Brian Prowse-Gany, Yahoo News
October 27, 2014

Just weeks after being named one of Time magazine's "25 Most Influential Teens of 2014," Jazz sat down with Yahoo Global News Anchor Katie Couric to discuss the challenges she faced while growing up and the motivation behind her new book

Watch (TW for scenes from protests with strong anti-trans language): http://news.yahoo.com/the-new-face-of-transgender-youth-231106807.html

Wonderful to see a trans kid portrayed so positively. Especially nice that no one mentioned genitals or surgery. Maybe the first trans news story that left those out. Sign that things are changing.

OTOH, media still seems to prefer trans subjects who "always knew". The more of those there are, the more likely people who didn't "always know" will meet skepticism when we announce we've finally figured it it.

The reason why we're fixating on the kids though-it's a bad one.  It's because the kids don't look any different from a cis person, fulfill the standard narrative of "knowing from birth" and also enforcing the notion that gender varience makes one transgender.  Just because a kid likes dresses doesn't make them trans.  Some are, granted-but not all.  This is reinforcing the idea that is perfectly ok to be trans, but only as long as you look and act like a cis person should, and has left those of us without that luxury in a very bad place.  There's a reason somebody like me isn't being featured on any TV show.

I don't disagree with what you are saying, but I think you are taking it a bit far.  There are other factors to why kids are more interesting stories.  There is additional conflict with school policies, there is the additional hardship parents face, and there is the whole phase vs real/how young is too young debate.  It all makes for stories on trans kids having more news value.  But while they get the most attention, it's not as if they get all of it.  I remember when Kristen Beck got a lot of screen time on CNN for like an entire week.  And even though it has been a fake trans person, Transparent has been getting a lot of attention with an older character.  And in the art scene, Zackary Drucker has gained a lot of notoriety even though she never changed her name.  I know that while these examples will never pass as cis they are still going for that archetype, and I know that there is not going to be any non-binary love in the media anytime soon, I think we'l get there eventually.