I will express a few ideas that won't mesh well with popular opinion here.
IMO it is far better to err on the safe side in these matters. When it comes to male-to-female transgendered individuals the child quoted above is correct. As testosterone takes hold in the young adolescent male physical changes occur that will make it very hard to successfully transition later after the child reaches majority. i.e. Large hands, large feet, large and thickened facial anatomy, deep voice, wide shoulders...etc
If, however, synthetic estrogen is administered these changes will not occur. There are some changes that will result from the estrogen but they are not game killers. The voice will remain high in pitch, body frame, breasts and facial features will develop as a female. The important thing is these changes would not eliminate the possibility for reversal to a male body type if the child changes their mind later. Breasts can easily be removed, the voice will deepen and musculature size increase as an effect of testosterone. The individual will be smaller than would have been the normal case but small men have no problem passing as male.
However, when it comes to female-to-male it is inadvisable to administer testosterone before adulthood! The changes cause by testosterone would make it nearly impossible for the individual to change their mind and decide to live as female. They can safely wait till adulthood to start a F2M transition... they will however be a smaller male than would have been the case if testosterone had been administered early on. The chance to be a large male is not worth the risk of irreversibility IMO.
The ability of the adolescent to change their mind and revert to the sex they were born as is in my mind the most important thing in these cases!
It is possible for the young M2F transgendered child to have a normal looking female genital anatomy that is completely reversible. As far as I know this type of surgery has not been used... at least I have not come across any record of such a case in the medical literature.. I am adding on to this post a part of a post I made some time ago on a FreeRepublic thread as it pertains to the issue at at hand. My apologies for the rather detailed clinical subject matter that follows.
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There is a totally reversible form of the male to female operation.
The problem is that when they described the surgery no one seemed to want the reversible form...they did not want the testicles embedded inside of them along with major parts of the penis.
They wanted the parts GONE!
The embedded testicles do not produce testosterone at all because of the levels of estrogen in the system..usually a synthetic form of estrogen is used so the liver cannot do conversions of it to other steroids. This is why M2F people have lower T than even 12 year old girls do. The only T they have is a scant amount produced by the adrenal gland. Women get their T mainly from the ovaries and liver conversion. The embedded penis causes no problem and leaves no huge bulge..it is rendered incapable of erectile function. The sensitive part of the glans is exposed at the proper location to serve as a clitoris.
The reversible form uses a piece of intestine to form the vagina..this has the benefit that it self-lubricates the way a real vagina does and with the estrogen induced Ph change even the scent is very similar.
In the irreversible form of the surgery most of the penis is discarded... this is the stuff that simply cannot be replaced because erectile tissue like the penis or nipples is very unique. The scrotum becomes the labia, the outer skin of the penis becomes the vagina, the sensitive part of the glans is repositioned to become the clitoris.
Since males are capable of both types of orgasm, the male type and the female type, the surgery results in a fully orgasmic person. There is a drawback in that some M2F’s do not have the ability to have multiple orgasms since the male protective libido shutdown of areas of the brain that occurs upon ejaculatory orgasm still kicks in for them. This shutdown mechanism has evolved as a safety mechanism... otherwise males would keep chasing a sexual high until they collapsed. Every male is aware of this mechanism ;-)
Interestingly, there are women who have benefited from the surgical techniques developed for M2F surgery. In some women who are very sensitive to testosterone or who have been exposed to too much of it at some point, the clitoris enlarges into the form of a small penis. This is most distressing (don’t google for images..they are gruesome) The surgeons that fix this problem use the techniques engineered to strip off the sensitive part of the glans penis in transgender males for relocation as a functioning clitoris. They have learned how to perform this delicate surgery without damaging the nerves at all.
The reason this sort of thing can happen is because we all, male and female, carry the vestigial parts of opposite sex’s sexual anatomy. This is why under certain conditions some men have enlarged breasts and some women have an enlarged clitoris that resembles a small penis. Some women ejaculate at orgasm, this was always considered to be urine but more recent studies have found it to be a thin, somewhat sticky clear fluid closely resembling semen.
This is too much info for some and I will stop here... there is more but it’s only interesting to surgeons and perhaps endocrinologists.
It’s a shame the person referenced in the article did not have the reversible form of surgery done :-(
Oh, it is interesting that the only time that sexual deviants are free of their affliction is that short period of time that follows the shutdown of areas of the brain involved with libido that occurs after ejaculation.
Wait a minute - if they are SO convinced they were born in the wrong body, why would they want to be able to reverse the transition? I guess they are NOT so sure and are just trying on different bodies as one would change clothing styles! First World problems for people with too much time on their hands.