A Proactive Process TransActive’s executive director on the “youngest members of

[Shana A]

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=177

Oliver'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.