year old.

[Trapezoid]

RickJ, you seem to be under the impression that she's had sexual reassignment surgery. She's only taking hormones, which is legal and considered safe even at that age.

On a related note: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kim_Petras The youngest person to actually get such surgery was 16. She knew since age 2 that she was a girl, and her parents only reluctantly came to accept it, i.e., it was not at their pushing.


By the way, if a person identifies as female it's a polite gesture to refer to them with female pronouns. Calling them by the opposite is rightly considered a big "fuck you."

[Ali]

But Ali, there is a context that is un avoidable.  The parents here have allowed their child to make a permanent and ill informed decision that he will have to live with for the rest of his life.  

There's a context, which we are largely unaware of. It's the context of that family's private life, how stable, loving and supportive they are or aren't. I don't know anything about that context and I'm not keen to condemn or applaud these parents.

And almost all of us are stuck with the gender we felt comfortable with at the age of 7.

DDQ is a master of debate.

[RickJ]

By the way, if a person identifies as female it's a polite gesture to refer to them with female pronouns. Calling them by the opposite is rightly considered a big "fuck you."

Trap thanks for bringing me into the 21st century.  I didn't intend to be impolite to anyone.   When I went to school  it was taught that "he" is also a gender neutral pronoun and should be used in circumstances where the person's sex is not known.  I have been goggling around and found other suggestions such as using one, they, or he/she none of which seem appropriate (he/she sounded pejorative to me in this instance).  The most helpful advice I found was at the following link:

http://answers.grammarly.com/questions/186-is-the-word-they-used-correctly-in-the-first-sentence-should-i-reword-the-sentence/

DDQ is a master of debate.

He certainly is.  We should award him a couple of Larrys for his win ---  hehe,    or do I have it backwards, maybe I should get the Larrys for having lost in such a spectacular way?      LoL

[Stupot+]

Dunno if anyone else has seen this: http://uk.lifestyle.yahoo.com/five-year-old-boy-opts-to-become-a-girl.html

He has even managed to persuade his school to make the toilets unisex... cunning little bugger, I know his game, the little pervert.  Wish I'd been as cunning as that 

[DeadSuperHero]

All of you with the severe overreactions, you can't possibly know what being trans is like. From what I can tell (from the trans people I actually know), many of them felt from an extremely young age that they were the opposite gender of their anatomy.

If anything, I think their parents should be applauded for taking the initiative and supporting it, rather than putting that kid through the hell of going through puberty and having to live a lie via suppression, like so many people I've come across.

The amount of trans-misogyny in this thread is appalling. Grow the fuck up.

[Ryan Timothy]

If anything, I think their parents should be applauded for taking the initiative and supporting it [..]

I'm not so sure about that. A young boy growing up in a house full of girls, he may want to dress up as these girls and do things the girls do. But why would it instantly be because he suffers from Gender Identity Disorder.

Or a girl growing up with brothers treating her like she's defective just because she's a girl, will definitely push herself into being more tomboy ish. Try to fit in with her brothers and prove to them she's just like them. It happens all the time, I witnessed my cousins doing this to their sisters and saw how it affected them.

So with the parents applauding the child into wearing the opposite sex clothing and helping support him/her, may actually be worse for the child. He/she's young, wants to fit in with their siblings or friends, doesn't in anyway mean the child has GID.

The amount of trans-misogyny in this thread is appalling. Grow the fuck up.

That's a little harsh and you're being just a little naive to believe that a child knows what its doing at that age.

I agree the parents shouldn't allow this until the kids are at an age where they understand what they're doing. At 5 years old, I could have convinced myself I was a robot. With parents applauding my actions, I would have been one messed up kid who still believed he was a robot. Shit, I know how messed up I got after watching the Truman Show. After watching that movie I always suspected a camera was watching me at all times, a part of me still believes this is happening.

[Stupot+]

@ DeadSuperHero
I don't deny that many trans-gendered people would have known from a young age that is how they wanted to grow up.  But I do deny that the reverse is necessarily true.  Just because young child says he or she wants to be of the opposite sex, doesn't necessarily mean that it is the child's destiny.

If it was my child I would of course support them, but would also encourage him or her to be patient and see how it plays out until at least puberty.  Anyone who's read His Dark Materials knows that a child's daemon is changeable all through childhood and doesn't settle in permanent form until puberty. That sounds fair to me.

[InCreator]

Kill it with fire.
I mean, the parents who were okay with this. I deny 21st century.

[DeadSuperHero]

I'm not so sure about that. A young boy growing up in a house full of girls, he may want to dress up as these girls and do things the girls do. But why would it instantly be because he suffers from Gender Identity Disorder.

Or a girl growing up with brothers treating her like she's defective just because she's a girl, will definitely push herself into being more tomboy ish. Try to fit in with her brothers and prove to them she's just like them. It happens all the time, I witnessed my cousins doing this to their sisters and saw how it affected them.

So with the parents applauding the child into wearing the opposite sex clothing and helping support him/her, may actually be worse for the child. He/she's young, wants to fit in with their siblings or friends, doesn't in anyway mean the child has GID.

Before you start throwing around GID like it's some thing a kid experiments with and ends up never being sure about, I suggest that you take at least more than two seconds to read up on the disorder, and then possibly go talk to some trans people about how they feel about it. A majority will say that they've always felt the way they do, and if they could've done it before they hit puberty, they absolutely would have.

Also, can you even comprehend the courage it takes to come up to your parents (even as a kid) and say that? This isn't a matter of sexuality, this is a matter of personal identity in relation to the spectrum of gender. Anyone of any age can comprehend that for themselves.

Sure, there are going to be isolated cases where a girl acts a little tomboyish, but what you're inferring is that the environment a child is in shapes his or her gender identity, which is also not unlike saying being gay is a choice. It's a crock of shit.

That's a little harsh and you're being just a little naive to believe that a child knows what its doing at that age.

Am I? A large portion of my friends and exes are trans, and they would beg to differ. But hey, if you want to beat gender-normative standards into their brains with a Bible, I'm sure a lot of religious conservatives wouldn't bat an eye at it.

And for those of you making the statement about a "suicide waiting to happen", trans suicides largely are the result of how these people are treated by those that refuse to understand them. Even worse is the huge homicide rate against trans people that get murdered for, you know, being trans. The world they live in is often not a fun one. Just the other days, one of my closest friends was in tears because she was so tired of going downtown and having people yell at her that she'd never be a "real girl".

It's that kind of treatment that makes you want to give up on life.

I agree the parents shouldn't allow this until the kids are at an age where they understand what they're doing. At 5 years old, I could have convinced myself I was a robot. With parents applauding my actions, I would have been one messed up kid who still believed he was a robot.

That's a huge straw-man argument. Parents of trans kids have historically said that they see signs for years indicating that their children are a little bit different: boys playing with dolls, girls playing army, tons of constant questions about why boys dress and act one way and why girls dress and act another. Even slight feminine and masculine traits in opposite genders in children have been observed.

Some resources, most of which make your point moot:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTxRxvMR4-0
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender_youth

[Noctambulo]

@DeadSuperHero

Don't you think that one thing it's what an adult could think about it's own childhood different from what a child could think about him/her as a grown up?

I'm not saying that you don't have a point (a very strong one), but I believe (yes, it's a belief) that it's better to wait a little longer to let a child to take such an important choice.

Do I think that the parents of that boy (girl?) are bad people? No way. I believe they are loving, even brave and really interested in their son's (daughter's?) happiness, but I can't say that their choice was the best (as I really hope it is)

[DeadSuperHero]

I think it's a toss-up, really. It's actually easier to make a gender transition before a person hits puberty, as the level of hormones can be controlled more easily, and you don't have to do things like up the level of estrogen in a Male-to-Female transperson when they're having a flood of testosterone and other hormones coming in when they're older.

Any person that's transitioned during adulthood or late teenage years will tell you that transitioning is very emotionally difficult. The amount of mood swings an adult trans person goes through is terrible, and that's mainly a product of trying to alter a body that's so used to having certain levels of estrogen/testosterone.

So, I mean, I get what you're saying. Maybe 3-5 is still relatively young, but at some point, that parent's got to support their child's decision, and they have to make the call about when the least emotionally and least physically difficult time to transition their child would be. Do they want to do it when they're younger, citing the above issue, or would they rather wait until they're "old enough"?

The other consideration to take into place is social settings. Do you really want to send your transitioning kid to high school without hormone treatments, or for that matter, do you want to send your kid that you kept repressing because they "weren't old enough to be sure" into a high school setting where they come out in front of everyone after years of suppressing it, only to be faced with the cruelty that usually comes from a high-school class that has little grasp of maturity?

These are all considerations a parent has to take when their kid says something like that when they're that young.

[Stupot+]

Do you really want to send your transitioning kid to high school without hormone treatments, or for that matter, do you want to send your kid that you kept repressing because they "weren't old enough to be sure" into a high school setting where they come out in front of everyone after years of suppressing it, only to be faced with the cruelty that usually comes from a high-school class that has little grasp of maturity?

All good points.  Conversely though, would you want to plug your child full of hormones, which will alter his physical apprearance, on the assumption that he's 'transitioning' when in reality he's just going through a phase.  I'm just suggesting that you can't know for sure at such a young age  It's the parents' duty to nurture their child but I would say that rushing to put their confused child through various treatments and things s/he doesn't fully understand is somewhat of a failure of that duty.

[DeadSuperHero]

I'm just suggesting that you can't know for sure at such a young age  It's the parents' duty to nurture their child but I would say that rushing to put their confused child through various treatments and things s/he doesn't fully understand is somewhat of a failure of that duty.

I think it's a tough call, but I'd like to think that parents that jump into these kind of things have done as much research as possible.

On a seperate note, Trapezoid, are you the Trapezoid that I think you are? (Lemon Demon) 

[blueskirt]

It's not trans-misogyny, we're talking about decisions with ginormous consequences on one's life, made by a kid at an age where they have no hindsight*, don't know decisions have consequences and tend to make decisions on a whim, and these parents gave in to their kid.

Better, more responsible parents would have refused until adulthood, and would have supported hir through the hell that is high school. Do you honestly believe hir high school years will be less hellish now? It will be hell, one way or another.

*Or insight? You know, "A sitting old man can see further than a standing young man."

[Calin Leafshade]

I think we are forgetting that this girl doesnt really get to 'choose' in that sense. It's not like she said "hey mommy, i'm a girl!" and then they chopped the penis off.

She would've been seen by healthcare professional who can assess her mental state and determine whether or not she truly does have gender identity disorder. I mean for god sake people, do you think you can just walk into a doctors office and say "CHANGE ME! FOR I AM OF THE OTHERS!"?

Do you honestly believe hir high school years will be less hellish now? It will be hell, one way or another.

That hell is the fault of others.

[Ali]

This story is on the front page of the Sun... and they are being nice nice about it. Which is astonishing really.

Since there is a high correlation between the opinions of the Sun and the opinions of bullies, maybe her school days will be alright after all.

It's not trans-misogyny, we're talking about decisions with ginormous consequences on one's life, made by a kid at an age where they have no hindsight*
...
*Or insight? You know, "A sitting old man can see further than a standing young man."

I don't think this makes sense. Can an old man (seated or otherwise) look back at his childhood, when he didn't have gender identity disorder and give these kids advice?

[Noctambulo]

I don't think this makes sense. Can an old man (seated or otherwise) look back at his childhood, when he didn't have gender identity disorder and give these kids advice?

That IS the point, because maybe some of these kids don't have GID neither... 

[Ali]

Which is why these decisions should be made by the families and psychologists involved, rather than opinionated people on the internet like us.

[Noctambulo]

Which is why these decisions should be made by the families and psychologists involved, rather than opinionated people on the internet like us.

We are here to share thoughts, not to determine the fate of anyone. And you don't know if some of that "opinionated people on the internet" can be facing the same situation, do you?

By the way, if you think that way, that doesn't mean that your against this kind of forums?

[blueskirt]

I don't think this makes sense. Can an old man (seated or otherwise) look back at his childhood, when he didn't have gender identity disorder and give these kids advice?

So you're saying anyone who didn't have gender identity disorder as kid is not qualified to comment on the issue?

You know what I wanted to say. When adults look at a pony, they see the pony but they also see the money and time spend on the barn, food, vet and cares. Kids just see the pony. I don't have a criminal record, that doesn't make me any less knowledgeable about life to tell younger people not to ever do anything that might land them with a criminal record lest they want their life to end like Cart Life. There's plenty of decisions I made which I regret, I'd have loved to have an older version of myself to tell and explain me why some of my decisions are bad ideas.

All I'm saying is. If it was my kid, I would not have given in like this kid's parents did. I would have supported him however I could, I would have been there during the tough years, but that final decision would be him to take, when he's no longer a teenager and his brain stop pumping this drug that makes everything feels so damn intense and/or looks like a good idea.

But let's suppose I'm wrong, it could happen, would it have been such a terrible idea to just wait 'til he's 12? Just to be more sure?