Corner Post – news.lgbti.org

My Little Girl’s Trapped in a Boy’s Body

At the age of 3, Simon was playing with tea-sets. At 5 he fell in love with Barbie dolls. And at 7 he told his mum: “I wish I’d been born a girl.”

But Pat wasn’t shocked… she already knew there was something different about her eldest son. He never touched boys’ toys and he only ever wanted girls as his playmates.

“As a teacher, I didn’t take too much notice at first, because children will play with whatever’s to hand,” says Pat. ” But it gradually dawned on me that he always went for the girls’ toys. The cars and garages we bought him were left untouched – he preferred to potter around the kitchen with a tea-towel tied around him like a skirt. One day, after I’d dropped him off at nursery school, I peered through the window and saw him playing with a pretty little tea-set.”

By the time Simon was 4, he’d made it clear he only wanted to play with the girls. “He couldn’t play with the boys,”” says Pat. “He had nothing in common with them. He was a very gentle child, so he was always being pushed around… They didn’t understand him.”

Pat and her husband Michael, a solictor, decided to send Simon to a boys-only school in the hope it would toughen him up and make him ‘normal’.

Pat admits: “It was a terrible mistake. Simon was very unhappy – the school was formal and competetive. He was often buliied – and once he was thrown on a rubbish heap. But above all, he missed girls’ company.”

They moved him to a smaller mixed school where he spent two happy years. Then he started secondary school, which was fine at first, especially when he got a part in the school play.

“He loved dressing up especially in girls’ clothes,” says Pat. “He’d raid my cupboards for things to wear. Then he took up dancing classes and won a competition dressed up in frills and feathers. His father sat squirming with embarrassment, although he hid it well from his son.”

But Simon’s happy schooldays didn’t last long. His drama teacher made a comment about his sexuality to a group of older boys… and the bullying started.

“I went up to the school and had it out with the teachers. Simon might be different, but it isn’t up to them to ridicule him. By then I was at my wits’ end.”

And birthday parties were a nightmare – Simon didn’t have any friends. Pat would invite her friends’ children around, but Simon was never invited back to their homes.

“We did our best to protect him. When other kids came round we’d suggest he put away his collection of Barbie Dolls so they wouldn’t tease him. He’d refuse, but he never complained when they took the mickey… He seemed to think it was his lot in life.”

When he was 7, Pat took him for assessment by child psychologists at a London Hospital. But they couldn’t help with the question of Simon’s true gender. “I never had anyone to talk to,” says Pat. “People just didn’t want to know… And there didn’t seem to be any experts I could turn to.”

Pat was at the end of her tether when she heard of a clinic at St. George’s Hospital in Tooting, South London, where an Italian doctor, Domenico Di Ceglie specialises in helping children with gender identification problems. “I was desperate to speak to someone who could help. They were wonderful,” says Pat.

“Boys and girls can sometimes grow up confused about what gender they really are,” says Dr Di Ceglie. “But it’s more noticeable in boys because a tomboyish girl is much more easily accepted than a feminine boy.”

“Research has shown gender problems can be caused by biological, psychological or family factors,” he continues. “It’s difficult to predict early on whether a child will become a transsexual, homosexual, or revert to heterosexual development. But by the early teens, we have a good idea, and by the late teenage years we know for certain.”

“If a boy consitently behaves like a girl, or a girl like a boy, then a professional should be consulted. But the child must be treated sensitively.”

Simon was 11 when he started going to sessions at St George’s. Now 13, he goes to a performing arts school where floaty shirts and jewellry fit in easily. Pat, who lives in Surrey, admits she’s embarrassed about what people must think. “One night, a friend of my other son’s was at the house. His father – who’d never met Simon – came to pick him up. When Simon waltzed in wearing a long velvet cloak and earrings, he asked if it was my daughter. ‘No’ I replied. ‘It’s Simon.’ I don’t know who was more embarrassed!”

But what really haunts Pat is what will happen to Simon eventually. “He doesn’t hate his male body like some boys at the clinic do… And he doesn’t buy girls’ panties. But I look at his make-up, dyed hair and clothes and I’m terrified he’ll be lynched one night.”

Simon’s still too young for anyone to know what his sexuality will be, but his mother knows he’ll have to face many difficult decisions as he gets older.

“It’s sad. People don’t understand,” she says. “But it helps to know he’s not alone – there are hundreds of children like him all over the country.”

“I just don’t know he’d be happier if he’d been born a girl. I only wish I could have been more help to him… by giving birth to him as a girl rather than as a boy.”

by Alix Palmer
From Woman’s Own
mermaids.freeuk.com/woman.html – 2004

The Gay, Lesbian, and Feminist Backlash

The modern era of the gay & lesbian rights movement is usually marked as starting on a hot July evening at the Stonewall Inn in New York City’s Greenwich Village. The New York police, as many city police departments across the United States did, made period raids on sexual minority bars to harass and arrest the patrons. On this particular night, transgendered woman, Sylvia Rivera, resisted arrest, touching off a riot that continued for three nights running.

In the next year, three transgendered people, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, and Angela Keyes Douglas would play pivotal roles in organizing the emergent Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance. The goal of the Gay Liberation Front was complete acceptance of sexual diversity and expression. But by 1971 the gay men’s community had returned to the assimilationist strategy as the lesbians, in 1973, turned to separatism and radical feminism. There seemed to be no room for transgendered people in either camp.

In 1971, the GAA wrote and introduced a bill to the New York City Council that was the first omnibus anti-discrimination bill to protect homosexual people. However, inspite of early and avid support of the GAA by transgendered people the bill completely ignored transgendered people. Silvia Rivera, disgusted by the batrayal, said to the leaders of the GAA, “It’s not us that they are afraid of — its you! Get rid of us. Sell us out. Make us expendable. Then you’re at the front lines. Don’t you understand that?” This marked the first serious batrayal, but certainly not the last.

Disillusioned by the GAA’s betrayal of transgendered people, Angela Douglas formed the Transsexual Activist Organization along the same lines as the GAA, with some of the loftier ideals of the GLF. She began publishing MoonShadow, a quirky newsletter for and about transgendered people and the struggle for legal rights.

In early 1970’s, Beth Elliott was active in a number of organizations including the Alice B. Toklas Gay Democratic Club, which she co-founded, the Board of Directors of the California Committee for Sexual Law Reform working to repeal California’s anti-sodomy laws, and the Daughters of Bilitus. The Daughters of Bilitus had been a pioneering lesbian organization during the 1950s and ‘60s, but was losing membership in the ‘70s as the lesbian community turned to more radical organizing. In ‘73 Ms. Elliott was asked to stand for election as the Vice-President of the San Francisco chapter of the Daughters of Bilitus. Late in her term of office her transgender status became a point of contention at the West Coast Lesbian Conference, where she was outed and vilified for being a MTF transsexual. The complaint was that Beth Elliott had insinuated herself into a position of power over women as a patriarchal man, a propagandist ploy that was to become common when attacking other transgendered people . At the conference she was forced to stop her music concert due to the catcalls from the audience by women that knew nothing more about her than that she was transsexual. She was required to sit through a popular vote of the attendees to determine whether they would let her finish her set. In the weeks and months to follow she was further vilified and even betrayed by women who had once called her friend. The treatment she received led her to become “stealth” for many years after.

In July of 1973, during a “Gay is Good” rally, Sylvia Rivera was followed on the stage by lesbian separatist Jean O’Leary. She denounced transgender people as men who, by “impersonating women”, were exploiting women for profit. It was the beginning of a series of such high profile transphobic attacts from the lesbian community.

In 1977, at the height of the Right Wing / Anita Bryant anti-gay rights backlash, the lesbian feminist separatist movement was busy attacking an even smaller community that only wanted to work within the lesbian community, lesbian identified transsexual women. Central to the conflict in ‘77 was transsexual recording engineer, Sandy Stone, working at Olivia Records.

Sandy Stone was a recording engineer for A&M Records before her transition. Olivia Records needed a recording engineer with skills and experience to help their fledgling all women’s recording studio. They found it in Sandy Stone. She recorded a number of their early albums, training other women on proper recording and mixing technique. When word got around that Olivia had a transsexual in the company, lesbian separatists threatened a boycott of Olivia products and concerts. Olivia Records was on the edge of profitability. A boycott would destroy them. Olivia supported Stone at first but eventually crumpled beneath the separatists demands, asking for Sandy’s resignation.

Angela Douglas became upset at the vitriolic, absurd, and transphobic comments broadcast on listener sponsored station KPFA in Berkeley, California and letters published in the feminist journal Sister. She wrote a very tongue-in-cheek satirical letter to the editor of Sister, the night before the 1977 San Francisco Gay Pride Parade.

The next day, at the Parade, a “gender bending” MTF individual handed out fliers that was written in protest of the Parade Committee’s policy of exclusion of “Drag Queens, Transvestites, and Transsexuals” . The policy was formulated in the hope of heading off the media which tended to focus on the flamboyant, instead of the very serious issues of Gay & Lesbian community pride and efforts to fight homophobia in society. However, transphobia had operated in the Parade Committee to equate transgendered people with “flamboyant” social unacceptability and political liability.

After the parade, Angela Douglas wrote a short essay with photos for the Berkeley Barb, in which she decried the efforts to exclude transgendered people. She asked if there shouldn’t be a counter parade by transgendered people, to be held on Halloween, a day that one is supposed to be flamboyant!

Two years later Janice Raymond in The Transsexual Empire, wrote of the events of 1977, casting Ms. Stone as an agent of the “Patriarchy” and “divisive”. The letter that Angela Douglas wrote as satire was quoted out of context, as an example of transsexual hatred of women, by Raymond. Her quoting out of context a letter written by Douglas was tantamount to intellectual dishonesty, with scholarly repercussions.

Janice Raymond was a professor at the University of Massachusetts. She is infamous for having written her doctoral thesis attacking transsexuality, denying its medical reality, and for viciously attacking individual transsexuals, notably Sandy Stone and Angela Keyes Douglas in her book, based on her dissertation. The book uses insensitive and transphobic language throughout, while vilifying feminine MTF transsexuals as tools of patriarchy for upholding stereotypes of women, and vilifying androgynous lesbian identified MTF transsexuals for being tools of patriarchy, fifth columnists infiltrating womens’ space and “raping womens’ bodies”, a typical ‘damned if you do, damned if you don’t’ trap. She dismisses FTM transsexuals as deluded and misguided lesbians, afraid of the label “homosexual”. Her thesis rests entirely on arguments that sex/gender identity are fixed within the genitals at birth, an essentialist theory that excludes the possibility of transsexuals being a form of intersex, a topic which Raymond never addresses.

The book, while it did not create the transphobic attitude in the lesbian community, did tap into and ‘validated’, at least for the transphobes themselves, the discrimination they practiced. Thus, what began in the ‘70s, occasional attacks on individual transsexual women, became institutionalized discrimination against all transsexuals in the ‘80s.

The Transsexual Empire, was not the most damaging writing that Raymond penned. Far worse was a United States federal government commissioned study in the early 1980’s on the topic of federal aid for transsexual people seeking rehabilitation and health services. This paper, not well publicized, effectively eliminated federal and some states aid for indigent and imprisoned transsexuals. It had a further impact on private health insurance which followed the federal government’s lead in disallowing services to transsexual patients for any treatment remotely related to being transsexual, including breast cancer or genital cancer, as that was deemed to be a consequence of treatment for transsexuality.

Ms. Raymond is closely associated with another noted transphobic writer, Mary Daly, who described transsexuals as “Frankenstien’s Monsters” in her book GynEcology.

Transgender participation continued to be controversial in the Gay & Lesbian Community. Transsexuals taking leadership positions in the community were especially subject to attack.

Ms. Carol Katz was on the Christopher Street West Gay Pride Parade and Festival Committee, serving as Security Coordinator from ‘79 through ‘81. However her position on the board was a controversial one as many gays and especially lesbians objected to the presence of a transsexual. She recruited a number of transgendered people, both FTM and FTM to work as volunteer parade monitors and festival security each year . Her background in law enforcement facilitated greater cooperation between the Committee and local law enforcement organizations, LAPD and the LA County Sheriff’s Department.

In 1980 Ms. Katz was asked to serve as Security Co-ordinator for the “Women Take Back The Night March” in Hollywood. She agreed to help. However… lesbian feminist separatists threatened to boycott the march. Carol offered to step down in the interests of the larger community, with some private bitterness. The Committee accepted her resignation. But at the very last minute, due to overwhelming details in doing the job without her… and perhaps a realization that it was wrong to push her out of her participation… the committee asked her to take back the job the very day of the march. The controversy over Ms. Katz’es leadership role lead to the effective banning of broad transgender community participation in event planning and execution, though transgendered people did march that night .

It should be noted that the memory of the gay & lesbian community is short, as demonstrated by the efforts of the transgender community in Los Angeles to win inclusion in the Parade and Festival in 1995; Transman, Jacob Hale faced a Festival committee that believed transgendered people had never been participants before. The work of the transgendered community in ‘79-’81 had been completely forgotten, erased by the silence of the 1980’s.

In 1991 Nancy Burkholter was ejected from the Michigan Wymyns’ Music Festival at 1:00am by security staff suspicious that she was transsexual. She had done nothing to warrant eviction. She was forced to find transportation back to town to fly home, a holiday trip ruined by transphobia.

Unknown to the transsexuals who had been quietly attending the festival for years was an unpublished policy of the festival organizers that transsexuals were not welcome “on the land”. The policy was written out in the material for the next year that only “Wymyn Born Wymyn” may attend. The language was clearly designed to exclude transsexuals while avoiding debates regarding whether MTF transsexuals were “Wymyn”.

The next year, in 1992 TransActivist Anne Ogborn began organizing a protest to be held at the Festival, unable to go herself, she enlisted Davina Anne Gabrielle to attend. Davina and non-transsexual woman, Janis Hollingsworth handed-out buttons to women reading “I might be transsexual” at a table to enlist festival attendees in a dialog over the transsexual inclusion. Davina was ejected from “the land” in accordance with the written policy.

In 1993, the transgender community pitched CampTrans outside the main entrance. Jessica Xavier, Leslie Feinberg, among others attended to protest the Festivals’ “Wymyn Born Wymyn Only” policy. “Woman Born Transsexual” read a new button worn by CampTrans inmates. At the camp, workshops and concerts were presented as an alternative to the Festival. A number of women came out of the festival to participate in discussions. Notable was the participation of younger lesbians, especially members of The Lesbian Avengers. TransActivist volunteers stood outside the gate taking a poll of the festival attendees attitudes toward transsexual inclusion at the festival. The poll revealed division on the issue, but the majority of the women attending indicated that they would welcome transsexual women.

Participation in CampTrans energized the transgender community to become active once again, after the community’s silent withdrawal from the larger gay & lesbian community the previous decade.

National and local transgender activist worked for months to gain inclusion in the 1993 March On Washington. Transgender volunteers aiding in organizing the March, notably Jessica Xavier, worked with March organizers for months trying to gain inclusion in the name of the March. There was a ‘divide and conquer’ politicking by transphobic gays & lesbians that pitted bisexuals against transgenders. They told the bisexual community members who were also working toward official inclusion that it was either transgender or bisexual, but not both. To their credit the bisexual members did not buy into the ploy. However, the issue of inclusion was still couched in such terms by the foes of transgender inclusion. When the issue was put to a vote by the organizing committee the bisexuals won inclusion easily. The vote for inclusion of transgender was divided. There were actual cheers from the gay and lesbian community when the committee announced their decision to exclude transgender which deeply dismayed the transgender community volunteers.

A new pattern emerged in the mid 1990’s. The generation that had grown up since Stonewall welcomed transgender people without reservation, perhaps even with a tinge of adulation for their contribution to the struggle for Queer Rights. The older generation, those who had struggled just after stonewall, those who had read The Transsexual Empire when it was new, had not changed their minds significantly. Those that had been accepting during the 1970s remained so, those that had been sitting on the fence now came down on transgender inclusion. But those who had adamantly opposed trans-inclusion in the ‘70s still fought against it in the ‘90s. In 1994 The Transsexual Empire was reprinted and used as a textbook in feminist classes once again.

In 1994 CampTrans was pitched again with Riki Anne Wilchins taking a leading role. The turn out was smaller than expected. It was not due to a feeling of failure, but rather a feeling that the issue of transgender inclusion in “wymyn only space” was being by-passed by larger and more important issues.

Also occurring in 1994 was the Gay Games. When transgendered people wished to participate they discovered similar transphobic attitudes that the International Olympic Committee held . The Games organizers refused to allow transgendered people to participate except under very restrictive rules, namely that had to prove that they had had surgery or at least lived two years full time, with hormones, in their gender of identity. Bi-gendered individuals were completely excluded. This reliance on rules that on the surface seem to come direct from the HBIGDA Standards of Care, offended the transgendered community.

Transsexual Menace of New York organized to protest the restrictive and discriminatory rules. In street protests the group held up a banner that read, “Gay Games to transgendered: DROP DEAD!!” The uproar and embarrassment forced the organizers to drop the rules and allow unrestricted participation.

Some gay columnists were calling the events the “transgender Stonewall”, comparing 1994’s protests to ‘the gay riots of 1969’, totally ignoring the historic irony that Stonewall itself was started and fought by transgendered people. This lack of historic recognition sparked another protest in New York, demanding inclusion in planned events to mark 25 years since Stonewall.

In 1994 the issue of discrimination against sexual minorities became the biggest issue. The gay & lesbian community was working towards passing a bill in Congress, the Employment Non-Discrimination Act (ENDA);. Transgender activists worked with the gay & lesbian community and the bill’s sponsors in Congress on inclusive language for the bill, only to discover that the language was removed before the bill was introduced. When the issue was researched by Phyllis Frye, she discovered that the Human Rights Campaign (HRC) had objected to the language. Once again transphobia in the gay community had resurfaced as betrayal.

The betrayal of the HRC was echoed at the local level. In 1995, transactivists in Oregon worked with gay & lesbian activist with the Right To Privacy Political Action Committee (RTP) for a state version of ENDA. Once again language was changed at the last minute, behind the back of the transgender community. Later, RTP board members denied this fact when charged by transactivists. However, transsexual law student and legislative intern, JoAnna McNamara was in the meetings that were held with RTP and the bill’s sponcors. RTP representitives did not know that Ms. McNamara was transsexual, who later provided information to the local gay press regarding the betrayal.

The transgender community lobbied the HRC and other organizations to amend the language to include transgender and gender variant gay & lesbian protection. Each year saw organizations that had previously supported the bill, drop its support. Each year of the second half of the ‘90s saw organizations officially add transgender to their mission statement. Each year saw what started as inclusive lip service become real support.

In 1998. the Gay Games was held in the Nederlands. Ironically, while transsexual pop singing star Dana International performed at the opening festivities, the transgender community protested the re-instatement of the same restrictive rules that had excluded some transgendered people in New York four years earlier. However, European officials of the Games were unmoved.

In 1999, five years after the disagreement between the HRC and the transgender community over inclusion in ENDA surfaced the controversy continued, one of the bill’s Congressional sponsors, openly gay Representative, Barney Frank, played the “Bathroom Card”, saying that employers will not accept transgender people as employees since they won’t be able to convince their other employees to tolerate transgender people in the restrooms. This was quickly denounced by transgender activists as truly expressing transphobia, though Frank had earlier voiced his concern regarding violence and discrimination against transgender people in the wake of the death of Tyra Hunter, pointing out the irony as the “Shower Card” was used against the gay & lesbian community in its fight to gain the right to serve in the armed forces earlier in the decade .

In 1999, at the close of the 20th Century, the gay & lesbian community was still divided over transgender inclusion. Camp Trans was once again pitched in front of the gate of the Michigan Wimmins’ Music Festival. This time post operative male to female transsexuals were allowed ‘on the land’, but pre-operative MTF women and post-operative FTM men were not. The issue had now come down to possession of a penis. Although they were now allowed on the land, vocal transphobic lesbian separatists menaced transsexual women, while members of The Lesbian Avengers supported them.

At the end of the 20th Century, the Transgender Question in the gay and lesbian community was still unsettled, and unsettling for the majority.

transhistory.org/history/TH_Backlash.html – 2003

My Teenage Son Wants to be a Woman

Beth Thomas always knew her son Adam was different she just couldn’t put her finger on it. At times she grew despondent at his mood swings. Adam was spending more and more time alone in his bedroom and when Beth asked what was wrong he wouldn’t answer properly.

“I’d always wondered if Adam was gay,” says Beth, 49, an office manager from Southend, Essex. “Even when he was growing up he’d always choose girls’ clothes instead of boys’ and play with the girls at school. I thought it was just a matter of time before he told me.”

But a few years later, when Adam was 18, he dropped a bombshell. He wasn’t gay but he wanted to change sex.

“I knew telling Mum would be one of the hardest things I’d ever have to do,” says Adam who’s now living as Zoe. “She’d always been quite open-minded but I knew telling her I wanted a sex change was going to be difficult. It would be hard for anyone to deal with.”

Five years earlier, Adam had started to feel uncomfortable about his identity and sank into a deep depression.

“It didn’t help that I was being bullied at school,” explains Zoe, 19. “I simply didn’t want to do any of the things other boys did like play football, fight and so on. I even took ballet lessons for a while. I’d get called a poof and be pushed around. I felt suicidal”

But when puberty hit, things got worse. “I started growing facial hair and it simply didn’t feel right,” adds Zoe. “I felt disgusted by it. I developed a sex drive too and that was very confusing. I wondered if I was gay but I fancied girls, though I felt more like them than a teenage boy.”

Adam left school at 16 to take a course in computing. There he found an outlet for his frustrations and made some friends. “There were boys at college who experimented with makeup.” recalls Zoe. “So I could wear lipstick and dress in sarongs without other students thinking I was strange.”

It was six months later that Adam discovered why he was feeling the way he was.

Surfing the Internet one night in July 1999 he came across the word ‘transsexual‘.

He logged on to the website and everything began to make sense. “There were stories about women trapped in men’s bodies,” recalls Zoe. “I identified with them strongly and nearly shouted out that’s me! Suddenly I didn’t feel so alone. I was frightened about the future but the overwhelming feeling was one of relief.”

Adam discovered there were operations and hormone treatments available for transsexuals to help them cope with their feelings.

“Almost immediately I knew I was really a girl,” says Zoe. “I asked Mum what she would have called me if I’d been born a girl. She said Zoe and that’s what I decided to call my alter ego my real self.”

Adam confided in friends first of all. “My closest friend Michelle said, ‘Oh, cool! If that will make you happy,'” remembers Zoe. “My other friends, Alex and Mike, didn’t seem shocked at all. The only comment they made was at Christmas when Alex said he didn’t know what to get me as he’d never bought anything for a girl before.”

Adam, an only child who’s had no contact with his father since his parents split up five years ago, was still petrified about telling his mum. It wasn’t until Christmas Eve 1999 that the truth came out.

“I came home and found him wearing one of my Chinese dresses,” recalls Beth. “I was stunned and asked him what he was doing. He burst into tears, sat down and hid his face. He told me he wanted a sex change. I told him he was messed up. I didn’t think he could be serious. The only transsexual I knew was Hayley in Coronation Street. He was far too young to be making decisions like this. Looking back I feel awful about the way I reacted.”

Over the next six months, Adam and Beth often rowed about his identity crisis.

“She kept saying it was stupid.” says Zoe, who works for an Internet company. “I tried to explain that I was really Zoe but she wouldn’t listen.”

Beth tried desperately to come to terms with her son’s feelings. She began surfing the Net for more information and also phoning helplines.

“I spoke to other transsexuals and realised they were ordinary, nice people,” she says. “I discovered it was a medical condition, diagnosed from psychiatric assessment, not a lifestyle choice or perversion.

“I suddenly understood why Adam had been behaving the way he had and that having a sex change might finally make him happy.

“I spoke to my GP and he said it was a good thing that Adam had made the decision so young, as it would save him years of anguish having to live as a man.

“I’ve found the fact that I’ll never have grandchildren very hard to deal with. But I’ve learnt to accept it. If things had carried on the way they were, then my son may have committed suicide and I’d have lost him altogether.”

One day last summer, Beth came home with a surprise. She held out her hand and gave Adam a keyring with the name ‘Zoe’ on it.

“I hugged him and told him I’d support him,” she says. “I knew he was determined to go through with it. I told him I wanted to meet Zoe, to see my son dressed as a girl.”

A few days later Beth took Zoe on a shopping spree to buy skirts and tops. “When he put on the clothes I was a bit shocked,” says Beth. “But the striking thing was how his personality changed. He was like a kid in a sweet shop. I could see he was so much happier being Zoe.”

Zoe discovered help on the Internet and visited a psychologist in London. He was diagnosed as transsexual and on his very first visit in August last year he was prescribed a course of female hormones.

“It can help to have the operation earlier rather than later,” says Dr Russell Reid, consultant psychiatrist specialising in gender identity, who’s treating Zoe.

“One in every 10 coming to see me is now under 20. For many young people with a crisis about their gender identity it can lead to confusion and hold them back. Having the operation can help them get on with the rest of their life.”

“Since I’ve been taking the hormones my skin is softer and people tell me my figure is much more feminine,” says Zoe. “I’ve even started to develop breasts. I’m a lot calmer but I find myself getting much more emotional, especially at the end of soppy films!

“When it comes to relationships I think of myself as a bisexual female and most people I mix with are transsexuals or very open-minded, so I don’t think I’ll have many problems.”

Adam began living as Zoe 24 hours a day.

“When I told my boss, my stomach was churning,” says Zoe. “But he was really understanding. I wore I women’s clothes to work and sent an e-mail to everyone asking if they’d call me Zoe. I’m sure there was gossip but everyone has been great.”

Beth knew she’d have to tell her friends. “Not one of them batted an eyelid:” says Beth. “They were just intrigued.”

Zoe is now saving for the private £9,000 operation which she plans to have next year. The surgery, which takes four hours, involves cutting the penis and inverting it to construct a vagina. Before then Zoe has to live as a woman for 12 months.

“Mum has gone from one extreme to the other,” says Zoe. “She wants me to be really girlie. But I just like to be natural and wear denim skirts, a blouse and not much make-up.”

Beth has surprised herself at her change of attitude.

“I genuinely think it’s for the best,” she says. “Zoe is a much happier person than Adam ever was. Adam had difficulties growing up and was a very difficult child. Zoe is much more happy-go-lucky. There was a period when I felt like I was in mourning for the son I’d lost. A little bit of my heart still misses him. But now I think of it as losing a son but gaining a daughter. And Zoe is a lovely daughter too!”

by Chris Morris
From Woman
19 February 2001, mermaids.freeuk.com/woman2.html

Gender Benders

Little boys in high heels, jewellery and make-up seem cute at three, less so at school age. And what if your little girl would rather play footie than dress her dolls? Denise Thornton has some sound advice

All societies treat boys and girls differently and expect different things from them, so understanding about gender is a crucial stage in a child’s development. As soon as children understand that they are a boy or a girl, it helps them to organize the way the will relate to the world around them.

You shouldn’t panic if your child seems to behave in a way more typical of the opposite sex. Preferring to play with girls may get a boy teased but it isn’t that unusual. In most cases this sorts itself out quite naturally as the child develops, though sometimes it happens much later than parents expect (or feel comfortable with!). Even when teenagers are displaying cross-gender behaviour, it generally sorts itself out by the end of the teenage years. Over-reacting may do more harm than good as it can make children feel inhibited and criticized by their parents and peers.

Discovering gender

We become aware of gender differences very early on. By 9 to 12 months most infants can discriminate between male and female faces. At 15 to 18 months old, they can identify features that are typical of men or women such as hairstyles and clothes. And by the age of two they can usually pick out a picture showing a person of their own sex.

But few children understand that a person’s gender stays the same and does not change until they are nearing their fourth birthday. As a result children can often pick out pictures of men and women, but a picture of someone who is obviously a man dressed up as a woman will confuse them until they are nearer to five years of age. The lack of understanding that a man is a man regardless of what he is wearing is the reason why so many young children are confused by pantomimes.

By two years old, many children have already learned that certain tasks and objects are associated more with males or females. However, most children are almost five years old before they link personality traits with being male or female. As a result, four-year-olds generally think it is fine for boys to play with dolls, while six-year-olds think it is totally wrong. By the age of nine, children will have changed their attitudes once again, with boys, for instance, deciding that there is nothing wrong in a boy playing with a doll after all.

Once children understand about gender they tend to look for rules to explain how they should behave. At first they are very rigid in the way they interpret their roles, which is why young boys think doll play is wrong – it breaks their rules. As they get older, they realise that lost of things break the rules and they become less worried by doll play, even though they might still feel they don’t want to play with the boy concerned.

Nature and nurture

Gender specific behaviour is a complex mix of nature and nurture. Studies point to the importance of both biology and learned behaviour. Children biologically born as boys but brought up as girls (because of freak accidents which robbed them of their male organs and so on) show that some boys take on female characteristics easily, while other studies have confirmed that at puberty boys become more boy like and go on to take on traditionally male jobs despite their girlie upbringing.

Mostly, children learn about gender from watching and copying and then re-enacting their observations in play. Male stereotypes develop faster than female stereotypes. Boys generally choose to be in larger groups and rely on status to organise the group. They tend to learn more from boys, give each other more feedback and expect boys to play boy-type games. Girls typically prefer to make fewer close relationships and are less concerned if girls prefer boy-type activities.

Obviously, children have to understand whether they are boys or girls before they start to choose behaviours which fit their gender. Parents play a key role in the development of gender as they tend to respond differently to boys and girls. For example, parents tend to be more robust with newborn boys than girls. A study from the 70s and 80s, called Baby X, showed that when baby boys are dressed as girls adults respond differently to them. The differences may be so subtle that parents are totally unaware that they have changed their behaviour.

Stereotyping continues, and even intensifies, as babies become children. People give girls different kinds of presents < often more arty or creative, while the gifts they give boys are more action based. Children of parents who consistently reinforce gender behaviour often learn to label things as being for boys or girls earlier. Television is also a major influence in boy/girl stereotyping.

Dressing-up play

Play is essential for normal development and should be encouraged, particularly pretend and imaginative play. Most three-to four-year-olds love dressing up, to explore how things feel and use their imaginations. If a child constantly wants to dress up as a policeman, few parents seriously believe that he can only be a policeman when he grows up. But if boys carry on dressing up as girls once they pass five years old, their parents soon start worrying. These worries are usually unfounded as most cross-dressing adult males are heterosexual anyway. This is simply another phase your child is going through. Stay relaxed and let him play in peace.

Daniel’s story

Daniel’s older sister, Miriam, loved dressing up. When Daniel was six he was still playing imaginative games with his nine-year-old sister, often involving him dressing up as a girl, a ballerina or wearing make-up carefully applied by Miriam!

Daniel’s parents began to worry when he seemed to be avoiding the kind of games other boys at school played because he thought they were too rough. They had always thought that dressing up was a phase that Daniel would grow out of, but they were increasingly criticised by Daniel’s grandparents, who believed they should take a more active line and stop him dressing up. They tried, but Daniel just carried on, hiding in his room quietly so that he wouldn’t be noticed.

Things seemed to come to a head when Daniel asked for ballet lessons for Christmas. His parents patiently explained that there were no boys in the ballet class. Daniel said he didn’t mind and that he wanted to go anyway. After much discussion, the family agreed. To their astonishment, Daniel showed real talent, the teacher constantly praised him and put him in for exams much earlier than his sister.

Now aged 13, Daniel rarely dances (despite being picked out by the Royal Ballet scouts, who recognized his potential as a young child) as he has lost interest. His parents cannot remember when they stopped worrying – they just did! In the last six months, Daniel has become more ‘masculine’ and he is more often found in the company of boys. At this same time, his hormonal changes have gathered pace and he is beginning to show an interest in girls – not so much for the companionship he used to enjoy, but as members of the opposite sex.

Daniel’s parents believe that if they had sought help for the son, they might have done more harm than good. They wish there had been someone they could have talked to, who could have reassured them that by following their own instincts, they were actually doing the right thing.

What to do if you’re worried

If your child is happy at school or in a social situations with other children, and seems to be developing well in other ways, it is most unlikely that your have anything to worry about. Only one child in a thousand has any real difficulty with gender identity and most of these problems are resolved in adolescence.

For parents who want reassurance, it can be difficult finding the right person to talk to. In this country, we are fortunate to have Mermaids, a support group set up to help children and parents with gender identity issues. They can advise from a position of experience, rather than just theory. Mermaids offers support and information to parents, families and carers. The Mermaid helpline is 07020 935066 (12 noon until 9pm [UK Time – Mermaids Editor]) or you can contact them via their website http://www.mermaids.freeuk.com or at Mermaids, BM Mermaids, London WC1N3XX

Denise Thornton is a chartered educational psychologist

Reproduced with the kind permission of Right Start magazine, Adam House, 7-10 Adam Street, The Strand, London WC2N 6AA Editor: Lynette Lowthian

Britain – Right Start magazine… August 2001… BLS transcribed text pages 18 – 20… Behaviour matters

by Denise Thornton
From Right Start Magazine
August 2001, mermaids.freeuk.com/rstart.html