A Story Often Told

It is a story that is becoming must more common, a son or daughter who tells their parents that they are the opposite gender.

Raising a Transgender Child: When George Became Jessie
Scary Mommy
By Julie Ross

Two years ago, my nine year old son tearfully shared with me that “his whole life, he had wanted to be a girl”. Pressed by the therapist (who, thank God, was in the room with us) to clarify whether he wants to be a girl or is a girl, George immediately replied that he is a girl. And so began a crazy-ass adventure of raising a transgendered child that I never, in a million years, expected to find my child or, frankly, myself, on.

To be clear, my husband Rich and I always knew that George (who is now Jessie) was different from not only our older son, but from other kids – male and female alike.

With sparkling eyes and a wildly observant and funny personality, he was known by everyone everywhere we went. Never one to shy away from a conversation or situation (particularly if it involved dolls, dresses, wigs or mermaid tails) he captured the attention of anyone he came into contact with. When behaviors that concerned us in preschool and kindergarten – including, but by no means limited to his self portraits (a frequent drawing assignment) consistently depicting a girl in a dress with long, flowing hair – continued with even greater vigor in first-, second- and third-grades we concluded that he was probably going to grow up to be gay, yet didn’t quite buy it ourselves. He was a boy who greatly appreciated a beautiful girl and what she was wearing. He never met a doll, wig, dress or mermaid tail that he didn’t feel a total compulsion to own – no matter how strongly he had to fight for it. And despite the fact that he was not even slightly effeminate, there were several occasions that he harassed and harangued me for hours on end requesting everything from hair extensions to wigs to dolls. It never added up. And then he asked for (and by “asked for” I mean “demanded”) a pierced ear. 

Our very good friend Dr. Zucker [sarcasm] has come out with a new study, “Evidence for an altered sex ratio in clinic-referred adolescents with gender dysphoria” in the Journal of Sexual Medicine. The abstract says,

Introduction. The number of adolescents referred to specialized gender identity clinics for gender dysphoria appears to be increasing and there also appears to be a corresponding shift in the sex ratio, from one favoring natal males to one favoring natal females.
[…]
Results. Across both clinics, the total sample size was 748. In both clinics, there was a significant change in the sex ratio of referred adolescents between the two cohort periods: between 2006-2013, the sex ratio favored natal females, but in the prior years the sex ratio favored natal males. In Study 1 from Toronto, there was no corresponding change in the sex ratio of 6592 adolescents referred for other clinical problems.
Conclusions. Sociological and sociocultural explanations are offered to account for this recent inversion in the sex ratio of adolescents with gender dysphoria.

While the academics are arguing over why there are more trans children coming, I think the answer is obvious, it is because they can. I think it because of a more tolerant society, people are more aware of trans people, and that the kids nowadays have access to the internet and they see other kids like them.