Saturday, April 19, 2008

Treatment of Trans Children - a Mothers Tale

When a young child is gender dysphoric, and therefore feel that they have "a girls brain in a boys body" or visa versa, how does the medical profession react?

The answer in Britain is not very well. The rigid approach by gender experts is to force the child to go through puberty and the consequential irreversible changes in their physical body. The result is untold pain and often suicide.

In the USA and Holland and other parts of the world, hormone blockers are used to suspend puberty to enable the child to reach 16 and then make an adult decision about their future. Stopping the blockers results in normal puberty continuing. Those who are transsexual will be able then to start cross ender hormones and develop in their acquired gender without the problem of then having to undergo difficult cosmetic surgery and cope with having a body which means they will always be identified as trans.

I highly recommend this sensitive interview by Christine Burns with the mother of a young trans girl who has had to go to Holland and the USA to secure the simple treatment to suspend puberty and give her daughter a chance of a near normal life.

What is most striking about this interview is the mothers commitment to supporting her daughters needs often against huge pressure from her ex husband and the medical profession to condemn her daughter to a lifetime of misery .