I’ve
debated with myself if I should post this, but it’s quite therapeutic to put
your thoughts in writing, it helps sort out how you feel about things. Thing is
I sat and watched a documentary about a young woman who was a transgender
person, She was (in her words) always a girl but born into the wrong sort of
body.
I don’t
want to be flippant about this, but there are so many documentaries on TV and
stories in magazines and newspapers about it that it’s almost boring, it’s a
case of yeah, yeah we’ve heard it all before. Well…………..I hadn’t heard this
particular story before and it made me think about the whole thing differently.
This
particular young lady made her feelings known at a very young age. When she was
only 5 she told her mother that God had made a mistake and she had the wrong
body; by the time she was 9 she living as a girl. She went to school dressed as
a girl and was accepted into a circle of friends who were all little girls.
Primary school children accepted her as a girl and she was a fairly happy at
that time. Secondary school was a whole new ball game; she was bullied, spat
at, called a freak and much, much worse. By the time she was 12 she was
actively suicidal. She attempted suicide several times, partly in response to
the relentless bullying and partly due to the terror she felt at the approach
of puberty which would change her
physically into a man. She knew once
these changes happened, once her voice broke and her adams
apple developed, once she grew facial hair and grew tall, she would not be
accepted any where as a girl. The thought of this drove her to several suicide
attempts. Her mother was more supportive than any other mother in a similar
situation that I’ve ever heard of. The mother researched on the internet until
she found the name of a doctor in America. (forgot to mention this is
a girl from the UK).
This Doctor was willing to prescribe what they describe as ‘blockers’ which are
drugs that effectively stop puberty from happening. Apparently this treatment
is not available in the UK.
In the UK
the accepted method of treatment for transgender people is to make them go
through puberty and grow in to their anatomical gender before starting any
treatment; and it was the prospect of this, along with the bullying, that led
to the suicide attempts.
So fast
forward….., the mother takes out huge loans against her house and takes the
daughter to America several times over the following few years. The girl is
prescribed blockers to stop puberty and then she is prescribed female hormones.
The result of this early intervention treatment is that this girl has never had
to live with manly characteristics. Her voice didn’t break, she didn’t grow to
be 6 ft 4 ( her predicted male height), she didn’t grow facial hair and she did
develop breasts quite naturally during her teenage years. At that time it was
still possible to get gender reassignment surgery in Thailand at the age of 16,(it has
subsequently been raised to 18 in line with most western countries). Her mother
took out more loans against her house, took the girl to Thailand and allowed her to have
full gender reassignment surgery on her 16th birthday. She is on
record as being the worlds youngest person to have full gender reassignment
surgery.
Fast
forward again; the documentary was filmed during her 19th year. What
we saw was a beautiful young woman who
was apparently head hunted by model agencies. She was an articulate and confident
young woman, you could see the surprise on the faces of people as she told them
for the first time about her history. She was a young woman comfortable in her
own skin. She entered the regional heats of the Miss England contest and was
completely accepted by the other contestants. They even voted for her as the
best liked contestant. Not that I’m a great lover of beauty contests but I
guess that’s personal choice.
So ….
What’s the moral of the story??..................it just made me think that
it’s very cruel to make people like this go through puberty when the whole
thing can be avoided. This girl was lucky; she has a mother who fought for her
every step of the way. Watching this
made me realise how cruel we are as a society to deny these people the
treatment they need when they need it. It’s cruel because the torment of
developing the adult body of the wrong gender is enough to drive any one to
suicide and also because once these changes happen, they can never be
completely reversed. Transgender women have surgical feminisation of the face,
they have their adams apple shaved, they need years of vocal coaching to
imitate a female voice, they have painful electrolysis hair removal, all of
this, and much more, could easily be avoided if they were allowed treatment to
prevent puberty in the first place. Plus, when they do get the gender
reassignment surgery they need, it’s a much bigger operation that it would have
been if puberty had not happened.
So……………that’s
my thoughts on the subject.
Your post reminds me of a novel by Josephine Wesley,a British author, called 'I Want to be Doris Day'. It's one of those sad stories with a happy ending - the kind we all like. The lttle boy in the book is exactly like this person, saying his mother gave him the wrong name and he's a girl. He doesn't actually say any of this to his mother, but to his best friend Alice who promises not to tell his secret. After all he's bullied because he likes playing with girls.
ReplyDeleteI hope the girl in the documentary realizes just lucky she is with her mother or Mother with a capital 'm' because she has made so many sacrifices for her child's happiness.
I think she does, the documentary included interviews with the mother and grandmother, and they all seem to be a very close family. One of the things she ( Jackie) says is that the only transgender people she knew of when she was younger were all older and going through transition at a much later age, sometimes after getting married and having children. She said she felt so sorry for these people because they ( male to female) had very masculine bodies and trying to become feminised was so difficult. She understands how important it is to the whole process to stop puberty and to stop the changes before they happen. This is why she wants to be some sort of role model and reach out to younger trans people. It educated me, after seeing her I realise that these people don't have to become masculinised if they get the right treatment.
Deletethis was a good post Loretta, and I believe how you do now -thank goodness for awesome mothers
ReplyDeleteoh yes...........Mothers have a lot ot answer for, and this girl was very very lucky. It shouldn't be that way, I would like to think all mothers would fight for their child the way this one did but sadly they don't. Lots of people are more concerned with what their friends will think than the well being of their child.
DeleteMy first reaction when I read what you wrote is this is exclusively a 21st century conversation, no previous generations have had access to such technologies so for any previous transexual person puberty wasn't optional extra. Personally I am uncomfortable to put it mildly, with the concept of puberty blockers for whatever reason they are used. It is to me an offshoot of eugenics and gender is not only now a lifestyle choice, it is apparently becoming a biological right.
ReplyDeleteSelf harm by unhappy young people is unfortunately a very common practice in the UK. Most of the precusors to self harm are not however addressable by recourse to surgery.
The thing that I think concerns me most is that this young person is a construct, a fishnet Frankinstein, a commodity or perhaps more accurately she reminds me of a Sumo wrestler 'groomed' and shaped to entertain and amaze the crowd.
Somehow, I don't think her mother really did her any favours myself, interfering in nature for vanity and celebrity is a dubious activity in my book....besides which biological females vary enormously, but she is a stereotypical 'model' a prefabricated 'sex object' of the sort feminists have railed against for the last 50 years at the very least, except this one has been created to be as fascinating to girls as she is to boys, although upon reflection that probably isn't particularly unique.
My view of gender reassignment is not unlike my view of IVF I don't have a problem with anyone who can afford it ....they should I think be able to obtain it, but I don't see those sorts of procedures as a public health issues or anything to do with me.
I hope this woman has a good life, its too early to say whether all the attention will have a positive or a negative effect on her, but I wish her well.
An interesting topic here Loretta thanks for stimulating discussion of an important social and moral issue.
Thanks for your thoughts on this Aaron. You’re right it is a specifically 21 centaury problem, it’s a whole conversation and way of thinking that wouldn’t have been possible 50 years ago. Personally I don’t look at this and see eugenics, although I do share your concern about the modern use of eugenics, but this particular case feels more like a birth defect being corrected. And I don’t think I share your view of gender as a lifestyle choice either because; I’ve never heard of any one claiming to be gender neutral who considered they had a choice. People tend to know what gender they are and those whose anatomies don’t match their gender look for ways of matching to two.
DeleteBut I do agree about the stereotypical type of female she has become, that’s not because she is transgender, I feel the same way about all young women who strive to follow the mass media version of what young women should look like. I did say I don’t particularly like beauty contests, but it’s a matter of personal choice and after all there are many things young women could be doing that are a hell of a lot worse than grooming them selves for a pageant circuit. I used to think exactly the same as you do about what the (finite) NHS resources should be spent on and now I guess my opinions have mellowed a little. Things like gender reassignment, IVF, or even having tattoos removed may not be medically essential for the physical well being of a person; But if their condition is the underlying cause or even a contributory factor in long term mental health issues, (which they almost always are) these mental health issues ARE conditions that require medical intervention, which means treating the underlying cause.
Like you say………….we have a lot of social and moral issues to think which that prior to modern technologies were never an issue.