Boy of 12 returns to new school year as a girl

[5inthebed]

Here. Sorry about the source.

I think 12 is a young age for any child to understand this, so can understand the parents anger at how the school dealt with it. The poor child is already getting bullied.

I was proper tomboy, had long blonde hair to my bottom which I hacked off short with nail scissors when I was 6 so I could have short boys hair. I wore unisex clothes (lots of jeans and red t-shirts IIRC)and stripes. I refused a one-peice swimsuit and wore blue and white striped half of a bikini when swimming.
I hayed pink with a passion. I still loathe it.
I knew I was a girl though and I played with dolls alongside action man and toy soldiers.

I didn't want to become a boy. I just never really got the hang of being girly.

and i should have put girly in ' '!

I don't know what to tink about this tbh. Right up untill i was 12-13 i was determined to be a boy, my hair was cropped, i refused point blank to wear the girls school uniform which was a skirt and i rebeled agains the rule of girls play netball boys play football, i was the best football player in the school, i would openly tell people how much i longed to be a boy, i really hated the fact i was a girl, i don't know why i changed my mind tbh, i went to an all girls highschool for the first year of secondry school and hated it, i think i changed my mind about which sex i wanted to be when i hit puberty.

Im really not sure what to think about the child in this story, i just hope the parents are making sure he/she is recieving the right expert care to help her through what i can imagine is going to be a very tough time.

Lenin I really think if anything they make the whole process too hard. I did a bit of research on this because of the case I had to help with and the protocols are very tough. Of course some of the people involved do have mental health issues - indeed gender dysmorphia is classified as a mental health problem, even though part of the solution may be surgical. Those who go through with full sex changes do not think of their surgery as mutilation, but as rectifying something that is wrong. Of course sometimes mistakes are made and that's a terrible thing, but for most people it is incredibly liberating to finally live the life they feel they need, often after years and years of trying to persuade the authorities that yes they are really serious, and no therapy won't make them feel happy. Of course as society becomes less rigid in gender roles and more accepting about difference perhaps some of those individuals might feel happier in themselves without radical surgery.

btw I understand that intersex conditions have very little to do with gender dysmorphia, although there is some overlap, especially in the past when gender assignment in these cases was fairly arbitrary.

Well I could be totally out of date of course, as it's an evolving field (the understanding of male/female). It's funny really because we do tend to see gender as a very black and white thing, and yet clearly there is a large and complicated grey area in between.

Dittany: while I put it a bit simplistically, what I know from talking to transgendered friends is that people who are gender dysmorphic feel utterly wrong in the bodies they were born with and it's not a matter of wanting to wear pink or play football. People who have felt like this often speak of incredible relief and happiness at having a body that, post surgery, feels and looks appropriate to them at last, even though they are fully aware that they have not 'changed sex' fully ie they will not be able either to impregnate a woman (if FtoM) or become pregnant and carry a baby to term.

SGB, you're wasting your time trying to reason. Dittany thinks transgender issues are just yet another manifestation of misogyny. Apparently all those tortured souls who want/need to have gender reassignment to make themselves look like the woman they believe themselves to be are just doing it because they hate women and want to dilute real womanhood, or something.

I can see where you are coming from, Leningrad. In my little ideal world, dd or ds could be interchangeable in the choices they make... though I know in reality I won't be putting ds in a dress (though happily in dd's embroidered trousers - to the of others).

Would rather we didn't define things so much in terms of boy/girl really. But I suppose that isn't the reality. Why is this boy SO desperate to be a girl? What does he think being a girl is like?

Not sure any 12yo feels happy in their own skin so generally uncomfortable with a psychologist agreeing that they are the 'wrong' gender - although if you were intersex I would understand it as a consideration more. And of course, we have no way of knowing who is intersex or not.

I have no issue with the child playing with ideas of identity (and 12 is a child) but don't see it necessary to announce it in assembly that they have changed gender. Weird.

Sorry, should read 'So desperate he IS a girl'.

i remember that documentary about fred, it was brilliant. i thought the child's mother was amazing, an absolute tigress for him, and it was so clearly the right decision to move before puberty changed things irrevocably.

Leningrad, I agree with you 100%. I have also known (and do know and spend time with) people who have an alter ego of the other gender and enjoy being that person sometimes but have no wish to change entirely.
Oh and let's not forget that there are plenty of transgendered people who were born female and want to be male, after all (ruling out the silly argument sometimes touted by the absolutely mental end of separatist feminism that gender dysphoria is 'just a way for men to get sexual access to lesbians').

I felt pretty similar when I was a teen Lenin, but I never had any actual issues with my body, it was the roles I objected to, boys/men seemed to have a much better life, so that's what I wanted. Now I am perfectly happy knowing I am a fairly atypical female, but I think as a teenager that's not so easy.