Right-Wing Websites Blast Paper’s Coverage of Teen’s Sex Change

[Shana A]

Right-Wing Websites Blast Paper's Coverage of Teen's Sex Change
by Jason St. Amand
Web Producer / Staff Writer
Friday Dec 16, 2011

http://www.edgeboston.com/news/family/news//127932/right-wing_websites_blast_paper%E2%80%99s_coverage_of_teen%E2%80%99s_sex_change

MassResistance, a Massachusetts anti-gay group, is up in arms about a story that was published in the Boston Globe last weekend and recently posted a reaction to the piece. The article told the harrowing story about 14-year-old twin boys, Jonas and Wyatt Maines. Although born as identical twins, Wyatt wanted to be a girl.

"The ultra-radical nature of the cultural revolution is coming into full view," MassResistance writes in a Dec. 12 post. "With the Massachusetts 'transgender rights' bill passed, the next frontier is public acceptance of sex-changes for children. Is this America's future?"

[Shana A]

Another boy becoming a girl

Written by Marcia Segelstein
December 16, 2011, 10:58 AM

http://online.worldmag.com/2011/12/16/another-boy-becoming-a-girl/

The Globe reports that Wyatt was vocal about wanting to be a girl since he was a toddler. Wyatt's parents first took him to see Spack when he was 9 years old. In January, they'll see him again to discuss the possibility of starting Wyatt/Nicole on estrogen. Once begun, that treatment cannot be reversed, and will leave the child infertile. Assuming the family decides to continue down this road, the final step would be gender reassignment surgery.

These are very serious considerations, especially in light of the fact that Spack told the newspaper that a "'very significant number of children who exhibit cross-gender behavior' before puberty 'do not end up being transgender.'"

------

Here's the full Paul McHugh article quoted in the article

Surgical Sex
Paul McHugh

http://www.firstthings.com/article/2009/02/surgical-sex--35

When the practice of sex-change surgery first emerged back in the early 1970s, I would often remind its advocating psychiatrists that with other patients, alcoholics in particular, they would quote the Serenity Prayer, "God, give me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference." Where did they get the idea that our sexual identity ("gender" was the term they preferred) as men or women was in the category of things that could be changed?

Their regular response was to show me their patients. Men (and until recently they were all men) with whom I spoke before their surgery would tell me that their bodies and sexual identities were at variance. Those I met after surgery would tell me that the surgery and hormone treatments that had made them "women" had also made them happy and contented. None of these encounters were persuasive, however. The post-surgical subjects struck me as caricatures of women. They wore high heels, copious makeup, and flamboyant clothing; they spoke about how they found themselves able to give vent to their natural inclinations for peace, domesticity, and gentleness—but their large hands, prominent Adam's apples, and thick facial features were incongruous (and would become more so as they aged). Women psychiatrists whom I sent to talk with them would intuitively see through the disguise and the exaggerated postures. "Gals know gals," one said to me, "and that's a guy."