NPR All Things Considered - Parents Consider Treatment to Delay Son's Puberty

Yesterday National Public Radio (NPR) had part 2 on transgenderism, an eleven year old trans-girl who is taking hormone blockers to prevent the onset of puberty. They are not giving her hormones that will cause irreversible changes but they giving her blockers to just delay puberty until the child is old enough to make the decision.

Doctors and More Doctors
The family consulted mental health professionals with all kinds of initials after their names. They passed out diagnoses with even more initials: ADD (attention-deficit disorder), OCD (obsessive-compulsive disorder).

"I mean, every conceivable diagnosis," Robert says. "But no one could put their finger on it."

Still, while the doctors were unable to find the right label, their son seemed to understand what was going on. Danielle says that during quiet moments, like the ride from school, her child would confess what was causing so much trouble.

"A lot of times she'd come out and say, 'I'm a girl.' No, at first it was, 'I want to be a girl,' then it's like 'No. I am a girl.' And she'd ask if me if I [thought] she was crazy and I'd say, 'No, honey, you know, it's OK.' And in the front, you know, I'm driving going ... 'Oh my gosh, what is this?' " Danielle says.

Gender Identity Disorder
After many years, the family found a psychologist who had experience with gender issues. At the end of a two-month evaluation, the therapist gave them a diagnosis: gender identity disorder.

A New Treatment
The treatment has been offered in the United States only for around four years. Essentially, kids who meet the criteria for gender identity disorder are given monthly injections of a medication that blocks their bodies from releasing sex hormones. This means that while the children continue to grow taller, for the three or four years they are on the medication, they are kept from maturing sexually.

How is she now that she has transition?

Robert and Danielle agreed. The first official day of Violet's new life was Aug. 19, 2007. It was the first day of a family vacation. Armand — now Violet — was 10. And Robert says her emotional transformation that day was nothing short of astonishing.

"It was the happiest kid I'd ever seen. Just lit up. Just ... brilliant and funny and these things that we caught glimpses of that weren't always there," he says.

Her first day of school…

And their worst fears — of ridicule, of violence — were not realized. At the end of the day, Violet skipped to the car and reported she had had a great day.

Robert says that since the family event, and Violet's transition, there's been a new level of peace in his household, a liberating clarity. "There is no doubt at this point in our lives that we have a transgender child. ... And there is no doubt in our mind that we are going to do what we can to help her," he says.

And what does the Catholic church think about this? There was an article in a Catholic newspaper about this very topic and about the same doctor that was published yesterday. Here is what they had to say...

‘Sex-change’ treatment for ‘transgender’ kids? Hospital clinic draw moral criticism
By Gail Besse
5/8/2008

The Anchor (www.fallriverdiocese.org/resources.asp)
BOSTON, MA (The Catholic Anchor) - A clinic at Children’s Hospital is providing powerful hormones to disturbed children who believe they should have been born the opposite sex…

…“This is cooperating with psychosis,” commented moral theologian Father Anthony Mastroeni of Patterson, N.J. Father Mastroeni, who has taught at Franciscan University of Steubenville and Christendom College, has written extensively to refute the notion that sex-change surgery might be morally justified…

…The clinic’s Web page links to various groups pushing to redefine sexuality: for example, the Human Rights Campaign (“Working for gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender equal rights”), and the Transkids Purple Rainbow Foundation (“Our kids aren’t pink or blue, but various shades of purple.”)…

…Although the site states that medical experience with transgenderism is “limited,” evidently Johns Hopkins University and other medical schools actually stopped encouraging sex changes decades ago.

“I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment,” wrote Dr. Paul McHugh, University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, in his 2004 First Things article, “Surgical Sex.”

“We psychiatrists, I thought, would do better to concentrate on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia,” McHugh said he eventually concluded of his patients who thought themselves transsexual….

And who do they use for a resource? Dr McHugh another long time National Association of Research and Therapy (NARTH) contributor (see yesterday’s blog entry).

# # #

What the doctors and all the others that are against this therapy for transgender people, seems to be lacking is the reality that these children are happier and have better social interactions now than before they transitioned. Isn’t that what is important?
I know I was always the quite one in the corner and I didn’t interact with people, I had only a few friends. Since I have “come out of the closet” I have gone to more places than I have every gone before in my fifties years of mine life, I have meet more people and made more friends than I ever did before. I am less stressful and more relax than before my transition. What stress I do have is not internal but caused by bigots and transphobes.
How can this be wrong?