Topic : 10/29 Gender Confused Children

While I agree with your post and am supportive of intersex folks this is not the same discussion. The people who disagree with what we are doing with our children do so because they think that their genitals define their gender. There is no ambiguity there so they feel they are always correct in their assertion.

 

Some of those same people would have an entirely different view if they child's physical genitalia was visibly different. Many of them would be far more sympathetic.

 

Let's face it. WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT CAUSES intersex or transgender, but we do know how to be compassionate. 

As I said earlier, I am a transsexual woman and a former Computer Programmer. I also have a BA in Pastoral Ministry and love Jesus Christ very much. Jesus, the Bible, and Christian Religion do not teach against transgenderism - Self-important, Attention Seeking Preachers Do (along with their mindless followers).

The question of accepting your childs need to transition comes down to just ONE THING - DO YOU WANT  A LIVE DAUGHTER - OR A DEAD SON (or vice-versa).  About half of the many transsexuals I know decided to transition to the opposite sex after attempting suicide. Fortunately, I was never among them, but I was very unhappy playing male nonetheless.

There is a rule among Psychologists called "The 40 Percent Rule." It says that 40 percent of all people who feel they were born the wrong sex will be dead by the age of 30, usually by their own hand. That's because they can't stand to play male (or female) when they don't feel that way inside. Unfortunately, current Diagnostic Imaging and Brain Scanning equipment is not yet available to medically diagnose whether someone's Gender Identity  (as defined by 12 states and the District of Columbia's governments in the U.S., along with many cities and counties and other countries' governments).

I've known I had Gender DyspHoria (the opposite of Euphoria) since I was very young. When I first found some girls' clothes in our attic at the age of nine and put them on, my parents made it very clear that They Would Never Accept a Transsexual Child, nor tolerate an "outwardly male" child dressing in girls' clothing. So much for The Myth of Unconditional Love. After that, until I was 16, they would occasionally come home and find me wearing girls' clothing - but I never told them why I did. And they always got mad, although they never PHYSICALLY hurt me.  VERBAL ABUSE was another matter though - and I still have trouble trusting my parents, knowing they thought I should live by the motto, as seen on the old television show, "I Dream Of Jeannie,"  "Does It Please You Master?   My father often said, "I don't live my life to please others, and if they don't like what I do, then THEY have a problem.

I remember thinking many times over the years, "If I woke up a girl, I would NOT be disappointed." When I was 16, my mother said to me, "If you don't stop wearing girls' clothes, I'm going to EVICT you. I had no job, no money, and didn't know where I would go if I did get evicted, so I was a lot more careful about when I did it. Unlike gay people, whom my pastor said were "sinful," no one had ever of transsexuals, except rumors that they lived in distant places like New York, Amsterdam, and the like.

Since I had never heard of transsexualism, other than rumors, I thought I was the only one like me. I didn't find out differently until I was about 30 years old. When I was 43, I called my mother (I was living in a distant city) and said, "I just changed my legal name - it is now Michelle," and she said, "Oh, is that all?" I thought she'd be the first to disown me, based on what she'd said earlier. After she told my father, I called him and asked what he thought, and he said, "I don't approve, but I accept you anyway." And I thought, "well, I don't approve either, but I'm trans anyway," because I wouldn't wish Gender Dysphoria on my worst enemy - because pretending to be someone I wasn't for 24 hours a day for many years was no fun. But neither was transitioning. I had my life threatened a couple times, because people could tell I was transgender (although I have no problem being accepted as a natal woman now - even though I've never had any facial feminization surgery). For the first few months after transitioning I was harrassed by "friends" who had known me before, and disowned by some of my relatives.

The last two Thanksgivings and the last Christmas that I lived in their state, my brother and sister "Un-invited me" to their celebrations."

 A couple years later, when I was living in another state, I went to visit my parents, and my father said, "You seem a lot happier now," and thought to myself, "Yes, the only acting I do now is when I'm paid to do it (as a Background Actress in Hollywood), instead of playing male for your entertainment, as I did for most of my life.

Even though I'm almost always apparently accepted as a natal woman,  I'm still very careful who I tell my history to, because even though I like the internet, I Really want to stay off the transgender web site  ***Remembering Our Dead .org***

 Countless transsexuals here and elsewhere have stated unequivocally that when someone is truly and profoundly  gender dysphoric, all the "guidance" and prayer in the world won't make it go away.

Gender therapists and researchers who approach the matter objectively will tell you the same thing.

Many, MANY transsexuals themselves have prayed sincerely over and over to have the condition go away so that they could be "normal", and it didn't change a thing; it simply doesn't go away.

Beatings/torture and other punishments don't work.

Drugs don't work, either when administered by doctors or as self-medication.

Shock therapy doesn't work.

Entering a "macho" profession like becoming an Army  Ranger or Navy Seal, or a fireman or police officer or an athlete doesn't work.

Getting married, fathering children and playing a typical male role doesn't work.

Transsexual people and those who know them intimately understand all this, yet people with no personal knowledge of the subject, no specific training in the psychology of gender, who in many cases have never even (knowingly) met or talked to a single transsexual pretend that they know better than transpeople themselves  what motivates them and how they think.

The sheer egotism of it all is infuriating and astonishing, especially coming from people who are admonished by their religious teachings to be humble and not sit in judgment of others.

Did you post this in support of what I said or in opposition to what I said. I'm very confused.

 

My child is transgender and has transitioned and is a happy camper!

 

I wouldn't change a thing.

 It *is* about intersex in two very important ways:

1) If you accept that GID/transgenderism is not a choice but a biological variation in human sex/gender development, then by definition it is an intersex condition.

2) When people who present as transsexuals  get the preliminary blood and genetic testing that precedes medical transition, very often they turn out to have an underlying medically recognized physiological intersex condition that was either undiagnosed or kept hidden from them.

This means that  many of the kids whose parents are being told to just steer them away from their cross-gender feelings and everything will be OK are in fact biologically intersexed and not in the grips of any psychological disorder whatsoever, and no amount of steering or prayer will change the fact that they are congenitally intersexed at a chromosomal level.

And to make matters worse, when this turns out to be the problem they are in many cases not treated ANY differently by the medical and legal communities than transsexuals who cannot point to any physiological anomaly to explain their gender variance.

To put it succinctly, there is a great deal of overlap between traditionally intersexed people with gender dysphoria over their birth assignments, and transsexuals- many people who are designated TS are in fact IS, they either just don't know it, or people who think that they know better refuse to believe that there is any connection between being IS and their dysphoria, and the IS person has to pretend to be TS to get any help, it happens all the time.

You simply cannot treat the two as separate and distinct conditions, and this is another area where Dr. Phil dropped the ball- despite specifically acknowledging that the diagnostic criteria for GID exclude anyone with an IS condition, he never once asked if ANY of the kids in question had had comprehensive testing to rule this out...a responsible medical professional would not simply gloss over a key diagnostic criteria like this, but many doctors with even better credentials than Dr.Phil do just that.

BTW, it is also incorrect to say "WE DO NOT KNOW WHAT CAUSES intersex"; the etiology of many intersex conditions is very well understood and has been for a long time.

Thank you for your support. I really appreciate you taking the time to comment. I DO NOT plan on giving my child hormone therapy until she is at least 12, and I am working with her Primary Care Physician.  We may not even give her hormone therapy, it really depends on how she feels and wants to enter puberty.  The hormones are only blockers.  No damage would be done.

 

 

THANK YOU TO ALL FOR YOUR SUPPORT!!!!!

I just wanted to let the viewers whom were in opposition of my decision to support my daughter that I did everything imaginable to try and steer her into a male role and the more I pushed the more she resisted.  My child is happier and emotionally healthy living as a female.  Remember there is a spectrum that everyone falls on.  GOD has nothing to do with this issue.  God created my child and loves my child.  God gave her to me for a reason, the reason was so I can be loving and caring in support of who she is.  Please have an open mind and try to think outside the ignorant rules of what Society thinks is acceptable.

 

It is very sad that any child would not make it to be an adult.  Whether they ended their lives themselves or somebody decided to end that childs life out of hate is a very horrible.  I never said that my wishing I was a boy at times stemmed from what had happedned to me as a child, I said it came from a natural child curiosity.  You assumed I was saying something I did not say this is what I said "Alot of people decide that they after having experiences such as mine or even worse would then not want to be a the sex they are or choose not to be with the opposite sex because of the memories that do come flooding back.  And as a child I did have the natural curiosity that many children have about being the opposite sex.  I did go through that stage".  My husband and I are 2 examples of people who went through things that no child should ever have to go through that did not end up/choosing to being gay or transgender.  Our insisting that there is something else wrong comes from our beliefs.  Just as you believe it is quite the opposite of that.

In support.