At age 2 Kathryn
began vehemently insisting that she was a boy.
No amount of persuasion could convince her otherwise and even her mother
Jean’s best efforts to show Kathryn that she biologically was female failed to
convince Kathryn who simply replied, “When did you change me?” Kathryn was so insistent on her status as a
boy that Jean and her husband finally began to do some research into the topic
of transgender children. After listening
to Kathryn constantly claiming that she was a boy in a girl’s body for years
her parents finally took her to a psychologist who specialized in treating the transgendered. The psychologists recommended that Kathryn’s
parents allow her to live as a boy, which they ultimately did.
Now Kathryn is
referred to as a he, is called Tyler and is publicly a boy in every way. The family has told their relatives, the
school their daughter/son attends and their church and Tyler now is happily
living as a boy. Tyler’s transgender
lifestyle does pose some problems however.
In five years when Tyler is ten, Tyler’s parents will have to decide
whether or not to put Tyler onto puberty blockers and later when Tyler is 15 or
16 Tyler’s parents will have to decide whether, if Tyler want to, to allow
Tyler to begin hormone injections.
Great controversy
has arisen over to what extent parents should allow their gender-dysphoric
children to undergo gender-changing procedures.
Because of the difference in the nature of each procedure different
rules of ethicality apply: parents should ethically be permitted to put their
children on puberty blockers but, should not allow their children to begin
early hormone treatments because of the difference in permanency between the
two procedures.
Puberty blockers
taken by children at the correct age prevent children’s body from maturing and,
in the case of girls, menstruating. The
decision to give a child puberty blockers is a difficult one but puberty
blockers differs dramatically from hormone injections in that the effects are
reversible if the puberty blockers are halted.
Parents should allow their children access to puberty blockers if their
children want them as a way of increasing their child’s happiness.
Parents should not
however allow 15 to 16 year old to begin hormone injections that will make them
grow the characteristics of the opposite biological sex because with hormone injections
the effects are not reversible. Hormone
treatments, though they make sex-change surgery less painful and expensive for
adults later down the line, cause the recipients to become infertile. Taking hormone injections can make the lives
of transgendered individuals easier down the road but it is still unethical for
a parent to allow a child to take permanent infertility drugs at the age of 15
or 16. According to transgender
counselor, Edgardo Menvielle, about 80 percent of transgender kids end up
switching back to their own biology but about 20 percent remain transgender as
they transition to adulthood. The high
percentage of kids that revert back to their original gender identity is much
to high for parents to allow their children to make such a radical permanent
decision at such a young age. Though
parents should try to make their children happy and do what’s best for their
child gender-dysphoric kids should be given the maximum amount of time to
decide on their identity before they take irreversible infertility-causing
hormone injections.
