I fully agree.
Now I know modern society is barking when it allows BS like this.
I have a friend with a male child that might go on to want to be a female, but there is no way that they’d actually send him to school as a “girl”.
Barking modern society Translation: I have a friend with a child who has a medical condition but they’re just going to ignore it until he’s older because there is no physical proof.
/end translation
I was a little surprised that this manifested so clearly so young but given the teenage and preteen depression issues that many transgendered youths suffer the earlier we can address their issues the better off they will be. It certainly won’t solve everything, there will still be bullying but at least the adults are (being forced to) demonstrate acceptance of the situation.
I’m not sure that “knowing you’re a boy at six” is the same thing exactly as knowing that you’re a straight male.
I knew I was a boy at 6, mostly because mom had explained that boys had tally-whackers, and girls didn’t.
Otherwise the only real difference between the genders was that the girls in the neighborhood didn’t like bugs or dirt or tackle football or wrestling, and us boys did. We all liked hide and seek and tag and other stuff like that. There wasn’t any sexual attraction at that age, or really much conscious idea of gender identity either. Based on my experience, there wasn’t this deep knowledge of your gender and the associated roles; while they may not have been our first choices, some of us boys played with girls and their barbie dolls, and some of the girls caught bugs and toads with us. Other than that, it was just wake up, eat some cereal and fruit, and go out and play.
The diagnostic criteria for depression can actually be found rather easily, and there are in fact physical tests that can help determine a possible or probable diagnosis of Alzheimer’s (or at least rule out other causes with similar symptoms), so I’m not sure those two examples really help your case. While you’re right that the specifics of this case are necessarily private, the diagnostic criteria should not be, and I would also be curious to know exactly what they are— and whether the criteria differ for a patient as young as this one.
A few years ago I’d’ve been with typoink on this. I wasn’t 100% comfortable about being a girl when I was six - because I was a tomboy, not because I was transgender. I had to grow into gender identity, too, and find ways it fits me.
But now I’ve got a four-year-old daughter who is all about being a girl. She revels in every aspect of it, stereotypes and all, with pure joy. If I asked her if she’s comfortable being a girl, she’d probably say it’s the best thing that’s ever happened to her.
If my daughter can be this absolutely certain at four, I figure there’s probably no reason Coy can’t be that certain at six. I’d bet that not all transgender kids are this certain this early, same as not all cisgender kids are, but presumably some are.
I’d be horrified if the parents were signing their kid up for some irreversible surgery, because that’s a decision that should be made by the person in question and it’s a decision that only an adult should make. But this isn’t irreversible. It isn’t even major. If Coy changes her mind and decides she feels like a boy after all, all she has to do is go back to using the other bathroom. I can’t see the big deal.
One blogger I like compared this to a court ruling that a 6-year old who thinks he’s Superman must be allowed to wear a cape and jump off the school’s roof.
I like how it’s always about sex though. In the article one of the protests are, “How do we know that someone’s not coming in just to be a Peeping Tom?”
In the other thread about sharing locker rooms it’s the same thing. Why are you so sure that people want to look at YOU?
I don’t know what’s right for this girl. I’m not the one to judge. I do kind of wish it wasn’t necessary to make a national case about it and put her picture everywhere. Fifteen minutes of fame do not a good childhood make.
And yet, if I were informed that a doctor had diagnosed a six-year-old with Alzheimer’s, I’m not so sure I’d believe it out of hand. I fully support the rights of adults to live as whatever gender they feel comfortable with, but the idea that someone can be objectively determined to have been “born in the wrong body”, especially at an age where their hormones are still 6-7 years away from kicking in, just plain strikes me as odd. I’m not a parent, but if I had a young male child who wanted to dress up in girls’ clothes and refer to himself as a she, I’d tell him something along the lines of “When you’re old enough, you can be whoever you want to be, but you’re not ready to make that decision just yet.”
Regardless of any medical diagnosis, I have a big problem with parents that throw their young child into the middle of a media circus.
My trouble here is that gender identity is, in a lot of ways, just a convenient fiction. Less than 100 years ago pink was a boy’s color and kids of both ages wore dresses. Take a look at little FDR seated with his long hair, frilly hat, dress and patent shoes.
So, a boy wants to wear a dress. That’s only interesting because he’s been told that boys don’t wear dresses. My son is a stubborn SOB. If he decided he wanted to wear a dress, me telling him “boys don’t wear dresses” would be a waste of breath. At bedtime he wore pajama pants on his head for a year because they were his “nighttime hat”.
The kid wants to be dressed like his sisters, and that’s something to be diagnosed?
They sued to protect her rights and court proceedings are public. How is that the parents throwing her into the middle of a media circus.
What would you propose they do differently?
Not use the courts to demand that the state acknowledge their kids’ desire to play make-believe?
I have no opinion on whether the parents are doing right by Coy are not and if she is truly transgendered. However, there have been other cases in the media with children this young being TG that have fared pretty well long term. Well, if you consider from 7 or so until the early teenage years. Anyway, the one I remember is the well-documented case of Jazz. She seems to still feel she’s a girl, is on hormone treatment therapy and doesn’t look like she’ll ever want to be a boy again or feel regret for how she’s been raised this far. If anyone is interested, I just googled “youngest transgender” and she’s right on all the first pages of the results.
Unless, of course, she proves to be TG for her entire life. Then I suppose it’s no longer playing “make-believe.”
IIRC, the triplets were born two boys and a girl. I was actually on the Mothering.com message boards at the same time as Kathryn Mathis and remember reading the birth story as it happened.
Perhaps the identity of young children in court proceedings does not have to be public.
I think a lot of people can’t really grok the affect gender non-conformity has on some folks. I know I don’t. I mean, I know how it feels to be androgynous and to feel like you don’t belong anywhere. But that’s different than feeling “stuck” in the wrong body. I can’t imagine how this feels, but I trust that it’s a geniune experience. I have no good reason to believe otherwise.
I kind of think what has people concerned is this notion that if you set a precedence, suddenly everyone is going to want to buck the system, and then the “system” will be rendered moot. If you treat one little boy like a little girl, then suddenly all the little boys will want to be given the same treatment! Then we’ll all have a generation of lost and confused people, and society will be lost! And I guess it can kind of seem like this is starting to happen in the eyes of the paranoid. Just a decade ago, few people weren’t even aware that trangenderism was a thing, let alone a thing that can affects kids. Nowadays, it’s almost commonplace because there’s media attention and more people are open about it. Transgendered gay babies with Asperger’s and gluten intolerance everywhere! The horrors!
But to me, it’s no big deal. I think gendered bathrooms are outdated and have been since the advent of the stall door. And if the presence of one transgendered kid is enough to incite an epidemic of transgenderism in a classroom or school, then I guess that just blows a big hole in the notion that gender is biological determined.
How is it not? A male who lives and identifies as a female does not cease to be male, any more than a blue-eyed person who wears brown contact lenses ceases to be blue-eyed.
I object to those photos on the grounds that sand is NOT yucky.
How old is “old enough?”