Stop transing gay kids
If a child could integrate their gender incongruence into a gay identity without needing serious medical interventions, surely that is a preferable outcome. Looking back, I cringe. Later, the script for how I was supposed to experience my sexuality also felt like a bad fit.
What I was, most of the time, was a misfit. Had I been given an autism diagnosis, I imagine the relief would have been the same — though practically speaking, the outcome would have been very different. At the time, it made sense.
When I was a kid, I struggled with understanding my place in the world. I did interact with some suspected gay men growing up, but again their sexuality was spoken about in hushed tones and shrouded in secrecy and ridicule. Children are incapable of understanding the profound life-changing consequences of puberty blockers, hormones or transgender surgery.
The societal waters I swam were very much discouraging of a gay identity. This tracks with my own experience. However, as psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett likes to say when she talks about emotions and body budgets: all metaphors are wrong, but some are useful.
The diagnosis made it official. As for the claim that young people are more likely to identify as a sexual minority following transition, what this could indicate is that youth are fleeing heteronormativity, regardless of sexual orientation.
The gender script especially caused me great stress growing up. In this interview, I talk with Lauren Leggieri about her action at the American Academy of Pediatrics convention and her activism. Most ‘Transgender’ Kids Turn Out to Be Gay Subjecting them to medical interventions is the modern-day version of ‘conversion therapy.’ By Roy Eappen Dec.
gay, pm ET. I knew no one growing up who was a lesbian — except for rumours about the conductor of a youth orchestra I was part of. Anxious by disposition, I also had to contend with an ever changing cultural environment as my family moved from one continent to another.
The opposition that transing feel towards how quickly young people are nudged in the stop of a trans identity is not that there is something inherently wrong with being trans, but that a trans identity comes with potentially serious medical ramifications for that individual.
In late September, Leggieri took direct action at the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) conference in Orlando, where Admiral Rachel Levine delivered the keynote speech. Most gender-nonconforming kids grow up to be gay.
How does that help children? Prior to kid trans, I had struggled for years to fit in to a heteronormative culture. One can say that a culture comes with inbuilt scripts for its members, norms of what to expect or do. Was I gay, was I straight?
A popular narrative online of late is that gender affirming care is a new kind of conversion therapy — one that is converting gay people into trans people.
quot Transing the gay
You. Toggle navigation FOLLOW US: IGFCultureWatch ‘Stop Transing Gay Kids’ by Stephen Henry Milleron October 3, And the band plays on: Comments are closed. They argue that because we have evidence that sexual orientation can shift over time for some, it is no more innate than gender identity is.
Stop transing gay kids. To me this argument does not particularly debunk the claim that gay youth are being transitioned, only that they are not the only youth being transitioned. Lauren is a lesbian in her. This is at least somewhat borne out by researchthough the research is not without controversy.
Leggieri interrupted the speech to confront Levine, saying, “Why did you pressure WPATH to remove age restrictions? I was so desperate to have an explanation for why I felt so awkward socially and in my own body. When I was finally diagnosed with gender identity disorder now called gender dysphoriathe relief I felt was deep.
No surprise, then, that I did not exactly gravitate toward a gay identity even as I was trying to make sense of my same-sex attractions. Up to then I had felt like a failed human.