Posted on 07/04/2015 9:22:59 AM PDT by Drango
It's controlled after-school anarchy at the Christian-Carter household. Seven-year-old Chloe has rolled herself up in an exercise mat in the living room of the family's lovely Oakland, Calif., home.
"Look I'm a burrito," Chloe shouts.
Her 4-year-old sister, Jackie, swoops in for a bite — and a hard push.
"Ow!" Chloe shouts. "Mom! Jackie pushed me!"
Just two sisters playing, occasionally sparring, as dad, James Christian, and mom, Mary Carter, watch nearby.
Jackie's birthday is in mid-October, but for Carter and Christian, a second date is seared in memory almost as intensely — what Carter calls "The Day."
Five Makeshift Ponytales
"It was May 15, 2014, and I remember the date because Jackie was out of school that day," she says. "We drove to drop her older sister off at kindergarten. And normally Jackie is quite happy and content to hang out with me and play."
Jackie was 3 then, and she was called Jack. Glancing into the backseat of her car, Mary noticed something different. Sisters Jackie Carter Christian (left) and Chloe Marie Christian at the beach. i
Sisters Jackie Carter Christian (left) and Chloe Marie Christian at the beach. Courtesy of the Christian family
"Jackie just looked really, really sad; sadder than a 3-and-a-half-year-old should look," Carter says. "This weight that looked like it weighed more than she did, something she had to say and I didn't know what that was.
"So I asked. I said, 'Jackie, are you sad that you're not going to school today?' And Jackie was really quiet and put her head down and said 'No, I'm sad because I'm a boy.' "
Carter was taken aback. Her youngest had been wearing her big sister's dresses regularly and enjoyed donning pink boots. But this was new.
Carter wanted to confirm. "You're really not happy being a boy?" she asked.
"I thought a little bit longer and I said, 'Well, are you happy being you?' And that made Jackie smile," she says. "And I felt like for that moment, that was all that really mattered. That was 'The Day.' "
Carter took her to a chain drug store, and Jackie asked for elastic hair bands. Her hair wasn't long enough yet, but Carter put Jackie's hair up in five makeshift ponytails.
"And I've never seen such a happy child," she remembers. "To go from maybe an hour before this, this child who looks so sad, to that, I felt like I'd done something right by her."
In the months that followed, they started talking over girl names, with help from Jackie's pre-K teacher. On her fourth birthday, the family sang happy birthday for the first time to Jackie.
Jackie Stood Her Ground
A new job for Christian had prompted the family to move from Atlanta to Oakland two years ago. Carter and Christian say they feel lucky they've landed there. The Bay Area is one of the most LGBT friendly regions in the nation. The challenges ahead might be far greater, Christian says, if they'd stayed in the South.
He recalls the Fourth of July weekend last year, when they were back visiting Atlanta. At a community party, Christian noticed a group of kids gathering around Jackie, who still went by Jack back then.
"There was a point when some of the other boys, alpha males, talking about 15 kids surrounding Jackie," he says, "wanted to challenge this notion, 'Wait a minute, you said you're a boy but you're wearing a dress and have pony tails. I don't understand that.' "
Christian says he felt anger at first. "Then joy, when this girl of about 9 stepped in and said, 'This is Jack, he's my friend.' And Jackie stood her ground, and so that made me very proud," he says.
It's only been a little more than a year since Jack became Jackie. Neither of her parents has any illusions about the potential struggles ahead. Transgender people have alarmingly high rates of depression, substance abuse and suicide.
"There will be more challenges, certainly, as Jackie gets older and gets around more kids," Christian says. "Then puberty, and dating, and the challenges will be like a very steep curve. But I'm hoping that by the time she gets there, I hope, one, we've given her the tools and two, that there's more acceptance of this issue."
There is more acceptance now than there was even a few years ago, says psychologist Diane Ehrensaft at the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital. Ehrensaft has worked with transgender youth for more than 20 years.
"We as a culture have lifted the lid so that kids can start speaking up, showing themselves and that we have a lens to understand it from," she says. "That's all very new. We are now much more commonly hearing very little children speak up, 'Please let me be the gender I am rather than the gender you think I am.' "
Experts in the field diverge on how to approach gender identity issues in the very young. Jackie's parents know some people may not understand their approach. It is even hard for them at times.
As Carter explains, her daughter Chloe is the only one in the family Jackie still allows to occasionally refer to her as "Jack," as "he" and as "brother."
"Chloe is very loving and protective and supportive," she says. "But I think for Chloe, she still attaches this memory of her little brother, of Jack. And it's right now hard for her to let that go. It's that last piece she's holding on to."
"I myself have times when I miss my boy," says James Christian. "And I look at the old clothes and the old pictures and I will miss Jack. And that's probably never going to go away. That's just going to take some time."
What a bunch of goose-stepping clowns, pretending that a 3-year-old knows a dang thing about this.
My three year old says she is a puppy and my seven year old is a velociraptor.
No child of 3 or 4 “knows” it is a sex opposite of it’s genetic signature or physical signs of that sex. The possibility of that is a minute percentile— infinitesimal that they would actually be a chimera.
This is parental self indulgence on a scale as to be child abuse of their own child. These people are insane.
they started talking over girl names, with help from Jackie’s pre-K teacher.
Sick, all of them.
If you identify as a burrito, you are a burrito.
If a 3 year old is mature enough and aware enough of his own sexuality to make the decision to transition into a girl, then he is mature enough and aware enough of his own sexuality to decide to enter into a sexual relationship of his own choosing. Right?
This will be the basis for normalizing pedophilia once polygamy and incest are normalized. All a child will need is a note from a health care professional that they are mature enough to decide on their own, and everyone will be happy with it.
This is why it was thought to be mental illness for many decades.
Because it is.
The boy cannot possibly know he wants to be a girl, because not BEING a girl, he can in no way comprehend what being a girl actually is.
In addition, pre-puberty is a time of innocence during which the child learns to function in everyday life WITHOUT having to WORRY about sex and its pressures.
Evil is the enemy of childhood innocence.
When I was a little boy, I would often play with my sister and her friends. I grew out of it. But I can't imagine how my life would have turned out if I had sexual deviants as parents who would have concluded that I was a girl and forced me into feminization.
What about "tomboys"? When growing up, I had a girl cousin who would alway prefer to hang with us boys climbing trees and catching frogs and such. She grew up into a very attractive woman who is happily married but what if she had been forced into a sex change when she was little?
Little jackie looks like she’s going to grow up to be a lesbian. Already sporting a butch cut.
Speechless
I am an A-10:
http://www.duffelblog.com/2015/03/op-ed-i-sexually-identify-as-an-a-10-thunderbolt/
This guy is an Apache Helicopter. If you don’t believe it, you’re a heliphobe:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=__BZahm4lfY
If changing the sex of a 3 year old is ok in the lefts sick mind ...is have sex with a 3 year old far behind to be ok with these sick minds?
Because at age 3, you’re mature enough to make life long decisions. Mama, took HIM to the store and put HIS hair in pony tails so we know how this started. Where is the father in all this?
"It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and he cast into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones."
More child abuse. Wonderful. /s
No doubt this was just some sort of phase but instead of treating it like that the parents are condemning their child to a lifetime of therapy.
Side bet. Mom was sexually abused by boys and her son was treated differently by her so much her son noticed difference and this has more to do with her own untreated trama than her son’s gender.
So let me see if I’m understanding the new fundaMENTALly changed USA. We now take away from a 2 parent family kids that are home schooled, play outside, do chores, and raise livestock, and we laud families that physically mutilate 3 year old boys for their own demented sexual fantasies. OK, got it. Wow
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