How young is too young...Follow

to start transgender therapy?

http://articles.boston.com/2011-12-11/lifestyle/30512365_1_twin-boys-transgender-jonas

Long story short, one of a pair of twin boy starts identifying with the female gender at an early age (3-4 iirc from the article). After much deliberation, the parents submit the boy to a transgender youth clinic in Boston where the boy receives hormone therapy to prevent the early onset of puberty.

The twins are now in high school, but have necessarily been enrolled in a private school with a noted tolerance for LGBT issues and have had their fair share of issues, including a pending discrimination lawsuit against a previous school, which is of course backed by the ACLU and GLAD.

I'm not sure how I feel about this situation. I can see both sides, but I tend to wonder, how old must a child really be before they can truly identify this type of issue and cope with it in a healthy way? A doctor from the clinic even says that a good portion of children who identify with the problem early on turn out not to be transgender at all, which makes it all the more important that the hormone therapy is reversible. What about parents who might incorrectly encourage the therapy, either out of ignorance or personal motives that conflict with the child's best interests?

And if they don't continue?

So to answer Stubbs' question, you think anything under 10?

Without knowing anything particular about the science, I have no clue. But 10 sounds like a decent age to start with.

For the psychological stuff, on the other hand, I'm on board. Kids shouldn't be forced into gender norms, and it's a good idea for those kids to have an outlet to help them cope with pressures from others to conform.

Manliest thing on earth.

Any parent that says their three or four year old is capable of discerning their own gender identity needs to be investigated for child abuse. It worked out for them, but ten out of nine times I'd have placed money on the parents wanting a boy and a girl instead of two boys so they manipulated the kid into that role. Seriously, twins that young, and one just happens to like dresses and such? Where was he getting those dresses? Sounds too damn suspicious to me.

STFU, cupcakes are delicious.

The kids aren't taking hormones themselves at a young age; just hormone blockers. They've been used for a long time with cases of precocious puberty, and kids will go through puberty after they stop taking them. If they find they conform to their birth sex, they'll stop them and continue on as they normally would.

Now, for transgender women starting the transition after puberty, especially if they have some very masculine characteristics? They're @#%^ed.

Edited, Dec 16th 2011 3:00pm by Sweetums

Not always true. It depends on the person. Each situation is different. As I said earlier the younger you take HRT the more convincing you are. Even after I did HRT my body changed more than I expected. Even your bones change. Just as your fat ends up in different spots. Not just Boobs but other places women have it. I know a few TG's that have been on the TV shows. Can you guess who is a man or woman? All of my friends were women to the audiences. Many of us have seen that people can have dramatic physical changes even in their twenties.

Even facial features can be changed rather well and not that expensively now. I had some surgery to change
my face to make it more feminine and its much different than before. I've had friends have major facial surgery and they look completely female now. Even boob jobs are common but not advisable untill a person has been on HRT for a few years because they take time to develop.

Edited, Dec 16th 2011 6:14pm by Tailmon

As always, gbaji needs to paint things in terms of benefits.

Transgendered people don't change their gender because they think a different one is better. They change because it's the gender they identify with. They don't ever think "I'm going to become a woman." They think "I'm a woman, and I think I'm going to change my body to reflect that."

That's actually a heteronormative statement though. Plenty of trans peoples identify as either or both genders. And then there are gender queer peoples, who don't feel they actually fall on the spectrum of gender at all.

Wow, you completely misunderstood what he was saying, probably because you're stupid. That was what he was contrasting actual transexuality with.

How are you so stupid?

No, I don't agree with him.

Yeah, that's definitely true. I guess I'm mostly thinking of the cases where they're misgendered in public. I certainly wouldn't be able to tell that Julia Serano wasn't cissexual unless I'd have already known

As I said before TG's are not someone that just plays with dolls. They are wired differently than normal.
Consider it being trapped in the wrong body. That was what I felt from a very early age. It's a recognized
fact. Playing dolls with your sister is not the only thing that makes you someone like me. It's much deeper
and part of your soul to say. You know your a different sex but your body is wrong. Dressing and being with
other girls helps but its not enough to help you. Eventually you can become self destructive and antisocial
or even seeking other things to help ease the problem. That is why many non opp TG kill themselves. The process
to become a TG and be on HRT takes time and therapy. With the process taking time because once you leap there is
no looking back.

As my therapist told me. "Be prepared to loose your Family, Friends, and Job. Because it will happen." I actually doubted her about that because I thought people were more open minded than when I was younger. The truth was that many were not and even all of my family stopped talking to me. I lost all but my Gay and TG friends. And it took them many years and lots of tries but they finally got rid of me at my past job. As I have indicated before I've coached many others and actually moderated MSN's TG forums years back.

Correct. I'm saying that to attempt to diagnose someone as transgender at that age is ridiculous. Nearly every kid at some point goes through a stage where they want to be the other gender, or dress like the other gender, or play with dolls/trucks/whatever that the other gender seems associated with. And for the vast majority of them it has *nothing* to do with being transgender.



Sure. Which was what I was talking about by harm done though. If the odds of your three year old boy who likes to play dolls being transgender is one in 10,000, then taking him to a therapist and treating him based on the assumption that he *is* transgender is going to harmfully confuse 9,999 kids for every one it saves from harmful confusion.

Another way to look at it is that the pressure to "conform" to society's gender assumptions act as a test for transgenders. If after constantly being told you're wearing the wrong clothes, or the wrong hairstyle, and a zillion other things, you *still* believe it feels more right to you to do those things then otherwise, then you aren't confused anymore. If you remove those pressures, you might save the rare transgender a bit of embarassment and confusion growing up (cause if everyone is wearing and acting differently they wont stick out), but it's going to create even more problems for everyone else.


Whether it's fair to transgenders or not, the societal norms are norms for a reason. It's what most people conform to and are comfortable with. It seems counter productive to make everyone uncomfortable so that a small percentage can feel less so. And in this case attempting to make that decision at such a young age is pretty ridiculous.



Sure. But do we decide that since said little boy wanted to wear dresses when he was three that he must be transgendered and tell his parents that they should encourage him to wear dresses, and put braids in his hair, and otherwise pressure him to continue with that as his gender identity? How far do we shelter said boy from society in order that he not ever be exposed to the idea that others might think what he's doing is unusual? How many years do you keep doing this?

IMO, that's going to screw him up far far more than actually being transgender in todays society. And it doesn't really help him in the long run either.

Edited, Dec 16th 2011 5:45pm by gbaji

Thank you! I couldn't have said it better.

Transsexual and Transgender are two totally different things. You can be one without being the other (or both).

There are 3 major issues I had with gbaji's post:

1. He assumes that to be transgendered is to be transsexual. This is absolutely not the case, and it is actually one of the biggest political (and social) obstacles faced by trans peoples. Most trans people never take hormone supplements or undergo sexual reassignment surgery.

2. He assumes that gender identity is the same as preference for "masculine" or "feminine" practices. Gender identity is WAY deeper than that. Anyone who assumes that their little boy is a little girl because he likes putting on dresses or playing with barbies is a frickin' moron. First of all, children learn to associate practices with a gender identity over time. Their own gender identity is a much deeper concept--they have one, yeah, but the most important thing is to let them explore it freely. General therapy is the best way to do that--positively reinforcing their ability to make a choice and deal with the stress it puts on them. Hormone therapy to delay the onset of puberty gives them additional time to make a choice regarding their body without a biological clock dictating things.

3. He assumes that gender identity isn't always in flux. Gender identity itself is something obtained from social scenarios. Are there basic psychological differences between male and female brains? Yes. And they will influence what end of a spectrum most males/females end up at. But what those ends look like, and how far apart they are, is entirely determined by society. It's a learned behavior.

Furthermore, gender identity is always fluid for everyone--plenty of people transition back and forth between identities, precisely because there isn't any intrinsic identity to their biology. Most of them end up settling somewhere eventually. But that's not universally true. The notion that the child is being forced to choose between two opposing gender identities is just not true.

gbaji was worried that a child would be pressured into another identity. For any good clinic, this isn't possible--the program would be set up in a distinctly non-hetero (or homo)normative way. Their goal is to provide a safe space where the child can naturally allow their gender identity to form without having to deal with heteronormative pressures since, realistically, the chances of the child ending up in a heteronormative identity are slim.

Okay, that's fair.

21/2 + 7 = 17. That's what this thread is about, right?

SpoilerAge/7+2 is superior rule

In the article, yes. My question was more of a general nature.

Is 2 too young? Almost definitely.

Is 10 too young? Probably not. In any case, the time left for you to start using hormone therapy is quickly dissipating (if not already passing).

So it's probably somewhere in there. Honestly, it has to be on a case-by-case basis, since every child is going to be different.

Usagi, dat you?

Naw, Usagi doesn't like 'em til they are old enough to put on a princess or sailor moon costume.

Ok, I read the article. She was getting her mother's clothes and shoes out of her closet, and wearing them, mostly. And seriously? Even if she didn't have access to female clothes in the family home, she would have seen women's and girl's clothing out in public and in kindergarten, and could have developed preferences for how they looked compared to the clothing most men wore.

The younger a child is, the more naive it is. But never ever underestimate a child's capability for intelligence, for rationing things out when bumping into first principles. They are learning machines, with eidetic memories usually until the age of 9. A two year old can structure a very complex and abstract thought. They just have a harder time getting their mouth around it.

In this case there was no final "descision" for Wyatt to become Nicole, when he was 3 or 4 or 5. There was just strong patterns of behaviour that were completely consistent over the entire course of his/her childhood, leading his parents to seeek medical advice for their son/daughter, leading to the descision for Nicole to go on Hormone blockers when she was 11, and then leading to her beginning female hormones at 14, when she was still convinced she wanted a woman's body to go with her mind, her tastes, and her preferences.

Edited, Dec 19th 2011 2:44pm by Aripyanfar

I don't mind the name, personally. At least he wasn't something like Quincy.

I made no such assumption. However, it can be argued that the parents in the article *did*. How the hell do you diagnose a gender identity issue at age 3?



So you agree with me that the parents were frickin' morons? You're kinda making my point for me here.



Yes. Over time. Do you see how taking your child to a gender clinic at age three because he's wearing dresses is a bad idea?



Therapy at that age is incredibly unlikely to do that, and far more likely to impose the assumption of a transgender condition which the clinic is biased to see and act on.



No, I didn't. The parents who responded to their boy wearing dresses by thinking "OMG! Our child might be transgender, let's take him to a clinic to be told it's ok to want to be a girl" instead of the far more rational "it's probably a phase". Which, if you'd actually read my earlier posts was what I was saying from the start.



Yes. We learn gender roles as we develop. And we learn most of that stuff *after* the age of 3. And guess what? Going to a transgender clinic is also going to change how that child learns gender roles and will influence that child's ultimate gender identity.

I think what you're failing to get is that I fully accept that society does tend to teach/pressure children to adopt gender roles based on their sex. The difference is that I see that in the overwhelming majority of cases this is going to derive a better result for the person than to introduce a counter education teaching the child different gender roles (which is essentially what such a clinic will do). I'll point out again that societal norms are norms for a reason. It's what most of the society is comfortable with. Deliberately teaching a child to adopt a gender identity at odds with that norm is just leaping pain and suffering on said child.

If a child sticks with a different gender role on their own despite pressures otherwise *then* you can go down the transgender therapy route. But there's no way in hell anyone's honestly making that determination at age 3. It would be questionable to make that determination at age 10 IMO.



Of course they are. And it's naive to insist otherwise. For good or bad we *do* force such choices on people. Pressures to conform to gender roles are all around us all the time. And while we may rail against such pressure, the reality is that most people conform and most people are happier because of it. That may suck and all, but that's the reality of the world we live in.



What other purpose could such therapy serve? Think about it.



Huh? Given that somewhere near 99.9% of all people end up with a heteronomative identity, I'd say that the odds of a 3 year old boy, even one who likes to wear dresses at that age, ending up heteronormative are incredibly high. They are high unless you send him to such a clinic. That's not to say that the parents didn't get incredibly lucky and happen to completely misdiagnose their child's dress wearing in a way which matched a reality they couldn't possibly know about their child at that age and said child really was transgender and the clinic helped save said child from a life of feeling like he/she is in the wrong body.

But the odds are that they just used the clinic to turn their otherwise normal child into a transexual with all the attendant social negatives that will cause over his/her lifetime. Because as you say, gender identity is largely learned behavior. Age three is certainly young enough to teach a child to adopt any gender identity you want to teach them. And I share a healthy skepticism about a clinic dedicated to teaching people to accept different gender roles being very likely to conclude that any child brought to them isn't a transexual.

Your entire response was more pig-headed than the initial post. You are a stain on humanity far more reasons than just those Brown articulated. If you need to believe that a transgender identity is forced upon someone, then you are pathetic.

Why does it terrify you so much that people wouldn't define themselves by the gender roles you've arbitrarily chosen? YOU don't have to do them. These are parents who are looking for the best way to support their child, which I find incredibly commendable. Yes, things start getting murky when we talk about medical treatments, but anyone willing to go out of their own comfort zone for the sake of their child's happiness, instead of just forcing societal standards on them, is way above average in my book.