I do think most kids know their gender young. I also think that for others, they know but dont' really think about it. I've heard of many trans people finding the big uh oh when puberty hit and it wasn't the puberty they envisioned, like they thought it would all sort out later and found out they were wrong. I knew I was male, but society said I was just a tomboy. I'm not stupid and could see my parts matched my sisters and not the boy I saw when I was age 4 and realized hey, I'm different than that boy! I really didn't think about it too much; I just thought I was weird for thinking I was a boy, wishing I was a boy, etc. I was mad they wouldn't let me into the boy scouts, who were doing far cooler things than whatever-the-crap was we were doing in girl scouts. I did NOT fit in there. I stuffed my pants; I used the boys/mens room if I knew I wouldnt' get caught, etc. But even if I screamed I was a boy at the top of my lungs, my parents wouldn't have listened; this was the 60s and I was a tomboy, period, end of discussion. I do think others fall in the grayer zone and don't quite figure it out until later. Heck, I didn't realize what I'd felt all along had a name and a cure! And it can be confusing as heck. Ryland seems precocious; I see a lot of my son in him and if my son had been trans, I could see him declaring it loudly and frequently until I got the message that he was not who I thought he was.
While the parent in me and the stealth me cringes a little that he is out for the world to see on the internet and can now never be stealth, it also serves to show the world that trans people aren't just adults who decide on a whim to become the opposite gender, and all of the mean slurs they throw at trans women specifically; that it has nothing to do with sex or perversion, but is innate and EVEN CHILDREN can be diagnosed with it.
I sent the family an email in support. The hate comments on Yahoo at least have been disabled.
