Young transgendered people can have a tough time transitioning, for while things have gotten better for the trans community on some fronts, they still face major challenges. This essay's purpose is to outline the difficulties transgendered youth face today that can hinder their efforts in transitioning to their preferred state of being. While sometimes considered wrong or unnatural, there is a portion of the American teenage population that feel wrong in their bodies, and have trouble doing anything about these feelings due to fear from religion and stereotypes, it's loose definitions and labels, and from backlash from friends or family.
One of the biggest problems in transitioning is negative stereotypes, religious zealots, and general “homophobes”.
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It is used to describe everyone feeling like the opposite gender, genderfluid, genderqueer, and many others that feel like none of these and create a new term for how they identify. It becomes more confusing when you start to look at sexual orientation, as that can have a huge impact on this. this all makes it difficult for those attempting to discover how they fit in this world, when trying to sort out feeling that are not considered “normal”, so they are not taught or described regularly from birth, they have to figure out most things entirely on their own. “When it comes to gender, Alex Polanco is not easily pegged. Some days, he wakes up in the morning and feels male, pulling on jeans and a T-shirt and leaving it at that. Other times, he wears makeup and one of the wigs he keeps in tidily packed boxes in his bedroom closet…...who refers to himself as "tranny boy." The term is deliberately ambiguous, reflecting the gray area in which Polanco exists, where gender is blurred and he feels no obligation to choose female over male--or vice versa..."People assume that gender is cut and dried--and it's not," says Mara, who describes her "gender identity" as female and "biological gender" as male. "But what about a gay male who's effeminate--or for that matter, a straight male who's effeminate or straight woman who's butch?"” (Irvine, Martha.) While discovering what gender you identify as is difficult, being …show more content…
“Ryan, at San Francisco State, says it's a common struggle for families she's interviewed. "The ones who are having a hard time are seeing only the gender rules and norms and how their kids are violating that," Ryan says. "So they're re-acting out of shame, 'What will the neighbors think?'" (Irvine, Martha.) Friends and family are the ones that people interact with the most, so when those close to you disagree or despise what you are, it is a rough life. Families have trouble knowing what to do. “Since the age of 2, he has been a very different kind of boy. He enjoys wearing his mother's shoes and his sister's dresses. He likes to play with girls and hates playing with boys, who are too rough. Now 5, he has told you that he wants to be a girl. In fact, he insists that he is a girl. Your son isn't just feminine; he is unhappy being a boy. He has gender dysphoria. You love him and you want him to be happy. But you're worried. Some older kids have started to tease him, and some parents have expressed disapproval. It seems you have two choices. You could insist that he is a boy and try to put an end to behaviors such as cross-dressing and insisting that he is a girl. The alternative is to let him be a girl: grow long hair,
First, what exactly is the process of transitioning for a minor? One of the more recent medical developments is the use of puberty blockers to treat children who are transgender. The medications, suppress the body’s production of estrogen or
In regards to the development of gender identity, it is a more complex issue to deal with, as one has to be concerned about all aspects of the person life, starting from even before they have been born (Swaab, 2004), to a point in their life where they are settled and satisfied with their identity. The American Psychological Association states that while development is very fluid among young children, it is usually believed to form between ages 3 and 6, however many transgender, individuals are not able to embrace their true gender identity until much later in life, largely due to societal stigma associated with these identities.
For instance, sociologists would argue that characteristics of the male gender in a given society include independence, and dominance whereas females express more passive behavior. Gender identity, on the other hand is an individual’s sense of their gender or in other words, their sense as to whether they are feminine or masculine. Therefore, transgender is a term related to “people whose gender identity is different from the gender commonly socially assigned to them on the basis of their biological sex” (Morrow & Messinger, 2006, p. 7).“Biological theories assume that gender should be consistent with biological sex and there are only two genders and two sexes” which does not correspond to transgender people. Furthermore, transgender is also used as a general term to include people such as transsexuals and cross-dressers
The knowledge of the dress code makes transgender people to wear boy or girl clothes. Parents in some cases may allow a certain behavior from their kids as a prize for achievement of high grades. The use of the knowledge may come with many rewards. In the article Why transgender teen Jazz Jennings is everywhere
Gender Dysphoria was previously referred to as Gender Identity Disorder or transsexuals and is characterized by “a marked incongruence between one’s experienced or expressed gender and one’s assigned gender as a male or female” (Sue, Sue, Sue and Sue, 2014, p. 363). Using an article written for the Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Nursing (2012), “Gender Dysphoria in Children: Let’s Think This Through” written by Hein and Kathrene Berger, and our text, “Invitation to the Lifespan (2014)” by Kathleen Stassen Berger, we will expand upon the effects of what was proposed in the article and it would affect a child. Although highly controversial, Hein and Berger argue against diagnosing a child with GD providing several key points, while
I always sensed that I was not a “girl’ and would partake activities such as sports and distancing myself from drama that is considered “girly”. I also have a niche for masculine things such as clothing and play video games, which are marketed profusely towards boys and men. At the same time, I did not feel like a “boy”. I was, during my early childhood, elementary, and pre-teen years labeling my as an “outsider” due to the perception of myself not fitting in. I went on to take on my persona as this “tomboy” while still having a distinctive identity that was not matching with the beliefs of how transgender people were in the
Children reach the first stage, gender identity, in which they are supposed to label their own gender, by the age of approximately two years. Also, children tend to be able to label others, such as their parents as male or female. Nevertheless, their gender believes are still based on physical characteristics.
Allowing a child to identify with who they feel they are (meaning transgender) is fine as long as the child is taught about the pain they may experience in a loving way of course. I have seen several 20/20 specials on transgender children and my heart aches for them. I did not like the fact that an early age the parents were taking the children for hormone shots. I think the children our too young to make a life changing decisions and the parents should just love/support them until they are truly old enough to understand the impact on their life. My thoughts were what if the child changes his/her mind. What if the female child grows out of being a tomboy and wants to be a frilly girl. What if the boy is actually bisexual and wants to stay a boy? There were follow-up specials when the child became a teenager as well as specials on transgender adults. I believe the older the child gets the more it is about the child’s sexuality and this is why the parents should wait before starting the sex change
Puberty is a difficult time for any child, but for transgender teens, it can be the difference between becoming who they want to be or remaining in the wrong body. In June of this year, PBS Frontline released a documentary, entitled Growing Up Trans, which chronicled the lives of eight transgender and nonbinary children, from the ages of 9 to 19, as they navigated through the process of transitioning to their prefered genders. Some of the kids took hormone blockers to slow down their puberty, others were going through puberty at the time and wanted to transition before it was complete, and one had already gone through puberty and was still taking hormones to transition. The controversy revolving around the documentary focused on whether or
"A lot of people see gender as very one-sided, girl or boy, but in reality, even the choices of one, the other, both, or neither just don't feel right.” Many people don’t realize that there are more gender identities than just “male” and “female.” In June 2016, The Williams Institute at UCLA estimated that about 1.4 million US adult’s genders don't align with the one they were assigned at birth. One can identify as the opposite gender from their assigned sex, as no gender, as both, or as a unique identity not so easily categorized.
Living life as a transgendered person is not easy. There are very few times when someone comes out as transgender and their lives are still relatively easy to manage. There are a copious...
In conclusion, transgender children is not a problem that can be diagnosed or even cured with holistic medicine or even going to “straight camp.” In children they are only expressing what they feel about themselves to be true and just want that dream to become a reality. They hope for there parents to understand and to treat them as the sex they so desperately want to be.
Gender is seen as a spectrum, and one can fall anywhere on this spectrum. Again, according to Sam Killerman, being transgendered means living "as a member of a gender other than that expected based on sex assigned at birth." Just because a person is born with male genitalia does not mean they have to be male.
Clinically speaking, a person who was assigned female at birth but identifies and lives as a man is referred to as a transsexual man, or transman, or female-to-male (FTM); a male-to-female (MTF) person is a transsexual woman or transwoman (Glicksman). Some people drop the transgender label after they have transitioned to their new gender. However, they want to be referred to only as a man or a woman. But what if our gender identity, our sense of being a boy or being a girl, does not match our physical body? From a very early age we will start to feel increasingly uncomfortable. For some this is a mild discomfort, for others it is so traumatic they would rather die than continue to live in the wrong body. Unfortunately as transsexual people are a small minority of the population the condition has been labeled by Psychiatrists as "Gender Identity Disorder". With the transgendered, the disordered assumption is that the
Gender identity has been a delicate issue when it comes to determining if a person's gender is set at birth or develops and changes as a person ages. A person’s gender is not as simple as being classified as either male or female. There’s a considerable amount of external factors that can influence someone’s identity. Although society has a major role in gender identity, sex assignment at birth is not final; furthermore, a person's gender can be influenced by psychological, physiological differences and undergoing changes to the human body. A common misconception many people believe is that gender and gender are the same or go hand in hand with one another.