Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear

[fgoodwin]

Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/us/02child.html

December 2, 2006

By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN

OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 1 - Until recently, many children who did not
conform to gender norms in their clothing or behavior and identified
intensely with the opposite sex were steered to psychoanalysis or
behavior modification.

But as advocates gain ground for what they call gender-identity rights,
evidenced most recently by New York City's decision to let people
alter the sex listed on their birth certificates, a major change is
taking place among schools and families. Children as young as 5 who
display predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being
supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental
health professionals.

Doctors, some of them from the top pediatric hospitals, have begun to
advise families to let these children be "who they are" to foster a
sense of security and self-esteem. They are motivated, in part, by the
high incidence of depression, suicidal feelings and self-mutilation
that has been common in past generations of transgender children. Legal
trends suggest that schools are now required to respect parents'
decisions.

"First we became sensitive to two mommies and two daddies," said
Reynaldo Almeida, the director of the Aurora School, a progressive
private school in Oakland. "Now it's kids who come to school who
aren't gender typical."

The supportive attitudes are far easier to find in traditionally
tolerant areas of the country like San Francisco than in other parts,
but even in those places there is fierce debate over how best to handle
the children.

Cassandra Reese, a first-grade teacher outside Boston, recalled that
fellow teachers were unnerved when a young boy showed up in a skirt.
"They said, 'This is not normal,' and, 'It's the parents'
fault,' " Ms. Reese said. "They didn't see children as
sophisticated enough to verbalize their feelings."

As their children head into adolescence, some parents are choosing to
block puberty medically to buy time for them to figure out who they are
- raising a host of ethical questions.

While these children are still relatively rare, doctors say the number
of referrals is rising across the nation. Massachusetts, Minnesota,
California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia have laws
protecting the rights of transgender students, and some schools are
engaged in a steep learning curve to dismantle gender stereotypes.

At the Park Day School in Oakland, teachers are taught a gender-neutral
vocabulary and are urged to line up students by sneaker color rather
than by gender. "We are careful not to create a situation where
students are being boxed in," said Tom Little, the school's
director. "We allow them to move back and forth until something feels
right."

For families, it can be a long, emotional adjustment. Shortly after her
son's third birthday, Pam B. and her husband, Joel, began a parental
journey for which there was no map. It started when their son, J.,
began wearing oversized T-shirts and wrapping a towel around his head
to emulate long, flowing hair. Then came his mothers' silky
undershirts. Half a year into preschool, J. started becoming agitated
when asked to wear boys' clothing.

En route to a mall with her son, Ms. B. had an epiphany: "It just
clicked in me. I said, 'You really want to wear a dress, don't
you?' "

Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
pigtails and pink jumpers to school.

Ms. B., 41, a lawyer, accepted the way her son defined himself after
she and her husband consulted with a psychologist and observed his
newfound comfort with his choice. But she feels the precarious nature
of the day-to-day reality. "It's hard to convey the relentlessness
of it, she said, "every social encounter, every time you go out to
eat, every day feeling like a balance between your kid's self-esteem
and protecting him from the hostile outside world."

The prospect of cross-dressing kindergartners has sparked a deep
philosophical divide among professionals over how best to counsel
families. Is it healthier for families to follow the child's lead, or
to spare children potential humiliation and isolation by steering them
toward accepting their biological gender until they are older?

Both sides in the debate underscore their concern for the profound
vulnerability of such youngsters, symbolized by occurrences like the
murder in 2002 of Gwen Araujo, a transgender teenager born as Eddie,
southeast of Oakland.

"Parents now are looking for advice on how to make life reasonable
for their kids - whether to allow cross-dressing in public, and how
to protect them from the savagery of other children," said Dr.
Herbert Schreier, a psychiatrist with Children's Hospital and
Research Center in Oakland.

Dr. Schreier is one of a growing number of professionals who have begun
to think of gender variance as a naturally occurring phenomenon rather
than a disorder. "These kids are becoming more aware of how it is to
be themselves," he said.

In past generations, so-called sissy boys and tomboy girls were made to
conform, based on the belief that their behaviors were largely products
of dysfunctional homes.

Among the revisionists is Dr. Edgardo Menvielle, a child-adolescent
psychiatrist at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington
who started a national outreach group for parents of gender-variant
children in 1998 that now has more than 200 participants. "We know
that sexually marginalized children have a higher rate of depression
and suicide attempts," Dr. Menvielle said. "The goal is for the
child to be well adjusted, healthy and have good self-esteem. What's
not important is molding their gender."

The literature on adults who are transgender was hardly consoling to
one parent, a 42-year-old software consultant in Massachusetts and the
father of a gender-variant third grader. "You're trudging through
this tragic, horrible stuff and realizing not a single person was
accepted and understood as a child," he said. "You read it and
think, O.K., best to avoid that. But as a parent you're in this
complete terra incognita."

The biological underpinnings of gender identity, much like sexual
orientation, remain something of a mystery, though many researchers
suspect it is linked with hormone exposure in the developing fetus.

Studies suggest that most boys with gender variance early in childhood
grow up to be gay, and about a quarter heterosexual, Dr. Menvielle
said. Only a small fraction grow up to identify as transgender.

Girls with gender-variant behavior, who have been studied less, voice
extreme unhappiness about being a girl and talk about wanting to have
male anatomy. But research has thus far suggested that most wind up as
heterosexual women.

Although many children role-play involving gender, Dr. Menvielle said,
"the key question is how intense and persistent the behavior is,"
especially if they show extreme distress.

Dr. Robin Dea, the director of regional mental health for Kaiser
Permanente in Northern California, said: "Our gender identity is
something we feel in our soul. But it is also a continuum, and it
evolves."

Dr. Dea works with four or five children under the age of 15 who are
essentially living as the opposite sex. "They are much happier, and
their grades are up," she said. "I'm waiting for the study that
says supporting these children is negative."

But Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and head of the gender-identity
service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto,
disagrees with the "free to be" approach with young children and
cross-dressing in public. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Zucker has
treated about 500 preadolescent gender-variant children. In his
studies, 80 percent grow out of the behavior, but 15 percent to 20
percent continue to be distressed about their gender and may ultimately
change their sex.

Dr. Zucker tries to "help these kids be more content in their
biological gender" until they are older and can determine their
sexual identity - accomplished, he said, by encouraging same-sex
friendships and activities like board games that move beyond strict
gender roles.

Though she has not encountered such a situation, Jennifer Schwartz,
assistant principal of Chatham Elementary School outside Springfield,
Ill., said that allowing a child to express gender differences "would
be very difficult to pull off" there.

Ms. Schwartz added: "I'm not sure it's worth the damage it could
cause the child, with all the prejudices and parents possibly
protesting. I'm not sure a child that age is ready to make that kind
of decision."

The B.'s thought long and hard about what they had observed in their
son. They have carefully choreographed his life, monitoring new
playmates, selecting a compatible school, finding sympathetic parents
in a babysitting co-op. Nevertheless, Ms. B. said, "there is still
the stomach-clenching fear for your kid."

It is indeed heartbreaking to hear a child say, as J. did recently,
"It feels like a nightmare I'm a boy."

The adjustment has been gradual for Mr. B., a 43-year-old public school
administrator who is trying to stop calling J. "our little man." He
thinks of his son as a positive, resilient person, and his love and
admiration show. "The truth is, is any parent going to choose this
for their kid?" he said. "It's who your kid is."

Families are caught in the undertow of conflicting approaches. One
suburban Chicago mother, who did not want to be identified, said in a
telephone interview that she was drawing the line on dress and trying
to provide "boy opportunities" for her 6-year-old son. "But we
can't make everything a power struggle," she said. "It gets
exhausting."

She worries about him becoming a social outcast. "Why does your
brother like girl things?" friends of her 10-year-old ask. The answer
is always, "I don't know."

Nila Marrone, a retired linguistics professor at the University of
Connecticut who consults with parents and schools, recalled an incident
last year at a Bronx elementary school in which an 8-year-old boy
perceived as effeminate was thrown into a large trash bin by a group of
boys. The principal, she said, "suggested to the mother that she was
to blame, for not having taught her son how to be tough enough."

But the tide is turning.

The Los Angeles Unified School District, for instance, requires that
students be addressed with "a name and pronoun that corresponds to
the gender identity." It also asks schools to provide a locker room
or changing area that corresponds to a student's chosen gender.

One of the most controversial issues concerns the use of
"blockers," hormones used to delay the onset of puberty in cases
where it could be psychologically devastating (for instance, a girl who
identifies as a boy might slice her wrists when she gets her period).
Some doctors disapprove of blockers, arguing that only at puberty does
an individual fully appreciate their gender identity.

Catherine Tuerk, a nurse-psychotherapist at the children's hospital
in Washington and the mother of a gender-variant child in the 1970s,
says parents are still left to find their own way. She recalls how
therapists urged her to steer her son into psychoanalysis and
"hypermasculine activities" like karate. She said she and her
husband became "gender cops."

"It was always, 'You're not kicking the ball hard enough,' "
she said.

Ms. Tuerk's son, now 30, is gay and a father, and her own thinking
has evolved since she was a young parent. "People are beginning to
understand this seems to be something that happens," she said. "But
there was a whole lifetime of feeling we could never leave him alone."

[Jen]

"fgoodwin" > wrote in message
ups.com...
> Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
>

>
> Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
> protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
> behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
> child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
> identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
> pigtails and pink jumpers to school.

But isn't that stereotypical in itself? Not all girls like wearing pink
dresses and pigtails? But does that necessarily mean that they want to be
boys? Why do boys need to wear pink dresses and pigtails to identify with
girls if the girls don't wear these things?


Jen

Jen

[-L.]

Jen wrote:
> "fgoodwin" > wrote in message
> ups.com...
> > Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
> >
>
> >
> > Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
> > protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
> > behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
> > child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
> > identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
> > pigtails and pink jumpers to school.
>
> But isn't that stereotypical in itself? Not all girls like wearing pink
> dresses and pigtails? But does that necessarily mean that they want to be
> boys? Why do boys need to wear pink dresses and pigtails to identify with
> girls if the girls don't wear these things?
>

It's poor writing. It should read "...and asks to wear traditionally
feminine clothing and styles such as..."

-L.

[Lars Eighner]

In our last episode,
. com>, the lovely and
talented -L. broadcast on alt.politics.homosexuality:


> Jen wrote:
>> "fgoodwin" > wrote in message
>> ups.com...
>> > Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
>> >
>>
>> >
>> > Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
>> > protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
>> > behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
>> > child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
>> > identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
>> > pigtails and pink jumpers to school.
>>
>> But isn't that stereotypical in itself? Not all girls like wearing pink
>> dresses and pigtails? But does that necessarily mean that they want to be
>> boys? Why do boys need to wear pink dresses and pigtails to identify with
>> girls if the girls don't wear these things?
>>

> It's poor writing. It should read "...and asks to wear traditionally
> feminine clothing and styles such as..."

And what's next? Girls wearing jeans to school? Oh, wait. That ship
sailed forty years ago.


--
Lars Eighner <http://larseighner.com/> <http://myspace.com/larseighner>
War on Terrorism: Bad News from the Sanity Front
"Tactical nuclear capabilities should be used against the bin Laden
camps in the desert of Afghanistan." -Thomas Woodrow,_Washington Times_

[Eleventhdr]

fgoodwin wrote:
> Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/us/02child.html
>
> December 2, 2006
>
> By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
>
> OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 1 - Until recently, many children who did not
> conform to gender norms in their clothing or behavior and identified
> intensely with the opposite sex were steered to psychoanalysis or
> behavior modification.
>
> But as advocates gain ground for what they call gender-identity rights,
> evidenced most recently by New York City's decision to let people
> alter the sex listed on their birth certificates, a major change is
> taking place among schools and families. Children as young as 5 who
> display predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being
> supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental
> health professionals.
>
> Doctors, some of them from the top pediatric hospitals, have begun to
> advise families to let these children be "who they are" to foster a
> sense of security and self-esteem. They are motivated, in part, by the
> high incidence of depression, suicidal feelings and self-mutilation
> that has been common in past generations of transgender children. Legal
> trends suggest that schools are now required to respect parents'
> decisions.
>
> "First we became sensitive to two mommies and two daddies," said
> Reynaldo Almeida, the director of the Aurora School, a progressive
> private school in Oakland. "Now it's kids who come to school who
> aren't gender typical."
>
> The supportive attitudes are far easier to find in traditionally
> tolerant areas of the country like San Francisco than in other parts,
> but even in those places there is fierce debate over how best to handle
> the children.
>
> Cassandra Reese, a first-grade teacher outside Boston, recalled that
> fellow teachers were unnerved when a young boy showed up in a skirt.
> "They said, 'This is not normal,' and, 'It's the parents'
> fault,' " Ms. Reese said. "They didn't see children as
> sophisticated enough to verbalize their feelings."
>
> As their children head into adolescence, some parents are choosing to
> block puberty medically to buy time for them to figure out who they are
> - raising a host of ethical questions.
>
> While these children are still relatively rare, doctors say the number
> of referrals is rising across the nation. Massachusetts, Minnesota,
> California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia have laws
> protecting the rights of transgender students, and some schools are
> engaged in a steep learning curve to dismantle gender stereotypes.
>
> At the Park Day School in Oakland, teachers are taught a gender-neutral
> vocabulary and are urged to line up students by sneaker color rather
> than by gender. "We are careful not to create a situation where
> students are being boxed in," said Tom Little, the school's
> director. "We allow them to move back and forth until something feels
> right."
>
> For families, it can be a long, emotional adjustment. Shortly after her
> son's third birthday, Pam B. and her husband, Joel, began a parental
> journey for which there was no map. It started when their son, J.,
> began wearing oversized T-shirts and wrapping a towel around his head
> to emulate long, flowing hair. Then came his mothers' silky
> undershirts. Half a year into preschool, J. started becoming agitated
> when asked to wear boys' clothing.
>
> En route to a mall with her son, Ms. B. had an epiphany: "It just
> clicked in me. I said, 'You really want to wear a dress, don't
> you?' "
>
> Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
> protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
> behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
> child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
> identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
> pigtails and pink jumpers to school.
>
> Ms. B., 41, a lawyer, accepted the way her son defined himself after
> she and her husband consulted with a psychologist and observed his
> newfound comfort with his choice. But she feels the precarious nature
> of the day-to-day reality. "It's hard to convey the relentlessness
> of it, she said, "every social encounter, every time you go out to
> eat, every day feeling like a balance between your kid's self-esteem
> and protecting him from the hostile outside world."
>
> The prospect of cross-dressing kindergartners has sparked a deep
> philosophical divide among professionals over how best to counsel
> families. Is it healthier for families to follow the child's lead, or
> to spare children potential humiliation and isolation by steering them
> toward accepting their biological gender until they are older?
>
> Both sides in the debate underscore their concern for the profound
> vulnerability of such youngsters, symbolized by occurrences like the
> murder in 2002 of Gwen Araujo, a transgender teenager born as Eddie,
> southeast of Oakland.
>
> "Parents now are looking for advice on how to make life reasonable
> for their kids - whether to allow cross-dressing in public, and how
> to protect them from the savagery of other children," said Dr.
> Herbert Schreier, a psychiatrist with Children's Hospital and
> Research Center in Oakland.
>
> Dr. Schreier is one of a growing number of professionals who have begun
> to think of gender variance as a naturally occurring phenomenon rather
> than a disorder. "These kids are becoming more aware of how it is to
> be themselves," he said.
>
> In past generations, so-called sissy boys and tomboy girls were made to
> conform, based on the belief that their behaviors were largely products
> of dysfunctional homes.
>
> Among the revisionists is Dr. Edgardo Menvielle, a child-adolescent
> psychiatrist at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington
> who started a national outreach group for parents of gender-variant
> children in 1998 that now has more than 200 participants. "We know
> that sexually marginalized children have a higher rate of depression
> and suicide attempts," Dr. Menvielle said. "The goal is for the
> child to be well adjusted, healthy and have good self-esteem. What's
> not important is molding their gender."
>
> The literature on adults who are transgender was hardly consoling to
> one parent, a 42-year-old software consultant in Massachusetts and the
> father of a gender-variant third grader. "You're trudging through
> this tragic, horrible stuff and realizing not a single person was
> accepted and understood as a child," he said. "You read it and
> think, O.K., best to avoid that. But as a parent you're in this
> complete terra incognita."
>
> The biological underpinnings of gender identity, much like sexual
> orientation, remain something of a mystery, though many researchers
> suspect it is linked with hormone exposure in the developing fetus.
>
> Studies suggest that most boys with gender variance early in childhood
> grow up to be gay, and about a quarter heterosexual, Dr. Menvielle
> said. Only a small fraction grow up to identify as transgender.
>
> Girls with gender-variant behavior, who have been studied less, voice
> extreme unhappiness about being a girl and talk about wanting to have
> male anatomy. But research has thus far suggested that most wind up as
> heterosexual women.
>
> Although many children role-play involving gender, Dr. Menvielle said,
> "the key question is how intense and persistent the behavior is,"
> especially if they show extreme distress.
>
> Dr. Robin Dea, the director of regional mental health for Kaiser
> Permanente in Northern California, said: "Our gender identity is
> something we feel in our soul. But it is also a continuum, and it
> evolves."
>
> Dr. Dea works with four or five children under the age of 15 who are
> essentially living as the opposite sex. "They are much happier, and
> their grades are up," she said. "I'm waiting for the study that
> says supporting these children is negative."
>
> But Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and head of the gender-identity
> service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto,
> disagrees with the "free to be" approach with young children and
> cross-dressing in public. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Zucker has
> treated about 500 preadolescent gender-variant children. In his
> studies, 80 percent grow out of the behavior, but 15 percent to 20
> percent continue to be distressed about their gender and may ultimately
> change their sex.
>
> Dr. Zucker tries to "help these kids be more content in their
> biological gender" until they are older and can determine their
> sexual identity - accomplished, he said, by encouraging same-sex
> friendships and activities like board games that move beyond strict
> gender roles.
>
> Though she has not encountered such a situation, Jennifer Schwartz,
> assistant principal of Chatham Elementary School outside Springfield,
> Ill., said that allowing a child to express gender differences "would
> be very difficult to pull off" there.
>
> Ms. Schwartz added: "I'm not sure it's worth the damage it could
> cause the child, with all the prejudices and parents possibly
> protesting. I'm not sure a child that age is ready to make that kind
> of decision."
>
> The B.'s thought long and hard about what they had observed in their
> son. They have carefully choreographed his life, monitoring new
> playmates, selecting a compatible school, finding sympathetic parents
> in a babysitting co-op. Nevertheless, Ms. B. said, "there is still
> the stomach-clenching fear for your kid."
>
> It is indeed heartbreaking to hear a child say, as J. did recently,
> "It feels like a nightmare I'm a boy."
>
> The adjustment has been gradual for Mr. B., a 43-year-old public school
> administrator who is trying to stop calling J. "our little man." He
> thinks of his son as a positive, resilient person, and his love and
> admiration show. "The truth is, is any parent going to choose this
> for their kid?" he said. "It's who your kid is."
>
> Families are caught in the undertow of conflicting approaches. One
> suburban Chicago mother, who did not want to be identified, said in a
> telephone interview that she was drawing the line on dress and trying
> to provide "boy opportunities" for her 6-year-old son. "But we
> can't make everything a power struggle," she said. "It gets
> exhausting."
>
> She worries about him becoming a social outcast. "Why does your
> brother like girl things?" friends of her 10-year-old ask. The answer
> is always, "I don't know."
>
> Nila Marrone, a retired linguistics professor at the University of
> Connecticut who consults with parents and schools, recalled an incident
> last year at a Bronx elementary school in which an 8-year-old boy
> perceived as effeminate was thrown into a large trash bin by a group of
> boys. The principal, she said, "suggested to the mother that she was
> to blame, for not having taught her son how to be tough enough."
>
> But the tide is turning.
>
> The Los Angeles Unified School District, for instance, requires that
> students be addressed with "a name and pronoun that corresponds to
> the gender identity." It also asks schools to provide a locker room
> or changing area that corresponds to a student's chosen gender.
>
> One of the most controversial issues concerns the use of
> "blockers," hormones used to delay the onset of puberty in cases
> where it could be psychologically devastating (for instance, a girl who
> identifies as a boy might slice her wrists when she gets her period).
> Some doctors disapprove of blockers, arguing that only at puberty does
> an individual fully appreciate their gender identity.
>
> Catherine Tuerk, a nurse-psychotherapist at the children's hospital
> in Washington and the mother of a gender-variant child in the 1970s,
> says parents are still left to find their own way. She recalls how
> therapists urged her to steer her son into psychoanalysis and
> "hypermasculine activities" like karate. She said she and her
> husband became "gender cops."
>
> "It was always, 'You're not kicking the ball hard enough,' "
> she said.
>
> Ms. Tuerk's son, now 30, is gay and a father, and her own thinking
> has evolved since she was a young parent. "People are beginning to
> understand this seems to be something that happens," she said. "But
> there was a whole lifetime of feeling we could never leave him alone."

[Eleventhdr]

fgoodwin wrote:
> Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/us/02child.html
>
> December 2, 2006
>
> By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
>
> OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 1 - Until recently, many children who did not
> conform to gender norms in their clothing or behavior and identified
> intensely with the opposite sex were steered to psychoanalysis or
> behavior modification.
>
> But as advocates gain ground for what they call gender-identity rights,
> evidenced most recently by New York City's decision to let people
> alter the sex listed on their birth certificates, a major change is
> taking place among schools and families. Children as young as 5 who
> display predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being
> supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental
> health professionals.
>
> Doctors, some of them from the top pediatric hospitals, have begun to
> advise families to let these children be "who they are" to foster a
> sense of security and self-esteem. They are motivated, in part, by the
> high incidence of depression, suicidal feelings and self-mutilation
> that has been common in past generations of transgender children. Legal
> trends suggest that schools are now required to respect parents'
> decisions.
>
> "First we became sensitive to two mommies and two daddies," said
> Reynaldo Almeida, the director of the Aurora School, a progressive
> private school in Oakland. "Now it's kids who come to school who
> aren't gender typical."
>
> The supportive attitudes are far easier to find in traditionally
> tolerant areas of the country like San Francisco than in other parts,
> but even in those places there is fierce debate over how best to handle
> the children.
>
> Cassandra Reese, a first-grade teacher outside Boston, recalled that
> fellow teachers were unnerved when a young boy showed up in a skirt.
> "They said, 'This is not normal,' and, 'It's the parents'
> fault,' " Ms. Reese said. "They didn't see children as
> sophisticated enough to verbalize their feelings."
>
> As their children head into adolescence, some parents are choosing to
> block puberty medically to buy time for them to figure out who they are
> - raising a host of ethical questions.
>
> While these children are still relatively rare, doctors say the number
> of referrals is rising across the nation. Massachusetts, Minnesota,
> California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia have laws
> protecting the rights of transgender students, and some schools are
> engaged in a steep learning curve to dismantle gender stereotypes.
>
> At the Park Day School in Oakland, teachers are taught a gender-neutral
> vocabulary and are urged to line up students by sneaker color rather
> than by gender. "We are careful not to create a situation where
> students are being boxed in," said Tom Little, the school's
> director. "We allow them to move back and forth until something feels
> right."
>
> For families, it can be a long, emotional adjustment. Shortly after her
> son's third birthday, Pam B. and her husband, Joel, began a parental
> journey for which there was no map. It started when their son, J.,
> began wearing oversized T-shirts and wrapping a towel around his head
> to emulate long, flowing hair. Then came his mothers' silky
> undershirts. Half a year into preschool, J. started becoming agitated
> when asked to wear boys' clothing.
>
> En route to a mall with her son, Ms. B. had an epiphany: "It just
> clicked in me. I said, 'You really want to wear a dress, don't
> you?' "
>
> Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
> protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
> behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
> child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
> identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
> pigtails and pink jumpers to school.
>
> Ms. B., 41, a lawyer, accepted the way her son defined himself after
> she and her husband consulted with a psychologist and observed his
> newfound comfort with his choice. But she feels the precarious nature
> of the day-to-day reality. "It's hard to convey the relentlessness
> of it, she said, "every social encounter, every time you go out to
> eat, every day feeling like a balance between your kid's self-esteem
> and protecting him from the hostile outside world."
>
> The prospect of cross-dressing kindergartners has sparked a deep
> philosophical divide among professionals over how best to counsel
> families. Is it healthier for families to follow the child's lead, or
> to spare children potential humiliation and isolation by steering them
> toward accepting their biological gender until they are older?
>
> Both sides in the debate underscore their concern for the profound
> vulnerability of such youngsters, symbolized by occurrences like the
> murder in 2002 of Gwen Araujo, a transgender teenager born as Eddie,
> southeast of Oakland.
>
> "Parents now are looking for advice on how to make life reasonable
> for their kids - whether to allow cross-dressing in public, and how
> to protect them from the savagery of other children," said Dr.
> Herbert Schreier, a psychiatrist with Children's Hospital and
> Research Center in Oakland.
>
> Dr. Schreier is one of a growing number of professionals who have begun
> to think of gender variance as a naturally occurring phenomenon rather
> than a disorder. "These kids are becoming more aware of how it is to
> be themselves," he said.
>
> In past generations, so-called sissy boys and tomboy girls were made to
> conform, based on the belief that their behaviors were largely products
> of dysfunctional homes.
>
> Among the revisionists is Dr. Edgardo Menvielle, a child-adolescent
> psychiatrist at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington
> who started a national outreach group for parents of gender-variant
> children in 1998 that now has more than 200 participants. "We know
> that sexually marginalized children have a higher rate of depression
> and suicide attempts," Dr. Menvielle said. "The goal is for the
> child to be well adjusted, healthy and have good self-esteem. What's
> not important is molding their gender."
>
> The literature on adults who are transgender was hardly consoling to
> one parent, a 42-year-old software consultant in Massachusetts and the
> father of a gender-variant third grader. "You're trudging through
> this tragic, horrible stuff and realizing not a single person was
> accepted and understood as a child," he said. "You read it and
> think, O.K., best to avoid that. But as a parent you're in this
> complete terra incognita."
>
> The biological underpinnings of gender identity, much like sexual
> orientation, remain something of a mystery, though many researchers
> suspect it is linked with hormone exposure in the developing fetus.
>
> Studies suggest that most boys with gender variance early in childhood
> grow up to be gay, and about a quarter heterosexual, Dr. Menvielle
> said. Only a small fraction grow up to identify as transgender.
>
> Girls with gender-variant behavior, who have been studied less, voice
> extreme unhappiness about being a girl and talk about wanting to have
> male anatomy. But research has thus far suggested that most wind up as
> heterosexual women.
>
> Although many children role-play involving gender, Dr. Menvielle said,
> "the key question is how intense and persistent the behavior is,"
> especially if they show extreme distress.
>
> Dr. Robin Dea, the director of regional mental health for Kaiser
> Permanente in Northern California, said: "Our gender identity is
> something we feel in our soul. But it is also a continuum, and it
> evolves."
>
> Dr. Dea works with four or five children under the age of 15 who are
> essentially living as the opposite sex. "They are much happier, and
> their grades are up," she said. "I'm waiting for the study that
> says supporting these children is negative."
>
> But Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and head of the gender-identity
> service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto,
> disagrees with the "free to be" approach with young children and
> cross-dressing in public. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Zucker has
> treated about 500 preadolescent gender-variant children. In his
> studies, 80 percent grow out of the behavior, but 15 percent to 20
> percent continue to be distressed about their gender and may ultimately
> change their sex.
>
> Dr. Zucker tries to "help these kids be more content in their
> biological gender" until they are older and can determine their
> sexual identity - accomplished, he said, by encouraging same-sex
> friendships and activities like board games that move beyond strict
> gender roles.
>
> Though she has not encountered such a situation, Jennifer Schwartz,
> assistant principal of Chatham Elementary School outside Springfield,
> Ill., said that allowing a child to express gender differences "would
> be very difficult to pull off" there.
>
> Ms. Schwartz added: "I'm not sure it's worth the damage it could
> cause the child, with all the prejudices and parents possibly
> protesting. I'm not sure a child that age is ready to make that kind
> of decision."
>
> The B.'s thought long and hard about what they had observed in their
> son. They have carefully choreographed his life, monitoring new
> playmates, selecting a compatible school, finding sympathetic parents
> in a babysitting co-op. Nevertheless, Ms. B. said, "there is still
> the stomach-clenching fear for your kid."
>
> It is indeed heartbreaking to hear a child say, as J. did recently,
> "It feels like a nightmare I'm a boy."
>
> The adjustment has been gradual for Mr. B., a 43-year-old public school
> administrator who is trying to stop calling J. "our little man." He
> thinks of his son as a positive, resilient person, and his love and
> admiration show. "The truth is, is any parent going to choose this
> for their kid?" he said. "It's who your kid is."
>
> Families are caught in the undertow of conflicting approaches. One
> suburban Chicago mother, who did not want to be identified, said in a
> telephone interview that she was drawing the line on dress and trying
> to provide "boy opportunities" for her 6-year-old son. "But we
> can't make everything a power struggle," she said. "It gets
> exhausting."
>
> She worries about him becoming a social outcast. "Why does your
> brother like girl things?" friends of her 10-year-old ask. The answer
> is always, "I don't know."
>
> Nila Marrone, a retired linguistics professor at the University of
> Connecticut who consults with parents and schools, recalled an incident
> last year at a Bronx elementary school in which an 8-year-old boy
> perceived as effeminate was thrown into a large trash bin by a group of
> boys. The principal, she said, "suggested to the mother that she was
> to blame, for not having taught her son how to be tough enough."
>
> But the tide is turning.
>
> The Los Angeles Unified School District, for instance, requires that
> students be addressed with "a name and pronoun that corresponds to
> the gender identity." It also asks schools to provide a locker room
> or changing area that corresponds to a student's chosen gender.
>
> One of the most controversial issues concerns the use of
> "blockers," hormones used to delay the onset of puberty in cases
> where it could be psychologically devastating (for instance, a girl who
> identifies as a boy might slice her wrists when she gets her period).
> Some doctors disapprove of blockers, arguing that only at puberty does
> an individual fully appreciate their gender identity.
>
> Catherine Tuerk, a nurse-psychotherapist at the children's hospital
> in Washington and the mother of a gender-variant child in the 1970s,
> says parents are still left to find their own way. She recalls how
> therapists urged her to steer her son into psychoanalysis and
> "hypermasculine activities" like karate. She said she and her
> husband became "gender cops."
>
> "It was always, 'You're not kicking the ball hard enough,' "
> she said.
>
> Ms. Tuerk's son, now 30, is gay and a father, and her own thinking
> has evolved since she was a young parent. "People are beginning to
> understand this seems to be something that happens," she said. "But
> there was a whole lifetime of feeling we could never leave him alone."

[Eleventhdr]

fgoodwin wrote:
> Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/us/02child.html
>
> December 2, 2006
>
> By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
>
> OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 1 - Until recently, many children who did not
> conform to gender norms in their clothing or behavior and identified
> intensely with the opposite sex were steered to psychoanalysis or
> behavior modification.
>
> But as advocates gain ground for what they call gender-identity rights,
> evidenced most recently by New York City's decision to let people
> alter the sex listed on their birth certificates, a major change is
> taking place among schools and families. Children as young as 5 who
> display predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being
> supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental
> health professionals.
>
> Doctors, some of them from the top pediatric hospitals, have begun to
> advise families to let these children be "who they are" to foster a
> sense of security and self-esteem. They are motivated, in part, by the
> high incidence of depression, suicidal feelings and self-mutilation
> that has been common in past generations of transgender children. Legal
> trends suggest that schools are now required to respect parents'
> decisions.
>
> "First we became sensitive to two mommies and two daddies," said
> Reynaldo Almeida, the director of the Aurora School, a progressive
> private school in Oakland. "Now it's kids who come to school who
> aren't gender typical."
>
> The supportive attitudes are far easier to find in traditionally
> tolerant areas of the country like San Francisco than in other parts,
> but even in those places there is fierce debate over how best to handle
> the children.
>
> Cassandra Reese, a first-grade teacher outside Boston, recalled that
> fellow teachers were unnerved when a young boy showed up in a skirt.
> "They said, 'This is not normal,' and, 'It's the parents'
> fault,' " Ms. Reese said. "They didn't see children as
> sophisticated enough to verbalize their feelings."
>
> As their children head into adolescence, some parents are choosing to
> block puberty medically to buy time for them to figure out who they are
> - raising a host of ethical questions.
>
> While these children are still relatively rare, doctors say the number
> of referrals is rising across the nation. Massachusetts, Minnesota,
> California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia have laws
> protecting the rights of transgender students, and some schools are
> engaged in a steep learning curve to dismantle gender stereotypes.
>
> At the Park Day School in Oakland, teachers are taught a gender-neutral
> vocabulary and are urged to line up students by sneaker color rather
> than by gender. "We are careful not to create a situation where
> students are being boxed in," said Tom Little, the school's
> director. "We allow them to move back and forth until something feels
> right."
>
> For families, it can be a long, emotional adjustment. Shortly after her
> son's third birthday, Pam B. and her husband, Joel, began a parental
> journey for which there was no map. It started when their son, J.,
> began wearing oversized T-shirts and wrapping a towel around his head
> to emulate long, flowing hair. Then came his mothers' silky
> undershirts. Half a year into preschool, J. started becoming agitated
> when asked to wear boys' clothing.
>
> En route to a mall with her son, Ms. B. had an epiphany: "It just
> clicked in me. I said, 'You really want to wear a dress, don't
> you?' "
>
> Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
> protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
> behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
> child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
> identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
> pigtails and pink jumpers to school.
>
> Ms. B., 41, a lawyer, accepted the way her son defined himself after
> she and her husband consulted with a psychologist and observed his
> newfound comfort with his choice. But she feels the precarious nature
> of the day-to-day reality. "It's hard to convey the relentlessness
> of it, she said, "every social encounter, every time you go out to
> eat, every day feeling like a balance between your kid's self-esteem
> and protecting him from the hostile outside world."
>
> The prospect of cross-dressing kindergartners has sparked a deep
> philosophical divide among professionals over how best to counsel
> families. Is it healthier for families to follow the child's lead, or
> to spare children potential humiliation and isolation by steering them
> toward accepting their biological gender until they are older?
>
> Both sides in the debate underscore their concern for the profound
> vulnerability of such youngsters, symbolized by occurrences like the
> murder in 2002 of Gwen Araujo, a transgender teenager born as Eddie,
> southeast of Oakland.
>
> "Parents now are looking for advice on how to make life reasonable
> for their kids - whether to allow cross-dressing in public, and how
> to protect them from the savagery of other children," said Dr.
> Herbert Schreier, a psychiatrist with Children's Hospital and
> Research Center in Oakland.
>
> Dr. Schreier is one of a growing number of professionals who have begun
> to think of gender variance as a naturally occurring phenomenon rather
> than a disorder. "These kids are becoming more aware of how it is to
> be themselves," he said.
>
> In past generations, so-called sissy boys and tomboy girls were made to
> conform, based on the belief that their behaviors were largely products
> of dysfunctional homes.
>
> Among the revisionists is Dr. Edgardo Menvielle, a child-adolescent
> psychiatrist at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington
> who started a national outreach group for parents of gender-variant
> children in 1998 that now has more than 200 participants. "We know
> that sexually marginalized children have a higher rate of depression
> and suicide attempts," Dr. Menvielle said. "The goal is for the
> child to be well adjusted, healthy and have good self-esteem. What's
> not important is molding their gender."
>
> The literature on adults who are transgender was hardly consoling to
> one parent, a 42-year-old software consultant in Massachusetts and the
> father of a gender-variant third grader. "You're trudging through
> this tragic, horrible stuff and realizing not a single person was
> accepted and understood as a child," he said. "You read it and
> think, O.K., best to avoid that. But as a parent you're in this
> complete terra incognita."
>
> The biological underpinnings of gender identity, much like sexual
> orientation, remain something of a mystery, though many researchers
> suspect it is linked with hormone exposure in the developing fetus.
>
> Studies suggest that most boys with gender variance early in childhood
> grow up to be gay, and about a quarter heterosexual, Dr. Menvielle
> said. Only a small fraction grow up to identify as transgender.
>
> Girls with gender-variant behavior, who have been studied less, voice
> extreme unhappiness about being a girl and talk about wanting to have
> male anatomy. But research has thus far suggested that most wind up as
> heterosexual women.
>
> Although many children role-play involving gender, Dr. Menvielle said,
> "the key question is how intense and persistent the behavior is,"
> especially if they show extreme distress.
>
> Dr. Robin Dea, the director of regional mental health for Kaiser
> Permanente in Northern California, said: "Our gender identity is
> something we feel in our soul. But it is also a continuum, and it
> evolves."
>
> Dr. Dea works with four or five children under the age of 15 who are
> essentially living as the opposite sex. "They are much happier, and
> their grades are up," she said. "I'm waiting for the study that
> says supporting these children is negative."
>
> But Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and head of the gender-identity
> service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto,
> disagrees with the "free to be" approach with young children and
> cross-dressing in public. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Zucker has
> treated about 500 preadolescent gender-variant children. In his
> studies, 80 percent grow out of the behavior, but 15 percent to 20
> percent continue to be distressed about their gender and may ultimately
> change their sex.
>
> Dr. Zucker tries to "help these kids be more content in their
> biological gender" until they are older and can determine their
> sexual identity - accomplished, he said, by encouraging same-sex
> friendships and activities like board games that move beyond strict
> gender roles.
>
> Though she has not encountered such a situation, Jennifer Schwartz,
> assistant principal of Chatham Elementary School outside Springfield,
> Ill., said that allowing a child to express gender differences "would
> be very difficult to pull off" there.
>
> Ms. Schwartz added: "I'm not sure it's worth the damage it could
> cause the child, with all the prejudices and parents possibly
> protesting. I'm not sure a child that age is ready to make that kind
> of decision."
>
> The B.'s thought long and hard about what they had observed in their
> son. They have carefully choreographed his life, monitoring new
> playmates, selecting a compatible school, finding sympathetic parents
> in a babysitting co-op. Nevertheless, Ms. B. said, "there is still
> the stomach-clenching fear for your kid."
>
> It is indeed heartbreaking to hear a child say, as J. did recently,
> "It feels like a nightmare I'm a boy."
>
> The adjustment has been gradual for Mr. B., a 43-year-old public school
> administrator who is trying to stop calling J. "our little man." He
> thinks of his son as a positive, resilient person, and his love and
> admiration show. "The truth is, is any parent going to choose this
> for their kid?" he said. "It's who your kid is."
>
> Families are caught in the undertow of conflicting approaches. One
> suburban Chicago mother, who did not want to be identified, said in a
> telephone interview that she was drawing the line on dress and trying
> to provide "boy opportunities" for her 6-year-old son. "But we
> can't make everything a power struggle," she said. "It gets
> exhausting."
>
> She worries about him becoming a social outcast. "Why does your
> brother like girl things?" friends of her 10-year-old ask. The answer
> is always, "I don't know."
>
> Nila Marrone, a retired linguistics professor at the University of
> Connecticut who consults with parents and schools, recalled an incident
> last year at a Bronx elementary school in which an 8-year-old boy
> perceived as effeminate was thrown into a large trash bin by a group of
> boys. The principal, she said, "suggested to the mother that she was
> to blame, for not having taught her son how to be tough enough."
>
> But the tide is turning.
>
> The Los Angeles Unified School District, for instance, requires that
> students be addressed with "a name and pronoun that corresponds to
> the gender identity." It also asks schools to provide a locker room
> or changing area that corresponds to a student's chosen gender.
>
> One of the most controversial issues concerns the use of
> "blockers," hormones used to delay the onset of puberty in cases
> where it could be psychologically devastating (for instance, a girl who
> identifies as a boy might slice her wrists when she gets her period).
> Some doctors disapprove of blockers, arguing that only at puberty does
> an individual fully appreciate their gender identity.
>
> Catherine Tuerk, a nurse-psychotherapist at the children's hospital
> in Washington and the mother of a gender-variant child in the 1970s,
> says parents are still left to find their own way. She recalls how
> therapists urged her to steer her son into psychoanalysis and
> "hypermasculine activities" like karate. She said she and her
> husband became "gender cops."
>
> "It was always, 'You're not kicking the ball hard enough,' "
> she said.
>
> Ms. Tuerk's son, now 30, is gay and a father, and her own thinking
> has evolved since she was a young parent. "People are beginning to
> understand this seems to be something that happens," she said. "But
> there was a whole lifetime of feeling we could never leave him alone."

[Eleventhdr]

fgoodwin wrote:
> Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/us/02child.html
>
> December 2, 2006
>
> By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
>
> OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 1 - Until recently, many children who did not
> conform to gender norms in their clothing or behavior and identified
> intensely with the opposite sex were steered to psychoanalysis or
> behavior modification.
>
> But as advocates gain ground for what they call gender-identity rights,
> evidenced most recently by New York City's decision to let people
> alter the sex listed on their birth certificates, a major change is
> taking place among schools and families. Children as young as 5 who
> display predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being
> supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental
> health professionals.
>
> Doctors, some of them from the top pediatric hospitals, have begun to
> advise families to let these children be "who they are" to foster a
> sense of security and self-esteem. They are motivated, in part, by the
> high incidence of depression, suicidal feelings and self-mutilation
> that has been common in past generations of transgender children. Legal
> trends suggest that schools are now required to respect parents'
> decisions.
>
> "First we became sensitive to two mommies and two daddies," said
> Reynaldo Almeida, the director of the Aurora School, a progressive
> private school in Oakland. "Now it's kids who come to school who
> aren't gender typical."
>
> The supportive attitudes are far easier to find in traditionally
> tolerant areas of the country like San Francisco than in other parts,
> but even in those places there is fierce debate over how best to handle
> the children.
>
> Cassandra Reese, a first-grade teacher outside Boston, recalled that
> fellow teachers were unnerved when a young boy showed up in a skirt.
> "They said, 'This is not normal,' and, 'It's the parents'
> fault,' " Ms. Reese said. "They didn't see children as
> sophisticated enough to verbalize their feelings."
>
> As their children head into adolescence, some parents are choosing to
> block puberty medically to buy time for them to figure out who they are
> - raising a host of ethical questions.
>
> While these children are still relatively rare, doctors say the number
> of referrals is rising across the nation. Massachusetts, Minnesota,
> California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia have laws
> protecting the rights of transgender students, and some schools are
> engaged in a steep learning curve to dismantle gender stereotypes.
>
> At the Park Day School in Oakland, teachers are taught a gender-neutral
> vocabulary and are urged to line up students by sneaker color rather
> than by gender. "We are careful not to create a situation where
> students are being boxed in," said Tom Little, the school's
> director. "We allow them to move back and forth until something feels
> right."
>
> For families, it can be a long, emotional adjustment. Shortly after her
> son's third birthday, Pam B. and her husband, Joel, began a parental
> journey for which there was no map. It started when their son, J.,
> began wearing oversized T-shirts and wrapping a towel around his head
> to emulate long, flowing hair. Then came his mothers' silky
> undershirts. Half a year into preschool, J. started becoming agitated
> when asked to wear boys' clothing.
>
> En route to a mall with her son, Ms. B. had an epiphany: "It just
> clicked in me. I said, 'You really want to wear a dress, don't
> you?' "
>
> Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
> protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
> behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
> child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
> identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
> pigtails and pink jumpers to school.
>
> Ms. B., 41, a lawyer, accepted the way her son defined himself after
> she and her husband consulted with a psychologist and observed his
> newfound comfort with his choice. But she feels the precarious nature
> of the day-to-day reality. "It's hard to convey the relentlessness
> of it, she said, "every social encounter, every time you go out to
> eat, every day feeling like a balance between your kid's self-esteem
> and protecting him from the hostile outside world."
>
> The prospect of cross-dressing kindergartners has sparked a deep
> philosophical divide among professionals over how best to counsel
> families. Is it healthier for families to follow the child's lead, or
> to spare children potential humiliation and isolation by steering them
> toward accepting their biological gender until they are older?
>
> Both sides in the debate underscore their concern for the profound
> vulnerability of such youngsters, symbolized by occurrences like the
> murder in 2002 of Gwen Araujo, a transgender teenager born as Eddie,
> southeast of Oakland.
>
> "Parents now are looking for advice on how to make life reasonable
> for their kids - whether to allow cross-dressing in public, and how
> to protect them from the savagery of other children," said Dr.
> Herbert Schreier, a psychiatrist with Children's Hospital and
> Research Center in Oakland.
>
> Dr. Schreier is one of a growing number of professionals who have begun
> to think of gender variance as a naturally occurring phenomenon rather
> than a disorder. "These kids are becoming more aware of how it is to
> be themselves," he said.
>
> In past generations, so-called sissy boys and tomboy girls were made to
> conform, based on the belief that their behaviors were largely products
> of dysfunctional homes.
>
> Among the revisionists is Dr. Edgardo Menvielle, a child-adolescent
> psychiatrist at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington
> who started a national outreach group for parents of gender-variant
> children in 1998 that now has more than 200 participants. "We know
> that sexually marginalized children have a higher rate of depression
> and suicide attempts," Dr. Menvielle said. "The goal is for the
> child to be well adjusted, healthy and have good self-esteem. What's
> not important is molding their gender."
>
> The literature on adults who are transgender was hardly consoling to
> one parent, a 42-year-old software consultant in Massachusetts and the
> father of a gender-variant third grader. "You're trudging through
> this tragic, horrible stuff and realizing not a single person was
> accepted and understood as a child," he said. "You read it and
> think, O.K., best to avoid that. But as a parent you're in this
> complete terra incognita."
>
> The biological underpinnings of gender identity, much like sexual
> orientation, remain something of a mystery, though many researchers
> suspect it is linked with hormone exposure in the developing fetus.
>
> Studies suggest that most boys with gender variance early in childhood
> grow up to be gay, and about a quarter heterosexual, Dr. Menvielle
> said. Only a small fraction grow up to identify as transgender.
>
> Girls with gender-variant behavior, who have been studied less, voice
> extreme unhappiness about being a girl and talk about wanting to have
> male anatomy. But research has thus far suggested that most wind up as
> heterosexual women.
>
> Although many children role-play involving gender, Dr. Menvielle said,
> "the key question is how intense and persistent the behavior is,"
> especially if they show extreme distress.
>
> Dr. Robin Dea, the director of regional mental health for Kaiser
> Permanente in Northern California, said: "Our gender identity is
> something we feel in our soul. But it is also a continuum, and it
> evolves."
>
> Dr. Dea works with four or five children under the age of 15 who are
> essentially living as the opposite sex. "They are much happier, and
> their grades are up," she said. "I'm waiting for the study that
> says supporting these children is negative."
>
> But Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and head of the gender-identity
> service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto,
> disagrees with the "free to be" approach with young children and
> cross-dressing in public. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Zucker has
> treated about 500 preadolescent gender-variant children. In his
> studies, 80 percent grow out of the behavior, but 15 percent to 20
> percent continue to be distressed about their gender and may ultimately
> change their sex.
>
> Dr. Zucker tries to "help these kids be more content in their
> biological gender" until they are older and can determine their
> sexual identity - accomplished, he said, by encouraging same-sex
> friendships and activities like board games that move beyond strict
> gender roles.
>
> Though she has not encountered such a situation, Jennifer Schwartz,
> assistant principal of Chatham Elementary School outside Springfield,
> Ill., said that allowing a child to express gender differences "would
> be very difficult to pull off" there.
>
> Ms. Schwartz added: "I'm not sure it's worth the damage it could
> cause the child, with all the prejudices and parents possibly
> protesting. I'm not sure a child that age is ready to make that kind
> of decision."
>
> The B.'s thought long and hard about what they had observed in their
> son. They have carefully choreographed his life, monitoring new
> playmates, selecting a compatible school, finding sympathetic parents
> in a babysitting co-op. Nevertheless, Ms. B. said, "there is still
> the stomach-clenching fear for your kid."
>
> It is indeed heartbreaking to hear a child say, as J. did recently,
> "It feels like a nightmare I'm a boy."
>
> The adjustment has been gradual for Mr. B., a 43-year-old public school
> administrator who is trying to stop calling J. "our little man." He
> thinks of his son as a positive, resilient person, and his love and
> admiration show. "The truth is, is any parent going to choose this
> for their kid?" he said. "It's who your kid is."
>
> Families are caught in the undertow of conflicting approaches. One
> suburban Chicago mother, who did not want to be identified, said in a
> telephone interview that she was drawing the line on dress and trying
> to provide "boy opportunities" for her 6-year-old son. "But we
> can't make everything a power struggle," she said. "It gets
> exhausting."
>
> She worries about him becoming a social outcast. "Why does your
> brother like girl things?" friends of her 10-year-old ask. The answer
> is always, "I don't know."
>
> Nila Marrone, a retired linguistics professor at the University of
> Connecticut who consults with parents and schools, recalled an incident
> last year at a Bronx elementary school in which an 8-year-old boy
> perceived as effeminate was thrown into a large trash bin by a group of
> boys. The principal, she said, "suggested to the mother that she was
> to blame, for not having taught her son how to be tough enough."
>
> But the tide is turning.
>
> The Los Angeles Unified School District, for instance, requires that
> students be addressed with "a name and pronoun that corresponds to
> the gender identity." It also asks schools to provide a locker room
> or changing area that corresponds to a student's chosen gender.
>
> One of the most controversial issues concerns the use of
> "blockers," hormones used to delay the onset of puberty in cases
> where it could be psychologically devastating (for instance, a girl who
> identifies as a boy might slice her wrists when she gets her period).
> Some doctors disapprove of blockers, arguing that only at puberty does
> an individual fully appreciate their gender identity.
>
> Catherine Tuerk, a nurse-psychotherapist at the children's hospital
> in Washington and the mother of a gender-variant child in the 1970s,
> says parents are still left to find their own way. She recalls how
> therapists urged her to steer her son into psychoanalysis and
> "hypermasculine activities" like karate. She said she and her
> husband became "gender cops."
>
> "It was always, 'You're not kicking the ball hard enough,' "
> she said.
>
> Ms. Tuerk's son, now 30, is gay and a father, and her own thinking
> has evolved since she was a young parent. "People are beginning to
> understand this seems to be something that happens," she said. "But
> there was a whole lifetime of feeling we could never leave him alone."

[Eleventhdr]

Eleventhdr wrote:
> fgoodwin wrote:
> > Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/us/02child.html
> >
> > December 2, 2006
> >
> > By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
> >
> > OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 1 - Until recently, many children who did not
> > conform to gender norms in their clothing or behavior and identified
> > intensely with the opposite sex were steered to psychoanalysis or
> > behavior modification.
> >
> > But as advocates gain ground for what they call gender-identity rights,
> > evidenced most recently by New York City's decision to let people
> > alter the sex listed on their birth certificates, a major change is
> > taking place among schools and families. Children as young as 5 who
> > display predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being
> > supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental
> > health professionals.
> >
> > Doctors, some of them from the top pediatric hospitals, have begun to
> > advise families to let these children be "who they are" to foster a
> > sense of security and self-esteem. They are motivated, in part, by the
> > high incidence of depression, suicidal feelings and self-mutilation
> > that has been common in past generations of transgender children. Legal
> > trends suggest that schools are now required to respect parents'
> > decisions.
> >
> > "First we became sensitive to two mommies and two daddies," said
> > Reynaldo Almeida, the director of the Aurora School, a progressive
> > private school in Oakland. "Now it's kids who come to school who
> > aren't gender typical."
> >
> > The supportive attitudes are far easier to find in traditionally
> > tolerant areas of the country like San Francisco than in other parts,
> > but even in those places there is fierce debate over how best to handle
> > the children.
> >
> > Cassandra Reese, a first-grade teacher outside Boston, recalled that
> > fellow teachers were unnerved when a young boy showed up in a skirt.
> > "They said, 'This is not normal,' and, 'It's the parents'
> > fault,' " Ms. Reese said. "They didn't see children as
> > sophisticated enough to verbalize their feelings."
> >
> > As their children head into adolescence, some parents are choosing to
> > block puberty medically to buy time for them to figure out who they are
> > - raising a host of ethical questions.
> >
> > While these children are still relatively rare, doctors say the number
> > of referrals is rising across the nation. Massachusetts, Minnesota,
> > California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia have laws
> > protecting the rights of transgender students, and some schools are
> > engaged in a steep learning curve to dismantle gender stereotypes.
> >
> > At the Park Day School in Oakland, teachers are taught a gender-neutral
> > vocabulary and are urged to line up students by sneaker color rather
> > than by gender. "We are careful not to create a situation where
> > students are being boxed in," said Tom Little, the school's
> > director. "We allow them to move back and forth until something feels
> > right."
> >
> > For families, it can be a long, emotional adjustment. Shortly after her
> > son's third birthday, Pam B. and her husband, Joel, began a parental
> > journey for which there was no map. It started when their son, J.,
> > began wearing oversized T-shirts and wrapping a towel around his head
> > to emulate long, flowing hair. Then came his mothers' silky
> > undershirts. Half a year into preschool, J. started becoming agitated
> > when asked to wear boys' clothing.
> >
> > En route to a mall with her son, Ms. B. had an epiphany: "It just
> > clicked in me. I said, 'You really want to wear a dress, don't
> > you?' "
> >
> > Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
> > protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
> > behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
> > child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
> > identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
> > pigtails and pink jumpers to school.
> >
> > Ms. B., 41, a lawyer, accepted the way her son defined himself after
> > she and her husband consulted with a psychologist and observed his
> > newfound comfort with his choice. But she feels the precarious nature
> > of the day-to-day reality. "It's hard to convey the relentlessness
> > of it, she said, "every social encounter, every time you go out to
> > eat, every day feeling like a balance between your kid's self-esteem
> > and protecting him from the hostile outside world."
> >
> > The prospect of cross-dressing kindergartners has sparked a deep
> > philosophical divide among professionals over how best to counsel
> > families. Is it healthier for families to follow the child's lead, or
> > to spare children potential humiliation and isolation by steering them
> > toward accepting their biological gender until they are older?
> >
> > Both sides in the debate underscore their concern for the profound
> > vulnerability of such youngsters, symbolized by occurrences like the
> > murder in 2002 of Gwen Araujo, a transgender teenager born as Eddie,
> > southeast of Oakland.
> >
> > "Parents now are looking for advice on how to make life reasonable
> > for their kids - whether to allow cross-dressing in public, and how
> > to protect them from the savagery of other children," said Dr.
> > Herbert Schreier, a psychiatrist with Children's Hospital and
> > Research Center in Oakland.
> >
> > Dr. Schreier is one of a growing number of professionals who have begun
> > to think of gender variance as a naturally occurring phenomenon rather
> > than a disorder. "These kids are becoming more aware of how it is to
> > be themselves," he said.
> >
> > In past generations, so-called sissy boys and tomboy girls were made to
> > conform, based on the belief that their behaviors were largely products
> > of dysfunctional homes.
> >
> > Among the revisionists is Dr. Edgardo Menvielle, a child-adolescent
> > psychiatrist at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington
> > who started a national outreach group for parents of gender-variant
> > children in 1998 that now has more than 200 participants. "We know
> > that sexually marginalized children have a higher rate of depression
> > and suicide attempts," Dr. Menvielle said. "The goal is for the
> > child to be well adjusted, healthy and have good self-esteem. What's
> > not important is molding their gender."
> >
> > The literature on adults who are transgender was hardly consoling to
> > one parent, a 42-year-old software consultant in Massachusetts and the
> > father of a gender-variant third grader. "You're trudging through
> > this tragic, horrible stuff and realizing not a single person was
> > accepted and understood as a child," he said. "You read it and
> > think, O.K., best to avoid that. But as a parent you're in this
> > complete terra incognita."
> >
> > The biological underpinnings of gender identity, much like sexual
> > orientation, remain something of a mystery, though many researchers
> > suspect it is linked with hormone exposure in the developing fetus.
> >
> > Studies suggest that most boys with gender variance early in childhood
> > grow up to be gay, and about a quarter heterosexual, Dr. Menvielle
> > said. Only a small fraction grow up to identify as transgender.
> >
> > Girls with gender-variant behavior, who have been studied less, voice
> > extreme unhappiness about being a girl and talk about wanting to have
> > male anatomy. But research has thus far suggested that most wind up as
> > heterosexual women.
> >
> > Although many children role-play involving gender, Dr. Menvielle said,
> > "the key question is how intense and persistent the behavior is,"
> > especially if they show extreme distress.
> >
> > Dr. Robin Dea, the director of regional mental health for Kaiser
> > Permanente in Northern California, said: "Our gender identity is
> > something we feel in our soul. But it is also a continuum, and it
> > evolves."
> >
> > Dr. Dea works with four or five children under the age of 15 who are
> > essentially living as the opposite sex. "They are much happier, and
> > their grades are up," she said. "I'm waiting for the study that
> > says supporting these children is negative."
> >
> > But Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and head of the gender-identity
> > service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto,
> > disagrees with the "free to be" approach with young children and
> > cross-dressing in public. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Zucker has
> > treated about 500 preadolescent gender-variant children. In his
> > studies, 80 percent grow out of the behavior, but 15 percent to 20
> > percent continue to be distressed about their gender and may ultimately
> > change their sex.
> >
> > Dr. Zucker tries to "help these kids be more content in their
> > biological gender" until they are older and can determine their
> > sexual identity - accomplished, he said, by encouraging same-sex
> > friendships and activities like board games that move beyond strict
> > gender roles.
> >
> > Though she has not encountered such a situation, Jennifer Schwartz,
> > assistant principal of Chatham Elementary School outside Springfield,
> > Ill., said that allowing a child to express gender differences "would
> > be very difficult to pull off" there.
> >
> > Ms. Schwartz added: "I'm not sure it's worth the damage it could
> > cause the child, with all the prejudices and parents possibly
> > protesting. I'm not sure a child that age is ready to make that kind
> > of decision."
> >
> > The B.'s thought long and hard about what they had observed in their
> > son. They have carefully choreographed his life, monitoring new
> > playmates, selecting a compatible school, finding sympathetic parents
> > in a babysitting co-op. Nevertheless, Ms. B. said, "there is still
> > the stomach-clenching fear for your kid."
> >
> > It is indeed heartbreaking to hear a child say, as J. did recently,
> > "It feels like a nightmare I'm a boy."
> >
> > The adjustment has been gradual for Mr. B., a 43-year-old public school
> > administrator who is trying to stop calling J. "our little man." He
> > thinks of his son as a positive, resilient person, and his love and
> > admiration show. "The truth is, is any parent going to choose this
> > for their kid?" he said. "It's who your kid is."
> >
> > Families are caught in the undertow of conflicting approaches. One
> > suburban Chicago mother, who did not want to be identified, said in a
> > telephone interview that she was drawing the line on dress and trying
> > to provide "boy opportunities" for her 6-year-old son. "But we
> > can't make everything a power struggle," she said. "It gets
> > exhausting."
> >
> > She worries about him becoming a social outcast. "Why does your
> > brother like girl things?" friends of her 10-year-old ask. The answer
> > is always, "I don't know."
> >
> > Nila Marrone, a retired linguistics professor at the University of
> > Connecticut who consults with parents and schools, recalled an incident
> > last year at a Bronx elementary school in which an 8-year-old boy
> > perceived as effeminate was thrown into a large trash bin by a group of
> > boys. The principal, she said, "suggested to the mother that she was
> > to blame, for not having taught her son how to be tough enough."
> >
> > But the tide is turning.
> >
> > The Los Angeles Unified School District, for instance, requires that
> > students be addressed with "a name and pronoun that corresponds to
> > the gender identity." It also asks schools to provide a locker room
> > or changing area that corresponds to a student's chosen gender.
> >
> > One of the most controversial issues concerns the use of
> > "blockers," hormones used to delay the onset of puberty in cases
> > where it could be psychologically devastating (for instance, a girl who
> > identifies as a boy might slice her wrists when she gets her period).
> > Some doctors disapprove of blockers, arguing that only at puberty does
> > an individual fully appreciate their gender identity.
> >
> > Catherine Tuerk, a nurse-psychotherapist at the children's hospital
> > in Washington and the mother of a gender-variant child in the 1970s,
> > says parents are still left to find their own way. She recalls how
> > therapists urged her to steer her son into psychoanalysis and
> > "hypermasculine activities" like karate. She said she and her
> > husband became "gender cops."
> >
> > "It was always, 'You're not kicking the ball hard enough,' "
> > she said.
> >
> > Ms. Tuerk's son, now 30, is gay and a father, and her own thinking
> > has evolved since she was a young parent. "People are beginning to
> > understand this seems to be something that happens," she said. "But
> > there was a whole lifetime of feeling we could never leave him alone."

Yesit is about time that we do reconize that to be mlae or female or
someelse entierly si something that just maybe predetermined before one
is ever really born.

it just maybe that since all life essentially is female before birth
that this is the natually sex and that to become mlae is secondarly
indeed and not the other way around at al as was the case determined
way back that once you were born as one sex or the other that you had
to remain that way all of your current lifetime.

Which simple is not the case and not true.

A very lot of us are transgenerd that is some of us are really femlae
in male bodies and vice versa.

So it is high time that we do reconize this and stop trying to program
peoples who feel and want to be the other sex once they are born into a
lifetime.

But want to change and be what they really are right.

I mean what is so all fired important to make one stay one sex or the
other once you are born into one sex or the other gender is not locked
just becasue you are born a boy or a girl.

And besides being a boy or a girl is not so all fired important it is
how one really does feel and want to be one sex or the other that is
what we are trying to get at here.

I just wish that when i was born and was growing up back in the 50's
and 60's that this had been the case sure would have really helped out
if and when i was or had been allowed to dress as i really had always
wanted to when i was little and to have been the sex that i was really
suppose to have been all along indeed.

I was in this lifetime suppose to ahve been female and what is so very
wrong with that.

Oh well!

Jay Suzy Ann my girl name for myself!

[Eleventhdr]

Eleventhdr wrote:
> fgoodwin wrote:
> > Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/us/02child.html
> >
> > December 2, 2006
> >
> > By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
> >
> > OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 1 - Until recently, many children who did not
> > conform to gender norms in their clothing or behavior and identified
> > intensely with the opposite sex were steered to psychoanalysis or
> > behavior modification.
> >
> > But as advocates gain ground for what they call gender-identity rights,
> > evidenced most recently by New York City's decision to let people
> > alter the sex listed on their birth certificates, a major change is
> > taking place among schools and families. Children as young as 5 who
> > display predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being
> > supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental
> > health professionals.
> >
> > Doctors, some of them from the top pediatric hospitals, have begun to
> > advise families to let these children be "who they are" to foster a
> > sense of security and self-esteem. They are motivated, in part, by the
> > high incidence of depression, suicidal feelings and self-mutilation
> > that has been common in past generations of transgender children. Legal
> > trends suggest that schools are now required to respect parents'
> > decisions.
> >
> > "First we became sensitive to two mommies and two daddies," said
> > Reynaldo Almeida, the director of the Aurora School, a progressive
> > private school in Oakland. "Now it's kids who come to school who
> > aren't gender typical."
> >
> > The supportive attitudes are far easier to find in traditionally
> > tolerant areas of the country like San Francisco than in other parts,
> > but even in those places there is fierce debate over how best to handle
> > the children.
> >
> > Cassandra Reese, a first-grade teacher outside Boston, recalled that
> > fellow teachers were unnerved when a young boy showed up in a skirt.
> > "They said, 'This is not normal,' and, 'It's the parents'
> > fault,' " Ms. Reese said. "They didn't see children as
> > sophisticated enough to verbalize their feelings."
> >
> > As their children head into adolescence, some parents are choosing to
> > block puberty medically to buy time for them to figure out who they are
> > - raising a host of ethical questions.
> >
> > While these children are still relatively rare, doctors say the number
> > of referrals is rising across the nation. Massachusetts, Minnesota,
> > California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia have laws
> > protecting the rights of transgender students, and some schools are
> > engaged in a steep learning curve to dismantle gender stereotypes.
> >
> > At the Park Day School in Oakland, teachers are taught a gender-neutral
> > vocabulary and are urged to line up students by sneaker color rather
> > than by gender. "We are careful not to create a situation where
> > students are being boxed in," said Tom Little, the school's
> > director. "We allow them to move back and forth until something feels
> > right."
> >
> > For families, it can be a long, emotional adjustment. Shortly after her
> > son's third birthday, Pam B. and her husband, Joel, began a parental
> > journey for which there was no map. It started when their son, J.,
> > began wearing oversized T-shirts and wrapping a towel around his head
> > to emulate long, flowing hair. Then came his mothers' silky
> > undershirts. Half a year into preschool, J. started becoming agitated
> > when asked to wear boys' clothing.
> >
> > En route to a mall with her son, Ms. B. had an epiphany: "It just
> > clicked in me. I said, 'You really want to wear a dress, don't
> > you?' "
> >
> > Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
> > protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
> > behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
> > child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
> > identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
> > pigtails and pink jumpers to school.
> >
> > Ms. B., 41, a lawyer, accepted the way her son defined himself after
> > she and her husband consulted with a psychologist and observed his
> > newfound comfort with his choice. But she feels the precarious nature
> > of the day-to-day reality. "It's hard to convey the relentlessness
> > of it, she said, "every social encounter, every time you go out to
> > eat, every day feeling like a balance between your kid's self-esteem
> > and protecting him from the hostile outside world."
> >
> > The prospect of cross-dressing kindergartners has sparked a deep
> > philosophical divide among professionals over how best to counsel
> > families. Is it healthier for families to follow the child's lead, or
> > to spare children potential humiliation and isolation by steering them
> > toward accepting their biological gender until they are older?
> >
> > Both sides in the debate underscore their concern for the profound
> > vulnerability of such youngsters, symbolized by occurrences like the
> > murder in 2002 of Gwen Araujo, a transgender teenager born as Eddie,
> > southeast of Oakland.
> >
> > "Parents now are looking for advice on how to make life reasonable
> > for their kids - whether to allow cross-dressing in public, and how
> > to protect them from the savagery of other children," said Dr.
> > Herbert Schreier, a psychiatrist with Children's Hospital and
> > Research Center in Oakland.
> >
> > Dr. Schreier is one of a growing number of professionals who have begun
> > to think of gender variance as a naturally occurring phenomenon rather
> > than a disorder. "These kids are becoming more aware of how it is to
> > be themselves," he said.
> >
> > In past generations, so-called sissy boys and tomboy girls were made to
> > conform, based on the belief that their behaviors were largely products
> > of dysfunctional homes.
> >
> > Among the revisionists is Dr. Edgardo Menvielle, a child-adolescent
> > psychiatrist at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington
> > who started a national outreach group for parents of gender-variant
> > children in 1998 that now has more than 200 participants. "We know
> > that sexually marginalized children have a higher rate of depression
> > and suicide attempts," Dr. Menvielle said. "The goal is for the
> > child to be well adjusted, healthy and have good self-esteem. What's
> > not important is molding their gender."
> >
> > The literature on adults who are transgender was hardly consoling to
> > one parent, a 42-year-old software consultant in Massachusetts and the
> > father of a gender-variant third grader. "You're trudging through
> > this tragic, horrible stuff and realizing not a single person was
> > accepted and understood as a child," he said. "You read it and
> > think, O.K., best to avoid that. But as a parent you're in this
> > complete terra incognita."
> >
> > The biological underpinnings of gender identity, much like sexual
> > orientation, remain something of a mystery, though many researchers
> > suspect it is linked with hormone exposure in the developing fetus.
> >
> > Studies suggest that most boys with gender variance early in childhood
> > grow up to be gay, and about a quarter heterosexual, Dr. Menvielle
> > said. Only a small fraction grow up to identify as transgender.
> >
> > Girls with gender-variant behavior, who have been studied less, voice
> > extreme unhappiness about being a girl and talk about wanting to have
> > male anatomy. But research has thus far suggested that most wind up as
> > heterosexual women.
> >
> > Although many children role-play involving gender, Dr. Menvielle said,
> > "the key question is how intense and persistent the behavior is,"
> > especially if they show extreme distress.
> >
> > Dr. Robin Dea, the director of regional mental health for Kaiser
> > Permanente in Northern California, said: "Our gender identity is
> > something we feel in our soul. But it is also a continuum, and it
> > evolves."
> >
> > Dr. Dea works with four or five children under the age of 15 who are
> > essentially living as the opposite sex. "They are much happier, and
> > their grades are up," she said. "I'm waiting for the study that
> > says supporting these children is negative."
> >
> > But Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and head of the gender-identity
> > service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto,
> > disagrees with the "free to be" approach with young children and
> > cross-dressing in public. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Zucker has
> > treated about 500 preadolescent gender-variant children. In his
> > studies, 80 percent grow out of the behavior, but 15 percent to 20
> > percent continue to be distressed about their gender and may ultimately
> > change their sex.
> >
> > Dr. Zucker tries to "help these kids be more content in their
> > biological gender" until they are older and can determine their
> > sexual identity - accomplished, he said, by encouraging same-sex
> > friendships and activities like board games that move beyond strict
> > gender roles.
> >
> > Though she has not encountered such a situation, Jennifer Schwartz,
> > assistant principal of Chatham Elementary School outside Springfield,
> > Ill., said that allowing a child to express gender differences "would
> > be very difficult to pull off" there.
> >
> > Ms. Schwartz added: "I'm not sure it's worth the damage it could
> > cause the child, with all the prejudices and parents possibly
> > protesting. I'm not sure a child that age is ready to make that kind
> > of decision."
> >
> > The B.'s thought long and hard about what they had observed in their
> > son. They have carefully choreographed his life, monitoring new
> > playmates, selecting a compatible school, finding sympathetic parents
> > in a babysitting co-op. Nevertheless, Ms. B. said, "there is still
> > the stomach-clenching fear for your kid."
> >
> > It is indeed heartbreaking to hear a child say, as J. did recently,
> > "It feels like a nightmare I'm a boy."
> >
> > The adjustment has been gradual for Mr. B., a 43-year-old public school
> > administrator who is trying to stop calling J. "our little man." He
> > thinks of his son as a positive, resilient person, and his love and
> > admiration show. "The truth is, is any parent going to choose this
> > for their kid?" he said. "It's who your kid is."
> >
> > Families are caught in the undertow of conflicting approaches. One
> > suburban Chicago mother, who did not want to be identified, said in a
> > telephone interview that she was drawing the line on dress and trying
> > to provide "boy opportunities" for her 6-year-old son. "But we
> > can't make everything a power struggle," she said. "It gets
> > exhausting."
> >
> > She worries about him becoming a social outcast. "Why does your
> > brother like girl things?" friends of her 10-year-old ask. The answer
> > is always, "I don't know."
> >
> > Nila Marrone, a retired linguistics professor at the University of
> > Connecticut who consults with parents and schools, recalled an incident
> > last year at a Bronx elementary school in which an 8-year-old boy
> > perceived as effeminate was thrown into a large trash bin by a group of
> > boys. The principal, she said, "suggested to the mother that she was
> > to blame, for not having taught her son how to be tough enough."
> >
> > But the tide is turning.
> >
> > The Los Angeles Unified School District, for instance, requires that
> > students be addressed with "a name and pronoun that corresponds to
> > the gender identity." It also asks schools to provide a locker room
> > or changing area that corresponds to a student's chosen gender.
> >
> > One of the most controversial issues concerns the use of
> > "blockers," hormones used to delay the onset of puberty in cases
> > where it could be psychologically devastating (for instance, a girl who
> > identifies as a boy might slice her wrists when she gets her period).
> > Some doctors disapprove of blockers, arguing that only at puberty does
> > an individual fully appreciate their gender identity.
> >
> > Catherine Tuerk, a nurse-psychotherapist at the children's hospital
> > in Washington and the mother of a gender-variant child in the 1970s,
> > says parents are still left to find their own way. She recalls how
> > therapists urged her to steer her son into psychoanalysis and
> > "hypermasculine activities" like karate. She said she and her
> > husband became "gender cops."
> >
> > "It was always, 'You're not kicking the ball hard enough,' "
> > she said.
> >
> > Ms. Tuerk's son, now 30, is gay and a father, and her own thinking
> > has evolved since she was a young parent. "People are beginning to
> > understand this seems to be something that happens," she said. "But
> > there was a whole lifetime of feeling we could never leave him alone."

Yesit is about time that we do reconize that to be mlae or female or
someelse entierly si something that just maybe predetermined before one
is ever really born.

it just maybe that since all life essentially is female before birth
that this is the natually sex and that to become mlae is secondarly
indeed and not the other way around at al as was the case determined
way back that once you were born as one sex or the other that you had
to remain that way all of your current lifetime.

Which simple is not the case and not true.

A very lot of us are transgenerd that is some of us are really femlae
in male bodies and vice versa.

So it is high time that we do reconize this and stop trying to program
peoples who feel and want to be the other sex once they are born into a
lifetime.

But want to change and be what they really are right.

I mean what is so all fired important to make one stay one sex or the
other once you are born into one sex or the other gender is not locked
just becasue you are born a boy or a girl.

And besides being a boy or a girl is not so all fired important it is
how one really does feel and want to be one sex or the other that is
what we are trying to get at here.

I just wish that when i was born and was growing up back in the 50's
and 60's that this had been the case sure would have really helped out
if and when i was or had been allowed to dress as i really had always
wanted to when i was little and to have been the sex that i was really
suppose to have been all along indeed.

I was in this lifetime suppose to ahve been female and what is so very
wrong with that.

Oh well!

Jay Suzy Ann my girl name for myself!

[Eleventhdr]

Eleventhdr wrote:
> fgoodwin wrote:
> > Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
> >
> > http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/us/02child.html
> >
> > December 2, 2006
> >
> > By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
> >
> > OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 1 - Until recently, many children who did not
> > conform to gender norms in their clothing or behavior and identified
> > intensely with the opposite sex were steered to psychoanalysis or
> > behavior modification.
> >
> > But as advocates gain ground for what they call gender-identity rights,
> > evidenced most recently by New York City's decision to let people
> > alter the sex listed on their birth certificates, a major change is
> > taking place among schools and families. Children as young as 5 who
> > display predispositions to dress like the opposite sex are being
> > supported by a growing number of young parents, educators and mental
> > health professionals.
> >
> > Doctors, some of them from the top pediatric hospitals, have begun to
> > advise families to let these children be "who they are" to foster a
> > sense of security and self-esteem. They are motivated, in part, by the
> > high incidence of depression, suicidal feelings and self-mutilation
> > that has been common in past generations of transgender children. Legal
> > trends suggest that schools are now required to respect parents'
> > decisions.
> >
> > "First we became sensitive to two mommies and two daddies," said
> > Reynaldo Almeida, the director of the Aurora School, a progressive
> > private school in Oakland. "Now it's kids who come to school who
> > aren't gender typical."
> >
> > The supportive attitudes are far easier to find in traditionally
> > tolerant areas of the country like San Francisco than in other parts,
> > but even in those places there is fierce debate over how best to handle
> > the children.
> >
> > Cassandra Reese, a first-grade teacher outside Boston, recalled that
> > fellow teachers were unnerved when a young boy showed up in a skirt.
> > "They said, 'This is not normal,' and, 'It's the parents'
> > fault,' " Ms. Reese said. "They didn't see children as
> > sophisticated enough to verbalize their feelings."
> >
> > As their children head into adolescence, some parents are choosing to
> > block puberty medically to buy time for them to figure out who they are
> > - raising a host of ethical questions.
> >
> > While these children are still relatively rare, doctors say the number
> > of referrals is rising across the nation. Massachusetts, Minnesota,
> > California, New Jersey and the District of Columbia have laws
> > protecting the rights of transgender students, and some schools are
> > engaged in a steep learning curve to dismantle gender stereotypes.
> >
> > At the Park Day School in Oakland, teachers are taught a gender-neutral
> > vocabulary and are urged to line up students by sneaker color rather
> > than by gender. "We are careful not to create a situation where
> > students are being boxed in," said Tom Little, the school's
> > director. "We allow them to move back and forth until something feels
> > right."
> >
> > For families, it can be a long, emotional adjustment. Shortly after her
> > son's third birthday, Pam B. and her husband, Joel, began a parental
> > journey for which there was no map. It started when their son, J.,
> > began wearing oversized T-shirts and wrapping a towel around his head
> > to emulate long, flowing hair. Then came his mothers' silky
> > undershirts. Half a year into preschool, J. started becoming agitated
> > when asked to wear boys' clothing.
> >
> > En route to a mall with her son, Ms. B. had an epiphany: "It just
> > clicked in me. I said, 'You really want to wear a dress, don't
> > you?' "
> >
> > Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
> > protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
> > behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
> > child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
> > identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
> > pigtails and pink jumpers to school.
> >
> > Ms. B., 41, a lawyer, accepted the way her son defined himself after
> > she and her husband consulted with a psychologist and observed his
> > newfound comfort with his choice. But she feels the precarious nature
> > of the day-to-day reality. "It's hard to convey the relentlessness
> > of it, she said, "every social encounter, every time you go out to
> > eat, every day feeling like a balance between your kid's self-esteem
> > and protecting him from the hostile outside world."
> >
> > The prospect of cross-dressing kindergartners has sparked a deep
> > philosophical divide among professionals over how best to counsel
> > families. Is it healthier for families to follow the child's lead, or
> > to spare children potential humiliation and isolation by steering them
> > toward accepting their biological gender until they are older?
> >
> > Both sides in the debate underscore their concern for the profound
> > vulnerability of such youngsters, symbolized by occurrences like the
> > murder in 2002 of Gwen Araujo, a transgender teenager born as Eddie,
> > southeast of Oakland.
> >
> > "Parents now are looking for advice on how to make life reasonable
> > for their kids - whether to allow cross-dressing in public, and how
> > to protect them from the savagery of other children," said Dr.
> > Herbert Schreier, a psychiatrist with Children's Hospital and
> > Research Center in Oakland.
> >
> > Dr. Schreier is one of a growing number of professionals who have begun
> > to think of gender variance as a naturally occurring phenomenon rather
> > than a disorder. "These kids are becoming more aware of how it is to
> > be themselves," he said.
> >
> > In past generations, so-called sissy boys and tomboy girls were made to
> > conform, based on the belief that their behaviors were largely products
> > of dysfunctional homes.
> >
> > Among the revisionists is Dr. Edgardo Menvielle, a child-adolescent
> > psychiatrist at the Children's National Medical Center in Washington
> > who started a national outreach group for parents of gender-variant
> > children in 1998 that now has more than 200 participants. "We know
> > that sexually marginalized children have a higher rate of depression
> > and suicide attempts," Dr. Menvielle said. "The goal is for the
> > child to be well adjusted, healthy and have good self-esteem. What's
> > not important is molding their gender."
> >
> > The literature on adults who are transgender was hardly consoling to
> > one parent, a 42-year-old software consultant in Massachusetts and the
> > father of a gender-variant third grader. "You're trudging through
> > this tragic, horrible stuff and realizing not a single person was
> > accepted and understood as a child," he said. "You read it and
> > think, O.K., best to avoid that. But as a parent you're in this
> > complete terra incognita."
> >
> > The biological underpinnings of gender identity, much like sexual
> > orientation, remain something of a mystery, though many researchers
> > suspect it is linked with hormone exposure in the developing fetus.
> >
> > Studies suggest that most boys with gender variance early in childhood
> > grow up to be gay, and about a quarter heterosexual, Dr. Menvielle
> > said. Only a small fraction grow up to identify as transgender.
> >
> > Girls with gender-variant behavior, who have been studied less, voice
> > extreme unhappiness about being a girl and talk about wanting to have
> > male anatomy. But research has thus far suggested that most wind up as
> > heterosexual women.
> >
> > Although many children role-play involving gender, Dr. Menvielle said,
> > "the key question is how intense and persistent the behavior is,"
> > especially if they show extreme distress.
> >
> > Dr. Robin Dea, the director of regional mental health for Kaiser
> > Permanente in Northern California, said: "Our gender identity is
> > something we feel in our soul. But it is also a continuum, and it
> > evolves."
> >
> > Dr. Dea works with four or five children under the age of 15 who are
> > essentially living as the opposite sex. "They are much happier, and
> > their grades are up," she said. "I'm waiting for the study that
> > says supporting these children is negative."
> >
> > But Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a psychologist and head of the gender-identity
> > service at the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto,
> > disagrees with the "free to be" approach with young children and
> > cross-dressing in public. Over the past 30 years, Dr. Zucker has
> > treated about 500 preadolescent gender-variant children. In his
> > studies, 80 percent grow out of the behavior, but 15 percent to 20
> > percent continue to be distressed about their gender and may ultimately
> > change their sex.
> >
> > Dr. Zucker tries to "help these kids be more content in their
> > biological gender" until they are older and can determine their
> > sexual identity - accomplished, he said, by encouraging same-sex
> > friendships and activities like board games that move beyond strict
> > gender roles.
> >
> > Though she has not encountered such a situation, Jennifer Schwartz,
> > assistant principal of Chatham Elementary School outside Springfield,
> > Ill., said that allowing a child to express gender differences "would
> > be very difficult to pull off" there.
> >
> > Ms. Schwartz added: "I'm not sure it's worth the damage it could
> > cause the child, with all the prejudices and parents possibly
> > protesting. I'm not sure a child that age is ready to make that kind
> > of decision."
> >
> > The B.'s thought long and hard about what they had observed in their
> > son. They have carefully choreographed his life, monitoring new
> > playmates, selecting a compatible school, finding sympathetic parents
> > in a babysitting co-op. Nevertheless, Ms. B. said, "there is still
> > the stomach-clenching fear for your kid."
> >
> > It is indeed heartbreaking to hear a child say, as J. did recently,
> > "It feels like a nightmare I'm a boy."
> >
> > The adjustment has been gradual for Mr. B., a 43-year-old public school
> > administrator who is trying to stop calling J. "our little man." He
> > thinks of his son as a positive, resilient person, and his love and
> > admiration show. "The truth is, is any parent going to choose this
> > for their kid?" he said. "It's who your kid is."
> >
> > Families are caught in the undertow of conflicting approaches. One
> > suburban Chicago mother, who did not want to be identified, said in a
> > telephone interview that she was drawing the line on dress and trying
> > to provide "boy opportunities" for her 6-year-old son. "But we
> > can't make everything a power struggle," she said. "It gets
> > exhausting."
> >
> > She worries about him becoming a social outcast. "Why does your
> > brother like girl things?" friends of her 10-year-old ask. The answer
> > is always, "I don't know."
> >
> > Nila Marrone, a retired linguistics professor at the University of
> > Connecticut who consults with parents and schools, recalled an incident
> > last year at a Bronx elementary school in which an 8-year-old boy
> > perceived as effeminate was thrown into a large trash bin by a group of
> > boys. The principal, she said, "suggested to the mother that she was
> > to blame, for not having taught her son how to be tough enough."
> >
> > But the tide is turning.
> >
> > The Los Angeles Unified School District, for instance, requires that
> > students be addressed with "a name and pronoun that corresponds to
> > the gender identity." It also asks schools to provide a locker room
> > or changing area that corresponds to a student's chosen gender.
> >
> > One of the most controversial issues concerns the use of
> > "blockers," hormones used to delay the onset of puberty in cases
> > where it could be psychologically devastating (for instance, a girl who
> > identifies as a boy might slice her wrists when she gets her period).
> > Some doctors disapprove of blockers, arguing that only at puberty does
> > an individual fully appreciate their gender identity.
> >
> > Catherine Tuerk, a nurse-psychotherapist at the children's hospital
> > in Washington and the mother of a gender-variant child in the 1970s,
> > says parents are still left to find their own way. She recalls how
> > therapists urged her to steer her son into psychoanalysis and
> > "hypermasculine activities" like karate. She said she and her
> > husband became "gender cops."
> >
> > "It was always, 'You're not kicking the ball hard enough,' "
> > she said.
> >
> > Ms. Tuerk's son, now 30, is gay and a father, and her own thinking
> > has evolved since she was a young parent. "People are beginning to
> > understand this seems to be something that happens," she said. "But
> > there was a whole lifetime of feeling we could never leave him alone."

Yesit is about time that we do reconize that to be mlae or female or
someelse entierly si something that just maybe predetermined before one
is ever really born.

it just maybe that since all life essentially is female before birth
that this is the natually sex and that to become mlae is secondarly
indeed and not the other way around at al as was the case determined
way back that once you were born as one sex or the other that you had
to remain that way all of your current lifetime.

Which simple is not the case and not true.

A very lot of us are transgenerd that is some of us are really femlae
in male bodies and vice versa.

So it is high time that we do reconize this and stop trying to program
peoples who feel and want to be the other sex once they are born into a
lifetime.

But want to change and be what they really are right.

I mean what is so all fired important to make one stay one sex or the
other once you are born into one sex or the other gender is not locked
just becasue you are born a boy or a girl.

And besides being a boy or a girl is not so all fired important it is
how one really does feel and want to be one sex or the other that is
what we are trying to get at here.

I just wish that when i was born and was growing up back in the 50's
and 60's that this had been the case sure would have really helped out
if and when i was or had been allowed to dress as i really had always
wanted to when i was little and to have been the sex that i was really
suppose to have been all along indeed.

I was in this lifetime suppose to ahve been female and what is so very
wrong with that.

Oh well!

Jay Suzy Ann my girl name for myself!

[Jeff]

"fgoodwin" > wrote in message
ups.com...
> Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/us/02child.html

Copyrighted material deleted.

It is an interesting article. In the vast majority of cases, kids with male
anatomy behave like boys and kids with female anatomy behave like girls.

When there is a boy who wants to play with trucks, we support the boy. When
a girl wants to play with dolls, we support the girl.

What I think we really need to do is let kids be who they are. If a boy
wants to wear dresses or play with dolls, let him. And if a girl wants to
play with trucks and wear genes, let her go for it.

What we really need to do is support the kids in who they are and not who we
want them to be.

One thing I disagree with is raising kids in a gender neutral way. A natural
way to line kids up is to have a girls' line and a boys' line. The trick is,
when a child has an issue about whether the child is male or female, to
support the child, just as we support boys who want to play with trucks and
girls who want to play with dolls.

By ignoring the traditional sex roles that the vast majority of us fall
into, we are ignoring the problem and not giving the support they need to
both those who fall into the traditional roles and those who don't.

Jeff

[Jeff]

"Eleventhdr" > wrote in message
ups.com...
It's bad form to reply to yourself with three identical messages.

Jeff

[Sarah Grae]

"fgoodwin" > wrote in message
ups.com...
> Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/02/us/02child.html
>
> December 2, 2006
>
> By PATRICIA LEIGH BROWN
>
> OAKLAND, Calif., Dec. 1 - Until recently, many children who did not
> conform to gender norms...

An interesting article, and somewhat promising. Thanks for sharing it.

Sarah

[BarbL]

Jen wrote:
> "fgoodwin" > wrote in message
> ups.com...
>> Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
>>
>
>> Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
>> protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
>> behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
>> child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
>> identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
>> pigtails and pink jumpers to school.
>
> But isn't that stereotypical in itself? Not all girls like wearing pink
> dresses and pigtails? But does that necessarily mean that they want to be
> boys? Why do boys need to wear pink dresses and pigtails to identify with
> girls if the girls don't wear these things?

I was wondering that too. I hate pink, and hate wearing
dresses - but it doesn't mean I wanted to be a boy. I wanted
to be able to run and climb trees, not told to fit into some
"little lady" mold.

Maybe if people would stop pushing the gender stereotypes on
kids, then they can just be whoever they are.


BarbL

[toypup]

"BarbL" <aBarbL@comcastdotnet> wrote in message
...
> I was wondering that too. I hate pink, and hate wearing dresses - but it
> doesn't mean I wanted to be a boy. I wanted to be able to run and climb
> trees, not told to fit into some "little lady" mold.
>
> Maybe if people would stop pushing the gender stereotypes on kids, then
> they can just be whoever they are.

I agree.

[Jeff]

"BarbL" <aBarbL@comcastdotnet> wrote in message
...
> Jen wrote:
>> "fgoodwin" > wrote in message
>> ups.com...
>>> Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
>>>
>>
>>> Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
>>> protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
>>> behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
>>> child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
>>> identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
>>> pigtails and pink jumpers to school.
>>
>> But isn't that stereotypical in itself? Not all girls like wearing pink
>> dresses and pigtails? But does that necessarily mean that they want to
>> be boys? Why do boys need to wear pink dresses and pigtails to identify
>> with girls if the girls don't wear these things?
>
> I was wondering that too. I hate pink, and hate wearing dresses - but it
> doesn't mean I wanted to be a boy. I wanted to be able to run and climb
> trees, not told to fit into some "little lady" mold.
>
> Maybe if people would stop pushing the gender stereotypes on kids, then
> they can just be whoever they are.

Most girls love to wear pretty dresses, at time (like formal events). Most
of the girls I know like pink and purple. Most girls like to play with
dolls. And other girl toys.

Most boys don't like to wear dresses or play with dolls. They like trucks.
They tend to play more roughly and play with boy toys.

The reason why this is is that boys and girls are biologically different
with brains wired differently. The differences between boys and girls is
biological.

So, when you support any kid with who he is, that means supporting boys who
like to play with trucks as well as those who perfer dolls and dress;
likewise, when you support who she is, that means supporting those who like
dolls as well as those who would rather play with trucks. And when a kid
with a male anatomy wants to identify with being a girl or a girl identifies
with being a boy, then you support the child in his/her decision.

If a kid likes football stuff and trucks, you get that kid football and
trucks for Christmas and birthdays; likewise, if a kid like dresses and
dolls, you get that kid dresses and dolls.

So the way you support any kid is to respect who he or she is. Most of the
time, that falls along the sex stereotypes (the word "gender" refers to
nouns and pronouns and adjectives, not people). In cases where it doesn,
you still respect and support the kid too.

I have absolutely no problem with the sex stereotypes. That reflects the way
most boys and girls are biologically wired. But, at the same time, I respect
that some kids fall outside the sterotypes. In fact, nearly all kids fall
outside the sterotypes at one point or another.

The other thing I respect is that all kids have great potential. And that
potential is not limited by their sex (except for roles in reproduction).

Jeff

> BarbL

[Banty]

In article et>, Jeff says...
>
>
>"BarbL" <aBarbL@comcastdotnet> wrote in message
...
>> Jen wrote:
>>> "fgoodwin" > wrote in message
>>> ups.com...
>>>> Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
>>>>
>>>
>>>> Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
>>>> protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
>>>> behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
>>>> child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
>>>> identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
>>>> pigtails and pink jumpers to school.
>>>
>>> But isn't that stereotypical in itself? Not all girls like wearing pink
>>> dresses and pigtails? But does that necessarily mean that they want to
>>> be boys? Why do boys need to wear pink dresses and pigtails to identify
>>> with girls if the girls don't wear these things?
>>
>> I was wondering that too. I hate pink, and hate wearing dresses - but it
>> doesn't mean I wanted to be a boy. I wanted to be able to run and climb
>> trees, not told to fit into some "little lady" mold.
>>
>> Maybe if people would stop pushing the gender stereotypes on kids, then
>> they can just be whoever they are.
>
>Most girls love to wear pretty dresses, at time (like formal events). Most
>of the girls I know like pink and purple. Most girls like to play with
>dolls. And other girl toys.
>
>Most boys don't like to wear dresses or play with dolls. They like trucks.
>They tend to play more roughly and play with boy toys.
>
>The reason why this is is that boys and girls are biologically different
>with brains wired differently. The differences between boys and girls is
>biological.
>
>So, when you support any kid with who he is, that means supporting boys who
>like to play with trucks as well as those who perfer dolls and dress;
>likewise, when you support who she is, that means supporting those who like
>dolls as well as those who would rather play with trucks. And when a kid
>with a male anatomy wants to identify with being a girl or a girl identifies
>with being a boy, then you support the child in his/her decision.
>
>If a kid likes football stuff and trucks, you get that kid football and
>trucks for Christmas and birthdays; likewise, if a kid like dresses and
>dolls, you get that kid dresses and dolls.
>
>So the way you support any kid is to respect who he or she is. Most of the
>time, that falls along the sex stereotypes (the word "gender" refers to
>nouns and pronouns and adjectives, not people). In cases where it doesn,
>you still respect and support the kid too.
>
>I have absolutely no problem with the sex stereotypes. That reflects the way
>most boys and girls are biologically wired. But, at the same time, I respect
>that some kids fall outside the sterotypes. In fact, nearly all kids fall
>outside the sterotypes at one point or another.
>
>The other thing I respect is that all kids have great potential. And that
>potential is not limited by their sex (except for roles in reproduction).
>
>Jeff

Exactly.

I also think that a good reason why trans-gender kids may go for the
stereotypical trappings is that those most clearly represent that gender. To
them because it does to society as a whole. For example, a trans-gender boy
couldn't put himself into a role of a girl very well by, after watching "Bend It
Like Beckham", putting on a soccer uniform.

Banty

[BarbL]

Jeff wrote:
> "BarbL" <aBarbL@comcastdotnet> wrote in message
> ...
>> Jen wrote:
>>> "fgoodwin" > wrote in message
>>> ups.com...
>>>> Supporting Boys or Girls When the Line Isn't Clear
>>>>
>>>> Thus began what the B.'s, who asked their full names not be used to
>>>> protect their son's privacy, call "the reluctant path," a
>>>> behind-closed-doors struggle to come to terms with a gender-variant
>>>> child - a spirited 5-year-old boy who, at least for now, strongly
>>>> identifies as a girl, requests to be called "she" and asks to wear
>>>> pigtails and pink jumpers to school.
>>> But isn't that stereotypical in itself? Not all girls like wearing pink
>>> dresses and pigtails? But does that necessarily mean that they want to
>>> be boys? Why do boys need to wear pink dresses and pigtails to identify
>>> with girls if the girls don't wear these things?
>> I was wondering that too. I hate pink, and hate wearing dresses - but it
>> doesn't mean I wanted to be a boy. I wanted to be able to run and climb
>> trees, not told to fit into some "little lady" mold.
>>
>> Maybe if people would stop pushing the gender stereotypes on kids, then
>> they can just be whoever they are.
>
> Most girls love to wear pretty dresses, at time (like formal events). Most
> of the girls I know like pink and purple. Most girls like to play with
> dolls. And other girl toys.

By calling them "girl toys", you're stereotyping. Neither of
my daughters nor my niece like pink. Pink is shoved on
little girls to force them to be "girly". Too many toys are
pink that could just be regular colors. It's nauseating for
those of us who hate pink. Many girls, when given a choice,
wouldn't be into pink.

I hate dressing up, my husband hates dressing up, but all 3
kids like it. (1 boy, 2 daughters) My daughters like frilly
*blue* dresses.


> Most boys don't like to wear dresses or play with dolls. They like trucks.
> They tend to play more roughly and play with boy toys.

The thing that is wrong is defining the toys as gender
specific. It's ok to like any of those toys, they all teach
something.

> The reason why this is is that boys and girls are biologically different
> with brains wired differently. The differences between boys and girls is
> biological.

Boys aren't born playing football, but newborns are given
footballs. That is gender stereotyping. It has nothing to do
with preference.

> So, when you support any kid with who he is, that means supporting boys who
> like to play with trucks as well as those who perfer dolls and dress;
> likewise, when you support who she is, that means supporting those who like
> dolls as well as those who would rather play with trucks. And when a kid
> with a male anatomy wants to identify with being a girl or a girl identifies
> with being a boy, then you support the child in his/her decision.

Uh, yep, that's what it means.

> If a kid likes football stuff and trucks, you get that kid football and
> trucks for Christmas and birthdays; likewise, if a kid like dresses and
> dolls, you get that kid dresses and dolls.

My kids tended to like things like books, art supplies,
Legos, trains, musical instruments, etc. I don't know who
the "you" is you're referring to, it's not me. I get Packers
and Mets and Red Wings stuff for any gender kid, and tend to
buy things that are what the kid likes. If I don't know, I
get the kid a book. I can find a lot of things to get a kid
that doesn't support a stereotype, but is what the kid wants.

One year, my son got a Polly Pocket set because he wanted
one. He had a Cabbage Patch kid when I was pregnant with his
first sister. It doesn't mean they were the only toys he
had, or all that he played with, they were things that he
wanted because they meant something to him.

My first daughter had every Polly Pocket there was, but also
was into dragons, Legos, trains and airplanes.

My youngest daughter has all the Fashion Pollys, but also a
collection of dragons, is a blossoming artist with anime,
likes Pokemon and manga.

They shared dollhouses, and Little People sets, train sets,
house sets, tea party sets, books, easels, science kits,
tents, riding toys, Star Wars sets... They all learned how
to change the oil in the car, how to mow the grass, how to
relight the heater. We all built a play yard, and put the
fence up around it as a family. When the pump room and the
porch needed replacing, all the kids worked on it. they've
also helped repair the roofs of the house and garage.

I think it would be a shame if some of them missed out on
things because of stereotyping.


> So the way you support any kid is to respect who he or she is. Most of the
> time, that falls along the sex stereotypes (the word "gender" refers to
> nouns and pronouns and adjectives, not people). In cases where it doesn,
> you still respect and support the kid too.

You're "correcting" my use of the word gender, but telling
me what I do? Stop saying "you" when you mean "I".

> I have absolutely no problem with the sex stereotypes. That reflects the way
> most boys and girls are biologically wired. But, at the same time, I respect
> that some kids fall outside the sterotypes. In fact, nearly all kids fall
> outside the sterotypes at one point or another.
>
> The other thing I respect is that all kids have great potential. And that
> potential is not limited by their sex (except for roles in reproduction).

It sounds like you're preaching to the choir... so why the
lecture?

BarbL

[toto]

On Wed, 06 Dec 2006 12:57:04 GMT, "Jeff" > wrote:

>Most girls love to wear pretty dresses, at time (like formal events). Most
>of the girls I know like pink and purple. Most girls like to play with
>dolls. And other girl toys.
>
Only because this is pushed as a stereotype. Most little girls I know
like to play with blocks and trucks. They may like both dressing up
and playing with cars and trucks.

>Most boys don't like to wear dresses or play with dolls. They like trucks.
>They tend to play more roughly and play with boy toys.
>
Again a stereotype. Many little boys actually like dressups, but are
afraid to use them after the preschool years because the other boys
will tease them. They may also like both playing with cars and trucks
and with dressup clothes.

>The reason why this is is that boys and girls are biologically different
>with brains wired differently. The differences between boys and girls is
>biological.
>
Yes, but toy preference and play preferences are not.

>So, when you support any kid with who he is, that means supporting boys who
>like to play with trucks as well as those who perfer dolls and dress;
>likewise, when you support who she is, that means supporting those who like
>dolls as well as those who would rather play with trucks. And when a kid
>with a male anatomy wants to identify with being a girl or a girl identifies
>with being a boy, then you support the child in his/her decision.
>
I agree with this part, but I also think we need to encourage children
to *try* things that are non-stereotypical to see if they like them.
Most girls actually do get this encouragement in terms of blocks and
cars and trucks and active play, but boys are often discouraged from
trying to play house or play with dolls by their fathers or other men
in their lives as well as by the teasing that goes on in schools if a
boy *dares* to be different.

>If a kid likes football stuff and trucks, you get that kid football and
>trucks for Christmas and birthdays; likewise, if a kid like dresses and
>dolls, you get that kid dresses and dolls.
>
>So the way you support any kid is to respect who he or she is. Most of the
>time, that falls along the sex stereotypes (the word "gender" refers to
>nouns and pronouns and adjectives, not people). In cases where it doesn,
>you still respect and support the kid too.
>
>I have absolutely no problem with the sex stereotypes. That reflects the way
>most boys and girls are biologically wired. But, at the same time, I respect
>that some kids fall outside the sterotypes. In fact, nearly all kids fall
>outside the sterotypes at one point or another.
>
>The other thing I respect is that all kids have great potential. And that
>potential is not limited by their sex (except for roles in reproduction).
>
>Jeff


--
Dorothy

There is no sound, no cry in all the world
that can be heard unless someone listens ..

The Outer Limits