Transgender Child?
Hello America,
I am perplexed today about a child in Douglas County that has decided that they wish to be acknowledged as a different gender than the gender in which they were born. When I say child, I am speaking of a person in the second grade. It’s not a typo.
This involves a second grade boy that wishes to dress as a girl and be addressed by a girl’s name. The school system is planning on being accomodating by creating two unisex bathrooms and also referring to the child by name instead of addressing them by gender.
There is an organization called the TransYouth Family Advocates that is providing this family and other families in Douglas County with support in dealing with this sensitive subject matter. According to Kim Pearson, executive director of the TransYouth Family Advocates, children as young as five years old are “realizing” their true identity.
Whei Wong, the Douglas County Schools spokesperson, says that the district views this as just another diversity issue and hopes everyone can accept and respect the student’s wishes. One parent that was brave enough to speak conservatively in this liberal egg sucking dog state said that, “I don’t think a (2nd) grader does have the rationale to decide this life-altering choice.”
Anyone else thinks that this is just a dream? How in the world did this issue become a part of our children’s society? Anyone else has fear running up their spine? How can this be? I am outraged and flabbergasted! Should we lower the age requirement to vote? Did someone watch that show called “Kid Nation” and thought that the world would be better off if children got to decide how they should live their lives?
Parents needs to start parenting again! Just because a child wants to stay awake until 3:00 a.m. doesn’t mean you allow them to do so. Are we now going to say that a child has the right to choose if they go to school, or if they bathe or not? If you relinquish an important boundary of deciding a child’s sexual orientation, what boundaries are left? Wake up America! Our children need our guidance. Stop dropping the ball! The consequences are too important.
on July 6th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Hi! I like your srticle and I would like very much to read some more information on this issue. Will you post some more?
on July 22nd, 2009 at 3:23 am
Sure, I will address this issue again in the near future.
on August 26th, 2009 at 10:43 am
This article was written from the perspective of ignorance that is typical of those who are “outraged” by this.
Sexual orientation and gender identity are completely different things. The first is a matter of who you are attracted to, and has certainly not been determined by this young age. Gender identity is that deep sense of who you are. It develops between age 3-5. Most of us never really thought about it, because the biology and the psychology matched, but how far back do you think you knew you were a boy/girl? It is a medical fact that the physical sex organs and the brain develop at different times during fetal development. It is also a medical fact that part of that brain development includes a hormonal “wash” that determines whether the fetus is going to be male or female, but the biology has already been set! Normally, the two match, but not always. It is likely that the intensity of the hormonal wash during brain development determines to what degree the psychology of the child will be male or female. We all know men and women who are more or less masculine or feminine in their behavior. That is a likely consequence of this developmental step, and it covers an entire continuum.
Why should we force children to try to fit neatly into one of two narrowly-defined boxes, when there are no such narrowly-defined categories in reality, either in biology or psychology? You would rather have these children live a life of suppression until, as adults, they finally take charge of their own destiny and make the change themselves, another 40-something transsexual, perhaps by that time married and with kids, trying to live a life that to them feels like a deception.
You can view it as a type of birth “defect” if that helps, but the preponderance of evidence indicates that it is an unalterable medical condition, and cannot be changed through “nurture”, although it can often be suppressed until later in life. That is, if doing so does not cause such psychological pain that the individual commits suicide.
In this case, the school did not create 2 unisex bathrooms. The child was simply relegated to using an existing unisex single-stall bathroom by the nurse’s office.
on August 27th, 2009 at 2:22 am
Of course, the response is always ignorance when there is an opposition of someone’s behavior that is not popular or “normal”. Make no mistake, I understand the biology and psychology of gender. The problem with behavior is there are too many external factors that can affect it. This is especially true with child development. A child’s environment can, and in some cases, will affect their behavior.
If a child is raised in an environment with permissive parenting, then the child is essentially raising themselves. This is really damaging to a child’s development because they aren’t getting the proper guidance that a child needs. A vast majority of gender confused children are products of this type of environment. Without proper guidance, children will likely go astray. That is why children are not allowed to make their own decisions about nutrition. It is very likely that this particular child is a product of a household that is allowing the child to make adult decisions.
The bottom line is that the school should not have enabled this child by offering assistance in their manifestation.
on September 2nd, 2009 at 11:51 am
The response is ignorance when it, in fact, embodies ignorance.
It is clear from both your article and your comments that you are nearly totally ignorant of this condition and this particular case. You have no idea what kind of parenting this child has received or what kind of household the child has been raised in.
But, by all means, don’t let that prevent you from making assumptions about it.
on September 2nd, 2009 at 2:56 pm
I suspect it will be futile, but I’ll try to fill you in a little more. Of course, you are free to disagree with how this condition is being handled in this case. Many people, including many professionals, do so. But you should at least do so from an informed position.
I happen to know the subject family quite well, but I can’t say how. I’ve since come to know several other families with children like this. In knowing a number of such families, one thing becomes clear, that environment has nothing to do with this. This happens in all sorts of families, both single-parent families and those with two parents very actively engaged. It happens in more permissive and in less permissive families. Some of these children are only children, some are the youngest, some are the oldest, and some are in the middle. Some of these children have siblings who are of the same biological sex as they themselves, some the opposite, and others have siblings of both sexes. In short, there is no common environmental factor.
In the case of this family, the child always behaved differently, and did things that could not be fully understood as separate incidents, from the age of 2 or 3. The child was always a puzzle. As the child got older, she exhibited more and more gender-variant behavior, but at an early age it was not thought, by pediatricians or psychologists, to be a serious issue. It was thought to be a phase. But how long does a phase last? 6 months? A year? 2 years? 5 years? Does a phase become more pronounced with age?
When this child was about 6 years old, she became obsessed with death, and often said she wanted to die. Is this the normal evolution of a phase? Or permissive parenting?
The moment of truth came in a very dramatic way, during a very emotional discussion, when she finally declared for herself that she WAS a girl. It isn’t that she *wants* to be a girl, or wishes to be a girl. She feels, deep down in the innermost part of her soul, that she IS a girl. Try to think about how far back you knew you were a boy/girl. You probably can’t remember a time when you did not know that. It is something we all know from a very early age, as a part of our core identity. Most of us don’t think about it very much, but that is because the biology and the psychology match. The problem occurs with a small number of people when that is not the case, and society demands that you think and behave as thought “typical” for your biological sex. The child first had to get old enough to be able to annunciate such a thing for herself. Once she did so, her entire history up to that point finally made sense, just like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle falling into place.
These parents are quite strict. They have not been permissive in any sense. But what are parents supposed to do when they have a suicidal small child who insists she is a girl, but she has a boy’s biology and desperately wants to have those male parts “removed”? Get “him” some serious psychological help, I hear you say? Exactly, and that is what these parents did. But guess what? Not even all mental health professionals agree on this. These parents had for years, and continued to do so for a while longer, tried going the route of making her behave like a boy, insisting that she do so, getting her more involved in sports with the boys, and all the other sterotypical “male” activities.
As they found out more about this condition, the parents came to realize that there is no good evidence that a child like this can be made to behave “normally”. And who defines what is “normal” anyway? Certainly there is a typical pattern of behavior, but there are also people whose behavior falls along all points along a continuum outside of what is typical. Even kids who are the least bit gender-variant, but more so for boys who exhibit the smallest amount of “feminine” behavior suffer extreme bullying within our culture.
This family has now seen and talked to an entire array of experts. While there are still a few who say the condition can be treated, there is little evidence that it works and most now say that it is an inborn condition, likely arising during fetal development as I described in my previous post.
There is some actual evidence that this is a biological condition. I don’t totally discount that environment, or abuse, could possibly produce a confused child, but that is not the case with this family, nor several of the other families I’m aware of. Some of the others, I can’t say for sure since I don’t know them or their internal circumstances well enough. But I’m not aware of any evidence that you can change how someone identifies themselves within their core self, although you can repress them, at least until they are grown. This condition may be related to the broader condition of body dysmorphia. In a few extreme cases of body dysmorphia, the patient may desperately insist that a limb must be amputated in order for them to feel “normal”. In a few cases, patients have performed self-amputations. As opposed to other types of body dysmorphia, however, there is a fairly easy wasy to deal with gender identity disorder. Let the child wear a dress! It’s not such a terrible thing, especially when the alternative is a suicidal 6 or 7 year-old child.
Since being allowed to make a “social” transition, pretty much all of the obsession with death and suicidal thoughts immediately subsided with this child. When she was finally recognized as being a girl, the child was far happier than ever before. This says a lot. And after all, the main object should be for the child to be happy and well-adjusted, rather than to conform to whatever society regards as “normal”. Of course, a social transition has not alleviated every problem the child has in this area. The male body parts remain, and continue to cause some distress, but as long as no one is aware of what is underneath her clothes, it seems to be an adequate measure for now.
You may ask if, simply because the child now seems to be happy, that automatically means this is the correct course of action. Not necessarily. But so far, there doesn’t appear to be any way to “cure” the condition. The family continues to seek out help, and to follow the latest research, but in the meantime the child must be kept alive. The parents state, very powerfully, that they would rather have a live girl, then a dead boy.
Even after all of this, what if the child – being as young as she is – is in fact merely confused after all? This is a question that these parents still struggle with. But consider that there is nothing irreversible being done yet. The child is merely dressing differently, while the parents continue to seek out other options. There is no medical intervention happening with a child this age. As the child gets older and begins entering puberty, the family will continue working with medical and psychological experts. If, at the time of puberty, nothing has changed, the child will likely be given puberty-blocking drugs. These drugs are used for other medical purposes, but in this case they will temporarily prevent the further development of male physical characteristics, buying still more time for the child and the family and the professionals to make sure they are going down the right road. If the child eventually decides that she really is a boy, and all of this has been a mistake, the drugs are merely stopped and puberty will proceed as usual at that time. If nothing changes by the time the child gets close to the age of consent, then sex reassignment surgery will be the likely result.
on September 2nd, 2009 at 3:41 pm
BTW, you have absolutely no basis for stating “A vast majority of gender confused children are products of this type of environment”.
I know that, because I’ve researched this issue.
on September 7th, 2009 at 2:31 am
Hello America,
It seems that Mark has chimed in again about the issue at hand. It appears that I must continue this futile exchange. Well, by all means let’s start.
I do indeed have basis for stating that a vast majority of gender confused children are a product of a permissive style parenting. I too have researched the issue. Does it mean that your research is more valid than mine or vice versa? Of course not!
Psychology and behavior is not a science. No matter how much “experts” wants to peddle their studies. The gangs all here! Fraud, a characterization not misspelling, Erikson, Skinner, or anyone not in print can chime in. It doesn’t matter because they all take their cues from the same play book.
My research shows that the leading gender-role confused people were products of a home with parents providing a permissive style upbringing. The second leading would be the home with the authoritarian style upbringing. In this case with this child, I could say that because the child is in a home with parents that practice authoritarian style parenting, then it supports my research of why this child is gender confused.
I am not going to say that. It could possibly be the reason for this occurrence or it could be that the child has a weak constitution and decided that because they were not quite like the boys, then he must be destined to be a girl. We all know that sexuality is a learned behavior. No one is born a homosexual. They learned or decided the behavior.
God does not create a female that is meant to be a male or a male that was meant to be a female. You can peddle birth defect if you’d like, but it just doesn’t gel. When a person is born with both sexual organs, then that is a birth defect. When a person is born overtly as a specific gender, then that is the gender they are meant to be.
When a person is born a male and decides that they are more comfortable or more natural being a female, then that is a personality issue. Personality is not formed at birth. Personality is formed by experience and by environment. This particular child has experienced something in their life that made them feel the way they do. They were not born this way.
The child is happier having gotten his way. Well of course! What child wouldn’t be happier getting their way? Is it right to have the child to conform to what society feels is normal? If that child’s abnormality may influence other children then absolutely. Being that behavior and personality is influenced by environment, then this child who has been known as a male starts to dress like a female could and would cause other children to consider this as being normal and acceptable behavior. It is not!
Who defines what is normal? The majority defines what is normal. The Bible defines what is normal. Normal behavior is simple to determine. To ask the question, “Who defines what is normal” places doubt in your credibility.
The bottom line and the basis of my original article is that the school should not have enabled this type of behavior. If these parents allows this child to take this road, then they can home school the child. The school is negligent by accomodating the manifestations of this child that will likely manufacture similar behavior within the other children with a weak constitution witnessing this abnormal behavior.
on September 9th, 2009 at 6:43 pm
Ahhh… How did I know that your conflict with this would come down to a particular interpretation of the Bible? That usually seems to be the case.
Originally, you said that it had to be a permissive household to have produced a child like this. When that was shown to be wrong, then you expanded that to authoritarian households! LOL! This is hilarious. Now, you have both permissive and authoritarian households included, so now I guess you have all your bases covered!
Personality can be influenced by environment, but it is most certainly not the product of environment. As the parent of 2 kids with very different personalities, I can attest to that.
Yes, the majority defines what is normal behavior. Exactly. That notion of normalcy does not, therefore, contain the full extent of all behavior, but only typical behavior.
The bottom line is that no one knows what causes this, or how to fix it. And this child has as much right to attend school as does any other child.
on September 11th, 2009 at 12:01 am
Hello America,
I guess I will continue this pointless exchange. I do not have to interpret the Bible, it is clear. No need to defend God’s word. He has already won his debate.
To be correct, I said that most of the children suffering from a gender confusion is most likely a product from a household with permissive parenting. I did not say that it “had to be”.
As my research has shown that the majority of gender confused children were raised in a household with permissive parenting; it also shows that the next leading percentage of gender confused children were raised in a household with authoritarian parenting.
I did not cover all of the bases as there is one major parenting style that I did not discuss. Parents using the authoritative parenting style has also produced gender confused children, but it is considerably lower than the other two styles previously mentioned.
The environment is a variable in personality. If an environment is negative, then there will be a variation in a person’s personality based on their ability to endure that environment. To imply that your children are the standard to whether or not an environment affects the personality negates any argument you have offered.
The majority is what matter. If the majority of boys started to wear dresses, then we could accept it as normal. It has not happened and in my world I don’t want to see it happen. That is why the school system should not allow this type of display around children.
Children are impressionable. Allowing a boy to dress up like a girl provides the impression that this behavior is okay. It is not. Every child has a right to attend school. They have the right to be in a school where boys are boys and girls are girls. These are not interchangeable.
on September 11th, 2009 at 1:08 am
Either I’m not reading you correctly, or you’re not making sense, but I’m not presuming which one it is. You said:
“As my research has shown that the majority of gender confused children were raised in a household with permissive parenting; it also shows that the next leading percentage of gender confused children were raised in a household with authoritarian parenting.
I did not cover all of the bases as there is one major parenting style that I did not discuss. Parents using the authoritative parenting style has also produced gender confused children, but it is considerably lower than the other two styles previously mentioned. ”
As I read it, you’ve only mentioned 2 styles in total, permissive and authoritative. If there is a 3rd style, what is it?
As I think I said earlier, this happens in all kinds of households. Parenting style doesn’t seem to be a common factor.
The household this child, as well as several of the others, comes from is a loving and concerned one, by any measure. Firm in its approach to discipline, but very loving and caring.
The majority is not the last word on what is acceptable. Just think of all the effeminate boys and men you may have known during your lifetime, and how they were treated by others. Simply because their behavior fell outside of what is considered normal by the majority, does that excuse how they were treated? What about any number of other perfectly innocent non-controversial behaviors people display that deviate from what is considered to be normal? Do they deserve to be treated badly by their peers simply because of that? What the majority considers to be normal behavior is not much of a justification for being cruel or for ostracism, as long as the behavior is not immoral or criminal.
A child born with both types of sex organs, such as the runner who was just investigated, is a birth defect that happens to be easy to see. A child born with a brain that did not fully “masculanize”, if that is a word, because something went wrong with the hormonal release at that particular stage of development is not so easy to see. Still, there is post-mortem evidence from the brains of transgendered individuals that indicate that certain structures in the brain of these individuals exhibit more female characteristics than is normal. Does the runner deserve to be considered a female? Biology is not as binary a phenomenon as you would like to believe. Psychology is even less so, and as we continue to discover more about how the brain works it appears the most “psychological” disorders seem to be rooted in biology within the brain.
For anyone who would like to find out more, independently, about this whole phenomenon, lots of information can be found at http://www.imatyfa.org.
on September 11th, 2009 at 1:25 am
I forgot two things.
For those who are afraid that their impressionable boys will all suddenly start wearing dresses because this child is in school, it just does not happen. There is no recorded case, that I’m aware of, of such a thing ever happening, and there are at least 3 other children like this in the same school district currently, ranging up to high school, with many more in neighboring school districts. There are no good statistics on how many of these children there are nationwide, but it is at least in the hundreds. There is zero evidence that you can cause a young child to become confused about their gender after about age 3. That just goes to show how deeply rooted in the psyche gender identity is. It also explains why these children can’t be “fixed”.
The second thing is that your last argument seems to mostly boil down to being against it simply because you don’t want to see it, and a general feeling that it’s “icky”. Well, I’m afraid that’s too bad. Your personal icky feeling is not justification for ostracising a child. It’s definitely not justification for continuing to let a child so young progress inexorably toward suicide, when such a thing can be stopped through very simple, if unconventional, means. Personally, I don’t want to see all of the tattoos and piercings that are so in vogue these days. I think it’s ghastly what so many people do to their bodies and I think it’s stupid. Oh, well!
on September 11th, 2009 at 4:01 am
Hello America,
This is going to be my last post on this issue unless there are others who wish to chime in. To answer your question about the parenting styles, there are three major parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian, and permissive. If you need to know the differences, then do the research.
Parenting style is a factor in gender identity. I am not saying that it is the only factor, nor am I saying is it the deciding factor. What I am saying is that in gender confused children, the two common noted parenting styles provided to these children was either permissive or authoritarian in nature.
In any democratic society, the majority is the last word. That is why same-sex Californians aren’t able to wed. The majority said no and it is so. The majority of children dress in the manner that matches their gender. It is not an accident that there is a male and female section in the department store.
If the male child wishes to dress in female attire, then the school district should not condone it, let alone accommodate it. The dress code is the dress code. Males are not able to wear earrings. This is not because of health reasons; it is because it is inappropriate.
Do what you want as an adult, but do not add more issues to a child’s environment. School is a learning environment. Allowing this type of behavior is disruptive to the learning environment. If a child is so stuck on concentrating on their gender than learning, then home school that child.
The school district is negligent and wrong to accommodate these types of manifestations. I am done with this issue.
on September 11th, 2009 at 9:37 am
Thank goodness this is going to be the last post!
We live in a constitutional republic, not a democracy, and the majority is not the last word, so I’m not sure how deeply you understand our form of government either. The Constitution and the US Supreme Court are the last word. Anyway, what I was talking about is that there are behaviors that occur in nature, both human and animal, which fall outside of what the majority would say is “normal”. That is not “right” or “wrong”, it’s just a simple fact.
It’s not the school’s place to condone it or not condone it. It is the school’s responsibility to educate every child who comes to it, as long as the child is not being disruptive. In this case, the family has written opinions from pediatricians and psychologists stating that this is the way this child needs to be allowed to live her life. To not accommodate her would be to place her life in danger. The fact that you would be more concerned about protecting society’s sensibilities than protecting the life of this child says something about you, I’m afraid.
on September 12th, 2009 at 10:06 pm
Dear Mark,
The law says we are to provide a FREE APPROPRIATE PUBLIC EDUCATION….by no means does that mean a child decides on how to receive that public education…such as dressing opposite of what is visually deemed the sex of that child. I won’t go into medical jargon with you as that is pointless. As parents we decide what is safe, right, appropriate and so on. If an 8 year old wants to run the show do it in a private setting and don’t infringe your wishes on other innocent 8 year olds as you affect them as well.
If you want as an adult to switch by all means go for it…but to force a school to address this issue is beyond academics and so forth.
I feel you are “ignorant” on the true issue behind this particular situation…that is what should take place at school and the responsibilities behind it.
Teaching….not making it a free for all of your viewpoint on your self if male or female. Treat the child as a sex and when adulthood and the maturity of the mind is in place then and only when the child fully understands into his/her adulthood venture into what ever path he/she deems is for them.
GET YOUR MIND RIGHT!
And please don’t bore me with one LONG ASS message…Be short and sweet about it….goodness the hours you must have spent here are mind boggling…Oh I type 60 wpm so this took only moments.
Toodles!
on September 13th, 2009 at 11:27 pm
The child has not decided. The parents and doctors, working with the school system, have decided.
This child is visually deemed to be a girl. She looks like a girl and behaves like a girl.
I am not the person here who is ignorant of the situation, but more than willing to render judgement anyway. When the child has been suicidal and professionals are recommending this course of action, the school would be leaving itself open to serious liability if they refused to accommodate it to some degree.
Home schooling works for some, but it doesn’t work for every child and every situation.
People who are , yes ignorant, about this condition usually say something like the children should wait until they are adults. The problem is that this is too late, in some ways. By then, they have gone through puberty and developed more male physical characteristics. At that point, it is very difficult to make a transition to the point where they can “pass” as female. The course that is being pursued is designed to 1) keep the child alive, and 2) temporarily prevent the development of a more “male” look while buying more time for the child to get closer to adulthood so that everyone can be more sure of what action needs to be taken for the long term. Too many of these children are repressed into adulthood, only to later transition on their own and looking forever like a “man in a dress”, many times with a wife and kids being affected after having tried to live a lie their whole lives.
Sorry for the long messages, but I’m trying to educate people who refuse to do so themselves, in an open-minded manner, but still spread their ignorant opinions all over the Internet.
Toodles!
on September 15th, 2009 at 9:30 am
Just a couple of quick notes.
The couple of people who have reponded seem to have been at least slightly offended by my use of the word “ignorant”. I didn’t mean it in any perjorative way, but simply as a statement of fact. There’s nothing wrong with being ignorant of something, it’s an opportunity to learn. What would be wrong, would be to wrap yourself in that ignorance like a security blanket and form your opinion based on dogma or fear without having access to all of the information.
Even after having all of the facts, you may still disagree with how this child is being handled. That’s okay, you don’t have to agree. These parents, themselves, are constantly going back over everything and re-examining whether or not they have done the right thing. It is not an easy thing to have to deal with.
on September 15th, 2009 at 9:41 am
A good opportunity for learning:
Tonight on the National Geographic Channel, “Sex, Lies and Gender” airs.
on May 26th, 2010 at 11:04 am
What is he really talking about in here? Aritotle words of wisdom suggests that we as humans must always accept what is the truth of the situation and appreciate life.
on June 15th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
hi-ya, I view all your articles, keep them coming.
on June 16th, 2010 at 3:12 pm
my God, i thought you had been going to chip in with some decisive insght at the end there, not leave it with ‘we leave it to you to decide’.
on August 25th, 2010 at 6:36 am
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