Monday, May 21, 2012

Early Age Gender Crisis


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.  

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