Portraits Of Transgender Children Reveal " The Person They Feel They Really Are"

http://www.buzzfeed.com/lynzybilling/portraits-of-cross-gender-children-reveal-the-person-they-fe#.xq3PL.8kebL

Buzzfeed LGBT/by Lynzy billing   05/14/2015

" Dutch photographer Sarah Wong began the ongoing project Inside Out: Portraits of Cross-Gender Children in 2003, photographing children who have changed, or are in the process changing   their sex because they feel they are a different gender to the one that they were born with."

There is really no blame to be had , but God how I wish I could of transitioned at the right age.

Working with young children who are possible transgenders is something that I would think was difficult. Young children often role play or say they are one gender or another. kids don't really have the capacity of realizing long term consequences, and if changes are made, there may be no going back.

Looking back, I wish I could have been started on HRT at puberty and called a male prior to that, but it isn't that simple. I knew another "girl" who felt as I did coming up through elementary school, and now she is very happily a wife and mother. You couldn't have convinced her of that when she was younger.

I don't believe that being a transgender is a mental illness, but just for the sake of argument, there are mental illnesses that cannot be diagnosed before a certain age because of the way the brain develops. If this the same with a transgender? I do think that we need to have pediatric specialists in this area as we learn more about transgenders to avoid both causing a true transgender years of misery as well as acting too soon and having a child wind up in the wrong body because they were misdiagnosed. Its definately a field that needs more looking into.

sam1234

Articles like this one give me a feeling of hope for the future.

Quote from: sam1234 on May 18, 2015, 12:53:42 AM
Working with young children who are possible transgenders is something that I would think was difficult. Young children often role play or say they are one gender or another. kids don't really have the capacity of realizing long term consequences, and if changes are made, there may be no going back.

...

I don't believe that being a transgender is a mental illness, but just for the sake of argument, there are mental illnesses that cannot be diagnosed before a certain age because of the way the brain develops. If this the same with a transgender?

It sounds like you think that what people do is to bring the kids to a shrink and have him (isn't it usually a "him"? ) pronounce the child "transgender!" and it's 1-2-3 hormones, RLE, and GRS.

Prior to puberty, it's mostly a matter of allowing the child to present and live as they feel most comfortable -- as a boy, as a girl, as some mix, as something else.  Since it only ever comes up when a child has already shown clear signs of being distressed for quite a while at being forced to act and live in accordance with their assigned gender, the alternative would be to make the child miserable for years.  (Been there, done that, and I can tell you, the damage it causes is life-long.)  If the child does change their mind, they simply go back to living like any cis child.

At puberty, the usual practice seems to be to use puberty blockers, which are considered reversible, and to not do anything irreversable until the child is old enough (age 18?)  Generally considered safe, especially in comparison to doing nothing and risking things like suicide.

Quote from: sam1234 on May 18, 2015, 12:53:42 AM
Its definitely a field that needs more looking into.

What do you think the adults (parents, medical people, etc.) in these children's lives are doing?

Given that the psychiatric establishment was, until very recently, convinced that being trans was ipso facto a disorder and that the only appropriate treatment was to brainwash trans people into "accepting" their assigned gender (and a substantial part of it still believes that), it's amazing we know anything at all.

Quote from: sam1234 on May 18, 2015, 12:53:42 AM
I don't believe that being a transgender is a mental illness, but just for the sake of argument, there are mental illnesses that cannot be diagnosed before a certain age because of the way the brain develops. If this the same with a transgender?

Studies show that children know their gender at a very young age.