Strollerderby : gender identity disorder

What defines a girl or a boy?

Miriam Axel-Lute — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:30:00 GMT

Writing about transgendered kids is tough. If you believe sex is biologically set by chromosomes and organs, then even considering the whole notion is silly. If you believe that gender identity is entirely socially constructed, it's hard to understand why some kids raised in households without rigid gender roles—boys allowed to dress up and not like sports, etc.—still develop passionate, intense desires to be the other gender. (Me, I'm thinking hormones. Pesky things.)

The stories in the recent article on transgendered kids in the Minneapolis CityPages should certainly give pause to anyone who thinks these kids are having passing phases that their parents could easily deflect. And they also show the interesting challenge of coming out to potential romantic partners when you have transitioned early enough to pass completely. It's worth a read.

But as whenever we talk about what it means to "feel" like one gender or the other, the article ends up giving credence to conventional gender stereotypes and binaries along the way. It opens, for example, like this: "On her third birthday, Sarah Barnett tore open a package from her grandmother that would delight most girls her age. Gently folded on a pillow of tissue paper lay a frilly, ruffled dress." Sigh. Is it mixing my issues to wish that transgender awareness could manage not to rest on ideas like "girls inherently like frilly dresses?" Isn't the point that cross-dressing isn't enough?

The point of that anecdote, of course, is that her response was not (as my happy-to-be-a-woman childhood self's would have been) "Ew. I hate dresses," but "Why don't you tell Grandma I'm a boy?" Still, it points up how hard it is to talk about this issue without the crutch of "what most girls/boys" would like/prefer.

Photo by anyjazz65.

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When Your Girl Is a Boy (Or Vice Versa)

Miriam Axel-Lute — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 23:15:00 GMT

We've all known (or been) boys obsessed with princesses and makeup or tomboys who would rather wipe an axle with a dress than wear it. Most of us who were raised with Free to Be You and Me and feminist moms (and even a bunch of us who weren't) go out of our way to let our non-gender-stereotype conforming kids explore whatever interests they want and express themselves as they see fit.

This is hard enough, given other parents' need to constantly harp on about what boys and girls do and like in front of our kids (something I've ranted about here). But what about when it's not enough? What if you have a kid who feels wrong in their body, insists on the other pronoun, and is generally miserable unless actually acknowledged as the other gender? By many accounts there are some kids for whom general freedom from prescribed gender roles doesn't cut it.

The authors of the newly released The Transgender Child, which deals with with "gender variance from birth through college," argue that a child's gender identity is generally a "permanent part of who they are," whether it matches biology or not. They wrote the book to help parents and professional find their way through the mine field of implications of that.

I know one family going through this, and even for the most liberal parents, it's hard. Changing your notion of who your child is midstream is no piece of cake. A transgendered child may need, ironically, to conform more tightly to stereotypes about their preferred gender in order to get a diagnosis of gender identity disorder. (But you can't really feel you're a girl if you like cars!

Even harder, if a diagnosis is given, then there are some big decisions to be made. The best time to medically transition to the other gender is pre-puberty: it works much better and allows you to pass as your preferred gender as an adult much better. No pesky unwanted facial hair or breasts to get rid of. But the prospect of letting a child so young make such a big decision is extremely uncomfortable. (Though apparently some folks are experimenting with puberty delaying drugs that could allow the decision to be put off. Puberty at 25 anyone?)

What do you think? Have you gone through this? What would you do if it were your kid?

Should Parents Delay Puberty for Transgender Children?

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:00:00 GMT

In the aftermath of media hype about pregnant transgender man Thomas Beattie—much of which threatened to return the “freak” label to the trans community—NPR has run a fascinating story that explains gender identity disorder from the viewpoint of a family living through it.

According to Danielle and Robert (last names were omitted), from the time their son was two-years-old, he insisted on dressing like a girl. From the time he was old enough to talk, he told his parents, “I’m a girl.” Throughout elementary school, he frequently had temper outbursts so severe that his parents sought psychiatric help. Finally, at age 10, he was diagnosed with gender identity disorder, a label that came as a relief to his parents, who could finally stop asking themselves, “What have we done to make this child so unhappy?” And, sure enough, as soon as Danielle and Robert allowed their son to live as a girl, the fights and the tantrums stopped.

The gender identity disorder diagnosis also allowed Danielle and Robert to consider options that were not available only four years ago. By taking monthly injections of medication that stops the body from releasing sex hormones, transgender children are able to postpone puberty, while continuing to grow taller. Then, at around age 16, they may decide to transition to the opposite gender by taking either estrogen or testosterone. By the time they are fully developed adults, they are physically almost indistinguishable from the gender with which they identify.

It probably won’t come as a shock that this is a very controversial program. Not only does taking estrogen or testosterone before puberty cause infertility, but some specialists believe that children cannot know with certainty whether or not they want to live as the opposite sex.

But Danielle and Robert do not see this as a choice for their child, now called Violet. In response to people who say Violet is too young to know that he wants to be a girl, Robert says, “Well, when did you know you were a girl? When did I know I was a boy? I knew my whole life, I can’t tell you exactly when, but it wasn’t like I was 10 and realized, ‘Oh gee, I must be a boy!’”

I know many liberal-minded people who do not “believe in” being transgender—that is, they do not believe there is a biological basis for the desire to live as the opposite sex. What do you folks think of Danielle and Robert’s story?

Image: prunellavulgaris.wordpress.com