Disturbing News
Michelle O’Brien, OII Board Member from the United Kingdom
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I was called by a journalist from Poland today (not sure where he got my number from), saying he had been advised to speak to me by someone at Mermaids (UK group for trans kids) about the reports of treatment of children as young as seven for transsexuality at a centre in Boston. I was taken aback, I must admit, because I have no connection with Mermaids (apart from a research call placed on their website four years ago).
I tried to bat him off by pointing out that I was not familiar with the story and that I am not a medical professional, so was unable to comment on what work is done with children and what the approach to transgendered children should be; I explained that I was a social researcher looking at the experiences that intersex and transsexual adults have had with medical intervention, including when they were children.
He explained that Christian groups in the USA were very concerned about the treatment of children as young as seven for transsexuality. I must admit I was not aware of the controversy, although I did know from a conference at the Royal Society of Medicine in the autumn that such a clinic was working with pre-adolescents - however, nothing surprises me with the Christian right. I had to point out that my knowledge was limited, because I am only concerned with the issues of intersex and transsexual/transgender people here in the UK.
He suggested that these Christian groups felt that while it was one thing to treat adults, they were portraying the treatment of children as a form of Nazi eugenics. I laughed, and said that I found that hard to believe, because as far as I was aware evangelical and fundamentalist groups were opposed to treatment for transsexuals at any age.
He was quite persistent, despite my explaining I was not the right person to be asking these questions of. I suggested a couple of people he might approach to get a balance of views here in the UK. I pointed out that people would need to be very cautious in treating children, because as Richard Green has shown, more young people with gender issues grow up to be gay than transsexual. I also said I was sceptical that people would be treated for transsexuality as young as seven, although they might well be assessed at that age; given that transsexuality is diagnosed as something that often presents itself in early childhood, one would expect to find children who had gender identity issues who would turn out to be transsexual. He asked whether transsexual children were depressed; I pointed out that most people who are transsexual seem to be fairly depressed about it until they get something done about it.
That was my understanding of the way the conversation went, whether or not it ends up reported that way I will never know, seeing as it was for a Polish newspaper.
Then I decided to look up what all the fuss was about:-
Appalling! This is a mess of lies, distortion, misunderstanding and ignorance designed to alarm people.
> BOSTON, Massachusetts, May 19, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A new clinic at the Children's Hospital Boston is offering hormone treatment to young children identified as "transgender" to facilitate eventual surgery for a gender switch, according to a report by MassResistance May 17.
No. What happens is hormone blockers are given to prevent the onset of puberty.
> Led by endocrinologist Dr. Norman Spack, the Gender Management Service Clinic is the first U.S. clinic to initiate medical intervention for healthy children on the basis of a "transgender" identification. A 12-year-old German boy who began receiving puberty-blocking hormone treatments last winter in preparation for sex-change "transition" surgery was believed to be the youngest child to receive the treatment at the time.
OK, how about making this clear - the Boston clinic assesses and works with children with gender issues, it also works with intersex kids; no doubt it also deals with issues such as 'precocious puberty'. Coupling that with the sentence about a 12 old German boy doesn't make it clear that this is about a completely different clinic, under a different Doctor, which is in Germany.
> The Boston clinic will reportedly offer the treatments to children as young as seven years old, according to researcher Ari Taube for MassResistance.
So, what is alleged now passes into fact? I am sure that a clinic which deals with kids with growth problems and precocious puberty will offer some treatments to children as young as seven - but that is not the same as treating kids with gender issues as young as seven as transsexuals.
> Hormone treatment of pre-pubescent children is intended to prevent normal development of gender characterization in order to ease eventual surgical procedures to complete a change of gender, which can take place once the child is about 16.
No. They are given blockers which delay the onset of puberty, until such an age where they can legally consent to hormone treatment and then surgery, which would usually take place after they are 18.
> On a MassResistance radio report, Taube emphasized that transgender procedures can only achieve the outward appearance of the opposite gender.
Standard evangelical bull...
> "It's important to point out that simply because one undergoes mutilating surgery and decides to administer to themselves the hormone of the opposite gender, doesn't actually make you that gender. It is surgery but it doesn't actually turn a girl into a boy. The chromosomal differences remain."
It's a view, but has little to do with the issue.
> Dr. Spack has acknowledged in the past that only about 20 percent of children who express gender confusion continue to express that confusion throughout adulthood, Taube pointed out.
This would be based on Green's study, and is why there is a rigorous assessment process before anything happens, as I understood it.
> "You're giving authority to a seven, eight or nine year old to determine what gender they want to display."
This is said by Taube, presumably, although not clearly attributable. Hints of mayhem – giving children the authority to make decisions about their own future.
> The treatments are an experimental procedure using hormones that can cause an alarming list of adverse effects, including spasms and bloody mucus from the nose, Taube stated.
Yes, because they have not been done before, they are experimental. Every procedure known to the medical profession was at one time experimental. However, some would argue that the experiment of doing nothing has failed - because as adults people continue to present themselves as transsexuals.
> Estrogen treatments increase the risk for later development of breast cancer, and taking hormones of the opposite sex render transgender teens infertile. As well as suppressing normal sexual development, the hormones act to retard male growth process to ensure a more "female" body type.
This is irrelevant, because here the discussion is not about hormones in adults, but blockers; hormones are not used until 16 - what happens at 16 is a different discussion from what is happening to children.
So to scare people further:
> "It's ghastly, it's really scary," Taube said.
That is an opinion, but one reached without appreciating the issues clearly.
Next comes the Christian-right’s favourite tactic of smearing by association:
> Dr. Spack's interest in transgender issues has included association with bondage and sadomasochistic groups-he presented a workshop at the Transcending Boundaries conference in Worcester last November, organized by PFLAG and co-sponsored by the New England Leather Alliance.
Hmmm. Dr. Spack co-presented one paper on children & transgender at a conference on trans issues, one of a large number of papers on a range of issues affecting trans and gay people - of which one was about coming out as BDSM.
The details of the clinic are here:
Note their use of DSD terminology
McHugh turns up here:
Conference details here:
Having clarified that this was another case of the Christian right breaking the 9th Commandment (Exodus 20:16 "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour."), and seeing the response to this on the forum, that this story originated because of a documentary by Barbara Walters on ABC, I decided to pursue this a bit further. As a researcher living in and focussed on the UK I am not party to the goings on in the USA, unless it happens to be brought to my attention. As an Anglican, however, I am all too familiar with the increasing ease with which representatives of the Christian right, such as Archbishop Akinola, seem happy to compromise the 9th Commandment in order to pursue their worldly political ambitions.
So, the misrepresentation on ‘lifesite’ seems to be traceable back to a blog entry on an ABC program:
This site shows the origins of the misinformation and misunderstanding, mixed in with an unhealthy dose of cant.
----- Is it child abuse to give a 12-year-old opposite-sex hormone injections? Is it child abuse to schedule your teenage daughter for breast-removal surgery? Is it child abuse to send your little boy to first grade in a dress, and decorate his room in lavender and pink? Is it child abuse to let your child sleep with a 4-foot-long live snake? Is it child abuse to discuss with a little boy how he can have his penis chopped off when he's older?
We are not given answers to these questions, but clearly they are rhetorical questions which are intended to convey that in the author’s opinion they are. This is a similar tactic to that now being used amongst some Christians to condemn homosexuals – if they carry out sexual practices that are deemed ‘unsafe’, risk catching and spreading diseases that are potentially life-threatening, are they are public health hazard? So, now parents who might support a child who is transgendered, or one might presume under the same distorted logic gay, are being portrayed as child abusers – placed on the same footing as paedophiles and others who harm children.
----- Isn't this just as bad or worse than an adult sexually assaulting a child? Why is this country so up in arms over homosexual pederast priests, but accepting a major network's promotion of breast removal surgery for a teenage girl?
In the program the ‘teenage girl’ concerned was 17, preparing for surgery, which would not occur until after she was 18; I don’t know about the USA, but here someone of 18 is not a child, boy or girl. The link with paedophile priests is interesting – slippage into a totally irrelevant issue, but one which has hurt the church badly; no doubt the intention of asking the question in this context is to remind people not of the abuses of Christ’s representatives here on earth, but the paranoiacs’ seeing this as part of a conspiracy to undermine the church (instead of facing up to what it was, abuse).
----- Hormonal manipulation and genital mutilation of CHILDREN: Sounds like a Nazi medical experiment
It certainly does, except it is not what is happening, according to any account I can find. Firstly, the work that is reported upon is with children who have exhibited extreme distress over their gender; the Nazis carried out medical experiments on unwilling victims. In reality, many older transsexuals would say that their experiences of a variety of behavioural, aversion, drug and hormone therapies were more like such medical experiments – because the failure to treat them as children did not work, and what they endured subsequently while doctors sought to find ‘cures’ unsuccessfully were themselves failed experiments.
What we hear are a distorted description of cases from the show, and the words of parents given with heavy comment appealing to ‘respectable’ people about how irresponsible these parents are; even go so far as to insinuate that they are the cause of the children’s problems. Perhaps the blogger would prefer that such children be taken from such undeserving liberal-minded parents, and relocated with firm Christian families who would ensure that these boys were beaten into manhood, or sexually abused into womanhood. That image conveys more of the Nazi paradigm than any that seeks to lift children out of a depressing reality to live happier lives.
I cannot comment on the documentary itself, not having been able to see it; it appears to have been well received by people who identify as transgender or are sympathetic to transgenderists. However, it clearly has provoked this backlash against a centre which helps a range of children, of whom those dealing with gender issues are just a few. How is it that the program did not manage to convey the seriousness and delicate nature of the work done with intersex children? How for some children, hormonal interventions may be necessary for other reasons, and that it is becoming accepted that they be consulted on that? What would their attitude towards a youngster with an intersex condition being consulted over the appropriateness and timing of hormones? If that is not acceptable, would they recommend a return to the secrecy, shame and stigma that so many intersex people report having experienced? But if, as evangelicals here in the UK are prone to do, they fall quiet on the mention of the ‘I’ word, and dismiss this as rare, and a different situation entirely, then the question raised is unanswered. Should intersex children also be forced into a gender role and treatment without consultation, or not? If not, then what makes transgender children so different that their wishes should not likewise be taken into account when determining the most appropriate treatment options for them?
Not treating is just as much a treatment option as active treatment is – failure to treat as serious as maltreatment. These are issues for specialists, parents, children, informed by those with personal experience of their own, not the moral pressure industry of the Christian right.
Where the program seems to have let us all down is that the complexity and delicate nature of the issues have not effectively been conveyed to those who are ignorant and quick to condemn. In part that failure has been the attempt to deal with one part of a complex set of issues which include intersex and transgender, separating out and focussing on one aspect of this work, while ignoring the work done in a wider context. In part, this reflects the erecting of the ‘DSD’ barrier. It may serve to shield those behind the DSD barbed-wire from the prying eyes of the media and the moral crusaders for the time being, while leaving those who are transgendered out in the open, vulnerable; however, it does that at the cost of a wider appreciation of just how diverse sex and gender in human beings can be. It reinforces the dogma that there are boys and girls, and nothing else will do.
Had the full range of the work undertaken been reported upon, these stories placed in the context of that variety as well as the stories of adults for whom such help was not available, perhaps then it would have been harder to characterise and criticise in the way it has been. However, clearly what some people saw simply reinforced their prejudices, however sympathetic the presentation.
These Christian websites’ give a twisted presentation of what is actually a difficult situation facing these children and their parents; it is about hate, not the love of God, and the goal is the promotion of hatred. That hatred is not the responsibility of those who treat children dealing with intersex or transgender issues, nor people who make programs about it. However, the way these issues are presented, in isolation, out of a wider context of human diversity, can give ammunition to those who will twist things in ways that incites hatred
