Are you allowed to have medical intervention in gender development that early, outside of an intersex issue? I thought you needed years of therapy, etc. Or is that only for surgery and not medication?

From what I've read about it (I'm sure other people know more), the medication that they give to preteen and teenage kids doesn't make them develop as the sex they identify as, it just prevents puberty of any sort. So the kid goes through the teenage years with the prepubescent body, and doesn't have to go through all the "I'm growing the wrong things" trauma. Then, when they're older and considered old enough to make a permanent decision, they can either start taking the drugs and have the surgery (if they want) to develop as the sex they identify as, or they can decide to just stop taking the drugs, and go through all the physical parts of puberty as a young adult and develop all the adult characteristics of the sex they were born as. I think they still grow taller as teenagers, though, but I can't totally remember. It's a way to hold off the decision until the kid is an adult, without putting the kid's body through anything more than they need to.

They were saying this kid always wore the pants of the female uniform, unlike the rest of the girls in the school, had short hair, etc., so it's not like the visual change was extreme.

I think I'd let a kid of mine call themselves a male name and dress male (note how I only give birth to XX), but I don't think I'd be down with medical stuff before 16. Shit's too crazy, man.

My gut is like that, except then thinking about how much more surgery you'd need later?

My gut is like that, except then thinking about how much more surgery you'd need later?

Yeah, it's much easier as an adult to just get the medical intervention to develop the parts you want without also having to undo the puberty your body went through already.

I think I'd let a kid of mine call themselves a male name and dress male (note how I only give birth to XX), but I don't think I'd be down with medical stuff before 16. Shit's too crazy, man.

There's still a lot of weird development and last-minute growing that teens do, isn't there? I'm down with trans* stuff, but I wouldn't want to fuck with a kid's basic growth and whatnot, which I'd be worried that hormones might do.

I wouldn't want to fuck with a kid's basic growth and whatnot, which I'd be worried that hormones might do.

Yeah, that's what I'm leery of. It's an emotional minefield, and an inchoate mess of biology. It might be harder to go back and undo and then do, but it's not like the primary sexual characteristics haven't already developed, and those are the hard ones.

There was an SVU episode about this. Main story was a father was beaten up by his kid's guidance counselor because he wouldn't let her take the puberty-stopping drugs, because he insisted that with more therapy, they'd get her to want to be a boy again. Subplot where the girl in question was involved in a support group for transgender teens who decided to rob a pharmaceutical company and steal all the drugs they and other transgender people needed, because they said it was unfair that they had to pay to be the sex they were supposed to be, and they were trying to start a revolution, or some such teenage thing that sounds really grand but doesn't totally work.

My boss just stopped by and looked at my doodling again. I took the chance to explain it helped me think. He joked about giving me more work, but I hope I got the message across.

Still don't like the liquid pencil. Maybe the other one in the pack at home writes more smoothly.

That's a tough time to know anything about one's identity. I would hope, if it were my kid who I had known all his or her life, I'd be able to gauge how sure they were about their gender identity and weigh that against the medical questions, but who knows how I would actually react and decide.

I am appalled at the school's requiring dresses. That's just ridiculous.

I wonder if it's any easier to go F to M than the other way around. We all start as girls, don't we? And only at a certain point in utero the male chromosome kicks in?

I wonder if it's any easier to go F to M than the other way around.

Surgically it's hard to add peen. I think it's easier to construct a vagina that passes muster.