Lost in transition
by Gavin Doyle, Nele Obermueller
http://www.exberliner.com/articles/lost-in-transition/index.htmlAlexander was two years old when he sat up in the bathtub next to his baby sister and declared "I'm a girl, too." His mother Anna thought little of this and replied simply, "No, you're a boy." Still, Alexander insisted, so Anna told him, "Look between your legs. See. You're a boy." But Alexander saw something else, something his mother would learn to understand but his father never could. "I'm just a different type of girl," he would later say.
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In 2011, that social worker was replaced with one Anna prefers to keep unnamed. After only a 30-minute talk with Anna and a one-hour conversation with Alexandra, the social worker decided Alexandra's transsexual identity had been "injected" into her by her mother. After hearing this opinion, the youth office ruled that Alexandra should be removed from the care of her mother (who was no longer responsible for Alexandra's healthcare) and put into the Charité's psychiatric ward for up to three years, to the outrage of gender rights activists. They pointed out that no psychiatric assessments of Alexandra or Anna were conducted on which to base the decision.
Instead, it rested on the opinion of a social worker with no medical background, and on very brief observations made of Alexandra in the Charité back in 2007 (when she was seven years old). As Anna's appeal of the decision is being reviewed, Alexandra anxiously awaits a decision from the experts who will pass sentence over her future. She still lives at her mother's home. But for how long?
