Twelve Year Old Boy Who Turned Himself Into A Female, Changes His Mind, Two Years Later.

[anotheoldgit]

http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/12-year-old-boy-trans-female-change-mind-years-later-patrick-mitchell-australia-oestrogen-hormones-a7933741.html

[ToraToraTora]

you're having a turkish jenny!

[jno]

I'm surprised the doctors okayed action on this when the kid was still so young, if only because as Kromovaracun's stats show, people do change their minds. But it looks as if no great harm has been done; the kid seems intelligent and articulate about it.

Good to see Tambo's concern for the Australian economy.

[ludwig]

There should be an age restriction on it, probably the same as sexual consent. It doesn't make any sense to me that you can't have sex legally until you're 16, but you can decide that you want to be a different gender, and undergo treatment accordingly.

[jim360]

I think the reason for earlier intervention is that waiting until after puberty is sometimes "too late" for the body image to match the gender identity of the person, at least convincingly. But I do sympathise with the idea, not that children are too young to be taken seriously when they express these thoughts, but certainly that care needs to be taken before rushing into something that could, after all, be just a phase. Trying to find the balance is tricky.

In this case, perhaps allowing the boy to express his confusion, to take it seriously, and show him that he could be who he wanted, allowed him to see that he was already what he wanted to be without making changes, whereas not taking him seriously would have created resentment or even more pressure to change. Who knows?