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As a tomboy, I find this hysterical!

When you were little, did you think of yourself as a boy rather than as a girl? That's the real issue, not whether the boy in question has female chromosomes, was born with female genitals, or likes sports.

It would be amazing how small-minded, ignorant and cruel religious people can be in enforcing their delusions on the rest of us, if we didn't see it happen so often.

In this case, many religious people don't want to acknowledge the obvious truth of the situation--that the child may have the body of a girl, but the brain is that of a boy. Cnservatives like to go on and on and on about how boys' brains are fundamentally different from girls' (they are) and ridicule radical feminists for claiming that there is no inherent difference. So if there is such a thing as a "boy's brain" that is different from a girl's brain, why is it so impossible that a boy's brain would exist in a girl's body?

This is a fundamental lack of imagination by closed-minded religious people who believe that sex can only be a binary thing (all male or all female) because that's how they read the Bible.

It requires people to be deliberately ignorant about the human body, about how hormones and other chemicals affect brain function, and about the development of the brain in the womb. If the human brain actually does develop in the fetus (and it does), then why couldn't a dose of the wrong chemical at the wrong time change things? If the human brain does not develop in the fetus, why not just allow abortion on demand? If you have any respect for the lives on unborn children as individual human beings, then you must consider this.

The basis for outlawing many drugs is that they cause changes in brain function. Substances (chemicals, etc.) affect how the brain functions. If women take steroids, for example, they can develop manly features and their brains think more like men's brains. What is so complicated about this?

Many religious people deliberately make themselves ignorant because they don't want to know things that conflict with the Bible. It's shameful.

It would be amazing how small-minded, ignorant and cruel religious people can be in enforcing their delusions on the rest of us, if we didn't see it happen so often.

Take your anti-religious cr*p elsewhere -if you have a gripe with someones opinion address them specifically!!!

I'm not sure what you're implying, but your rhetoric is wasted on the wrong person. I am not a religious zealot. And yes, there were times as a young girl I wished I was a boy. But I *now* love being a full-blooded woman, who still has her tomboy ways. Instead of blaming religion or Christians, perhaps you should look toward the parents for making a snap judgment on a child that does not have the mental capacity to understand the feelings she is having, let alone the consequences of the choice.

We live in a society where ramifications of free will are pushed aside. And in the case of a nine year old girl, any parent who believes in reassigning gender based on what the child wants needs to have their head examined.

I don't think this 4th grader is on steroids. Maybe she is though and thats why I support random drug testing on 4th graders.
How could a boy's brain get into a girls body?? Well I did read a comic book when I was a kid when a mad scientist had his brain put into a gorilla's body. Are you implying that this girls parents are mad scientists?

PS. You are a bigot, but you are also pathetic so I am not very offended. Keep up the good work of making atheist's look like moral relativist and whiny emotionally immature children.

Vatican says 'sex-change' operation does not change person's gender
By John Norton Catholic News Service
VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- After years of study, the Vatican's doctrinal congregation has sent church leaders a confidential document concluding that "sex-change" procedures do not change a person's gender in the eyes of the church.
Consequently, the document instructs bishops never to alter the sex listed in parish baptismal records and says Catholics who have undergone "sex-change" procedures are not eligible to marry, be ordained to the priesthood or enter religious life, according to a source familiar with the text.
The document was completed in 2000 and sent "sub secretum" (under secrecy) to the papal representatives in each country to provide guidance on a case-by-case basis to bishops. But when it became clear that many bishops were still unaware of its existence, in 2002 the congregation sent it to the presidents of bishops' conferences as well.
"The key point is that the (transsexual) surgical operation is so superficial and external that it does not change the personality. If the person was male, he remains male. If she was female, she remains female," said the source.
Bishop Wilton D. Gregory of Belleville, Ill., president of the U.S. bishops' conference, sent a brief letter to U.S. bishops in October informing them of the Vatican document and highlighting its instruction not to alter parish baptismal records, except to make a notation in the margin when deemed necessary.
"The altered condition of a member of the faithful under civil law does not change one's canonical condition, which is male or female as determined at the moment of birth," Bishop Gregory wrote. of those whose genetic makeup and physical characteristics are unambiguously of one sex but who feel that they belong to the opposite sex. In some cases, the urge is so strong that the person undergoes a "sex-change" operation to acquire the opposite sex's external sexual organs. The new organs have no reproductive function.
The document's conclusions close one area of controversial speculation that arose in Italy in the late 1980s when a priest publicly announced he had undergone a "sex-change" operation.
Given church teaching that only males can be validly ordained priests, the question posed in newspapers at the time was whether a priest who undergoes a "sex-change" operation remains a priest -- the answer is "yes" -- and whether a woman who undergoes the procedure can be ordained -- "no."
A Vatican source said the text was prepared largely by Jesuit Father Urbano Navarrete, now a retired canon law professor at Rome's Gregorian University.
In 1997, Father Navarrete wrote an article on transsexualism in an authoritative canon law journal and has been consulted by the doctrinal congregation on specific cases involving transsexualism and hermaphroditism.
The priest, citing confidentiality rules, declined to speak on the record to Catholic News Service for this story.
The Vatican document's specific points include:
-- An analysis of the moral licitness of "sex-change" operations. It concludes that the procedure could be morally acceptable in certain extreme cases if a medical probability exists that it will "cure" the patient's internal turmoil.
But a source familiar with the document said recent medical evidence suggested that in a majority of cases the procedure increases the likelihood of depression and psychic disturbance. -- A provision giving religious superiors administrative authority to expel a member of the community who has undergone the procedure. In most cases of expulsion from religious life, the superior must conduct a trial.
-- A recommendation of psychiatric treatment and spiritual counseling for transsexual priests. It suggests they can continue to exercise their ministry privately if it does not cause scandal.
-- A conclusion that those who undergo sex-change operations are unsuitable candidates for priesthood and religious life because of mental instability.
-- A conclusion that people who have undergone a sex-change operation cannot enter into a valid marriage, either because they would be marrying someone of the same sex in the eyes of the church or because their mental state casts doubt on their ability to make and uphold their marriage vows.
-- An affirmation of the validity of marriages in which one partner later undergoes the procedure, unless a church tribunal determines that a transsexual disposition predated the wedding ceremony.

It seems to me that the idea of a male soul informing a female body is as impossible as a human soul informing a a dog's body (possible only miraculously). But the Vatican statement that "the procedure could be morally acceptable in certain extreme cases" implies that this is not the case, unless these "extreme cases" refer to hermaphrodism, which presents its own philosophical problems.

As a tomboy, I find this hysterical!..........rintense

When you were little, did you think of yourself as a boy rather than as a girl? That's the real issue, not whether the boy in question has female chromosomes, was born with female genitals, or likes sports. It would be amazing how small-minded, ignorant and cruel religious people can be in enforcing their delusions on the rest of us, if we didn't see it happen so often. In this case, many religious people don't want to acknowledge the obvious truth of the situation--that the child may have the body of a girl, but the brain is that of a boy. Cnservatives like to go on and on and on about how boys' brains are fundamentally different from girls' (they are) and ridicule radical feminists for claiming that there is no inherent difference. So if there is such a thing as a "boy's brain" that is different from a girl's brain, why is it so impossible that a boy's brain would exist in a girl's body?............xm177e2

From a purely scientific viewpoint, I agree with rintense on this one and I don't see what religion has to do with any of this.

Sex differentiation is not a simple matter of two X chromosomes or a Y chromosome. There is, for example, Klinefelter Syndrome where the individual has both two X chromosomes and a Y chromosome.

In mammals, the inherent embryological development is female. That is to say, if left without androgenic hormones or the biochemical ability to respond to those hormones, the embryo will develop as a female. The androgenic hormones will be produced by the activation of the Y chromosome in an (XY) individual.

Messing up this process can lead to all sorts of sex differentiation abnormalities and the severity of outcomes spans the range from anatomical hemaphrodism to brain changes without outward anatomical manifestations. Specific Syndromes of Sex Differentiation

Androgenic hormones stop the inherent feminization process (defeminization) and commence the masculinization process.

In an (XX) fetus, androgenic hormones introduced either endogenously (as from a fetal adrenal tumor) or exogenously (as from hormones in the maternal bloodstream from whatever source) or the biochemical inablity to respond to androgen hormones due to androgen receptor function deficiency can result in a defeminization and masculinization process in the brain of the (XX) fetus.

Brain masculinization requires androgen receptor function

Be that as it may, however (..........and this is the crucial point in this particular case...........), as the above linked scientific research paper states, the "Brain Masculinization" phenomenon is defined as:

"male-typical behaviors in the adult"

Those are the key words:

"in the adult"

Neither a 9 year old human child nor the age-equivalent lab rat who is 9 "lab rat years old" has the post-pubertal hormone environment necessary to determine if either one actually has a true "Brain Masculinization" syndrome.

To claim otherwise is pure psycho-babble.

For the record, when dressed in casual jeans and a top, my 14 year old daughter is dressed in clothes purchased from the Boy's Department simply because the Boy's Department is the only place we, the parents, are able to find clothes that do not make our daughter look like a member of the Future Sluts of America.

Maybe this 9 year old girl is merely rebelling against the sexualization of pre-teen girls she see all around her and would prefer to act like a "boy" in order to escape from that.

That, however, does not make her a case of true "Brain Masculinization" syndrome. That merely makes her a tomboy with a very good reason for being a tomboy.