When my son was in preschool, there was this kid who was convinced he was a train. Actually this child—let’s call him Thomas—believed he was a locomotive. “Train,” I learned from Tommy, is technically the engine plus all its attached cars. One person couldn’t be a whole train, Tommy explained to me. That would just be silly!
And this definitely wasn’t about being silly. This was no one-day play identity for Tommy. As I recall, Tommy spent over a year being a locomotive, day in and day out. And not just any loco. Tommy was—and he seemed convinced he would remain—the type of Union Pacific articulated steam locomotive known as a “Big Boy.”
I had to hand it to Tommy. He made about as convincing a locomotive as a kid could be. He blew his whistle in advance of crossing paths and rang his bell when he came into “stations.” On really cold days, he couldn’t move forward until his firebox had warmed enough to make a good head of steam. Once he could really see his breath, then he’d chug along.
The other preschool parents thought this was so cute. I kept wondering whether, by the time Tommy grew up, there was going to be a surgeon who would offer to transform him physically into an engine. I wasn’t sure what that would look like, but I had already met a surgeon interested in using his craft to provide people with wings. I figured that surgeon, 20 years later, might be willing—given enough cash and a firm liability waiver—to try to approximate a Big Boy, trademark infringement on Union Pacific notwithstanding.
Before I get slaughtered by the trans activist community (again), let me be clear that I don’t think being a transgender adult is like being a child who imagines he is a locomotive. There’s no analogue to the engine-wish among adult humans. Meanwhile, most adult humans do seem to have gender identities, and we know that some people grow up with genders that don’t match their body types. I support the right of people to determine their own genders, and even to change them repeatedly. I don’t see a lot of reason why governments need to keep as close track of our gender identities as they do. And if a person is found by a qualified mental health professional to be likely to be left better off in terms of mental health by “sex change” interventions, then I think those interventions should be paid for by the same insurance systems that pay for treatment of depression and anxiety.
Some will label me anti-trans for opening with my story of Tommy, but I’m not. I just think the way some putative progressives are dealing with trans right now among kids is—well, it’s kind of transphobic.
Changing a kid’s name and gender identification at the age of 5 or 6? This approach takes gender claims of little children so seriously that it’s actually beholden to a ridiculously strict notion of gender. No meaningful trans really allowed.
Fact is, kids don’t always mean what we mean when they make seemingly firm identity claims. Let’s go over some other uncomfortable facts. The great majority of young children who declare they are a gender that doesn’t match their birth sex grow out of the mismatch. Most boys who declare themselves girls or act girly grow up to be ordinary gay men. These men may occasionally crossdress for fun using drag handles like “Helvetica Bold,” but they won’t seek to have their penises and testicles removed and replaced by estrogen and a vulva.
Young girls who declare in word or behavior that they are boys end up all over the place, which at some level proves to me most really are females. (As a general rule, males end up more specific about identities and interests, while females have broader interests and greater flexibility of experience; so we would predict that males would have clearer clusters of outcomes than females do.) Some gender-bending little girls will end up as men—gay, straight, bi—but a fair number will end up as lesbian, bi, and straight women who have no sense of having been “born in the wrong body.”
Sex-changing interventions are nontrivial. They involve substantial physical risk, including major risk to sexual sensation, and a lifelong commitment to trying to manage hormone replacement. Most people seem to get how serious sex-changing interventions are when we’re not talking about transgender. A couple of weeks ago, a man writing into Savage Love mentioned that he had voluntarily been castrated—a fetish, don’t you know—and the commentators went, well, nuts. And most people get that it was wrong for doctors in the past to take baby boys born with small penises and sex-change them with genital surgeries and hormonal interventions.
But somehow if we wrap these major interventions around gender identity, we’re supposed to believe they are not that big a deal in terms of planning for a child’s future? And the clinician who tries to get a gender dysphoric kid to learn to like her or his innate body really is a Nazi? Not buying it.
Look, I am certainly not suggesting we go back to the UCLA Sissy Boy Experiment days of George Rekers and try to metaphorically or literally beat the sissy out of boys and the butch out of girls. But I am also sick and tired of trans-rights advocates acting like a certain current-day endocrinologist is ever-so-progressive because he essentially starts prepping genderqueer kids for surgery the moment they are presented by their distraught parents. Reminds me a little too much of Iran, you know?
So what do we do with these kids?
For over a decade, my friend and colleague Paul Vasey has been studying the fa’afafine people of Samoa. These are biological males who, as the word fa’afafine translates, live “in the manner of women.” These folks were born male typical, but from pretty early on they seemed quite girlish—girl-typical in activities, dress, play, and general self-identity. The Samoans get that this happens. They just give these kids a way to be—they say, “you’re fa’afafine”—without sending any message that their bodies aren’t appropriate to their senses of self.
Paul’s research, comparing the Samoan experience with the North American, indicates that the stress genderqueer kids here feel is not inherent to them. Being genderqueer doesn’t make you distressed. Distress arises from the push and pull of the people around who just can’t deal.
So “What do we do with these kids?” is the wrong question. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them. The problem is us and the way we demand certainty from them, the way we insist on conformation to a two-sex model as early as possible. The problem is the bullies and gender-obsessed adults, not the genderqueer kids.
What if a boy could go to school in a dress and still be a boy? What if a girl could declare she’s going to grow up to be a man without being dragged to a clinic for a cure and/or prep? What if we made the bullies go get mental health interventions first (or, at least, too)?
You know what? We don’t have to force our little locomotives to pick one track or the other. They just want love, reasonable-but-not-infinite space to try stuff out, and a nice warm roundhouse to come home to at the end of the day. We can wait to see where they need to go tomorrow. 
Alice Dreger, PhD, is professor of clinical medical humanities and bioethics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine. Her personal website is www.alicedreger.com.
Unless you’re one of these kids, or one of these parents… maybe you really can’t express from experience, and so should talk to some of them and learn a thing or three. Just saying. In this case, you’re ALL ignorant. I am too.
@ 42: “Alice Dreger may indeed be an unethical academic; but to attack her as a person rather than debunking her theories is counterproductive”
So people who have been proven to be unethical and/or con artists get a pass? The reality of who they are is unmentionable?
Sorry, but any critique of any “theory” that, for example, Chuck Colson might spew, can rightly be preceded by the phrase “convicted felon and Watergate conspirator.” That’s personal. Its also fact. And it is relevant to anything that has oozed out of his mouth since Watergate.
Alice Dreger has, in effect, professionally merged her DNA with that of the unethical author of a fraudulent ‘science’ book on transsexualism, Michael Bailey. Anything that she has uttered since her Madoff-esque effort to rehabilitate Bailey the fraudmeister must be analyzed with that attempted rehabilitation as preface.
I knew someone who thought she was an advocate for trans and gender queer people when she had zero support from or affiliation with those very people. And zero interest or ability in forging those connections going forward.
Sadly, she didn’t grow out of it.
Her deeply ingrained delusional systems of some relevance and entitlement to speak for peoples she can’t connect with on any level would be merely considered sad in most professions. But unlike her compatriots in the used car trade, she can make a living from sources other than those who would be the normal consumers of her dubious wares. A form of professional enabling.
Prognosis…….guarded.
For what it’s worth: Paul Vasey and Doug VanderLaan do NOT use the term “genderqueer”, or “sugar boys”, or “gay” to characterize fa’afafine:
“… in Independent Samoa, almost all fa’afafine exhibit transgendered male androphilia, not egalitarian male androphilia.”*
They use TRANSGENDERED.
Some folks just can’t bring themselves to make this distinction, especially those who feel acute discomfort over the whole idea of getting surgery to become a “locomotive”… haha:
THAT’S SO FUNNY I FORGOT TO LAUGH
– bonze Anne Rose Blayk
*Vasey et al – Avuncular Tendencies and the Evolution of Male Androphilia in Samoan Fa’afafine – http://psy2.ucsd.edu/~mgorman/Vasey2009.…
Alice Drager must be the queen of misinformation. The standard ‘treatment’ for trans kids is to delay puberty onset to allow them to work out their gender issues themselves before any drastic action is taken. This is critical because all the literature suggests that GID in children does not necessarily translate to GID in adulthood. I don’t know of single trans person who would advocate any other treatment. Perhaps she can find one but to then write as if there is some kind of trans activist conspiracy that forces gender changes in children is just so far from the truth that it borders on fantasy.
“But I am also sick and tired of trans-rights advocates acting like a certain current-day endocrinologist is ever-so-progressive because he essentially starts prepping genderqueer kids for surgery the moment they are presented by their distraught parents. Reminds me a little too much of Iran, you know?”
Not mentioning Dr Spack of the Boston Clinic by name, of course.
In a perfect world, such articles as this could be written without them being misused or misconstrued, or perverted by the malicious and hateful. In a perfect world, one could also speculate about the influence of World Jewry on the International Banking System without being Anti-Semitic, or conjecture that the reason Blacks are imprisoned in disproportionate numbers in the USA is because Blacks are, statistically speaking, inherently morally inferior and of limited intelligence – all without being Racist. Then we could sensibly discuss, say, the influence of nutrition on brain development, socialisation, the effects of generations of racist persecution, the perpetuation of underclass status, systemic racism in the court system, and all the other confounding factors that make genetic racism so much hogwash.
However, we don’t live in such a perfect world.
We live in one where the history of Anti-Semitism for example, past and present, is such that any such speculation had better be larded with ten times its own weight in disclaimers, caveats, and the like. Not to do so would be irresponsible, cloth-eared, and unbelievably insensitive.
The fact is that there is and has been a very powerful movement to ban sex-reassignment surgery under any circumstances. That the deaths that will result are often seen as desirable. That rabidly transphobic organisations exist, which take Dr Drager’s expressed ideas as justification for persecuting and even exterminating trans people. That such ideas are openly taught at academic institutions.
In a sane world, we’d have good data about follow-ups to Dr Zuckers protocols (let’s continue naming names here)- “the clinician who tries to get a gender dysphoric kid to learn to like her or his innate body”.
Such interventions would not be associated with suicide attempts, anxiety attacks on seeing the colour pink, and other sequelae. But they are. Are they causal? That’s another matter, but they certainly might be, whether Dr Dreger buys it or not.
In a conversation I had with Dr Milton Diamond, he pointed out to me that both Zucker and Spack were engaged in experimental therapies, that neither had a good evidential basis. The charge of “Mengele-esque” behaviour on the part of Dr Zucker was not justified purely by his experimentation using children as subjects. In order to determine what is best for such gender dusphoric children, we have to experiment, or abdicate responsibility and let too many of them die.
There is one difference though; Zucker’s protocol is coercive, even if rather more gently so than Rekers’ beatings, or for that matter, the UCLA experiments using cattle-prods on autistic toddlers that happen even now. Toys are withheld, existing friendships no longer permitted.
Spack’s is permissive, the child neither encouraged into gender non-conformity, nor discouraged, but allowed.
Anecdote is not data, but I would ask Dr Dreger to see, as I have, some of the people who have been through both protocols. The differences I observed were startling. Before starting to talk about Iran and Nazis, please actually talk to the human beings involved, not as experimental subjects, but as people. Then go do some good science, double-blind follow-ups, to see if one’s initial impressions are backed up, or contradicted, by objective facts.
Meanwhile, although this was not Dr Dreger’s intention, objectively this article will result in increased persecution of trans and intersex people, and the denial of basic human rights in a legal sense. It shouldn’t. We should be able to do good science and express such ideas as hers without this consequence. But we can’t, and not to acknowledge that is to be deliberately blind to the irrationalism and anti-scientific bent of political ideologies today, the very thing she herself complains about.
I was a trans-kid as far back as the 1960’s. Happily my parents were among the tiny minority back then who DID believe me and tried to accommodate me. The only result that I can see from this is that I grew up a happy and well adjusted woman and not an unhappy and badly screwed up gay man. This does not seem to me to be a bad result. When I look around at most of my less fortunate trans peers I see misery and repression.
I simply don’t understand why you would wish repression on someone Alice. It seems twisted and sick to me to visit on others needless suffering and confusion when there are means available to help them. Sure the diagnostic process isn’t perfect, but it continues to improve and lets face it very little medicine has a 100% success rate.
Kudos on your ability to construct straw-trans-people and straw-gender-therapists to a high art form, Dr. Dreger. No wonder you have no credibility in the communities profess to advocate for.
People like Dreger, Blanchard, Bailey, and Zucker will never understand someone like me.
They’ll eagerly hold our head under water until we stop kicking, and get us to accept the ‘gay in denial’ label, the ‘fetishist’ label, or the ‘gender queer’ label.
Does each of those exist? Certainly. Any fool with eyes can see that for themselves. It doesn’t even take their famous sock-puppet routines to make that point.
But am i willing to be falsely grouped into a pathological catagory i don’t belong, to make your academic life easier? Or watch young new transsexual be dragged unwillingly into them also?
i think not.
Anonymous T-Girl
http://www.anonymous-t-girl@blogspot.com
I see that it has been less than 24 hours before Dr Dregers words were being used by sites advocating withdrawal of human rights from Intersexed and Trans people, and in some cases, advocating their literal extermination.
Rather earlier than I’d expected, but entirely foreseeable.
They now have a venir of academic respectability to hide behind, one Dr Dreger has provided. I won’t speculate on Dr Dreger’s intentions here, but to take the most charitable view, she’d have to be extraordinarily insensitive and naive to expect anything else.
Can we see an article from an actual transperson? All these cispeople just seem clueless and extremely confident in their cluelessness.
Actually this is NOT a trans issue, it is a human rights and children’s rights issue. Children should be accepted and loved as they are, and a societally defined “mismatch”of Gender and Sex should never lead to assumption that a child will need to or ought to change their mind or their body. Children should be free to explore and to be and to grow. We should start with the assumption that everything about them (body, mind, gender expression) is to be treasured as it emerges. The type of thinking that starts socially “transitioning” children in a pathway towards surgery at 5 or six hatefully pathologises the childs body in the same way earlier therapies hatefully pathologies hatefully pathologised childrens minds and identities. Intersex activists like myself have fought long for acceptance of diversity and against parents or mediocos making life-limiting decisions for children. This applies as much to children society (or parents or medicos) judges as having as miss-match of gender and biology as it does to intersex children with biological aspects that don’t match conventionally.
In adult life people chose gender expressions, sexuality and roles they never could have anticipated as children. We should not let parents or medicos limits life options for children by offerring sterilization and medical dependancy as part of package deal to “fix”gender/sex missmatch. The possibility that a child might grow up to be gay, genderqueer, or even a non-op transgender person is denied these children. While I am utterly against Dregar’s (former) advocacy of DSD terminology I believe she is that rare species of Academic who actually braves learning and changing her opinion to adapt to new understanding. This issue is really important human rights one regardless of your views on Dregar. And to the Academic who has an astounding ignorance of the growing practice of transitioning children before they have the cognitive development to understand sex v’s gender (let alone the happy missmatches they might find as an adult) – please try to familiarise yourself with this very visible increasing trend (the topic of this article). Type “trans children” into you tube – and watch the multitude of interviews with children and the parents who descibe their 6year old’s genitals as birth defects and watch while parents tell lies to their children about the exciting surgical plans already made for them.
A Two Families’ Reactions to Sons who like Pink:
The program and article I’d like you to look at show two different ways parents might react to having a son who from pre-school age seemed to behave in non-gender conforming (“girly”) ways.
What if your preschooler son was “Girly”?
If your preschooler son asked for a Barbie doll, how would you feel? Would you give it to him? In years gone-by almost all parents would answer a resounding “no!” to that question and would probably add “my son would never ask for that” in a defensive or dismissive tone. These days many parents are more flexible. They allow children access to toys and even clothes of the “opposite” gender, seeing it as part of growing up and exploring. But what about families of boys who recurrently break gender norms, those who raise undeniably feminine boys?
Let’s look at two very different families who let their son’s “choose pink”, and how these families different assumptions about gender lead to very different socialization of their children, and, consequently a very different range of future possibilities for their children.
Family One : “My son the pink boy” – by Sarah Hoffman
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/0…
This article “My son the pink boy” (published on the Open Salon blog on 21st Feb 2011) describes a mothers acceptance of her son’s gender non- conforming choices. She let her son wear dresses, grow his hair and do ballet instead of football. The mother “Sarah Hoffman” notes other parents mixed reactions to her son, but also describes his happy interaction with both boys and girls his own age. She still sees her son as a boy – but describes his shade unconventional gender expression as being a “pink boy”. Hoffman notes peoples assumptions that her son will grow up to be gay but asserts “Random Mom doesn’t know who or what my son is going to grow up to be, any more than she knows who or what her kid is going to grow up to be.” Hoffman asserts that gender expression doesn’t necessarily predict sexual orientation and gives her husband’s feminine behavior as a heterosexual example of a feminine man, but further states that she will embrace her son’s orientation whichever way it goes.
Sarah Hoffman defends her son’s right to self-expression, and embraces and accepts his choices and his right to determine and define his own identity and sexuality as he grows. She accepts him as a perfect and healthy variation of his gender and sex and does not limit what or who he might be in the future. Hoffman’s son is likely to internalize positive and accepting ideas about himself because of this positive upbringing
Hoffman’s article also provides an insightful analysis of hidden homophobia in both social and media reactions to non-conforming gender expression in boys. She describes how talk show Guru Dr Phil discourages feminine behavior in boys because of its association with homosexuality
In Context:
In the 1970’s when feminine behavior in boys was widely ostracized, many feminine boys were diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder. Researcher Zucker theorized these boys would go on to be surgery seeking transgender people. In a large scale longditudinal study it was found that these boys rarely ended up trans – usually ending up self-accepting homosexual men (roughly 3/4) or heterosexual men (roughly 1/4). This is important to consider when looking at the socialization in the following video, set in a cultural context where there is little tolerance for gender ambiguity.
Family Two – Real life: Transgender Kids – The Romero Family
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EPffj8k7i…
This documentary details the journey of a number of children who are being socialized towards surgery intended to match their body with their gender expression.
Josie Romero was born male, but showed a preference for feminine toys and clothes. In Josie’s cultural context gender roles are still very traditional, with no room for ambiguity. Such cultures are usually also stridently homophobic. In such cultures men are masculine, and because homosexuality is seen as “sinful”, it is something you would avoid seeing the possibility of in your child. Boys in such cultures internalize the view that pink and sparkly is only for girls, so if they feel drawn to such things it compromises their gender identity. Socially unacceptable variations can sometimes be excused as blameless by re-conceptualizing them as medical problems. Here Josie’s family describes their child’s penis as a birth defect. They are blind to other differences in primary sexual characteristics. Josie is told by her mother she will get an operation that will fix her birth defect by turning her penis inside out to make it the vagina it was meant to be and hormones will give her a female puberty. When Josie asks “How?” her questions are brushed off. Science and medicine don’t offer Josie these possibilities. If she does not escape the path already plotted for her Josie will be sterilized and artificial genitals will replace her real ones before she even gets to try them. She will be medically dependent for life. She will never experience a live and responsive endocrine system, only a flat-line one delivered by pills. Josie is being socialized in a way that deprives her as self-determination and betrays her with false choices. The characterization of her biological self as defective, will likely be internalized in her self –perception, as will the lack of autonomy created by her dependence on medical intervention she has not initiated. Her experience of surgery and treatment might be expected to be closer to that of an intersex child who has had surgery chosen for them than the potentially empowering experience of a self-determined transexual who has chosen surgery for themselves. Josie’s parents say she has made this choice, but it is clear that an informed choice could not be made by an eight year old in this situation.
Josie has been socialized in a way that limits her future choices and autonomy. The drastic pathway planned for Josie at the tender age of eight is new and extreme form of gender policing, where if minds and behavior can’t be conformed, to sex –matching ideals then bodies are controlled to give the appearance of a match.
References:
Henslin, J. M., Possamai, A. and Possamai-Inesedy, A. (2011) Sociology: A Down-to-Earth-Approach, Pearson Australia
Hoffman, S. My son the pink boy, Salon.com 2011, Feb 21st.
http://www.salon.com/life/feature/2011/0…
Zucker, KJ. Gender identity development and issues. Child Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics North America 2004, 13: 551-568.
Let’s consider what Dr Dreger means though when she talks about “the clinician who tries to get a gender dysphoric kid to learn to like her or his innate body”
Because that doesn’t describe the Hoffman’s hands-off approach.
http://www.npr.org/2008/05/07/90247842/t…
—
“It does seem to be the case that, at least in the short term, Carol’s son Bradley is struggling in some ways with Zucker’s therapy. Carol says it was particularly hard at the beginning.
“He was much more emotional. … He could be very clingy. He didn’t want to go to school anymore,” she says. “Just the smallest thing could, you know, send him into a major crying fit. And … he seemed to feel really heavy and really emotional.”
Bradley has been in therapy now for eight months, and Carol says still, on the rare occasions when she cannot avoid having him exposed to girl toys, like when they visit family, it doesn’t go well.
“It’s really hard for him. He’ll disappear and close a door, and we’ll find him playing with dolls and Polly Pockets and … the stuff that he’s drawn to,” she says.
In particular, there is one typically girl thing — now banned — that her son absolutely cannot resist.
“He really struggles with the color pink. He really struggles with the color pink. He can’t even really look at pink,” Carol says. “He’s like an addict. He’s like, ‘Mommy, don’t take me there! Close my eyes! Cover my eyes! I can’t see that stuff; it’s all pink!’ “
Still, Carol says, Bradley has made some progress. Today, he is able to play with boys. He has a few male friends, and has said that he now enjoys boy things. And there are other signs of change.
“I mean, he tells us now that he doesn’t dream anymore that he’s a girl. So, we’re happy with that. He’s still a bit defensive if we ask him, ‘Do you want to be a girl?’ He’s like ‘No, NO! I’m happy being a boy. …’ He gives us that sort of stock answer. … I still think we’re at the stage where he feels he’s leading a double life,” she says. “… I’m still quite certain that he is with the girls all the time at school, and so he knows to behave one way at school, and then when he comes home, there’s a different set of expectations.”
—
I’ll quote someone Dr Dreger has defended, J. Michael Bailey, speaking about Zucker’s Therapeutic regime:
“Zucker thinks that an important goal of treatment is to help the children accept their birth sex and to avoid becoming transsexual.
…
First, he thinks that family dynamics play a large role in childhood GID (Gender Identity Disorder)—not necessarily in the origins of cross-gendered behavior, but in their persistence.
…
So the first prong of Zucker’s approach is family therapy.
…
The second prong is therapy for the boy, to help him adjust to the idea that he cannot become a girl, and to help teach him how to minimize social ostracism. Zucker does not teach boys how to walk in a manly fashion, but he does give them feedback about the likely consequences of taking a doll to school.
…
The third prong is key. Zucker says simply: “The Barbies have to go.” He has nothing against Barbie dolls, of course. He means something more general. Feminine toys and accoutrements—including Barbie dolls, girls’ shoes, dresses, purses, and princess gowns—are no longer to be tolerated at home, much less bought for the child.
…
Failure to intervene increases the chances of transsexualism in adulthood, which Zucker considers a bad outcome. … Why put boys at risk for this when they can become gay men happy to be men?”
—
Let’s have a look at Zucker’s “successes”. http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/arch…
—
“Zucker put me in touch with two of his success stories, a boy and a girl, now both living in the suburbs of Toronto.
…
When I visited the family, John was lazing around with his older brother, idly watching TV and playing video games, dressed in a polo shirt and Abercrombie & Fitch shorts. He said he was glad he’d been through the therapy, “because it made me feel happy,” but that’s about all he would say; for the most part, his mother spoke for him. Recently, John was in the basement watching the Grammys. When Caroline walked downstairs to say good night, she found him draped in a blanket, vamping. He looked up at her, mortified. She held his face and said, “You never have to be embarrassed of the things you say or do around me.” Her position now is that the treatment is “not a cure; this will always be with him”—but also that he has nothing to be ashamed of. About a year ago, John carefully broke the news to his parents that he is gay.
…
Yet Zucker’s approach has its own disturbing elements. It’s easy to imagine that his methods—steering parents toward removing pink crayons from the box, extolling a patriarchy no one believes in—could instill in some children a sense of shame and a double life. A 2008 study of 25 girls who had been seen in Zucker’s clinic showed positive results; 22 were no longer gender-dysphoric, meaning they were comfortable living as girls. But that doesn’t mean they were happy. I spoke to the mother of one Zucker patient in her late 20s, who said her daughter was repulsed by the thought of a sex change but was still suffering—she’d become an alcoholic, and was cutting herself. “I’d be surprised if she outlived me,” her mother said.
—
This shows the “best results” when transsexual children are coerced into “accepting their own bodies”.
That Dr Zucker’s views are based on political and ideological beliefs, not evidence, is shown by his own words:
“The therapists supporting a child’s transition early, I have characterized them in a half serious way as liberal essentialists. On the surface, the approach comes across as very humanistic, liberal, accepting, tolerant of diversity. But I think the hidden assumption is that they believe the child’s cross-gender identity is entirely caused by biological factors. That’s why I call them essentialists. Liberals have always been critical of biological reductionism, but here they embrace it. I think that conceptual approach is astonishingly naive and simplistic, and I think it’s wrong.”
He’s right in that I believe a child’s cross-gender identity is entirely the result of biological factors; but doesn’t realise that as neither sex nor gender are strict binaries, borderline cases exist, just as do extreme ones. Try to force transition on someone who is neither transsexual nor borderline – bi-gendered – and you get a David Reimer situation. Try to force non-transition on an extreme transsexual child, you get the same kind if problems.
Of the two approaches mentioned in “Family One” and “Family Two”, I’d personally be more comfortable with the “Family One” approach. If the child is Transsexual, with a gender identity towards the extreme, they’ll tell us so. If a borderline case, then anything which can avoid the problems inherent in major surgery of any kind, especially one that causes sterility, has to be the preferred option.
However… if the child is not a borderline case, then while a hands-off approach will do no harm – the child will insist on transition (or insist on *not* transitioning) anyway – if they’re not borderline, no amount of encouragement to fit into a gender binary others think is “appropriate” will make the slightest bit of difference. Except to possibly leave them suicidal if the wrong side of the binary line is chosen for them. Trying to make them fit our own ideas of what their bodies should look like based on our ideological beliefs is a recipe for disaster.
Transsexuality comes in different degrees. When the symptoms are obvious when young, it’s usually not borderline at all. But may be, so unless obviously extreme, use “hands off”.
I guess that the best way is to point out choices, including ones outside the gender binary, and let the child decide. This is not an abdication of responsibility, it’s attempting to “do no harm”. When the child reaches the age of consent, then allow puberty-delaying treatment. Before that in the case of precocious puberty, just as we do with non-trans children as a matter of routine.
Then, as young adults, old enough to marry anyway, they can give fully informed consent to whatever treatment *they*, not we, think is best.
Maybe I should add – I fit neatly into the binary concept of gender, though hardly the Doris Day stereotype. More of the “Girl Scientist”, my role models Grace Hopper, Hypatia, Mdm Curie, Ada Augusta Byron, Rosamund Franklin, rather than Brigitte Bardot. Though I wouldn’t mind looking like her…
I was brought up in a very patriarchal society – girls became nurses, not doctors, beauticians, not astronauts. When I was young, I wanted to be a boy, as they got to do the cool stuff.
But it was obvious I wasn’t one. While other girls I found silly and sissy, boys were ALIEN, puerile, immature.
Sounds like a conflicted tomboy who might consider an unwise FtoM transition?
No, because my birth certificate said “boy”. As it turned out, that was biologically incorrect, I’m Intersex (please… not disordered… different) but I digress, I looked male when young. I was socialised as male. It made not the slightest bit of difference to my gender identity. Biologically, my sex is as far outside the strict binary as my gender identity is within it.
When I had genital reconstruction (necessary to remove cancer risk and ensure urinary function), I didn’t expect much – though by that time it was something of a compulsion. I didn’t anticipate the feeling of “YES!! THINGS FEEL RIGHT NOW!!!” that I got. Suddenly, a lot of things made sense, in terms of instincts and feeling my body was part of me, not a shell I inhabited. The unexpected feeling of relief was indescribable – though reported by many classically Transsexual women.
However… I can’t and shouldn’t universalise my own experience. But I am a counter-example to much ideologically-based theorising, even if my own narrative doesn’t match that of a single other person on the planet (though it probably does).
I think Dr Dreger should do a bit more listening, and a bit less ideological preaching. As probably, should I.
There are a few things you can count on whenever the trans issue is brought up:
1. It’s a semantic jungle full of angry lesbians
2. Whatever you say will be wrong
A-fucking-MEN! & RIGHT FUCKING ON! THANK YOU!
1.) i’m angry, but straight.
2.) You forgot, ‘…and used against you.’
Well done.
http://www.anonymous-t-girl@blogspot.com
Zoe – you are creating straw men! no one is defending Zucker’s practices. The point here is that it is as harmful to pathologise and manipulate children’s bodies as it is to pathologize and manipulate children’s minds. Both extreme interventionist approaches to young children with an internal diversity of sex and/or gender expression are oppressive interfering and limit children’s life choices. Read my earlier posts with an open mind. Try and put yourself into the position of a child for who is groomed towards irreversible surgery from ery early childhood. These children’s life options are limited based on narrow ideas of how our minds and bodies must match in order for us to be “acceptable” human beings. It makes me really angry to keep hearing repeated the idea that people whose bodies and or body/mind combinations are unconventional are intrinsically flawed or in need of altering to be happy. The practice of grooming young children towards puberty blockers and surgery is rejecting, narrow minded and (perhaps not intentionally? ) hateful. Setting children on this path in early childhood is the antithesis to the acceptance and care all children need and the antithesis to the freedom and self determination basic to all human rights.I strongly support the right for self identified trans young adults to choose their treatment (or no treatment)- and this cannot be achieved without protecting them (and all children) from pre-emptive gender policing interventions chosen by adults for them.
Let’s be clear Zoe. Hoffman and Dregar are (as you well know) both completely against Zucker’s practices. The whole point about reflecting on Zuckers studies were that the outcomes were not as expected and the longditudinal outcomes suggest that Zucker’s (psychological) interventions are unfounded (it is harmful to try and shape children’s minds) and further suggest that we cannot confidently predict adult transexuality from children’s behaviour (shaping children’s bodies is also futile/harmful). Extracting lessons from Zucker’s studies does not equate to sitting in his camp! (you know this – you are an academic!)
—
While this stranger article by Dregar uses a pretty stupid and insensitive analogy, the issues are very important. Dregar actually wrote an article last year revising her own earlier stance on transitioning young children – and her willingness to open her mind and realise her earlier narrow mindedness was my first recognition that she may not be all bad.
In the following article both Zucker and Childhood Trans gender-reinforcing approaches are rejected in favour of Hoffman’s Hands off approach:
http://www.thehastingscenter.org/Bioethi…
Dear Alice,
Many, many years ago you were welcomed in as a helper. And for a time you did help. But over the last decade that changed. You started becoming a critic and then an enemy. So you’ve come full circle in a way. My advice is that you retire while you still have a reputation (at least among cisgender people).
Georgina – please see my own comment on that article you quote.
Dr Dreger’s unfortunate turns of phrase left me with the impression that she had reverted to her former position.
If “the clinician who tries to get a gender dysphoric kid to learn to like her or his innate body” is not Zucker, who else could it be? Who else has been described as “really .. a Nazi”?
If the only clinician that puts teenagers on puberty blockers in the USA is not “a certain current-day endocrinologist”, who is? Not that “he essentially starts prepping genderqueer kids for surgery the moment they are presented by their distraught parents” except in the fevered imagination of some far-right religious nuts and far-left feminists.
Perhaps Dr Dreger should actually look at the protocols – and the diagnostic criteria that Zucker uses, and the very different ones used by Spack.
Most of Zucker’s patients do not conform to the DSM-IV-TR criteria, flawed though they may be. He takes in *any* child showing *any* signs of cross-sexed behaviour when young, and tries to make them happy, well-adjusted but genitally intact gays and lesbians. As many would turn out that way anyway, he is able to claim a high rate of “success” – though without a control group that shows any difference from *not* having treatment, his results are, at best, questionable.
Spack on the other hand only tracks for *likely* (not certain) transition those meeting even more stringent requirements than are in the DSM-IV-TR. He leaves the possibility open for others, but emphasises that this is not the only route available, or even likely, for them.
See if I have interpreted you aright: your concern is twofold: that pre-gay children will be coerced into becoming transsexual *after* transition from environmental pressure to conform to a gender binary; and that transgendered children are not being given the option of being themselves, genitally intact but gender-nonconforming, due to a fanatic adherence to a strict gender binary model too.
These dangers are very real, if the situation is not handled well. Your concerns are not chimeric, they’re valid, and there would be a danger of either happening in the hands of hopelessly incompetent physicians desperate to be “progressive”.
Your fear that such physicians exist is justified too. Spack’s not one of them though.
My concern is that strongly neurologically cross-sexed children, who firmly and implacably state what sex they are from a very early age, get damaged if forced into a transgender or cisgender role which does not fit. Their gender really does fit into the binary model far better than any other. These are extreme cases, but need careful handling, and need to be distinguished from the great majority who do not meet the strict diagnostic criteria here. Mere gender-nonconformity in play patterns is *not* a reliable indicator that transition is appropriate.
Moreover, there is no doubt in my mind that there are many who have had surgery, who didn’t actually *need* it. They were forced into it by legislation that required proof of surgery in order to marry, or acquire accurate ID, or to avoid very real legal and social dangers. While such matters should always be the patient’s decision, I think we’re on very shaky ethical grounds if we didn’t make the case that legalisms are no excuse for extensive and risky medical interventions. The Law and societal attitudes should change, not people’s bodies – unless that’s really necessary.
BUT… there are some where the superior parietal lobule is so cross-sexed that preventing them from accessing surgery is likely to kill them, but only after years of torment. They’re a minority, but not a *small* minority. And there are others who it won’t actually kill, just leave utterly miserable.
I speak from personal experience, being in the latter category. I could have lived with it – just as I could have lived with paraplegia. Not that I knew I was miserable – I didn’t understand the concept of “happiness”, so had no reference to use. Now I do, and the world makes a great deal more sense now.
What I foresee happening as the result of Dr Dreger’s article is that the trendoid and incompetent therapists who could actually benefit from it, won’t. They will either never hear of it, or of they do, will interpret it as now being “fashionable” to deny surgery or hormones to anyone under any circumstances. They’re incompetent, remember?
And it will be, and is being, used by those opposed to surgery under any circumstances whatsoever, due to religious or ideological beliefs, to agitate for surgery to be made illegal – though there’s some cognitive dyssonance there, as the religious nutters believe that the Strict Gender Binary Is Decreed By God, while the Idealogues see Gender as a concept (including Transgender) to be inherently oppressive of women.
As an aside – be VERY careful about co-opting the concepts of the fa’fahine, whakawahine, fakaleiti, mahu, akava’ine etc.
These are starting to split, with many Samoan gay men who would have adopted the (traditionally acceptable) fa’fahine role now feeling free to be gay males, and some fa’fahine going to Thailand for surgery, not because of cultural pressure, but despite it. There has traditionally been no male equivalent too – now there’s starting to be.
I’m at the ANU – the Australian National University – and as we have a large polynesian population, both transient and immigrant, we’re possibly a little more aware of the various forms of polynesian “third sex”, not just the Samoan one.
What really throws me though is the variety of types of Brotherboys and Sistagirls in Aboriginal groups. Especially those who are Intersex too. But I digress, and am a rank amateur here anyway – I just have to advise such students when the gender-binary university beureaucracy throws a gear when dealing with them.
“There are a few things you can count on whenever the trans issue is brought up:
1. It’s a semantic jungle full of angry lesbians
2. Whatever you say will be wrong”
Jake Snake FTW!!
Problem is not just ‘us’ (meaning the masses), but she is part of the problem too, as she thinks that sex parts defines gender in absolute binary equations, Sex=Gender. Penis-Male; and Vagina=Female. And totally ignores gender identity as being the sole definer of gender, and all else should be secondary to it, including sex parts AND gender expression.
She offers just this final thought:
“What if a boy could go to school in a dress and still be a boy? What if a girl could declare she’s going to grow up to be a man without being dragged to a clinic for a cure and/or prep? What if we made the bullies go get mental health interventions first (or, at least, too)?”
But what of the alternative completely neglected?:
What if a Wolffian Sexed Girl (she has a penis; but Alice insists she is a ‘he’ and a ‘boy’ based on her Wolffian Sex parts) could go to school in a dress and still be a girl? What if a Müllerian Sexed Boy (he has a vagina; but Alice insists he is a ‘she’ and a ‘girl’ based on her having Müllerian Sex parts) could declare he’s going to grow up to be a man without being dragged to a clinic for a cure and/or prep? What if we made the bullies go get mental health interventions first (or, at least, too) such as Alice Dreger and those of her ilk? She cannot seem to get it out of her traditional antiquated learnings that human sex parts do not really define gender, but only the sexual function or act, and not entirely or wholly gender expression. And that Gender Identity, self-identifying and persistent as shared by the individual involved is what matters. What to do? Let those who are what they say they are ‘be’ and not molested or bullied.
Everyone should be shown the ‘basics’ of how our human sexual systems develop, obviously from what is below, shows humans to be bi-potential for EITHER sex systems and NO ONE is genetically ‘one-sexed only’, we all are dual-potential sexed, all depending on developmental steps involving hormonal signalling, the lack of it, the receptiveness, the sensitivity, etc, not just mere ‘one gene’ here or there, it is a symphony of those combined factors that give rise to the ‘sex parts’, and all the more SEPARATELY to a ‘gender identity’ (brain gender identity).
Bi-Systems: the two Nephric Duct Systems exists genetically in place for everyone, to which no ‘mutation’ ever need happen but merely the chance ‘genes’ that contribute to a more common outcome or a less common outcome, precursors for both sex systems are inherent for every INDIVIDUAL, not just one of the two systems:
Müllerian and Wolffian
MÜLLERIAN and WOLFFIAN
http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/En/HowTheB…
Otherwise, Müllerian or Wolffian parts, one or the other, would actually be absent for 100% of every developing human baby, which is simply NOT the case; because the OPPOSITE is true, ALL humans have BOTH precursor systems, and so all that happens from that dual starting point is development ‘usually’ but not ‘always’ going down one path or the other, or a mixed path of partial of one or the other, sometimes both, sometimes neither.
The is old knowledge, but sadly with nobody standing up and saying ‘Aha!’ but rather keeping quiet for whatever other agenda exists in the medical community, special insights of the ‘doctors’ or ‘experts’ so they can gain privileged profits, right? If not for profit, and the logic above is sound, why not openly teach it to everyone?
Stefanie Yue
(SaintSuelle/Xzotyqa)
Problem is not just ‘us’ (meaning the masses), but she is part of the problem too, as she thinks that sex parts defines gender in absolute binary equations, Sex=Gender. Penis-Male; and Vagina=Female. And totally ignores gender identity as being the sole definer of gender, and all else should be secondary to it, including sex parts AND gender expression.
She offers just this final thought:
“What if a boy could go to school in a dress and still be a boy? What if a girl could declare she’s going to grow up to be a man without being dragged to a clinic for a cure and/or prep? What if we made the bullies go get mental health interventions first (or, at least, too)?”
But what of the alternative completely neglected?:
What if a Wolffian Sexed Girl (she has a penis; but Alice insists she is a ‘he’ and a ‘boy’ based on her Wolffian Sex parts) could go to school in a dress and still be a girl? What if a Müllerian Sexed Boy (he has a vagina; but Alice insists he is a ‘she’ and a ‘girl’ based on her having Müllerian Sex parts) could declare he’s going to grow up to be a man without being dragged to a clinic for a cure and/or prep? What if we made the bullies go get mental health interventions first (or, at least, too) such as Alice Dreger and those of her ilk? She cannot seem to get it out of her traditional antiquated learnings that human sex parts do not really define gender, but only the sexual function or act, and not entirely or wholly gender expression. And that Gender Identity, self-identifying and persistent as shared by the individual involved is what matters. What to do? Let those who are what they say they are ‘be’ and not molested or bullied.
Everyone should be shown the ‘basics’ of how our human sexual systems develop, obviously from what is below, shows humans to be bi-potential for EITHER sex systems and NO ONE is genetically ‘one-sexed only’, we all are dual-potential sexed, all depending on developmental steps involving hormonal signalling, the lack of it, the receptiveness, the sensitivity, etc, not just mere ‘one gene’ here or there, it is a symphony of those combined factors that give rise to the ‘sex parts’, and all the more SEPARATELY to a ‘gender identity’ (brain gender identity).
Bi-Systems: the two Nephric Duct Systems exists genetically in place for everyone, to which no ‘mutation’ ever need happen but merely the chance ‘genes’ that contribute to a more common outcome or a less common outcome, precursors for both sex systems are inherent for every INDIVIDUAL, not just one of the two systems:
Müllerian and Wolffian
MÜLLERIAN and WOLFFIAN
http://www.aboutkidshealth.ca/En/HowTheB…
Otherwise, Müllerian or Wolffian parts, one or the other, would actually be absent for 100% of every developing human baby, which is simply NOT the case; because the OPPOSITE is true, ALL humans have BOTH precursor systems, and so all that happens from that dual starting point is development ‘usually’ but not ‘always’ going down one path or the other, or a mixed path of partial of one or the other, sometimes both, sometimes neither.
The is old knowledge, but sadly with nobody standing up and saying ‘Aha!’ but rather keeping quiet for whatever other agenda exists in the medical community, special insights of the ‘doctors’ or ‘experts’ so they can gain privileged profits, right? If not for profit, and the logic above is sound, why not openly teach it to everyone?
Stefanie Yue
(SaintSuelle/Xzotyqa)
hmm, only the second post #76 with the live web url is valid, but my comment was double posted due to the registration process. : sorry.
wow I read this article and there are some relevant issues discussed. Definitely nothing that isnt being discussed however my brain kept coming back to the subtext. this article is very dismissive and belittling in nature. Its like it was written to antagonise. The tone is familiar and tranphobic in nature.
This article is terrible, i had to stop reading because you lost me at Thomas.
wow I read this article and there are some relevant issues discussed. Definitely nothing that isnt being discussed however my brain kept coming back to the subtext. this article is very dismissive and belittling in nature. Its like it was written to antagonise. The tone is familiar and tranphobic in nature.
This article is terrible, i had to stop reading because you lost me at Thomas.
this article is an exorcise in creating friction.
When someone “doesn’t feel right in their skin”, that’s a mental illness. Okay fine. So why not treat it like one? Why demand that other people are required to humor their delusion?
The guy who thinks he’s Nepolean Bonapart, do we give him France? The guy with two healthy legs who thinks he should have been born with with his left limb missing, do we cut off his leg? Most importantly, IF doctors did amputate his leg, are the other people around him REQUIRED to pretend he was born that way?
These folks aren’t just suffering from a delusion but they’re demanding that everybody else go along with it. But just because somebody believes that their religion is true, doesn’t mean I am required to act as if their beliefs are true. Their entitled narcissism is ridiculous.
I tend to agree with you on this one, Alice.
http://mishmich.wordpress.com/2011/11/27…
Mish.
I tend to agree with you on this one, Alice.
http://mishmich.wordpress.com/2011/11/27…
Mish.
Alice, sure it’s true that non-binary non-transsexual people are the most common transgender people outnumbering transsexuals hundreds or even thousands to one. Most of them are also deeply closeted and suffering because of it, left out of antidiscrimination measures and vilified all over the place. And those kids need help too. But an anti-transsexual response would still fail the transsexual kids. So isn’t the only solution one that allows for the diversity of the kids without discouraging the medical option for those who need it?
Alice Dreger……..pah
learned so much its confused her to the point that she has to write a lengthy articles full of trans-phobic cliches to put accross one point of view.
or was it just a subliminal exercise to brainwash the mainstream public into beliving some of the rubbish that she has written.
oh my point is.. if you want to make a point say what you mean dont go round the houses…
Seriously Alice, you have no clue what it is like to be a transsexual or intersexed child that has grown up with gender identity issues. And often their GID won’t really manifest because the child often represses their true gender identity because of peer pressure, bullying and abuse. The child gets lost, they become shy and withdrawn, and often they don’t know where they are suppose to fit into society. I personally felt like an alien and constantly wondering if I was a boy or a girl, despite the fact I had male genitalia. Eventually I gave in to the pressure and tried very hard to accept myself as a male, engaged in the most hyper-masculine activities, learnt how to fight and stand up to my aggressors, found a lady, bought house, had kids and it all still fell apart because of the constant feelings I was in the wrong body and the women that I was with really couldn’t understand me because I wasn’t true to myself.
I was never gay as a male because in my day society didn’t tolerate that, but that is not to say that I didn’t have strong feelings for some males, I just never expressed them because being ‘gay’ was also wrong. So to society it appeared I was in heterosexual relationships.
However the irony is I have told every single partner I have been with from the age of 20 that I felt like a “lesbian trapped in the wrong body”, but of course they never took me seriously because I didn’t have the nerve to tell them I believed that I was really a woman and wanted to undergo gender reassignment. So I couldn’t expect them to ever understand me properly. So I blame myself for that and then took everything but on myself afterwards because essentially I was forced to become something I wasn’t and it was destroying my whole life and every relationship I ever had. I lost count of how many times I have thought about suicide before I finally made the decision to face my fears rather than keep running away from them. The only wrong thing you can ever do to a transgender child is try and repress who they really are. You will smother that child and will seriously impede and disrupt that child’s chances of reaching their full potential.
My advice to you Alice is to do some proper research before posting crap like this again because you really are so way off the mark in your understanding it’s comical. So thanks for the laugh. LOL
I’m curious to know about Prof. Dreger’s basis for characterizing the course of care and treatment provided by “a certain current-day endocrinologist” to his patients as “prepping genderqueer kids for surgery the moment they are presented by their distraught parents.” It is obvious that she is referring to Dr. Norman Spack of Boston Children’s Hospital. Prof. Dreger could only offer an informed opinion about Dr. Spack’s treatment of his patients, and about the emotional state of his patients and their parents, if she had either sat in on their consultations or gained access to their medical records as part of a duly approved research protocol. However, neither I nor my child have ever consented to the use by any researcher of any information from our numerous consultations with Dr. Spack in the five years since we first sought his expert advice. If Prof. Dreger had ever sought participants for a research project evaluating Dr. Spack’s care and his patients’ and families’ mental health, we would have heard about it.
Prof. Dreger is throwing flames not at an actual threat, but at her own fantasies, and grossly underestimates the ability of gender-nonconforming children, their parents and their advisors to deal intelligently and constructively with the developmental and social dilemmas they face.