Transgendered Children

Completely unrelated to my recent post "Questions on the T" and the subsequent discussion, a facebook acquaintence of mine recently posted an article to a group of people from The Atlantic entitled A Boy's Life. The article tells the story of transgendered children by following one little boy who, ever since he could speak, said that he was supposed to be a girl. Perhaps the most phenomenal part of this story is that the boy (pictured) has the support of his working-class family.

This article is actually really incredible and does a great job of portraying all of the issues that a parent has to deal with when raising a child who believes he was born in the wrong body.

One of the more interesting parts of this article is scientific research that it relays. First, there's the story of an infant boy who had his penis burned off in a circumcision accident. He was used in a horrible experiment where, through surgeries, hormones and socialization, he was raised as a girl. Guess what? The experiment failed. With tragic results. This story was the topic of the 2000 book As Nature Made Him which looks like an excellent read. This makes me think that gender is fixed in the brain before birth and is immutable.

Another interesting research result in the article describes a 1987 study wherein 44 "sissy boys" were followed for 15 years to chart their psycho-sexual development. The researcher had originally assumed that all of the boys, who played with dolls as well as played hide-the-penis "look ma I'm a girl", would turn out transgendered. In fact, only one of them did. But 3/4 of the 44 turned out to be gay. This study does more to link effeminate behaviors with sexual orientation than it does with gender, in my mind. However, those behaviors aren't necessarily directly correlated to orientation.

The most compelling thing reported on in the above article was this: doctors now can administer hormone blockers to transgendered children, basically delaying puberty until the child grows up and has a better ability to decide whether their self-gender-identity matches their chromosomal gender. Wow.

I'll freely admit that I was pretty sissy when I was a kid. I was horrible at sports and preferred playing in the woods with the girls while our brothers played little league baseball. While my brothers monopolized the television all year 'round with baseball, football and basketball, I spent time in the other room listening to the radio and tying bedsheets around my body into intricate saris that I'd show off to my mother. I always preferred helping my mother in the kitchen, inventing recipes for "apple cake" and "fritters" or trying to master my grandfather's chewy fudge recipe, all while my brothers were out back tossing the pig-skin. After I'd given up on sports, my mother enrolled me in a jazz dance class in 4th grade. Though I didn't like it enough to re-enroll for another year, I did decide to teach the routine to two girl friends in my neighborhood and we eventually put on a show in front of our parents and neighbors that included home-baked refreshments and a "gymnastics" routine. I even once tucked my pre-pubescent package between my legs and showed my mother, proudly proclaiming, "Look, mom, I'm a girl!"

But for all this girlie, sissy behavior, did I ever actually want to be a girl? I don't think so. And, especially once puberty hit, I quickly grew into a (gay) man who was comfortable in his body.

Perhaps I'm the lucky one. Perhaps ending up gay is a better fate than actually wanting to be the other gender, or feeling that you were born in the wrong body. Or perhaps the transfolk are luckier? Between hormones and surgery, many can easily integrate themselves into the majority straight culture, leaving behind the world of sexual deviance and focusing instead on a "medical condition" for which science and medicine can provide at least a semblance of a cure.

So, perhaps here is another question for the trans members of our community. How early did you know? And if you knew early enough and hormone blockers were available to you at the time, would you have taken them?

And to everyone who commented on my previous post, please read the article I'm describing here and share any new perspectives you may have in the comments.