Does making transgender children wait to transition make it harder for them in the long run?
In a story set to be published in the New Yorker on Monday, author Margaret Talbot tells the story of Skyler, a teenager from New Haven, Connecticut, who began his physical transition from female-to-male at the age of 14. As Talbot explains,
Skylar is a boy, but he was born a girl, and lived as one until the age of fourteen. Skylar would put it differently: he believes that, despite biological appearances, he was a boy all along. He’d just been burdened with a body that required medical and surgical adjustments so that it could reflect the gender he knew himself to be. At sixteen, he started getting testosterone injections every other week; just before he turned seventeen, he had a double mastectomy … No matter what people thought they saw when they looked at him … he knew that he “was nothing along the lines of a girl.”
According to Newser, with transgender issues taking more of the center stage in recent years, “Parents and doctors are embracing transgender surgery for children at younger ages.” Some as young as elementary school in fact. The argument behind this new practice is that, “Early surgery and puberty-suppressing medication will make kids better looking and mentally stronger as they change genders.” However, some parents are truly struggling with these decisions concerning their children, and some medical experts caution that early treatments such as these can carry significant risks.
What do you think?
Would you allow your child to have transgender surgery before he or she is a legal adult? If so, how young?
What would you factor into the decision?
Photo: VishalKapoorMD/Flickr
This is a really tough question. As a child I wanted to be a boy. I was supposed to be a boy, a gay boy for that matter. I knew there was nothing I could do about it, let alone that I didn’t have to courage to tell anyone. My mother bought me boys’ clothes to wear but she didn’t know that I wanted to BE a boy, she probably just thought I was gay. Now as adult (still female), admittedly, I was a little jealous when I heard about the hormone suppressing drugs that are now available. I’m fine… Read more »
Puberty suppressing stuff doesn’t cause irreversible changes.
Consent is the obvious difference.
OK & how does this stack up next to parents deciding to circumcise their sons?
Has anyone ever heard of castrati?
This is a decision tree I would hate to face…
Personally, I think puberty-supressing stuff and hormones should be given ASAP. And that bottom surgery should stop being thought of as this magic bullet that will fix it all. 1) Every place in the world should offer to be able to change name and legal marker without needing bottom surgery 2) a) Surgery is expensive, carries health risk, and is generally not “as good” as the “born-with” deal (and I’m not talking about fertility). It can probably infect easier and get unique-to-trans-people stuff (due to the material and possible complications), on top of what cis people get with the same… Read more »
Yes. I’ve known several transgender people, including my own father, and their experiences have convinced me that if a child wants to transition, they should be allowed to do so as soon as it is medically safe. Every transgender person that I’ve known who transitioned as an adult has expressed regret that they could not have started the process before puberty made changes their body. This is especially true of people who transitioned from male to female, since the changes that occur during puberty for men are more irrevocable. At the same time, the transgender people I’ve known who started… Read more »