News and Events => People news => Topic started by: Shana A on April 24, 2012, 08:17:37 AM Return to Full Version
Title: The Future of Gender
Post by: Shana A on April 24, 2012, 08:17:37 AM
Post by: Shana A on April 24, 2012, 08:17:37 AM
Posted on Advocate.com April 23, 2012 02:05:00 PM ET
The Future of Gender
Authors Diane Ehrensaft, Genny Beemyn, and Susan Rankin talk about the lives of transgender kids in America.
By Advocate Editors
http://www.advocate.com/Arts_and_Entertainment/Books/The_Future_of_Gender/ (http://www.advocate.com/Arts_and_Entertainment/Books/The_Future_of_Gender/)
As HRC kicks off it's new equality speaker series tonight, with renowned developmental and clinical psychologist Diane Ehrensaft discussing gender nonconforming and transgender children at HRC's Washington, D.C. headquarters at 6:00 pm (it'll also be air live at hrc.org/equalitytalks), we asked Ehrensaft to chat with fellow authors Genny Beemyn and Susan Rankin.
[...]
Ehrensaft: In your book, The Lives of Transgender People, so many of the interviewees said they knew from an early age that they were "different." Did any of them refer specifically to the kind of help they wish they could have gotten as a child?
Beemyn: Many of the interviewees, especially the MTF [male-to-female] interviewees, indicated that they had no support from their families growing up. On the contrary, some of the trans women reported that they were physically or sexually assaulted for indicating to their parents that they felt female, or they were sent to therapists or institutionalized to be "cured." All of the MTF interviewees who dressed and presented as female as children had to do so in secret because of family opposition or feared family opposition. How different their lives would have been had they been able to express their "true" selves from a young age! I, for one, am envious of the children today who have supportive parents and can present as themselves from a young age and not have to go through the puberty that is wrong for them.
The Future of Gender
Authors Diane Ehrensaft, Genny Beemyn, and Susan Rankin talk about the lives of transgender kids in America.
By Advocate Editors
http://www.advocate.com/Arts_and_Entertainment/Books/The_Future_of_Gender/ (http://www.advocate.com/Arts_and_Entertainment/Books/The_Future_of_Gender/)
As HRC kicks off it's new equality speaker series tonight, with renowned developmental and clinical psychologist Diane Ehrensaft discussing gender nonconforming and transgender children at HRC's Washington, D.C. headquarters at 6:00 pm (it'll also be air live at hrc.org/equalitytalks), we asked Ehrensaft to chat with fellow authors Genny Beemyn and Susan Rankin.
[...]
Ehrensaft: In your book, The Lives of Transgender People, so many of the interviewees said they knew from an early age that they were "different." Did any of them refer specifically to the kind of help they wish they could have gotten as a child?
Beemyn: Many of the interviewees, especially the MTF [male-to-female] interviewees, indicated that they had no support from their families growing up. On the contrary, some of the trans women reported that they were physically or sexually assaulted for indicating to their parents that they felt female, or they were sent to therapists or institutionalized to be "cured." All of the MTF interviewees who dressed and presented as female as children had to do so in secret because of family opposition or feared family opposition. How different their lives would have been had they been able to express their "true" selves from a young age! I, for one, am envious of the children today who have supportive parents and can present as themselves from a young age and not have to go through the puberty that is wrong for them.