Kalhoun, that’s why the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care (HBSOC) were instituted for all professional caregivers to follow, to ensure it isn’t a mistake. Because when it’s really for real, you can tell, there’s no mistaking it. The HBSOC are a method to clearly distinguish real ones from mistakes.
“Cisgendered”?
My head hurts.
I understand that part. What I don’t understand is how you can determine that, even with the standards that have been established, on a person who is in the early stages of physical and emotional development. If I’m not mistaken, there are no physical signs to go by. It is strictly self-image, emotional, and developmental. So how do you know when the subject you’re dealing with is going through physical, hormonal, emotional, developmental, and environmental changes?
Not being argumentative here…I’d just like to understand.
I was a tomboy from the time I was old enough to tell my mom I hated wearing dresses.
I cut my hair short when I was 8, joined a softball team when I was 4 and was generally outspoken against all things frilly and feminine.
My mom and my brother were convinced I was gay and tried to be supportive. Mom: “I love you no matter what, if you’re gay you can tell me”. Brother (and his girlfriend, both bi): “There’s this cute girl we want to set you up with”.
At the time, I considered myself straight. I now consider myself bi, but further over on the straight side of the spectrum. I still resent being told by my brother that I was gay and I should just come out already and stop fooling around.
Don’t bring it up. Don’t talk to him about sexuality, you’ll just embarrass the kid and make it harder for him to tell himself if he’s gay or not. He’ll come to you if you’re supportive in all things. Even if he does turn out to like NASCAR.
It’s much like we diagnose anything else in young people. There is a big difference between “I would like to be another gender” or “I like another gender” and “I AM another gender”. Generally this feeling is very strong, present from a young age (my friend figured it out at five) and doctors know what to look for. After years of training and observing countless cases, you learn to be good at it.
This feeling is NOT a sexual thing- it’s a life thing. It’s not something that is still in flux in the pre-teen years or affected by puberty. You may not know if you are gay or straight at that age, but you know if you are a boy or a girl.
Furthermore, the whole process is LONG and thorough. It’s not like you walk in to your doctor’s office and come out with hormones. There are numerous evaluations and numerous different paths to take. Doctor’s are well trained to figure out what path and timeline is appropriate for each person.
It would be nice if everything could wait until everyone was eighteen. But puberty changes the body just like hormones change the body. It’s not a neutral choice, and once it’s changes are made there are some things that can never be regained. Sadly in this would these changes can severaly affect one’s safety and quality of life.
Transgendered people that are not “out” and making the changes they feel are approriate have a HUGE suicide rate- up to 50%. It’s not a whim, it’s a big deal. We don’t have perfect solutions, but we have ones that work pretty well, and that work much better than no solution at all.
To the OP,
I was not the least bit interested in girls at the age of 11, but I certainly was a few years later (starting in earnest at around 14 1/2). I think the fact I was shy made me a late bloomer.
In short I think it’s too early to be concerned.
I understand how it works in adults and I’m all for it. I just don’t see how a 13-year-old (in most cases) can understand what’s going on in their already raging bodies and minds, understand the questions adequately or articulate it sufficiently to warrant a doctor to begin physical and chemical changes in their young bodies. I’d like to see a sampling of the questions that are asked. I would like to see how they tell the difference between an effeminate boy and a transgendered girl. Can someone link to something that would actually be used in a diagnosis?
Do people not talk to their kids about sex these days? Why wouldn’t a discussion of gay issues be part of that?
I agree that you don’t walk up and say ‘You know 13 year old son of mine, I think you’re gay.’, but that doesn’t mean talking about gay issues can’t be part of the conversations. I remember my dad trying to have the ‘birds and bees’ talks with me, it was so very boring since it was all about straight stuff and had no meaning to me. I would have been glad to have had some factual info.
I can’t speak for all transgendered people (not even transgendered myself) but generally, most transgendered people know how they feel and what they are even at a very young age. For them, going through puberty is a disgusting, terrible thing. I used to be a huge tomboy when I was little - I hated wearing dresses and makeup, I only wore boy’s clothing and I rejected pink and anything else I considered feminine. However, during that entire time never once did I think I was really a boy. I might’ve said that I wanted to be a boy, but it was only because being a Boy Scout looked a lot more fun than being a Girl Scout. I had all male friends and didn’t identify with the females my age who ran screaming at the sight of worms. My mom also thought I was gay, she even asked me about it point blank once. I wasn’t embarassed, but then, I was a girl and it’s a lot more socially acceptable for a girl to be a lesbian.
My advice to his mom - Just let him be what he is. If he’s gay, transgendered, a feminine cisgendered boy, whatever, he will come out in time.
Cisgendered - a nontransgendered person.
Okay…I did a little poking around. From the Harry Benjamin site:
(bolding mine)
Now, it doesn’t clearly identify what they consider a “child” to be, but as I suspected, they don’t advise hormonal or surgical treatment. I think the sad truth is that a kid will have to go through puberty and then reverse the effects as much as possible as an adult. If anyone can elaborate on exceptions to this rule, please feel free to jump in.
Found some more which appears to support some primary hormone treatment in adolescence:
It looks like they really don’t want to be doing much more than observing and working with the psychological aspects of transgendered kids until they’re 15 or 16 years old. That’s a far cry, developmentally, from a 13-year old. It doesn’t recommend taking hormones to fend off maturity so the transition won’t be as difficult. Unless I’m missing something.
No, transitioning is a long process and always involves long periods of observation and evaluation. For a younger person it may also involve stuff like changing schools. If you can get that done between the ages of 13 and 15, you don’t have to spend the ages of 16-18 watching your beard grow full, your hips widen, etc. Even the difference between transitioning at 18 and at 24 are really significant.
I’m responding to Johanna’s statement:
Originally Posted by Johanna
…which seems to be in direct contradiction to the Harry Benjamin documentation I’ve been looking at. There are some things they can watch for and in some cases they can start with Phase I hormone treatments, but for the most part, there is no way for them to know if a particular kid is going through the things the straight posters in this thread went through, i.e., hating to wear girl’s clothes, preferring dolls to trucks, and even thinking thoughts along the lines of “girl stuff is stupid” or what have you.
I’m not saying it can’t be explored. I am saying that it appears that most physical treatment (hormones and therapy) is not considered on a kid who is only 13. Things can change in a very short period of time.
You also have to remember that Johanna is looking at this from the other side-- knowing what she does now, which is obvious in hindsight, it would’ve been great for those things to happen for her. But it’s like a child who grows up with a huge disfiguring scar on their face-- while you can point to that young adult and say “Fixing this before adolescence would’ve been wonderful for them” that doesn’t mean that every child who’s unhappy with their appearance would benefit from plastic surgery. (Johanna, feel free to thwap me if this isn’t an accurate reading.)
I guess “effeminate straight boy” like Charger. Well, I mean, I also think he sounds like an effeminate straight boy, not that he’s just like Charger– but if he grows up to be as articulate and interesting as that, you’ll have every right to be proud of him.
Corr
True enough. I also agree that there may be some cases that are readily apparent at a young age with regard to true GID. But I think they’re probably few and far between.
Lots of good advice here. I’d just like to second the idea that the last thing you want to do is discuss his sexuality with him, as it’s likely you’re the last person on Earth he’d want to talk about that.
But you should make sure he’s got all the concepts right. Leave him out of it, but let him know boys usually grow up and fall in love with girls, but sometimes boys fall in love with boys, and girls with girls. Sometimes, someone’s born boy, but feels like a girl on the inside, etc. Then drop the subject, and let him stew on it.
My mom made a few mistakes. One, was not really understanding gay men. If she had just said, sometimes a man falls in love with another man, they live happily ever after, and left it at that, I might have been ok with it. Instead, she went off on the “one pretends to be a woman, the other pretends to be the man” thing which just convinced me I wasn’t homosexual. Then, she went into some clumsy details about actual sex acts that gays do, which just grossed me out and further convinced me I wasn’t gay.
Then, as I grew older and more convinced there was something wrong with me and I must be the only person in the world with this particular mental problem - which was simply preferring men - she made a really big mistake. She figured if I were gay, well of course I’d have told her by now. So I must not be gay. Then she’d make comments every so often about being so relieved, “whew, I’m glad neither you or your brother turned out gay.” Mom! What made you think I’d tell you about my sexual fantasies?!? But thanks for letting me know how relieved you are I’m not homo. I didn’t finally come out to her until I was at least 30 years old.
Don’t contact anyone. If your son would find out and he isn’t gay (especially at 13 when alot of kids are insecure anyway), would you blame him for being so royally angry.
Brossa summed it up well with this:
At any rate, it took until college for me to become mature enough to handle realistic boy-girl relationships. Like I said, a late bloomer. But every time I went home to visit for the weekend, my mother would ask if I had met any nice girls and a little part of me would die. Then she’d ask if I had ‘anything to tell them’. If she had come to me all PFLAG; all “I love my gay son! Oh wait, you’re not gay? Sorry!” it would have totally destroyed my already underdeveloped confidence with the opposite sex.
He is 13. Don’t worry about it at this point.
I can’t agree with this. Feel free to contact people; you need to prepare for everything.
I agree with what people said about not confronting him, and that can be extended to not making it obvious what you’re doing (“I’m off to my PFLAG meeting now!”) But you have every right to educate yourself on gay and lesbian issues, and to make use of the resources at your disposal.
Kalhoun, thanks for looking up all that information, this has been a good education for me. In that case I would revise what I said. It’s probably safest to go according to Harry Benjamin, though many trans people would probably consider that way too conservative; it dates from the 1960s before TG was as well understood as now. That was in the days when gatekeepers required transsexual aspirants to conform to 1950s stereotypical heterosexual gender roles before they’d open the gate. Like 30-40 years ago I would have had to hide my lesbianism to get anywhere. I know the institute has updated the standards somewhat over the years, probably not enough to please many people.
But I think you’ve found the answer to your question, which is: transition for kids isn’t absolutely impossible, but the standards for GID diagnosis are far more exacting than they already are. In any case, no estrogen would be applied that young, only testosterone blocker. The effects of that are easily reversible later if needed: just add testosterone. A delay of a few years in puberty maybe. Some kids get late puberty. The effects of testosterone are easy to add: FTMs grow beards, go bald, and get deeper voices. That part is quite easy, except that FTM bottom surgery is much more expensive and difficult, and less satisfactory. The effects of testosterone, however, are not reversible. Sometimes the only real answer for MTFs is facial feminization surgery, which involves removal of bone from the jaw and brow ridges, and a tracheal shave to get rid of the Adam’s apple. This costs something comparable to a BMW. I first heard of tracheal shaves when my daughter asked for one. She has an Adam’s apple, but I have an Eve’s non-apple, go figure. Anyway, she has become such an unusually beautiful woman that it doesn’t detract from her looks at all. My jaw is not terribly big and I don’t have brow ridges, and I have a nice oval face, so that’s that.
We should go with whatever is safest for kids. But reading about German Johanna really twanged my heartstrings. Imagine!
Corrvin, you understood me well, although it’s hard to imagine a kid not wanting to improve their appearance. I was born too early to have taken advantage of the recent advances in gender science, so it isn’t something that bothers me anyway. I’m finally on estrogen and life has never felt so beautiful. 
In light of this information and the valuable input of all posters in this thread, I’d have to say that the OP would best serve her son and herself by educating herself on all the possibilities and keeping the lines of communication open and non-judgemental. If he knows that she loves him, he’ll come to her if he’s gay, trans, or wondering where to get BC pills for his girlfriend. We’re fairly open about sex in our society, but sometimes that freedom can be confusing…especially to a kid. The most important thing to him will be to know that he has her in his corner. And from her posts, it sounds like she is.