Sarah Wong’s Portraits of Dutch Transgendered Children

[SandraJane]

Sarah Wong's Portraits of Dutch Transgendered Children


By AMY KELLNER |  August 23, 2012, 4:52 pm


http://6thfloor.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/08/23/sarah-wongs-portraits-of-dutch-transgendered-children/?partner=rss&emc=rss


http://www.sarahwong.com/independent   Portrait website



Sarah Wong     The cover of "Inside Out: Portraits of Cross-Gender Children," by Sarah Wong and Ellen de Visser.


Several years before Lindsay Morris photographed the gender-fluid children featured in our recent cover story, the Dutch photographer Sarah Wong was documenting children in her country who said they felt they were born in the wrong body.

Wong's ongoing project, which she began in 2003, led to "Inside Out: Portraits of Cross-Gender Children," with text by the Dutch medical journalist Ellen de Visser. The book, which came out in the Netherlands in 2010, follows children who have changed or are in the process of changing their gender and includes multiple portraits of them over the course of seven years. The individual portraits shown below are of children who were born male; the group shots include two children who were born female and now present themselves as male.

[DISHEETS]

I sent these links to my sister who is very supportive of me and is intrigued about my transition and wants to know as much as she can, so I have been sending her everything I can that is of interest to me. One of the little boys is Dees. For now I am using just the first two letters of my birthname (Dianna) and am now DI....she always called me Dee Dee.

[SandraJane]

It is a very well written book full of the experiences of the transgender children, their family and the doctors who aid them. The only negative remark I have is that the writer is very negative about those who start transition after their biological puberty. She describes the differences between young and late transitioners in the part "An unfair divide", where she states that these children have the lifelong advantage of having an convincing appearance and a stainless past. She describes the adults with the following words: "failed women, silent and vulnerable, lost everything, unnatural appearance, fear invoking".

I find it remarkable that Sara Wong writes that she wants to give hope with this book. But frankly, her words I mentioned above have the opposite effect. They frighten me.

Currently this book is not available yet in the United States, though one can pre-order it at Amazon.com.  "An unfair divide", I think is accurate, but to catagorize "late Transitioners" in that manner is stereotyping all of us that didn't have the opportunity and chance to do so in Adolesence. At least these children, their generation and those that come after them have a brighter future, but to cast us "Late Transitioners" in such a way deserves a future comment on Sarah Wong's blog...http://sarahjuliawong.wordpress.com/

I do look forward to reading this book when it becomes available though.

SJ