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I'm posting this for reference and discussion. It's quite a conflicted article, showing the unhappy sides of two opposite approaches to treating gender dysphoric behavior in young children and raising doubts of the value of either.
One wonders if the author could have done a better job of convincing us as to whether one approach held more hope than the other, or found more experts to cite. As it is, this article strikes me as doing little more than sensationalizing the issue and leaving the reader sad and depressed.
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Important
Pippa, thanks so much for posting this important reportage. Daphne
Daphne
It Is Pretty Sad That These Kids Have To Know Hatred
These poor kids are just trying to be happy with who they are. It is pretty sad that they have to know the hatred and bigotry that others show toward them for just being themselves. The Fundamentalist crowd needs to get over themselves and realize that everything is not black and white. We suffer from a birth defect and it is no different than someone born without limbs or a hole in their heart. I have a friend who is a Methodist minister and when I explained it as a birth defect, he understood. We have been friend for years. I am glad that some parents have actually made an effort at understanding. We still have a long way to go, but we are seeing progress.
Thanks, Pippa
I'm glad you linked to the article so that I/we got to read it.
I learned some things, like details of Zucker's therapy. I and most of us, I assume, are likely to be very suspicious of anyone trying to deny the existence of transsexuals and/or trying to make transsexual children into something they are not. Zucker's ideas, however seem both moronic and draconian. Sexist, patriarchal, a fantasy of 1950's life; any thinking person just couldn't accept such crap as part of modern, scientific psychology, IMHO.
The dutch program sounds very good, but possibly too restrictive. The modern "pro-TS" activities in the US are described as seeming anarchtic, however I think some standards of care will evolve and be useful.
I don't see what is wrong with talking with and observing children to find out what they really want. Very young children start imitating their parents or care givers. This seems like an important adaptation for survival and was/is probably instinctive in us and our ancestors over many millions of years. But, how do these young children know who to imitate? I think something in ones brain is wired so that one attempts to learn female or to learn male behavior. IMO, if a child acts like and says she is a girl, there is a high probability she is saying that (because) her brain sex is female.
TSs exist, obviously. TS occurrence in the population is grossly underestimated (see Lynn Conway, et al). Treating them as the gender that they are (in their brain) as soon as possible and causing their bodies to develop as closely as possible to the norm (of those with same brain and body sex), seems both morally correct, practical and least harmful for the TS individual. The article says this is happening. I think the more this happens and the more thoughtful articles are written, the sooner society will get used to this and the fewer ignorant there will be to give us problems.
Big Hugs and Think/Dream/Work for a Happy Future!
Renee
Hugs and Bright Blessings,
Renee
Zucker, Etc.
The biggest problem with Zucker and his theories, I suspect, is that he's actually right part of the time. From the article, if I read it right, it seems like he has a pretty hard and fast rule of not trying to tinker with kids who are 13 years and older. He seems willing to accept evidence that on the face of it indicates the child is trans.
It's with the younger kids, especially the very young, where Zucker's theories (that of disbelieving that they could be truly trans and might be acting out some trauma or deficiency in their lives) probably do much more harm than good. But, his theoretical point might have some merit, that SOME children really aren't trans -- they're just going through a phase of some sort, or are gay.
One major problem with his gay theory, of course, is at that age (4 to 10) children are not normally sexualized unless they've been sexually molested, so their sexual preference would be entirely undeveloped at that age, even if it might in some sense be predictable. That is, they wouldn't be reacting against having sexual desire for the same sex and seeking to be the opposite sex to avoid being gay, simply because they're too young for sexual desire to have developed at all yet.
Another problem is that to a large extent, children ARE malleable. They will try to please their parents to seek love, even if it makes them miserable in the long run.
Yet, he does have a point. SOME children may just be going through a phase or working out some demons or lack in their family life. But, it's a point in search of a protocol. Unless some more definitive way is found of objectively identifying who is who, the bias of the therapist is treacherous. "Never ask a barber if you need a haircut," etc.
If you could tell in advance, which kid could benefit from encouragement to explore their birth gender, and which are truly rooted in the opposite one, it would be a slam-dunk to give the right kid the right treatment. So far, this seems like a field of study that's barely in its infancy. Zucker might some day get credit for inspiring it, but right now, today, he's just a barber who wants to give all these kids the same crewcut.
The clinicians who urge acceptance of the transgender nature of the children, and the clinics providing puberty-blocking drugs are, to some extent, doing the same thing, treating all their patients with the same assumption. One big plus in their favor, of course, is that their clients seem much happier, by and large, at least in their identities if not in their environments. But, there is always a danger that someone might enter such a program and not be one of the patients who really need it. Once in the program, though, their path is pretty well set. Puberty-blockers, followed by cross-gender hormones, along with a growing brain is likely to be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
This raises ethical questions. If the treatment itself is, so to speak, chemically reinforcing of the initial impression, then will the clinician have erred in not "salvaging" any borderline cases? The Dutch seem to have more intensive confirmation protocols in place than some of the other centers and individual practicioners cited.
Environment can not be discounted, either. If a transgender child is fated to be hounded and tormented by classmates and neighbors, the outcome can be devastating no matter what the clinical treatment is.
So, my depressing take on the situation is that while it is conceivably dangerous to take everything at face value all the time, so is it dangerous to make untestable assumptions that things are not as they seem. I don't know what the answer is.
I guess that's why I'm not rich and famous.
Zucker redux
What bothers me about Zucker and his ilk, is that they throw around these "plausible" psychological development theories about distant fathers and dominant mothers or whatnot, without a single shred of actual evidence of any kind that such a thing even correlates statistically with transsexualism, let alone causes it. And yet, there is a growing body of evidence that it's pretty much inborn*, which they dismiss and ignore because--well, because in order to accept it they'd have to admit they were wrong, that their entire careers had been based on pseudoscientific mumbo-jumbo with nothing real to back it up.
I put the asterisk on "inborn" because there's also some evidence that maybe one out of three kids don't innately identify strongly one way or the other, and will just more-or-less happily go along with whatever they're raised as because it's easier that way. But those kids would be pretty unlikely to be referred to Zucker in the first place, I'd think.
SF Weekly Article
I'm not sure whether last year's lead article in a July issue of SF Weekly (a San Francisco alternative tabloid and part of the New Times/Village Voice chain, though this was local content) covering much of the same ground was ever noted here:
http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-07-11/news/girl-boy-interrupted/1
Zucker gets one sentence or so as part of the opposition, but his ideas about traditional gender roles aren't mentioned. The story as a whole seems quite positive about the expansion of the Dutch treatment to the U.S..
Eric
Excellent Article
Best part for interested parents is the list of resources at the end.