I do not see what is so hard to accept about the fact that this child and obviously others relate and identify with things that are considered appropriate for the opposite gender. Age has nothing to do with it. If this were a little girl who simply would rather wear jeans and flannel shirts she’d be labeled a “tomboy” and no one would care. But because this is a boy that loves to wear girl’s clothes and is drawn to things that are classically female then the whole world gets excited about it, including his parents. They have after all taken him to a shrink. I don’t know if I’d have bothered to go that far myself. But then there must be an awful lot of pressure from friends and family on the parents to “do something about” their child’s oddness. I wonder how odd it would be if this were a girl that doesn’t like to play with dolls? I didn’t. I didn’t even want to wear clothes at 5 years old let alone dresses and frilly underwear.
How narrow a mind to think that you can dictate, guide or steer a person away from something you deem inappropriate. Especially when children are not stupid, even at this age, and have an inherent knowledge as to what is harmful and what isn’t. If this kid were setting fires or torturing animals then I’d have to worry about him a little. Might take him in for a diagnosis. His preoccupation with girl things is harmless compared to some things he could be identifying with.
I have never heard of this and am very curious. Do these people develop the sex organs of the other gender, or, for example, do undescended testes drop in females who are changing into males? Or does it mean that at puberty some people realize or start to believe that they were really meant to be the other sex? And is this phenomenon limited to citizens of the Dominican Republic? And if so, why?
I’m not oldscratch, but I read an article on this when I was taking Intro Bio my first year in college. I’m afraid I don’t still have it, but I’ll say what I can from memory and hope I don’t make too many mistakes. With luck oldscratch will be able to fill in anything I miss.
If I recall correctly, there are two main hormones which affect male sexual development. The people in question are insensitive to one of these hormones, which prevents their male genitals from developing normally in utero. When the baby is born it will appear to be a girl, at least externally.
The other type of hormone doesn’t really kick in until puberty. That’s when it becomes apparent that the “girl” is really a boy. Instead of developing breasts and beginning to menstruate his testicles will descend, his “clitoris” will becomes larger and more clearly a penis, he’ll grow facial hair, etc. His gentials will never be exactly normal (his penis will have no opening and he’ll ejaculate from a small opening behind the penis), but he’s obviously a man.
This condition is not limited to any one country, but is much more common in certain isolated populations because of inbreeding.
What many people seem to be missing here is that gender roles are quite as important prior to puberty as they are after; they simply add in the dimension of sexual interests afterwards. Consider:
Did it make a difference whether you read “Chris” as short for Christopher or for Christine? Read it again with the other name in mind. Is this a well-adjusted kid? Why or why not?
Personally I suspect gender role, and sexuality and gender dysphoria, are quite obvious to the kid well before anyone else catches on that there may be a problem. And I think far more problems arise from social expectations than from any purely interior self-identity questions.
Poly, excellent point. I was looking for some information on Medline regarding gender identity in prepubescents, and while much of it wasn’t really relevant to the discussion at hand, one abstract did mention sex differences in children brought in for observation for gender confusion. Girls are usually permitted to cross much farther over the sociocultural lines in terms of interests and behavior than boys are before being suspected of gender identity problems.
It also seems that many people are dismissing out-of-hand the idea that this six-year-old child could genuinely have a gender identity problem. As I said on the Fathom board:
If your child came to you and told you they had frequent headaches and smelled oranges all the time, you might suspect he had a brain tumor.
If your child came to you a little man was following them around all the time and whispering in his ear, you might suspect he was schizophrenic.
If your child comes to you and tells you he doesn’t feel like a boy and doesn’t like “boy” clothes and “boy” things, he might have a gender identity problem.
if someone you percieve to be a “man” acts in such a way, it sticks out far more. though it may be extreme behavior in anyone, when a female does the same, it is not as noticed. after all, there are girls that act that way, that is how it became girly.
i am a transgendered woman. i have never had any gender confusion. [i was forced by parents and school and jobs to dress like a boy.] if societal demands allowed me to wear makeup and long hair, i’d do it a hot second. [oh yeah, i do anyway.]
why do tg folk need to go overboard?? if you, being the woman you are, had a body as ugly as a tg woman you might do the same. [hair growing all over your face, arms, torso. thick waist, no hips. masculine features…] add to it having never been able to make any feminine appearance at all, and you would probably go overboard too. but of course the tg’s that do so are more obvious. the ones that grow into their new image learn to blend in better, and are not noticed. they have to do what 13 yo girls do… experiment with makeup and clothes and style. but they often have no no one helping. no one to tell them that a skirt is too short, or clothes too tight, or makeup way too heavy.
and of course the media will choose to show the most outrageous at any given moment, so what you see on tv is not typical for any group, least of all tg’s
pldennison, thanks for pointing out "As Nature Made Him.’ The scariest part of this book is that the antagonist of this true story, John Money, was a well-respected scientist, and even though he has been totally dissed by this book, he still has his supporters. The book shows that small groups can get away with doing bad science, at least for awhile, and especially in the difficult area of psychology & human behaviour.
First off, many of you are treating this like the boy just liked doing Girly things or being the opposite of a Tomboy. That is NOT the same as having your parents call you a her and registering you as a girl.
Second, when did society change, and make children “Little Adults” If children were so capable of making correct desicions (sp) we wouldn’t need to parent them so long.
Third, you can THINK or FEEL like someone of the oppsite sex all you want, but Gender is not a state of mind. It is biological. You may not want to conform to current gender stereotypes, but that does NOT change your gender.
Our society is becomming more and more accepting of things and then just giving them names so they don’t sound as bad as they used to. What if this child had decided, at 2 yrs of age, that he KNEW he was meant to have sex with animals. I know many of you are going to say the two issues are FAR removed, but 50 years ago, people would not have. But we are more enlightened now…so in 50 years will we be MORE enlightened and allow our kids to have sex with the family pet?
I can find several dozen MEDLINE psychiatric and medical abstracts to describe to you how full of feces you are, but I’ll first give you an opportunity to back this statement up with some facts. You have 2 minutes from . . . now.
And . . . time’s up. While anatomical sex is in fact biological, gender is very much something created in the brain, not the genitals; and often one does not conform to the other. You may not like it, but it’s a simple, observable fact.
Ok, so when you go to check the gender of your cat, do you ask it questions and such…not, you check the genetals. just because we are smarter than animals doesn’t mean biological rules get to change for us. I can THINK I am a dog, that doesn’t make me a dog.
Just beacuse, in our “enlightened” state of the 20th-21st century, we decided to change definitions doesn’t mean they are right. Most often, in these cases, when they decide to change the meaning like this, it’s to pander to a bunch of people who want it changed to fit them. Marriage used to mean a bond between a man and woman, but that is changing.
And even IF gender was a mental thing, that doesn’t detract from the main point which is whether or not a 2 yearold can make that choice.
sghoul: Whatever. It’s obvious you aren’t interested in reading links from people who have actually experienced things or studied them, don’t understand the difference between sex and gender, and don’t in fact know anything at all about transgenderism. Buh-bye now.
1.Grammar.
a.A grammatical category used in the analysis of nouns, pronouns, adjectives, and, in
some languages, verbs that may be arbitrary or based on characteristics such as
sex or animacy and that determines agreement with or selection of modifiers,
referents, or grammatical forms.
b.One category of such a set.
c.The classification of a word or grammatical form in such a category.
d.The distinguishing form or forms used.
2.Sexual identity, especially in relation to society or culture.
The first only has to do with grammer, the second with sexual identity…
sex·u·al (sksh-l)
adj.
1.Of, relating to, involving, or characteristic of sex, sexuality, the sexes, or the sex organs
and their functions.
You are right, I didn’t take those links into account. Because it seemed to me that those pages were written by folks who cater to people who want to change “gender”. Now, do you think their information on the subject might be alittle biased based on clientele (sp).
I am also not so interested in the subject to read pages of stuff. The jist would have been fine.
And, in the end, this kind of information is somewhat nebulous. It’s not hard fact. Any psycological stuff is theory at best. It’s whatever the psycologists of the day decide to be the case.
I would be happy to read a concise report of scientific fact.
There you go. You look at a cat’s genitals to determine its sex. You do not look at its genitals to determine its sexual identity in relation to its society or culture. It is questionable whether cats even have sexual identities, societies, or cultures.
You don’t honestly believe that things like the desire to wear skirts and makeup are rooted in biology, do you? In some parts of the world traditional men’s clothing does involve skirts, but in most of the modern West skirt-wearing is considered acceptable only for females. Until quite recently the wearing of trousers was considered acceptable only for males. I am quite certain that women do not have a “skirt gene”, nor do men have a “trouser gene”. These differences (and many others) are purely social/cultural and thus a matter of gender instead of sex.
“Scientific facts” are of pretty low value. They are the data from which competent scientists formulate theories that explain the world we live in.
Geologists study the rocks and minerals composing the lithosphere of the planet. Meteorologists study the phenomena associated with the atmosphere and related affecting phenomena in an effort to understand the weather. And so on.
The human mind is an amazingly complex thing which nobody understands completely. Competent clinical psychologists have spent a great deal of time attempting to get at how it operates and why different people have the differences they do. This includes the identification of syndromes such as gender dysphoria. It is, as you note, a theory. But if you are looking for “absolute fact” on which you can hang your hat, you’re at the wrong place. There are tons of gurus around who will tell you the Truth as they know it. Here, we attempt to learn it. Unfortunately, this often results in the surgical removal of preconceptions, a quite painful process.
sghoul: I sincerely hope neither you nor anyone you love is ever faced with a brain and a self telling them they are a different gender than what their genitals indicate.
There’s also a big difference, BTW, between “psychological” and “psychiatric.” Psychiatrists are MDs. And most of the MEDLINE links I posted were from psychiatric abstracts, which are indeed concise scientific fact.
Sghoul—if you don’t want to read links, then let me just sum up some scientific experiments that have been done in recent years.
When pregnant animals were injected with certain hormones, their offspring was often born with the body of one sex and the brain of another—chemical makeup, hypothalamus and behavior of the opposite sex. So yes, transgenderism CAN exist in “the family cat.” Autopsies done on transsexuals also indicate that they have the brain makeup of the sex they claimed to “feel like.”
And this is not something recent: there have been transgendered people of both sexes in all societies from the dawn of recorded history. It’s only within the past 60 years or so that medical science has been able to DO something about it.
Don’t believe me, or want me to back this up? THEN READ PLDENNISON’S GODDAM LINKS AND LEARN SOMETHING.
