Children and gender reassignment

I personally do not think gender reassignment surgery should be done on the NHS. I have worked in the NHS for 30 years and never saw a person who had undergone gender reassignment who had made a happy and successful transition. They always end up with loads of problems in the ones I knew. They rarely look convincing as women and sadly stand out as oddities. My heart goes out to these folk who are unhappy with their gender but I personally think we are doing them a disservice to try and change such a huge part of a person. I certainly do not think surgery should ever be considered under 18.

well said yggdrasil

This does not seem to recognise that people, even as children, can be certain they are the 'wrong' sex. It isn't just being a tomboy or a boy playing with dolls.
And certain treatments, applied before puberty, can help a lot psychologically.
It isn't up to those with fixed ideas of what female and male ought to be to decide what a trans person needs.

When I was ten, a teacher at my all-girls school asked my class how many of us would like to be boys. All hands went up except mine and that of one other girl. The general agreement was that boys have more fun and more freedom. I was very surprised, as I had always thought it would be horrible to be a boy. I didn’t like their boring grey clothes or their tough schools like the one my brother went to.

Just as well that all these girls’ opinions were not taken literally.

I think there is a huge spectrum of behaviour and we should not equate our own experiences with those of other people. I too was not a girly girl -although my mum tried hard. The problem then was I think that some behavours were styled "boyish" when they were simply the actions of more active and outspoken girls. The same sort of actions are now sometimes picked out in boys who are doing 'girly' things like dressing up. No doubt trans gender actions can be tracked back into early years, but equally many people simply incorporate those actions into the gender they were born into.
That said if a child has a desperate need to be a diferent gender and has been given supportive and knowledgeable counselling I can see no reason to make them wait until after they are 18. If they are living lives they find totally impossible making them wait could result in tragedy.

I had a good friend that was a committed lesbian until her late twenties and is now married to a man and has a family. People grow and change a lot from teens to twenties so personally, I’d prefer if the limit for medical intervention was raised to 25 as I think 18 is still too young to make such a huge irreversible decision.
If a woman was adamant she would never want children and wanted a full hysterectomy at 18, would you still think, ‘yes, she knows her own mind’.

You need to be an adult to make these decisions.

I absolutely agree that all this medication and surgery would be less to the fore if people were just accepted for who they are and could dress/act as they wish.

I dress as a boy all the time.

I’m glad no one asked me whether I wanted to be a boy or a girl when I was a child- I definitely wished I was a boy! It all faded away when puberty kicked in.

Definitely with the petition, just to be clear which I'm not sure I was!!!!

I can remember as a child desperately wanting to be/wishing that I had been, a boy, wearing jeans as much as was allowed, and playing boys games, in other words, a tomboy!! Thank goodness no one took me up on it, but viewed it as a phase which would disappear as I got older which it did!! So definitely NO, not before 18!

That appears to be the view of that paediatric gender therapist, SueDonim.

I encourage anyone who is interested to look at the video (it is only 2.5 minutes long) and to check out information about Diane Ehrensaft and other gender therapists and their views about their work with children and transgenderism.

Are we to take from that video, Farnorth that any toddler boy who tries on his sister's ballet tutu or any girl who likes to play with cars or trains is sending a message that they are transgender?

Gender is a social construct and one's sex cannot be changed!

Yes farnorth , sorry I didn’t make my views clear , definitely with the petition

Here is a very short video of Diane Ehrensaft, one of the top pediatric "gender therapists" in the United States.

In it, she responds to a question on how to recognise trans-genderism in very young children who may not be able to speak yet.

vimeo.com/185149379

Full video here (creative commons license, free to share):
www.youtube.com/watch?v=30rEjumFaDY&feature=youtu.be
Clip starts at 2 hours, 5 minutes

Since it has become easier in some countries for people to be more open about their gender identities it has become evidentt that humanity is and always has been multi-gendered "Fifty shades of humanity". Really rather than encouraging children or others to change their bodies to conform with the dominant body shapes we should all learn to accept the reality that has always been there but has had to be suppressed because religions only want reproducers and celebrate the fact that everyone should mature into who/what they are intended to be.

You agree with the aim of the petition, Annie? (I'm maybe dense but I'm not sure what your comment refers to.)

Not under eighteen

As explained in the text of the petition, there are many things that young people are not allowed to do - for their own protection.
I believe that medical intervention for gender reassignment should be one of those things.

It is extremely unlikely that a young woman who does not want to have children will be allowed to have a sterilisation performed until she is at least 30 years old, because doctors believe she might change her mind.

Similarly, young people change their minds about all sorts of things and can need protection from doing something which will have far-reaching effects for their whole lives.

I should say they live 60 miles apart and have no knowledge of the other ..so its not some sort of teenage pact

sorry not signing .I personally know two young people having treatment to reassign gender from female to male.They are both 17...they are both intelligent people they have both been living as boys for nearly two years . They have both had psych assessments as part of the process BEFORE the treatment started.Can YOU explain to me WHY its any of YOUR business what someone else wants to do with their lives? It wont impact you if they change sex ....I do wish people would just keep to their own business and let others live their lives their way