Posted on 01/28/2007 9:53:56 AM PST by wagglebee
A German boy, now 14, is believed to be the youngest patient in the world pursuing gender reassignment after convincing doctors two years ago he wanted to live as a female.
Doctors say the boy, born "Tim," has considered himself female since he was two.
According to his parents, Tim tried on his older sisters clothes and played with her Barbie dolls, announcing, "I'm a girl." The boy was distraught after every haircut, they said, and at four, he took a pair of scissors and threatened to "cut off my thing!" After that incident, Tim was called "Kim" by his family.
"We always saw Kim as a girl, but not as a problem," the father, who was not identified, told Der Spiegel. "In fact, our life was surprisingly normal."
Puberty brought about a drop in Kim's voice and concern for the child's future.
"At that stage we realized that she was terrified of growing facial hair and her voice breaking," said the father.
The family sought medical advice about a possible sex change for Kim, with mixed results.
"Hormone treatment! Gender adjustment! How could you possibly do this to the child?" the family's pediatrician asked the father. Some psychiatrists suggested Kim be placed under observation in a psychiatric hospital.
Eventually, the family contacted Dr. Bernd Meyenburg, the head of a clinic for children and adolescents with sexual identity problems at Frankfurt University. He concluded that Kim represented the "rare ... clear-cut case" for intervention before puberty initiated irreversible changes to his body.
"It would have been a crime to let her grow up as a man," Meyenburg said.
According to Dr. Achim Wuesthof, the endocrinologist who is treating the teen, the procedure to arrest the course of male puberty has been successful thus far. Even though children under 16 are not permitted to undergo sex change in other countries, he and his colleagues thought it best to start early in Kim's case.
"To the best of my knowledge, Kim is the youngest sex change patient in the world," Wuesthof told the London Sunday Telegram. "According to German law, two independent psychiatrists must confirm that the child is indeed transsexual and approve the sex change. Once that has been done, it is best to start as early as possible."
For legal reasons, surgery to remove Kim's male genitals cannot be performed until age 18.
"From a purely medical standpoint we are dealing with the mutilation of a biologically healthy body," said Meyenburg. "We face a real dilemma. If we do something about it, it's irreversible. And if we allow nature to take its course, that too is irreversible."
Meyenburg said he had mixed feelings about the fact that more and more – and younger – patients are seeking him out for advice.
I'm amazed that something so simple seems to have been overlooked by the medical profession. Great idea.
No. The difference is a left-wing political construct serving a radical political anti-male, anti-motherhood, anti-family agenda.
In this day in age with all the "fake hormones" put in meats, it would be no reason of doubt, that the hormones/metabolism could be altered, fast-forwarded or all together misfired in young people today!
I've heard stories, that even young girls at ages 8-10 are starting early puberty these days.
Most of the replies here are very misinformed. First off the John Money john/joan case (money was a evil doctor at johns hopkins who faked his research) showed that gender was INNATE in the BRAIN. Later research by Zhao and Kruijiver on the BSTc striate nucleus showed that trans women DO INDEED have biological female brain structures. How can this happen? In the womb there are two periods of high testosterone used to sex the fetus male. The first earlier changes the BRAIN. The second one induces the physical changes. Basically a trans woman is someone who did not receive this second hormonal high testosterone period.
OK, now the result is a INTERSEXED condition meaning that ONE PART of the body is one gender and ANOTHER part of the body (the biological brain) is another. Now what are the choices for intersexed people.
The first choice was reparitive type therapy and outright torture. This was tried in the 1800s to the 1950s. The result was not a cure to the condition (you cant change your biology through torture) but many of the people commited suicide.
The second approach suggested here - give testosterone hormones - almost always has the result of making the patient feel very ill. Nor does it re-orient the brain as once the biological structures are fused they cannot be changed.
The only other approach remaining is to help an intersexed person adjust their physiology to match their brain. Upon receiving the correct horomonal bath which is consistent with their brain, trans women immediately report relief. (similarly trans men have the same calming reaction and loss of depression when treated with testosterone. Although we know much less as to the mechanism which leads to trans men but high testosterone levels in the womb are suspect)
People here argue that you CANNOT change your gender that it is set. This is correct. But dont forget, for the trans woman, their birth gender was an intersexed condition, and after transition, even if they appear female, they remain to some degree, intersexed.
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