Over the weekend came the sad news that a young boy, living on Southeast Queensland, is dressing as a girl and heading off to school.
It has become news because the boy’s mother is upset that he can’t use the girls’ bathroom.
This story is sad for so many reasons.
Firstly, this little boy himself, is troubled. His mother admits to his problems at school and difficulties with Asperger’s Syndrome.
Unfortunately, going to school in dresses and calling yourself a girl is not a real treatment for anything. It is an imaginary treatment. An attempt to escape from reality.
This little boy’s father lives apart from his child, too. However you think about this situation, this is also very sad. It is always a tragedy when children and parents are separated. For all involved.
The mother also confesses to sadness. She says she has lost her son. No doubt, she loves her child and wants what is best for him. But supporting this ‘treatment’ is not going to help the situation.
Then there are the teachers. How can you teach a child the reality of the world when his own family denies it? It is bizarre that the teachers have been put in a situation where they are expected to treat a young boy as if he was a girl. It is also an impossible thing to achieve.
For a boy is not a girl. He never can be one, and no amount of manipulation of the truth will ever make him one.
And a boy should not use the girls’ bathroom. This is where it is sad for the other parents and children involved.
What parent would be happy to allow their daughters to share school bathrooms with a troubled boy? And every parent of a child in Grade 4 knows that soon afterwards they will be in Grade 5 and quickly approaching puberty.
If it is not a recipe for disaster, it is a mixture that will bring discomfort, confusion, trouble and further misery.
No doubt, the taxpayer will take a hit as well. Just like they already are with the Australian Defence Force’s crazy policy to fund ‘sex-change’ operations. Now this school will probably be required to build or establish a new toilet facility for one perfectly functional little boy.
While the media loves spinning stories about troubled men who wind up as well adjusted women, the actual truth is much different.
Walt Heyer should know. He was born a man, underwent a sex-change operation and supposedly lived as a woman. But he eventually accepted the fact that his surgery didn’t change his masculinity and that the only things that changed were the words on his documentation and medical records.
He realised the whole thing was a fraud. It was only after this that he was able to find happiness.
Walt was also lucky. As he writes, over 30 per cent of people like him commit suicide. The number of those who have attempted to do so reaches closer to 50 per cent.
This is an untold tragedy.
Walt also writes that it is the media who are largely responsible for perpetuating this tragedy because they refuse to publish the reality that many, many people who undergo a ‘sex-change’ operation end up abandoning the fraud. There is an extensive list of sad examples on his website.
Those who don’t often end up taking their lives.
Obviously, if someone has trouble accepting their gender, they need help. Providing them with a lie and a fraud is not going to substitute for reality and will only prolong or increase their suffering.
Unfortunately for this little boy, it seems like he is headed down this destructive path.
July 18, 2013
Bernie, you’re absolutely wrong. If you want to be a man because you entered this world as, well, a male, then that’s your choice. But if a little boy wants to be a girl or a plane or something else, who are you to stop him/her/it?
July 18, 2013
Chad – you are wrong.
If a little boy wants to be a girl or a plane or something else it is not me that stops them. It is reality.
Just the same as if a boy wants to be a girl or a plane or something else, my affirmation of their delusion would not in one way, shape or form transform them into something different.
A little boy cannot be a plane. For you to even suggest it shows how illogical you are.
July 18, 2013
In this situation Chad, it’s not being said that there’s a boy who wants to be a girl. They are saying there’s a girl who unfortunately has a male phenotype and sex organs. Different argument.
But let’s get back to your argument. How do you prove that a boy who hasn’t reached the age of reason wants be a girl forever? How do you know it’s not a passing phase?
Oh yeah…..”studies show….etc”… That’s the standard answer. My answer to that is that there’s a study to suit every argument in this world.
My answer to the first argument is that girls don’t have male phenotypes and sex organs.
July 17, 2013
It’s a sad thing how a lot of people here are happy to decide for this child that he is a female. If the boy is treated as a girl all it will achieve is reinforce a gender identity crisis which may well resolve with time.
It’s said that gender is a continuum, or that identity is determined by the mind, and that sex is not merely physical. All those things are partly true but there is one over-riding factor and is that the body is supposed to compatible with gender identity.
There will be no argument about there here, because most agree with the concept of changing sex. For an individual in some cases it may be the best treatment. Genetic males, with Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome are often raised as girls, may even be baptised into the Catholic Church as girls, marry as girls and adopt children. That however, is a distinctly different condition to transsexualism and we know for a fact that with those women the lack of an androgenic effect on the brain during development generally leads to a normal female identity.
Normal physical males present a different situation altogether. Changing their physical development to female, if their problem is actually a paraphilia, which it often is may be disastrous.
The better approach with this child would be to continue normal socialisation as a boy until puberty then reassess the situation. Moreover, socialising them as female if they will never be fully female, could also be disastrous. Suppose they have a sex change – should they be obliged to tell potential suitors their background? Should birth certificates be amended so they are complicit in lying about the circumstances of the child’s birth?
Should other lives be potentially destroyed or harmed by society’s sympathy for the plight of allegedly transsexual children?
It’s not as easy or as clear-cut as many of you appear to believe it is. Society calls these people by the blanket term of transsexual but the etiology of the condition might be different in every single case. That is why the standards of care adhered to by treating specialists is not really an acceptable standard at all. It is a one case fits all solution for a condition with a probable multitude of etiolgies and potential treatments.
June 18, 2013
Bernard Gaynor: World expert on paediatric gender identity.
May 17, 2013
Hi Bruce,
Reimers case proves my point. His case is completely different to the circumstances of this little girl. He had no say as to his gender reassignment, this little girl is making deliberate and conscious choices as to the clothing she wants to wear and how she views her own identity. She has had no surgery and there is no mention as to her receiving any hormone treatment at this early stage. I need to clarify something. Your sex is the biological fact of being male or female. Your gender is the social construction of your sexual identity (see Reimer). The two are tied together but distinct. There are strong social, political, cultural and economic pressures in shaping sexuality and gender identity. It’s a complex path of self identification in the context of a broader cultured shape by mass media, peers, family etc for a young person to negotiate. Reimer was an anomaly not the norm for those who have had gender reassignment surgery and what happened to him was terribly sad and it does not the negate this child’s need to decide for herself who she is.
May 19, 2013
“Reimer was an anomaly not the norm for those who have had gender reassignment surgery and what happened to him was terribly sad and it does not the negate this child’s need to decide for herself who she is.” ———————– Do you have any evidence to support your claim? “There are strong social, political, cultural and economic pressures in shaping sexuality and gender identity.” ———————- Do they override the biological factors that determine what men and women like, who they like, how they act, and so on… ?
July 17, 2013
David Reimer had time to develop a gender identity post birth. John Money, a homosexual, experimented unforgivably with him.
On the other hand, Dr Milton Diamond, who disputed Money’s theories and revealed David Reimer’s situation to the world, seems to have moved too far in the opposite direction.
We must act in the interests of all society. While transgenderism can be a tragic condition, going too far to accommodate people’s gender dysphoria may create real life problems for others. We human beings are not God, and if you don’t believe in God then we are not nature. We are subject to either/or and for everything we do that sets out to contravene what it has ordained there is a consequence, and most of the time it turns out to be unpleasant.
We must learn to be cautious and not so impatient to solve vexing problems whose unsatisfactory solution might end up making a bad situation worse.
May 15, 2013
Not taking into account your blunt way of writing this entry, I surprisingly agree, in part, with your assessment. The mother is clearly a whiner, and I have to really wonder if the boy is truly experiencing gender dysphoria. While he has the genitals of a boy, he can’t be treated as a girl, no matter what he wears. Once he has gender reassignment surgery, he should be treated as a girl for his own protection, but then he is still genetically a boy.
Parents shouldn’t be pandering to the wishes of their children who want gender reassignment. But hey, there’s nothing wrong with a little cross dressing, it’s all part of growing up.
Besides, there are worse things than gender reassignment, on paper and through surgery, and cross dressing, just do a web search for the Equine Dreams Foundation to see what I mean.
May 14, 2013
Gay rights activists are to blame.
May 14, 2013
She never used the girls toilet…she was forced to use the disabled toilets which made her feel worse.
The school then changed the name to unisex and anybody can use it.
The school also didn’t have to build a new toilet like I said above they changed the name of the disabled toilet to unisex….did you read the whole story or just read what you wanted and then summarised it to scare people.
You also forgot to mention what the father said that there has been a huge change in his daughter self-esteem and happiness since she has been allowed to be a girl.
I think the mother is doing a great job in being a parent because she is fighting for a child.
May 15, 2013
Mark,
Firstly, he is not a she. He is not a girl, even if he does wear a dress. And because he is not a girl this boy should not be in the girls’ toilets.
Secondly, I never said the school built a new toilet. I said they would probably be required to establish some kind of new facility. This is because the mother is taking this issue to the Anti-Discrimination Commission. While I hope that common sense prevails, I doubt it will. That is the basis of my assessment that new facilities will probably be required. And we will all pay for this through our taxes.
Thirdly, in this interesting world of anti-discrimination, isn’t it a negative and discriminatory judgment that has been cast on disabled people by this mother. She is unhappy that her boy isn’t allowed into the girls’ bathroom and instead has to use disabled toilets, as if they are somehow beneath the dignity of her son.
Fourthly, the father, who is acknowledged as separated from his child and who has the deceitful capacity to call his son a girl, has also said that ‘she’ is doing better. This capacity for deceit calls into question his judgment.
If his son is better behaved this year it could be from a range of factors. One, I suggest, is that teachers who might have been prepared to discipline him last year are not doing so this year because of a concern they would be called discriminatory and a bully. So they don’t discipline at all. As a result, he is seemingly doing better, but only because he is being pampered.
If he is doing better as a direct result of wearing dresses then this apparent success is due to a lie and a fraud and will eventually result in worse outcomes for the child.
We are all taught to be honest. At the centre of this issue is a big lie being perpetuated that this boy is a girl. He is not. To state otherwise is to participate in a lie.
May 15, 2013
I object as a taxpayer to paying for the indoctrination and abuse of innocent children in to the Catholic School system. It’s seems we’ve reached an impasse. Stop whining.
May 16, 2013
You can object but your point is not logical or fair.
Basically, you want Catholics to pay tax for your kid’s education and then pay the entire cost of their own child’s education as well – unless you are prepared to allow Catholics to claim tax deductions on education fees because they don’t burden the state system.
However, the only way I read this is that you think Catholic taxpayers are not entitled to state assistance because they are Catholic.
It would be worthwhile for you to remember that per child, Catholic schools cost less than state schools and they also receive less funding. Basically, they are more efficient. Plus they deliver a better result.
So instead of your whining about a problem that doesn’t exist, I think it would be better for you to thank all those Catholic taxpayers out there. Because they are prepared to pay out of their hip pocket for school fees while subsidising those who want to use the state system, taxes do not need to be so high.
How about you show some thanks and respect.
May 16, 2013
Sorry Bernard, the only person here whining is you. The previous poster said they that objected to their taxes being spent on Catholic Schools. This is a fact. You were speculatively whining about money that has not yet been spent on a child who has gender identity issues. Perhaps if your catholic education had given you correct information regarding the difference between your biological sex and your gender, which is nothing more than a social construct, you wouldn’t keep making these glaring and foolish mistakes. I would argue that the Catholic School system should have more money spent on it if your simplistic and facile approach to complex social issues is the result. You’ll get respect when you earn it. Being a bigoted buffoon doesn’t cut it. Sorry.
May 16, 2013
” correct information regarding the difference between your biological sex and your gender, which is nothing more than a social construct” ———————– Ever heard of David Reimer? He was given a sex change when he was a baby because his penis was lost in a botched circumcision. A full orchidectomy was performed to prevent him from being a male. His parents raised him as a girl. The poor boy was told all his life that he was a girl, but he knew he really wasn’t. He ended up committing suicide. Gender obviously wasn’t a social construct in the eyes of David Reimer.
July 17, 2013
Mr. Gaynor,
Your use of the male pronoun is disrespectful to the young girl, and disregards the general acceptance of the concept that gender is in fact related to how one identifies mentally and emotionally. Genitals determine one’s sex- not one’s gender. I won’t go into discussion about the spectrum of genders that exist, or the complexities of gender as a social construct, but the point is that in modern and more enlightened times, we should be at least somewhat educated on the diversity of the people around us. Male, female, or any variety of gender deviance- they are all based on personal identification. Who are you to decide how someone identifies? Who are you to determine how a young person should live their life, when you are not even aware of the difference between sex and gender?
In identifying as female, this child has every right to live HER life as a girl. The lives of trans* people are already severely affected by discrimination from people of low maturity and intelligence, so I’d expect someone in a position of power and influence such as yourself to be more receptive to demographics that need help. It is far more of an issue that transgender people around the world suffer through discrimination and severe depression (with a high suicide rate might I add, so perhaps the taxpayer money you are so worried about could be saved in the area of mental health if people were to be compassionate and accepting) than that in years to come, girls will be using the same bathroom as someone who is slightly different.
Please show some compassion for those people who have not had the same privilege as you, to be born into a body which matches the way you feel. And please show some respect for a brave young girl who has to face a world of abuse from people who do not understand, and who just wants the chance to live her life in a way she can be happy. Her parents should be proud of her and of themselves.
Caitlin
July 17, 2013
Obviously you are transgendered, Caitlin. You have a bias concerning this issue and you should admit it.
Sex is not a construction. And if it comes to that nor is gender. That’s just your leftist/feminist ideology slipping out onto display.
You have a body, you have a sex and they are supposed to be congruent. There is no social construction there.
The problem is that this is not a perfect world and sometimes developmental mistakes occur. If it was a perfect world there would be males, females, no true or pseudo-hermaphrodites, no transsexuals, no transvestites and no homosexuals.
August 23, 2013
Anthony, I am not actually transgender, I just have some knowledge of the difference between sex and gender. Genitals and chromosomes to not always conform to a binary, so how can we expect the social construct of gender to do so?
May 15, 2013
People need to learn from the David Reimer case.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Reimer