You've gotta hear this!
Oh wow there is the most incredible story on NPR right now about transgender children! They explore two cases of very young children, both biologically male, who strongly believe they are really females. Each set of parents have completely different responses to this: the first boy/girl's parents take him/her to a therapist who bans girl things and pretty much forces them to make the child "learn to be comfortable with being a boy" saying it's like a black child who wants to be white it's the product of dysfunction. The second boy/girl's parents let the child be the person she feels she is. They take her to buy her first dress and let her start kindergarten as a girl. They say they don't want to repeat the mistakes of years ago when homosexuality was viewed as a dysfunction and therapists encouraged patients to repress it.
It was such a powerful story I'm still crying as I'm typing this. If you haven't read the novel Middlesex yet, you should! My god it's good!
heard that story today too, and it also made me teary-eyed.
Posted by: Sarah J | Wednesday, May 07, 2008 at 08:31 PM
I just listened to it this morning, and WOW! Very, very touching.
Posted by: Lorena | Thursday, May 08, 2008 at 01:03 PM