Lucanae, you’re not reading the thread. I DID respond to your OP, some arguments you made for one issue of this and that pertaining to your question. To prove I did, JUST READ.
You said you thought it was a choice. I responded to that. You even admitted you could see yourself attracted to other men, but you make the choice not to. I, and many, many others responded to that.
The scenario you accuse me of NOT responding to have already been posted by other Dopers. Read through, you’ll see this.
As far as this kid goes, if you’re showing more support for him than me, that means you think he should be a girl, it’s not a choice, and you’ll help pay for the surgery.
God has nothing to do with it. But, once again, you contradict yourself more than the bible. You condemned him in your op by saying, “chooses to be transexual.” It is not a choice.
PLEASE just read through. And also, please understand a “what if” sentence is not exactly a scenario. I have never called you a hatemonger in this thread. Closed minded, yes. A hidden religious debate instead of “care” for a child’s decision, yes, did that too.
Please, just read, read, read, and don’t jump to conclusions. by my count, it’s your OP, so you HAVE to read it. And I haven’t seen you since page 2 or 3. Ya got 4 or five to go.
Actually, I think Hilarity N. Suze might have been referring to body integrity identity disorder which is a desire to have a body part amputated that has nothing to do with sexual fetishism.
I meant a lot of the talk about trans people’s bodies in general - how they’re really male or female or formerly male or female or look male or female, what kinds of surgeries are performed. Totally invasive and othering discussions that pretty much make it clear that trans bodies are simply available for public comment. Some people are focusing on identity/brain and that’s appreciated.
Sort of a followup to my previous post: I am curious if the people insisting that you can’t trust what a trans person says about gender at 8 years old was unclear on their own gender at 8 years old. Did they really not know? Did we have to wait until they were 18 years or older when we could finally take their word for them being who they said they were, or is this just idea that trans people have transient gender identities because y’all think that the way you are is the only natural, proper way to be?
Because, I’d like to see some serious evidence that cisgender people have fluctuating gender identities until adulthood.
One thing both trans and cis people tend to have is a stable gender identity at a young age. Not all trans people will declare they’re the “wrong sex” before puberty, but those who do tend not to change their minds.
Also, the survey done by… was it Money? Or Green?.. anyway, is kind of flawed. He followed up on these children at 18 and determined that only one had begun transition. Many trans people at the time (and still) didn’t transition until their 20s, 30s, 40s, 50s, even 60s. A trans girl who says she’s a girl at 6 or 8 years old may end up closeted until her 40s.
As a counterexample, none of the children who have gone on puberty blockers have decided not to transition so far - they’re described in the Atlantic article linked upthread.
Actually, there’s no guarantee the hypothetical child will be interested in boys - she could be interested in girls or both boys and girls. That does, after all, happen to non-transexual people, too.
It will certainly be a surprise, and almost certainly not a good one.
It is an interesting point, and one faced by some women with clitoromegaly (I’d link to an article, but I couldn’t find anything without graphic illustrations that may violate rules about safe images, but feel free to Google). The more extreme cases of 5 alpha reductase deficiency can also result in similar issues once an affected individual reaches puberty. My point with bringing up these other two disorders is that not only is that a valid issue, it’s not restricted to transsexuals.
I’m not sure that is anyone’s business outside of Katie, her parents, and the medical people treating the child.
Ideally, Katie would wait until adulthood to engage in intimate activities (though clearly many children don’t wait) and it would be strictly between Katie and Katie’s love interest(s).
I disagree that such a revelation would be more damaging to someone near Katie. People who encounter such surprises do suffer a shock, but there is no reason to think that it causes them lasting harm. Suppressed transsexuals, though, have a very high rate of self-harm and suicide.
I think you just summed up one of the major problems transsexuals have in dating and marriage.
If Katie decides on transition surgery at the earliest possible time (her 18th birthday - let’s say she has to be a legal adult) then once she heals up a hypothetical love interest may have no reason to think she was born in a male body and any man attracted to her would be responding as a heterosexual male since we see body shapes, not chromosomes, when we look at someone. A true homosexual would not be attracted to her, though a bisexual would. Likewise, any woman interested in Katie on a sexual level would be responding as a lesbian.
The big issue comes up while Katie is pre-operation. If a fully clothed Katie looks entirely female, a heterosexual male responds to her as a woman, the clothes come off - yes, that is a problem. It has even occurred, and as a consequence some transsexuals have been either beaten or murdered subsequent to that revelation. There was also the case of Brandon Teena where a transman was revealed as such publicly and was subsequently raped and murdered though in that case it wasn’t so much Brandon’s girlfriend who was freaked out as other people who knew Brandon as a man.
So, good question, and I think there’s something to discuss here, but given that in the cases I hear about the transsexual person is all too frequently beaten, raped, or murdered I can’t see where it’s their partner who is at greater risk of harm here.
By that argument, homosexuals shouldn’t risk being out of the closet and inter-racial couples in the 1960’s shouldn’t have crossed racial lines while dating. The wrong here is not the transsexual, it’s people who think that finding such a surprise in one’s partner or potential partner justifies violence.
It is one of the risks of dating and intimate relationships that you find out your partner isn’t who or what you thought that person was.
Broomstick made an excellent summary. On a personal note, I would like to add:
As someone pointed out, this is a problem for trans people. However, as much as it may astonish you, people, especially those familiar with trans people and their situation, have been known to fall in love with them from time to time.
Being a gay man, I would not be interested in a trans woman, because I’m attracted to men. However, I have had relationships with trans men, whom I perceive and relate to as men.
Of course not all gay men will be attracted to trans men; because our society is transphobic it can be difficult to find partners who will treat you with respect and support. But it’s no irresolvable conundrum. Many, many trans people are in relationships with non-trans people.
I’m inclined to say no and no, the parents are not obliged to advertise this to everybody. I don’t see who is helped if they publicize the situation (even more than it has been) to near-strangers. I don’t know what the best or most ethical way to handle these kinds of situations is. There was a debate on this site about it recently.
And for that matter there’s been some debate publicly about things like “transgender panic.” (Here’s an article about a recent murder case touching on the issue.) While there’s potential for people to feel misled and feelings to be hurt, the idea that this could be more damaging for others than for the actual TG person is ridiculous.
Your inability to imagine it or make up a name for it does not prove it’s a bad idea.
I don’t need to read, read, read to see how ass-backwards today’s society is.
It’s so disgusting that an 8 year old boy is allowed to destroy and mutate his natural male body to become a female, or is told that God (or nature) made a mistake creating his body, and that he should be a girl… but yet a 13 year old boy and his mother are being searched for by the courts and by police because he has cancer and doesn’t want to undergo treatment (except with natural treatments), but the courts are ordering this child to have his cancer treated with modern medical sciences. WHAT THE FUCK!? WHY IS THIS RETARDED LITTLE 8 YEAR OLD THOUGHT OF AS NORMAL AND PEOPLE ARE ALLOWING HIM TO THINK HE’S A GIRL WHEN HE IS NOT A GIRL, BUT THIS 13 YEAR OLD AND HIS FAMILY ARE GETTING IN TROUBLE BECAUSE THEY DON’T WANT TO TREAT HIS CANCER A CERTAIN WAY!!! YOU PEOPLE ARE SICK AND IGNORANT…
this world is so backwards. I hate it. It makes me sick… but one day you all will see the perversion of your ways.
Yeah, that’ll persuade us. I REVEL in the perversion of my ways. I’m not under the illusion that my “lifestyle” or philosophies are endorsed by any deity, if any such thing exists. But I’m having a hell of a lot of fun, while trying to treat most people fairly and gently.
May I just note that your homophobia and transphobia are evident by your completely inconceivable position that finding out about a trans person’s physical gender unexpectedly somehow is more painful and traumatic for you than their entire LIVES as the wrong gender are to them. It seems that, to you, having almost been physical with someone of the same physical gender as you is one of the most traumatic things you could possibly go through.
By the way, it’s not the rest of the world that’s stuck in the 13th Century…which is the very definition of backward.
I’m sorry - where did you get the idea that anything is being done to this child’s body? ALL that is happening at the moment is that the child is being permitted to dress like a girl. There are no hormones being administered at this point. Surgery, if it ever occurs is YEARS away, a decade or more. You are reading more into this than is actually there.
Because the “natural cures” they want to use are quackery whereas modern medicine has been proved to be more useful than those “natural cures” or simply doing nothing. Or don’t you approve of saving the life of a young boy with cancer? Because if his mother is allowed to deny him life-saving treatment he will die.
I don’t think anyone here thinks the 8 year old transsexual is “normal”. The child is NOT normal, that is why the child is seeing professional therapists and there is a discussion on the proper way to handle the situation. If the child was normal we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The disagreement here is how to deal with this child who is clearly NOT normal.
Because they way the 13 year old’s family wants to treat his cancer is in reality no treatment at all and WILL result in his unnecessary death.
For someone who’s so het up, you sure do a lousy job explaining why we should see the similarities between these two cases. THINK THINK THINK indeed.
For one thing, there is no life-death component to the transgendered case.
You can’t produce a cite showing that treating a child as the gender they identify with will endanger their life.
Furthermore, short of cutting off the child’s genitals–which they aren’t doing–the parents’ choices for how to handle their transgendered child are reversible. If the child decides he really isn’t a female, he can swap the skirts for jeans and pull out the hairbows. Year later it will be one of those funny “remember when” stories that the family can laugh about.
When we’re talking about a family essentially denying a child of an almost certain chance of survival, the situation becomes less funny. I doubt you’d be so compassionate for the 13-year-old and his mother if they were proponents of the Chester Cheetah Cheeto Cure for Cancer, whereby a diet of cheetos and orange soda (Faygo, preferably) are believed to be embued with magical powers. Not the same thing as prayer and Native American herbal remedies, you say? Well, the cheeto cure has just as high a success rate. And what 13-year-old would say no to a diet of cheetos!
I’m not in favor of the government intervening in all medical cases. But when the situation is as urgent as this one, it’s hard for me not to think the mother is putting her crazy wackjob beliefs over the welfare of her son.
if those people want to refuse modern medicine it is their right. That 13 year old is well aware of his situation, and I believe he has the right to choose what kind of treatment he wants to receive. That 13 year old is more capable of making the right decision opposed to the 8 year old.
I’m not homophobic or transphobic. I have gay friends, thank you.
I can’t wait until today’s society is stripped of all the things it depends on… such as modern medicine and technologies…
*Some of us would be dead without modern medicine and technologies. If you would like to live your life without such things then you’re welcome to it (you could start by getting off the Internet), but it’s pretty horrible for you to look forward with glee to the death of millions of people with life-threatening conditions that are treatable or curable with modern medicine.
Reminds me of the picture I saw once of a fellow who criticised technology and said we should all go back to being hunter gatherers - while standing in front of his music CD collection.
So if the transgendered child was five years older, you’d have no problem with her living as a female?
If a 13-year-old has the right to choose which treatment he wants, does he also have the right to choose whether he wants to live or not? Let’s say he decided he wanted to forgo ALL treatments and just spend the rest of his short life playing X-Box. Would you grant him that right?
Yes, because we know diseases are actually blessings from the Lord, and it’s only our twisted human logic that makes us believe otherwise. We should be forever thankful that He has allowed us to suffer, for such suffering reminds us how horrible and wretched we are compared to Him. Damn us for trying to make life easier so that we could spend more time serving Him instead of dying and grieving all the time!
And you have the gall to call someone else retarded?