A Proactive Process
TransActive's executive director on the "youngest members of the GLBT community"
By Amanda Schurr
http://www.justout.com/news.aspx?id=177Oliver's story may seem like a rare one, but statistics on ->-bleeped-<- and gender non-conforming identity in youth suggest otherwise. A 2007 University of Michigan study by Professors Femke Olyslager and Lynn Conway reports that 1 in 250 children is significantly gender non-conforming, and additional statistical analysis by Conway indicates that 1 in 500 is transgender.
This is nearly 100 times the number published by the American Psychiatric Association in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual IV.
It should be noted that prevalence statistics for female-bodied/male-identified children like Oliver are less well known than male-bodied/female-identified individuals. One of the reasons for this may be due to the greater leeway and acceptance female-bodied children are given with regards to their gender expression (for example, "tomboy" is not considered a put-down). This is not to minimize the credibility of gender non-conformity and trans identity in younger, female-bodied/male-identified children.
