Posted on 07/04/2015 5:33:31 PM PDT by ScottWalkerForPresident2016
What would you do if your 3-year-old son told you assuredly that he wanted to be a girl? An Oakland, Cali. couple told their child it was OK, and a sad boy become a joyful little girl.
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.
"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."
I am ALWAYS talking about it here, Mrs. Don-O. And I do believe when the scientists find all the soft bodied animals with reproductive problems near industrially polluted bodies or water, that these things affect us in these ways too. We are just as “soft bodied” as a frog.
We don’t know squat about how harmful the chemicals with toss about with impunity are. People don’t even understand that what they put on their skin goes into their bloodstream, or no one would ever wear commercial lotions or prescription creams or any makeup or hair product. And the plastics everywhere, in our foods, in our water. SOMETHING is messing up these innocent children. Clearly they have this issue. And it must be painful because even the liberal treatment called “living as the other gender,” often without any surgeries, only works 50% of the time. They look all wrong usually, and they still aren’t happy. Very high suicide rates.
We need to treat this as a serious disorder and help find how it happens. It’s not cool or a new normal, except that if you have it, it is your normal, and I sure don’t want to put down anyone with schizophrenia, transgender, or bipolar. It’s not their fault. But it isn’t cool.
I agree. The inmates are truly running the asylum.
Mushroom people, stickmen, even...moleman!
Sane parents understand that three-year-olds don’t have an adult understanding of...well, a lot of things, let alone gender identity, theirs or others’. And then there are these folks.
I did.
Genes don’t cause every disorder or illness. When a baby is being formed, the conditions in the uterus definitely have an effect on development. Almost as much as the genes do. The study of epigenetics is all over this. The most easy to see and famous of the classic epigenetics studies is the one with the ponies and the horses. Pony embryos were implanted into the uteri of horses. The resulting ponies, 100% genetic ponies, were significantly LARGER than ponies.
So Darwin was correct but so was the much maligned Lamarck.
A lot of these gender or sexuality problems seem to stem from changes in the uterus. One study shows that homosexual men tend to have had older genetic brothers. Sometimes multiple. If someone has a few sons, the later ones would tend to be the gay ones.
The information was recently updated. The complete Chapter 5 is at the link.
Once again, this is not “chemical” anything.
This is a case of idiotic parents.
But hey, we are all free to be transracial, transexual, transpecies, and apparently transcomestible too.
We agree — this was dead WRONG of these parents. Three is too young to know squat. Just support him and love him and live life.
I love you. I never say it as well as you do.
The Day huh? I doubt mommie dearest knows DAY from NIGHT,,,much less up from down..
I am so out of ANY level of tolerance for these sick bastards who project their own needs on their kids...thus likely ruining them for life!
Agreed, it is too soon at age 3 to know if this child has an identity disorder, and they should just love and support him.
I have to laugh at all the posts noticing the start of the article was the other child in the family saying “I’m a burrito!” Transcomestible indeed! I wonder if starting the article that way was the writer’s way of getting his or her opinion slyly into the piece!
I’d like to be a chocolate covered strawberry actually.
Reminded me of the Invader Zim episode “chicken foot”.
Omg, my kids are HUGE invader zim fans. Seriously. I have never watched any episodes, but they once made me watch the Jolly Boots of Doom.
MY GENES MADE ME DO IT ! - Chapter 7. Pre-natal hormones? Stress? Immune attack?
Although there are some pre-natal hormonal effects on sexual behaviour for lower animals, there is not con vincing evidence for such an effect on sexual orientation in humans. The studies examining the effects of high doses of female hormones to pregnant women are particularly informative because these are very high doses and any hormonal effects on sexual orientation should show up clearly. But the result is a dubious effect on women and no effects on men. Any effects on sexual orientation appear to be better explained in terms of gender non-conformity—a psychological construct. Sex hormones do increase or lower sex drive, but that appears to be about all.
The maternal immune hypothesis seems very speculative, and needs much more evidence before it is taken more seriously. We leave the last word to several researchers in the field. James summarises the evidence for effects of prenatal hormone exposure on subsequent sexual orientation as “weak”.
In summary, the evidence from prenatal endocrine disorders and from the offspring of hormone-treated pregnancies suggests that hormones may contribute to, but do not actually determine, the course of sexual orientation in individuals with an abnormal sex steroid history during prenatal life.
“At this time, the literature does not support a causal link between hormones and homosexuality.”
Also, “In clinical practice numerous patients are encountered with gross abnormalities of their hormonal profiles. As a rule this does not impact on their gender identity or sexual orientation.”
The parents are idiots.
The end of the chicken foot episode, the microwave shortsvout and the guy in the taco outfit goes “yay, I’m a taco.”
M4L transition
See Post 56.
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