Parents of an 8-year-old transgendered child who insists on her gender identity despite her male physiology have decided that it’s in their child’s best interests to allow her to live as a girl.
The decision means removing the child from Catholic school, where the issue of the child--now free to live as "Katie," rather than "Ben"--being transgendered was regarded as "unfair" to ask others to accept.
The move also pre-empts potential acts of aggression from Katie, who, reported a May 16 story in the Omaha World-Herald spat at a classmate who called her a "boy."
In an example of Katie’s artwork, a picture shows Katie being called a boy by another child; the legend reads, "I feel angry when..."
The case seems to fit with classic instances of transgenderism, with Katie rejecting the very notion that she is anything other than a little girl, despite the evidence of her body’s male physiology.
For Katie’s parents, the issue has meant learning that there’s a huge difference between homosexuality (they at first thought Ben was gay) and transgenderism.
Now that Katie is headed to pubic school, the immediate problems are more or less solved. What to do as Katie gets older is another question, which her family will have to deal with in the fullness of time.
One possibility is to embrace a new, and controversial, therapy in which a transgendered child is given medications to delay the onset of adolescence, in order to make a surgical transition to a female physique less grueling.
The drug therapy also would buy time for a child to decide once and for all whether she really is a she, though in Katie’s case she’s been insistent and sure of herself since the age of two.
The article said that the best advice for Katie’s parents was to let her take the lead in determining who she is, and to go from there.
The parents have taken that advice to heart; said Katie’s mother, "This really isn’t our journey.
"We’re kind of observers on this path."
Observers who have had to take a hand in matters from time to time. Katie was allowed to be Katie while at home, but during the time she attended an Omaha Catholic school, she was required to be "Ben" during school hours.
When Katie finally convinced her parents to allow her to express her indentified gender full time, the parents ran into a wall when it came to allowing Katie to return to Catholic school in the fall.
The church sees gender as determined by the physical body, and not subject to change, the article noted, citing Rev. Joseph Tephorn, the chancellor for the Archdiocese of Omaha.
Taphorn also claimed that it was an issue of fairness--to Katie’s classmates and their parents.
"It’s not fair to other children or families to introduce this question and this issue that is obviously a very real and serious one," the article quoted Taphorn as saying.
That was heartbreaking to Katie’s mother, who went to Catholic school in Omaha herself, but Katie’s wellbeing came first: she’s headed to public school in the fall.
The family’s choices are not without critics. At conservative chat room FreeRepublic.com, where chat participants on any given day could be reliably expected to defend parental rights when it comes to keeping their kids out of sex ed classes, the issue of parents choosing to allow their biological son to live as the daughter she is convinced that she truly is under the skin was greeted with contempt and generalizations about the "loony left."
Wrote one chat participant, "This is what you can look forward too.
"First comes gay marriage then comes more and more.
"Won’t be able to say anything about it either or you will be labeled a bigot."
Evidently blaming individuals of certain political leanings for the child’s sense of herself, the posting went on, "Maybe they will counsel your child to consider whether they really are the sex they were born or not or maybe if they would like to be the opposite sex. Isn’t that such a wonderful thing?
"The left is such a horrible ugly beast. It is long over due for being slain," the posting concluded.
Wrote another, "Imagine they are letting a 8yr old decide what he wants and they think it is ok.
"I am totally disgusted and at a loss for words...”
Added another, "I’ll bet the parents are both nutcase liberals!"
Echoed another, "I feel for the kid.
"He She,he it will be confused all it’s life and vote democratic.."
Another offered a prescription for the issue. "One word for ya--home school."
Another predicted that violence would result. "Beat up or killed.
"That happened to a kid near here (So Cal) about 5 years ago. All the ’counseling’ and ’sensitivity training’ in the world did not make it work, nor did the PC ’thinking’ make it TRUE."
Another tossed off, "Messed up parents make messed up kids."
Another raised the specter of the restroom dilemma: "Parents of real girls at the school had better be up in arms if the school allows this kid to use the girl’s restroom."
Wrote another, "Children are taken form [sic] parents who will not allow a blood transfusion--why aren’t the authorities rescuing this sick kid?"
Another speculated that despite Katie’s long-standing convictions, she could simply be going through "a phase," writing, "In my opinion, a kid doesn’t have a firm idea of ’gender’ until they’ve reached puberty and their hormones start influencing them--until then, their idea of ’gender’ is almost entirely based around arbitrary social constructs like ’blue is for boys and pink is for girls’."
Added the contributor, "What does an 8-year-old girl have that an 8-year-old boy doesn’t, beyond Hannah Montana stuff and dolls instead of Spiderman stuff and trucks?
"Parents who encourage things like allowing a toddler to ’change their gender’ are only going to make their child terribly confused during at least their teenage and adult years."
While such opinions such as that last one may seem to be common-sense to many lay people, some mental health professionals disagree. The Omaha World-Tribune cited psychologist Diane Ehrensaft as saying that if a child "grows out" of being transgendered, then he or she wasn’t transgendered at all.
Transgendered individuals, by contrast, have a core identity as a member of the other gender, and a conviction that they are in the wrong sort of body, the article reported, citing psychotherapist MeganSmith, who has worked with Katie’s family. It’s not a conviction that comes and goes: it’s permanent and definite.
Said Smith, "If the child is truly transgender, it’s not going to go away."
The choice becomes one of accepting that the person’s sense of self belongs to the gender opposite that of his or her body, and working for there, or attempting to suppress and deny the transgendered person’s innate sense of who they are.
When the latter choice is made, and the individual’s "truth" about his or her gender smothered under gender conformity, the consequences can be drastic, including drug use, depression, and suicide, the article said.
For Katie, the details of her journey’s future may not as yet be settled, but she’s on a path to life as a person who has not been forced into a painful, even destructive, denial of her own deepest truths.
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