Posted on 03/05/2005 10:36:30 AM PST by Radix
A Methuen fourth-grader who was attending school as a girl before February break has come back to school as a boy.
The parents of the 9-year-old said their child was born with the body of a girl but the brain of a boy and has struggled with identity from an early age.
The unidentified parents are now asking school officials to instruct teachers and students to refer to the child as a boy and begin using a new name to address him. The student has been attending the elementary school since first grade.
The sudden change in the child's sexual identity has generated some concerned calls to the school, but administrators said they intend to comply with the parents' request, according to the Eagle-Tribune of Lawrence.
There are about 1,200 students in the elementary school, with nearly 150 in fourth grade. So far, school officials said, students are adjusting well to the change.
The mother of the child said the decision to change the child's identity came after lengthy consultations with medical professionals. She said the child's condition is the result of a birth defect that causes the body to develop as one gender, while the brain is hardwired for another.
The mother said the child began identifying as a boy at an early age and became so insistant that she and her husband sought medical help. The child has not undergone any medical procedure to change sexes.
I don't mean to be callous but this sounds like so much psycho-babble to me.
I wonder how exactly this change gets explained to the other kids, especially the boys who now have a girl using their bathrooms, locker rooms, and sharing their gym classes.
Are they planning to pump her body full of hormones so that she doesn't develop?
Better yet, what about writting it's name in the snow?
I'm a lesbian trapped in a male body.
Help me rhonda
Help, help me rhonda ...
I thought this was called being a tomboy and a fairly normal occurence?
I think you don't have a flipping clue.
Why do you assume that the kid in question is just a normal girl who likes a few stereotypically-male activities? Why would you assume that's all there is to a story like this?
Then what?
Oh, so now there are differences between male and female brains. The story changes every week.
Before you opine on other people assuming- and bring up your inevitable slam on established religion, perhaps you should stop assuming so much yourself.
I'm curious as to the home environment. This is just such an odd story, I can't help but imagine that there must be some very weird external influences in this child's environment (especially regarding the parents - I suspect there's quite the little freak show going on with these two).
Guess who's back! Round Two!!!
Its lazy parenting.
If 'he' makes it through highschool in disguise, 'she' won't get pregnant.
Furthermore: is it really a good idea to tell a nine-year-old that she should live the rest of her life in radical denial of her body? That her body is in a sense her enemy? (With the most extremely invasive sort of surgery presumably down the line.) Doesn't the way we relate to our bodies generally change a lot as we mature? Is it really clear that as she matures there would be no possibility of finding strategies for reconciling mind and brain? Maybe she's a girl with a unique point of view, rather than a boy "trapped" in an unsuitable body.
You just wish people would think. But I guess one of the attractions of the "each person's feelings define their reality" idea is that it removes the burden of hard thinking from so many areas of life.
...and what happens if s/he changes its mind and decides s/he is bisexual?
Then what?
Odd days she will use the ladies restroom and lockeroom and evens he will use the other ones.
"come back to school as a boy"
At first they thought he came back as a fruit.....but that's only recognized in MA and CA.
I've always been and still am a tomboy on steroids. But I've never tried to use the urinal just because I like math, chicken wings, and sports...
This is my fantasy.
Is the person an XX or XY? If they are an XY with female parts I can understand the problem but if they are XX with female parts then they would be no different than an adult that "feels" like another gender. In reality you can't change your sex--you can alter the outside but you are what you are.
good one, FIS
now I have heard of babies being born with both male and female reproductive organs and the doctors and parents make a choice, do you raise the baby as a girl or a boy
male and female fetuses are identical until the testosterone kicks in, if this process goes haywire, then you have the problems
the parents make a choice and sometimes it is the wrong choice
but that doesn't seem to be the case here, it would appear, unless we aren't getting all the facts, that this kid was born with all the proper female genitalia etc....
so yeah Fox got it right, if you accept this argument, male and female brains really are different, which the feminists have been skewering old Larry Summers about for months here, or is something else going on here......
maybe the kid isn't a boy but a butch lesbian, that does often manifest itself quite early, except most parents aren't that indulgent and frankly I would have thought the kid is too young to make that kinds of decision...but yes we called that tomboys, and some girls grew out of it, the hetero girls, and others never did, the dykes, and then yeah you have a handful of transgender wannabes
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