International symbol for Transsexuality
There are some stories that appear to have a ‘yuck’ factor that is difficult to suppress and this particular tale is one of those. It’s written by Sarah Karlan the Buzzfeed LGBT section deputy editor, and I was alerted to it by one of Milo Yiannopoulos ( @Nero ) Tweets who said that it reminded him of child abuse. Having read the story and seen the video I can’t help but agree.
The story concerns a 14 year old boy who the parents are convinced is a male to female transsexual, and the Buzzfeed story centres around the mother and child’s joyful feelings when Corey, the child, got their first lot of female hormones. Now I have little problem with individual adults who feel that they are the wrong gender and wish to take hormones or submit themselves to surgery but children should really be left alone to see if they grow out of their gender confusion. I think that it is dangerous to pump 14 year olds full of Oestrogen or Testosterone, merely because the young person and/or their parent is suffering from a gender delusion. I know that the transsexual lobby and their loud and aggressive activists are currently pushing the idea that the earlier a person starts gender reassignment then the better the outcomes are for the individual. Unfortunately the Trans lobby in calling for gender reassignment at 12 or 14 do not appear to consider what would be the negative effects of starting gender reassignment too early.
Gender reassignment is a huge thing to undertake. Some of the medications involved such as Testosterone have irreversible effects on a genetic female child’s body. In my view these medications and the gender reassignment process itself should, for ethical reasons, be banned for anyone under the age of 21. I’ve known quite a few transsexuals, mostly male to female transsexuals, in my social circle and as work colleagues etc, therefore, although I’m not Trans myself, I have a pretty good idea about what is involved in the transition process. It’s not an easy process and it is often an irreversible one as well, and the decision to transition is so profound and far reaching that it shouldn’t be made by anybody or for anybody who is incapable by virtue of age of making such a choice.
My contact with Trans people over a long period has also made me question whether gender reassignment really is the best option for those who are feeling conflicted about gender? Too many (not all I might add, but enough to make me think carefully about the issue) of the M2F trans people I have known have had within them a deep, depressive sadness, which gender reassignment has not cured or alleviated. The problem is that this internal sadness is blamed on the gender dysphoria, therefore the depressive feelings and self destructive emotions should at the very least be reduced post-transition. Seeing friends and acquaintances who should have been cured of their emotional and psychological problems still suffering from the feelings of worthlessness and helplessness that was blamed on the gender dysphoria, made me think: ‘Is surgery and medication always the right way to treat this condition?’ I’ve come to the conclusion that I don’t think that it is always the best way of proceeding.
On the subject of the child who is in my view ‘too young to be trans’, I look back to how I was when I was 14 and I know that I would not be capable of making a decision over gender back then, I was just about capable of choosing my courses at secondary school. When I view the video below of the child opening their first package of female hormones with their parent and the parent having a celebratory attitude towards the matter, I feel extremely uneasy, and as I said earlier, find it hard to shake the feeling of ‘yuck’. It’s pretty obvious that the parent in this particular family is feeding and reinforcing the child’s apparent gender delusion and my worry is that the parent may be encouraging their child down a path that they may regret later. Not every boy-child who puts on their mums clothes or plays around with gender roles or gender imagery is going to turn out to be trans and it’s dangerous to automatically reach for the trans label in these situations. It’s an inconvenient truth, and one that too many Trans activists do not want to acknowledge, that sometimes life does go in ‘phases’. Some people do go through a transvestite stage or a Goth stage or a questioning their sexuality or gender stage, but that doesn’t mean that these immature thoughts and desires and self images should be the basis for irreversible medical treatment that will effect their whole lives.
I’ve met enough people who have regretted their gender reassignment, or who have not been cured of their underlying problems, to wonder whether there should be a more sober assessment of gender dysphoria than the one promoted by Transsexual activists. I’m not the only one questioning the Trans activists agenda, this article from the Wall Street Journal states that one of the hospitals who carried out the first gender reassignments in the United States, now refuses to do them on the grounds that the long term effects of surgery were psychologically not good.
Paul McHugh, former chief psychiatrist of Johns Hopkins University Hospital said in the Wall Street Journal article:
“Most of the surgically treated patients described themselves as “satisfied” by the results, but their subsequent psycho-social adjustments were no better than those who didn’t have the surgery. And so at Hopkins we stopped doing sex-reassignment surgery, since producing a “satisfied” but still troubled patient seemed an inadequate reason for surgically amputating normal organs.
It now appears that our long-ago decision was a wise one. A 2011 study at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden produced the most illuminating results yet regarding the transgendered, evidence that should give advocates pause. The long-term study—up to 30 years—followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population. This disturbing result has as yet no explanation but probably reflects the growing sense of isolation reported by the aging transgendered after surgery. The high suicide rate certainly challenges the surgery prescription.”
It’s interesting to say the least to see Johns Hopkins senior staff notice the same or similar things as I’ve seen in my circle or Trans friends and associates. I’d say that out of the 15 male to female transsexuals who I have known close enough to discuss such matters with I’d say that at least 7 of them have had some form of post surgery mental illness or have not had their existing pre-transition depression cured, or have found that transitioning is not what they expected it to be, and additional one person of that 15 actively regretted transitioning from male to female. These are not good figures. If you was in the business of fixing broken legs and 8 out of 15 patients who pass through your clinic had their broken leg either not fixed or made worse, you’d expect to have your clinic and your medical skills and your knowledge and agenda, questioned. Therefore why is the surgical / medical model of gender confusion being so relentlessly pushed when it is plain to see it is too often a downright failure.
We should not be pushing the activists view of gender dysphoria as in my view the jury is still out on whether surgical and medical treatments for perceived gender confusion is the right way to go. Society should most certainly not be using these questionable methods of dealing with gender confusion on minors. Such an action does seem more and more to me like a form of child abuse.
Here’s the article from Buzzfeed, with as usual this blog’s quotes in plain text and the original text in italics:
Erica Maison, a mother of five from Detroit, surprised her transgender daughter Corey with her first dose of hormones — something the 14-year-old had been waiting over two years to receive. She managed to capture the emotional moment on video:
Here’s the video: I can’t help thinking that the mother in this case is feeding the trans feelings in the child.
According to her mother, Corey is usually busy riding her penny skateboard, playing Call of Duty on her Xbox, and obsessing over makeup. “She has more than I ever had my entire life,” Erica told BuzzFeed News. But this particular day was different. This was the day Corey would be permitted to begin hormone therapy.
I question both whether this was a path that this family should be going down with this child and also whether it was appropriate to make this video so public? In the digital world, nothing is ever completely deleted and I predict that this video will resurface to haunt Corey in some way later in their life.
In the video, Erica instructs her daughter to reach behind a cushion and see what’s there for her. Corey knows something is up, but plays along and finds a mysterious bag.
“I could tell she really had no idea what was happening,” Erica said. “I was very anxious and couldn’t stop smiling.”
I find the ‘find the hormones’ game creepy and disgusting.
In the video you can see the moment Corey realizes what’s inside the box. “She squeezed me, and I stopped the camera so I could hug her back. Neither of us let go for what seemed like an eternity.”
I hope the parent enjoyed her hormone bonding moment, let’s hope that joy doesn’t turn to hatred later on if Corey realises that they made a big mistake by making a decision about gender reassignment when they were not mature enough to do so. What if looking back, Corey wishes that their mother had said ‘no’, or ‘wait until you are a proper adult before you make such a decision’.
The moments after the recording stopped were emotional for both Corey and her mother. “We were both crying and shaking. She literally took my breath away, as she has never given me a hug like that before. I have never felt so much love from her than that moment. It was a mixture of pure joy and relief from us both.”
Such a comment does make me consider whether the parent is pushing the medical/surgical transsexual option onto their child?
“This was it, this was the most pivotal turning point in her life, and we both knew it,” Erica said of the emotions captured in the video.
Erica told BuzzFeed News that Corey was always feminine, even from the time she was very young. “She loved to dress in high heels and dresses. In public she wore boy clothes — I just assumed she might be gay.”
It’s pretty plain to see from the video that the child does have a bit of an androgynous look about him, but that doesn’t automatically mean that the child is transsexual. In my experience a masculine looking man for example, is not necessarily going to be heterosexual and a girly looking boy doesn’t necessarily have to be gay or bisexual or Transsexual. Many male transvestites for example are probably more heterosexual than the average Rugby player. Physical appearance, and a possibly temporary obsession with teenage cross dressing is no proper reason for the sort of radical surgery and medical intervention that gender reassignment involves. There are plenty of post-16 teenagers who flirt with the idea of fluidity when it comes to matters of gender and sexuality, but that doesn’t mean they will spend their whole lives that way.
When Corey was in the fifth grade she was bullied so badly her mother made the decision to pull her out of public school and begin homeschooling. It wasn’t until Corey was 11 years old that the mother-daughter duo came across a video of transgender YouTuber Jazz Jennings and everything suddenly clicked. “She said, ‘Mom, I’m just like her, I AM a girl.’”
Once she was at home and free to be herself, Corey started gaining confidence and began dressing like a girl in public — which wasn’t always easy.
So it seems the parent is pushing the Trans idea on her child by watching transsexual teenagers on YouTube with them and feeding what could be their child’s temporary delusion. Seems that the mother in this case is more than a little supportive to the idea of her son changing their gender. The mother may even have helped to create the conditions that resulted in her son becoming bullied in the 5th grade (approx 10 years old) by pushing the big red ‘Trans’ button with the school.
“Her hair was still very short, and she still looked like a boy. People would give her dirty looks, and take pictures of her with their cell phone cameras,” Erica said. “They would laugh, and point, and stare. I told Corey, ‘Every time someone points their phone at you to take a picture, you turn and smile and strike a pose!’ That really boosted her self-esteem. I wanted to teach her to turn anything negative into something positive.”
It seems that by going along with the child’s possibly mistaken gender self-image the mother has made her son a figure of fun among the local community and by encouraging her son to ‘strike a pose’ and feel ‘positive’ about his alleged medical condition, she is colluding in possibly prolonging it. Maybe there is more going on here than we are being told, maybe the mother has self-esteem issues and enjoys the attention and the pats on the back from pro-Trans people on the internet. If that’s the case then the mother is putting her own emotional hunger way ahead of what is best for her child.
Erica began the search for a therapist who specialized in transgender children to help the family through the process of Corey’s transition. Eventually she was directed to the gender clinic at Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago, which was five hours away from their home. “At that appointment our lives were changed forever,” Erica said.
Changed for the better, or for the worse? Only time will tell whether Corey becomes a member of the minority group of sorted MTF transsexuals who are happy with life, or will end up as just another mental health casualty or suicide statistic.
Corey was given a puberty-suppressing implant just a few months later. “It’s usually a fight to get the insurance to cover it for gender dysphoria, and we were fully prepared to write letters, make phone calls, whatever it took to get it covered, as it costs $21,000 just for the implant — that didn’t include any of the doctor or hospital fees for placing it surgically,” her mother said of the process. The family was informed that the procedure would be fully covered by their insurance.
I can well imagine in the current climate of Obama’s United States and with the all encompassing political correctness that exists there that an insurance company may be so frightened of being sued by Trans activists for refusing this treatment that it is cheaper for the company to just cave in and allow the teenager the treatment.
The family’s therapist, along with the medical team in Chicago, determined that Corey was ready to start hormone therapy in August 2015, as she would be 14 years old. “All we had to do was wait for the therapist to send over the ‘readiness’ letter to Chicago. We waited, and waited, and waited,” Corey’s mother said of the process.
14 is in my opinion far, far too young to embark on such a life changing path.
On Sept. 24, Erica finally received a phone call from the pharmacy letting her know the oestrogen prescription was ready to be picked up. “It was so surreal. I was shaking and crying the entire trip to the pharmacy. I was trying to think of the best way to tell her that the day she had been waiting two and a half years for was finally here.”
Erica has received nothing but positive reactions since posting the video to YouTube and Facebook. “I knew I was taking a chance for negativity when I set it to public, but I did it anyway,” she said.
So you thought that there would be a negative reaction to what you are doing to your child but you still went ahead and did it anyway? That certainly sounds like bad parenting to me. A reasonable person would not permit their child to be tattooed at 14, even if the child demanded it, and any parent who did so, would quite rightly be seen as a bad parent. If tattooing your child is bad, how much worse is it to collude with your child’s delusion that they are of the wrong gender, and submit the child to medical and surgical treatments that are not easy to reverse, and are not even as efficacious as some Trans activists would like to think they are?
Corey’s mother believes that if the video can help even one child, any amount of negativity will be worth it.
“I think one of the biggest issues with our society today is that people just don’t understand what being transgender actually means. I want people to watch this video, and see the raw emotion of a transgender child that can finally live her life the way she feels inside. I want people to see this, because maybe it will open their eyes. Open their eyes to anyone who’s different. Maybe make them realize that people who are transgender are people just like them, but also people that are at much higher risk for violence and ridicule, over something they had no choice in. I promise you that no child wants to be made fun of, no child ever wants to be hurt, or picked on. No child would ever choose to be transgender, it is 100% how they are born.”
My question to Corey’s mother would be ‘but what of the effect of all this publicity and negativity on your child?’ Is that worth it?
“We all just want to be loved and accepted by others, and that is all I want for my daughter, to be loved and accepted for who she is inside.”
Of course we all want to be loved and accepted for who we are but there does have to be limits as to what is acceptable and what is not. In my view pumping your child full of inappropriate hormones doesn’t strike me as being either acceptable or sensible.
Johns Hopkins University Hospital and others have done the studies to show that far too many Trans people end up sad, mad or dead, and that is not any sort of recommendation for any sort of medical procedure.
To give hormones to such a young person, simply because they have a possibly temporary gender delusion, is just as much an act of child abuse as some of those actions that many of us would readily and reasonably recognise as such. If beating or sexually abusing a child is wrong, so also is giving them medical and surgical treatments that may not cure them but is likely to ultimately make them worse.
To conclude: If adults, of sound mind, after careful consideration of the risks, dangers and uncertainty that comes with gender reassignment, make a decision to take this path, then that is up to them, it’s their bodies it’s their minds, but this option should not be imposed on children, it really should not.
Links
Original Buzzfeed article
Wall Street Journal article on Trans issues
http://www.wsj.com/articles/paul-mchugh-transgender-surgery-isnt-the-solution-1402615120
Here’s an interesting blog by a Lefty mother of a possibly F to M transsexual teenager who questions the emphasis put on gender transition. Some useful research links on how teenage gender dysphoria is more related to matters of sexuality than matters of gender. It came from one of the comments on the Buzzfeed article.
Why is there no mention, in the entire article, about Corey’s Father? Grandparents?
It seems to me this could be a case of a man-hater, re-programming her son to meet her own specifications. Removing his maleness while he is still too young to object.
I find it, and her, revolting.
Apparently, via the btl comments, the father is around and supports this treatment. I’ve no problem with adults transitioning, that’s their choice, but to give this treatment to a person who has not worked their way through puberty, is wrong. Some people, for various environmental and genetic factors, don’t fully come out of the other side of puberty until their late teens/early 20’s and I don’t think that is right or ethical to give gender reassignment until puberty is fully completed and the individual has a much fuller idea about where their gender identity lies. I also think that gender reassignment may not be the best treatment for the majority of those with some form of gender confusion, despite what the loud, and often obnoxious trans activist community may believe. I’ve seen far too many people funnelled down the route of transition when some other therapy or coping mechanism may be more appropriate.
It’s all going to end in tears, that’s for sure.
There is an article in todays Daily Fail (2:10:15) about some character
who wants to be “the first person in Britain to be both mother AND father to the same baby”.
Even Huxley didn’t come up with that one!
Check out Zager and Evans 1969 recording, “In the year 2525”.(Youtube)
Seems the only thing they were wrong about was the date.
Going to hell in a handcart 🙂
Haven’t read the whole post but by the time I’d got to para 2/3 two thoughts had occurred:
1. it’s no accident that it’s a given that adolescents are notoriously difficult – their bodies are going through such hormonal turmoil , therefore maybe they should be just a tad circumspect before the bien pensant launch into realignment on behalf of those to whom they have a duty of care. Circumspect bien pensant is, of course, an oxymoron.
2. I’ve read more than once plastic surgeons (or at least those with integrity) counselling that the nose/boob/ whatever job will never solve problems of depression, self-esteem or other problems that are rooted in psychopathology so again the sensible parent would not consent to irreversible, radical surgery on behalf of their young, immature offspring.
Welcome to Fahrenheit211 Jay.
Re 1. This is the main reason why I believe that access to gender reassignment surgery and hormone treatments should be the preserve fo those over 21. A 14/15 year old is often all over the place because of the pubertal changes along with the new effects of naturally occurring hormones. Although all people are individuals and mature mentally and physically at different ages, I don’t believe that generally under 21’s are in a mental or physical state to give proper informed consent to gender reassignment treatment. As regards the parent, in this case well some will say ‘this mother is doing the best for her child to help them be who they truly are’, but there is another view and that isthat the mother has noticed that her child is maybe not as boyish as she may have expected him to be and ‘locked on ‘ to the Trans explanation either innpropriately or far too early. I also think she might be grandstanding and be enjoying the attention she is getting from pro-trans people.
I don’t know about you but I felt the mother may be feeding what may be a temporary delusion in their teenager to their long term detriment. I worry that LGB teens who do seem a bit camp for a boy or butch for a girl or show gender confusion, may be pushed by trans activists and others into a gender transition that may not be right for them. I’ve seen references to some studies that more than 60% of gender confused teens grow out of the delusion and become Lesbian Gay or Bisexual, showing that the apparent gender confusion was not in these cases linked to gender at all but instead to sexuality. It is wrong therefore to force such teens into gender reassignment when all they are is LGB.
2. There are surgeons and psychiatrists who will do this but they are under intense pressure from Trans activist groups to make it easier and cheaper to transition, and moans about how difficult it is to access transition services are common coming from trans activists. I know that my trans friends will disagree with me on this but I don’t think that a tiny number of loud and sometimes obnoxious and intolerant trans activists should be calling the shots here, I really don’t. I’ve seen too many trans people whose transition has not cured their internal mental or spiritual problems and I think there should be much more done and more time spent by psychs to find out if a persons pre treatment trans identification is down to genuine gender dysphoria or something else, something completely unrelated to matters of gender.
As an outside observer of the Trans community, but one who has met and worked with Trans people for many years, I support the right of adults to transition if they so wish, but to allow those whose growth is not yet complete to transition seems to me to be morally wrong.