Transgender Children

This expert guide to working with transgender and gender variant youth offers ways to make positive change to service provision for practitioners working with this group. Based on the latest research, the recommendations made by the author are backed up by statistics and data, and refer to first-hand stories and experiences.

Exploring four key areas - mental health, physical health, sexual health and social health - the book sets out exactly what professionals need to know in relation to these areas and how to support trans youth in these circumstances. Providing clarity on a range of topics, this is the perfect overview for practitioners, as well as a useful text for students and researchers.

Hur påverkas den unga generationen av de nya teorierna kring kön och sexualitet? I den här artikeln undersöks särskilt vad som händer när trans- och queertänkandet får fäste i de bredare befolkningslagren. Sexualiteten beskrivs som ett ekosystem, där hela systemet påverkas när normkritiken tillåts bli den överordnade normen.

SOURCE: Baril, A. (2021) “Detransition, Re-transition, Interrupted or Discontinued Transition: All the same thing? A critical and philosophical reflection on the notion of detransition,” Symposium: “Detrans” or the Phenomenon of Discontinuation of Gender Transition in Young People:
Preliminary Results, 25th Congress of the World Association for Sexual Health (WAS), Pre-recorded symposium, Virtual Congress, September 12.

Se trata del Relevamiento de Infancias y Adolescencias trans de Río Negro y Neuquén, realizado durante el año 2020 y parte del 2021, y coordinado por el Observatorio de DDHH de Neuquén, dependiente de la Subsecretaría de DDHH de la provincia.

This paper introduces the concept of massive gender trauma, a clinical syndrome arising at the onerous intersection of the misgendering of transgender patients and the subjective, anguished experience of the natal body. Analysts have become increasingly aware in recent years of the complex interactions between psyche, soma, and culture. Consequently, the field is increasingly hospitable to considering the psy- chic risks inherent in misgendering. However, patients’ body dysphoria is often left unaddressed even by analysts who seek to work within their analysands’ gendered experience. Through a detailed, in-depth account of work with a five-year-old trans girl (female-identified, male-bodied), the developmental implications of the natal body’s not becoming suffi- ciently mentalized in the course of treatment are tracked and explored. Attention to unconscious fantasy and its transformations shows the importance of helping transgender patients whose bodies are a source of suffering to be able to psychically represent their pain as a critical step in the process of a psychologically healthy transition.

Existing research on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) youth homelessness identifies family rejection as a main pathway into homelessness for the youth. This finding, however, can depict people of color or poor people as more prejudiced than White, middle-class families. In this 18-month ethnographic study, the author complicates this rejection paradigm through documenting the narratives of 40 LGBTQ youth experiencing homelessness. The author examines how poverty and family instability shaped the conditions that the youth perceived as their being rejected because of their gender and sexuality. This rejection generated strained familial ties within families wherein the ties were already fragile. Likewise, the author shows how being gender expansive marked many youth's experiences of familial abuse and strain. This study proposes the concept of conditional families to capture the social processes of how poverty and family instability shape experiences of gender, sexuality, and rejection for some LGBTQ youth.

In March 2021, Hannah Wallerstein and Jordan Osserman facilitated a live dialogue over Zoom on the subject of transgender young people, with four psychoanalytic clinicians and thinkers. The conversation draws on short essays submitted in this section of The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child as a springboard for discussion. It has been transcribed and edited for length and clarity, and is reproduced here. Questions explored include the differences surrounding gender identity in childhood versus adulthood, the use of medical interventions for children experiencing gender dysphoria, the tension between psychoanalytic neutrality and affirmation, and the ethical stakes of working in this field.

In 2004, a young Seattle girl with significant disabilities known only by the pseudonym Ashley X, underwent a series of medical procedures without her consent. At the request of her parents, Ashley received a mastectomy, a hysterectomy and hormonal treatment, designed to arrest her development in a childlike state. In the eyes of her doctors, her family, and their lawyers, it was urgent that Ashley's body be aligned with her purported cognitive age. The temporal and ethical arguments used to justify her 'Treatment' turned Ashley's body into a site of international debate over disability and human rights, consent and medical science, eugenics and human engineering. Yet the similarities and differences between Ashley's non-consensual pubertal arrest versus that actively sought by trans youth are rarely mentioned. This paper uses the clinical and media discourses at work in both the 'Ashley Treatment' and the treatment sought by trans youth to think through this moment in which some bodies are treated to greater forms of autonomy while other bodies have none. I argue that the discourses used to secure transition for some trans youth ought to be weighed against the implications for others, in particular for trans youth with disabilities. While the availability of puberty suppression for trans youth can be narrated as a sign that things are getting better, the literatures of queer temporality and critical disability studies help to consider that it may also augur something else—a widening gap between those invested with the ability to stop time versus those who are stopped in time.

Culture, and more specifically literature, functions as a tool to define and shape the world around us. Regarding literature, children’s literature is often overlooked despite having the strongest impact in us because of the age in which is consumed. Therefore, is necessary for children’s literature to be as accurate as possible to real life and society, and that cannot be achieved if it keeps ignoring diversity. Through this paper we’ll collect some of the conclusions relating to those topics and write a short novel with a trans protagonist to apply at school. Because of the state of exception due to COVID-19, the novel has been analysed by professionals and taken to practice with children, with a generally positive feedback.

The issue of LGBTQ violence has been co-opted by a bullying industry that defines the problem in terms of anti-social individuals, discriminatory attitudes, and aggressive behaviors. The concept of gender policing advances the conversation about LGBTQ violence through drawing attention to the heteronormative social norms that are used to reproduce the lines between normal, different, and unacceptable. These (hetero) normative boundaries are used by youth (and adults) to regulate the identities and expressions of queer students in K-12 schools. It will be argued that the conceptual shift from bullying to gender policing creates possibilities for transformative educational practice because the cultural norms underlying the violence become the objects of inquiry and targets of reform, rather than the violent behaviors themselves.

This study documents the child welfare experiences of youth who are LGBTQ and their perspectives on how these experiences influenced their housing instability and homelessness. Youth detailed incidents of gender segregation, stigmatization, isolation, and institutionalization in child welfare systems that they linked to their gender expression and sexuality, which often intersected with being a youth of color. The youth described these incidents as contributing to multiple placements and shaping why they experienced homelessness.

The Division of Clinical Psychology (DCP) of the British Psychological Society (BPS) invited Professor Ken Zucker as a keynote speaker to their annual conference in December 2010 (BPS, 2010). Zucker works at the Toronto Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH) and is considered an authoritative figure in the controversial diagnosis and ‘treatment’ of children with ‘Gender Identity Disorder’ (Hill et al. 2006). He is also Chair of the American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Sexual and Gender Identity Disorders Work Group for the DSM-5 (APA, 2010). His invitation was proposed by the DCP conference committee ‘expert group’ who research potential speakers for the division (J. Unwin, personal communication, November 15, 2010). This invitation sparked an angry and concerned response from many. Zucker’s work at the CAMH GID clinic has been widely criticised by academics (e.g. Wilson, 2000; Wren, 2002; Menvielle & Tuerk, 2002; Hird, 2003; Langer & Martin, 2004; Lev, 2005; Bryant, 2008), organisations (e.g. Burleton, 2008; Choe, 2008; Queerty, 2009) and individuals concerned with LGBT issues and gender diversity.

Recent years have seen a substantial change in how children who challenge gender norms (referred to in this article as ‘‘Gender Independent’’) are regarded by professionals, by their families and by the public at large. Pathologized and treated for decades as a mental illness, childhood gender non-conformity would seem to be imbued with new meaning, as evidenced by a growing number of public voices claiming gender variance as part of human diversity. Call it a paradigm shift: from disorder to diversity, from treatment to affirmation, from pathology to pride, from cure to community. This commentary article reflects on recent shifts in language, shifts in identity options, and shifts in the focus of intervention with gender non-conforming children. Drawing on existing research and public discourse, I consider what the field of human sexuality can learn from ‘‘Gender Independence.’’

Mark Latham, One Nation Leader in the Upper House of the NSW Parliament has introduced a proposed bill into the NSW Parliament entitled "Education Legislation Amendment (Parental Rights) Bill 2020"

This bill if passed would create significant harm to transgender and gender diverse students in schools in the State of NSW, Australia, and threaten the employment of teachers and staff if they provided them with any support.  It would also disallow any educational reference to transgender and gender diverse people in schools.

Our submission to the Legislative Council’s Portfolio Committee No.3 is to outright reject the proposed bill.  We recommend another course of action to improve LGBTIQ inclusion in the NSW Education system

• Incorporate more support services for LGBTIQ children within NSW Schools
• Improve facilities for transgender and gender diverse students in all NSW schools
• Provide teacher training (primary and high school) around LGBTIQ issues, including but not limited to Transgender and Gender Diverse students. This would include PreService and InService Training.
• Development of protocols to protect LGBTIQ students who may disclose their LGBTIQ identity to school staff (teachers, psychologists, counsellors, nurses, office staff etc), and require protection of that disclosure from their parents for their own safety
• Provide significant enhancements to the PDHPE Curriculum for inclusion on understanding for all students around LGBTIQ citizens and appropriate sexual health considerations for LGBTIQ students
• Remove exemptions for non-government schools in NSW that allow them to discriminate against LGBTIQ students, students of LGBTIQ families and LGBTIQ staff.

RESUMEN Es notable la creciente inquietud en torno a la incertidumbre del sexo y género en los primeros años de vida. Mediante el análisis de tres casos atravesados por el tema de la infancia y por los discursos modernos del sexo y el género, en este artículo se discute sobre las transformaciones que estos factores introducen en las condiciones de producción de la identidad sexuada. Las indagaciones científicas sobre el sexo, las teorías psicológicas del desarrollo del género, la política de gradual apertura a espacios posibles de ciudadanía, los movimientos de derechos humanos y la difusión de nuevas narrativas en medios masivos de comunicación, son algunos elementos que reconfiguran en la actualidad las preguntas y las respuestas acerca de quién y qué es un niño o una niña. ABSTRACT It is notable the increasing interest and quandary surrounding issues of sex and gender during the first years of life. In this paper we analyzed three cases in which the childhood is intertwined with modern discourses of sex and gender. The changes of the conditions in which the sexual identity is produced are exposed. Scientific research regarding sex, psychological theories of gender development, the politics that are gradually opening spaces to different possibilities of citizenship, human rights movements and the dissemination of new narratives through the media, are just a few elements that nowadays

Objective: This study is a longitudinal evaluation of the effectiveness of gender-affirming hormones for improving psychological well-being and decreasing suicidality among transgender youth referred to a transgender health specialty clinic at a large Midwest children’s hospital. Method: Forty-seven youth (13.73 to 19.04 years; M = 16.59, SD = 1.19) who received gender-affirming hormones were assessed at least 2 times: before the start of treatment and at least 3 months after treatment. Results: After gender-affirming hormones, a significant increase in levels of general well-being and a significant decrease in levels of suicidality were observed. Conclusion: These findings suggest that gender-affirming hormones are a valuable medical intervention with promising psychosocial outcomes for transgender youth.

Training has been developed to support staff who work with patients at a privately run psychiatric hospital in northern England to refer to transgender-diverse individuals (TGD; Saewyc, 2017) by their preferred name, pronouns, and self- identified gender (Richards et al., 2019), at all times in conversation and documentation (Walton & Baker, 2019). Primarily it will be delivered as a stand-alone session, but if successful may become part of the hospital’s mandatory three-week induction. Patients at this hospital experience complex conditions, are either adolescents of any gender or adults assigned female at birth (AFAB). The umbrella term TGD is used, being inclusive of people of non-binary genders (Coleman et al, 2012; Dembroff, 2020; Haslanger, 2000; Hembree et al., 2009; Hyde et al., 2018; James, et al., 2016; Scandurra et al., 2019; Seal, 2017; Telfer, et al., 2018; Van Caenegem et al., 2015; Yeadon-Lee, 2016).
The consequences of any individual’s unique experiences of discrimination and stigma are greater than the sum of their parts (Crenshaw, 1989; Jefferson et al., 2013): the stigma of mental health (MH) and being TGD exacerbates MH symptoms (Richards et al., 2019; White Hughto et al., 2015). Evidence indicates widespread discrimination against TGD in MH and healthcare settings in general (Bockting et al., 1998; Cicero et al., 2019; Heng et al., 2018; Kattari et al., 2019; Kattari et al., 2020; Kcomt et al., 2020; Lambda Legal, 2010; Lombardi, 2001; Mizock & Lundquist, 2016; Powell & Cochran, 2020; Romanelli & Lindsey, 2020; Seelman et al., 2017; White & Fontenot, 2019; Whittle et al., 2008), and frequent misgendering and dead-naming of TGD in this hospital has been observed by the writer. Inadequate training may be
2
implicated, and although staff who spend most time with patients often receive least training (Walton & Baker, 2019), the issue is not confined to one staff group. Inadequate training in multiple medical professions has been evidenced (Bristol et al., 2018; Dubin et al., 2018; Kattari et al., 2020; Kcomt et al., 2020; Korpaisarn & Safer, 2018; Rowan et al., 2019; Safer et al., 2016; Snelgrove et al., 2012) to lead to negative consequences for TGD. Training supports staff to feel more confident and prepared (Carabez et al., 2016; Kattari et al., 2020; McCullough et al., 2017; Valenta et al., 2018; Walton & Baker, 2019; White & Fontenot, 2019), mitigates issues of power, and leads towards a more positive environment.
Therefore, a profound need exists to train staff to adhere to the correct signifiers by demonstrating that misgendering and dead-naming are damaging both to the individual and TGD community by educating them about wider TGD issues, and by informing them of relevant laws, codes and guidelines. Fundamental to the present training are the Social GRRRAAACCEEESSS Model (Burnham, 2012); Ecological Model (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; 1994); and Hagan & Smail’s (1997) power-mapping technique.

Parents of gender non-conforming children encounter substantial conflict as they negotiate their children’s “Otherness.” For decades, a pathologizing service model has advocated clinical correction. In opposition, some parents adopt affirming stances toward their children. This study explored the knowledge underneath this stance, asking parents of gender non-conforming children how they know what they know. Analysis revealed a process of recognition and knowledge of the children’s needs acquired through relationship. Drawing on political philosophy and psychoanalytic theory, I argue that the affirming approach to gender non-conforming children is a non-aggressive response to the “Other” and a justice-based parenting practice.

This is a book on the experiences of transgender persons in Karnataka and the journey of Jeeva, a community based organisation established in 2012, that works to promote the rights of gender and sexual minorities.
There are four sections in this book. The first and second map personal stories and experiences with the major institutions of society such as the state, media and family. Most stories have been shared by friends of Jeeva who have consistently supported Jeeva in prioritising issues for reflection, conversation and campaigns. Some stories have been adapted from ‘Ananya’, Jeeva’s print magazine, or interviews aired on Jeeva Diary, a community radio programme. Jeeva’s key interventions are highlighted in the third section. The final section touches on engagements with law and the state and includes experiences from campaigns and traces key developments and current concerns for gender and sexual minority rights. In the annexures to the book are a glossary of relevant concepts, acronyms used in the book, links for reference and further reading and finally, lists of sensitive hospitals, counsellors and NGOs/CBOs.
We hope this book generates awareness, understanding and dialogue on the concerns of gender and sexual minorities. Though not exhaustive, it attempts to reflect the rich and varied experiences, challenges and victories of gender and sexual minorities – personal, collective and organizational.
In case of difficulties in viewing the PDF, visit https://www.slideshare.net/WinnuDas/our-voices-our-experiences-2019. For any further queries or comments, contact winnudas@gmail.com.

The successes of the transgender rights movement in the US have taken place in the institutions where politics is imagined to take place--the courts, legislatures and administrative policy venues. However, struggles outside these venues are much less visible to scholars in political science. That invisibility is not surprising for two reasons. First, in political science, these institutions are often constructed as the horizon and limit of politics. Secondly, in order to be legible within US legal architecture, claims for equality are generally constrained within a “but for” arithmetic: for example, but for characteristic X, one would have been treated equally. The legal subject is thus reduced to a singular trait, which is belied by the lived reality of most. As a result, those whose oppression results from linkages between structures of racism, ethnocentrism, class, (dis)ability, and gender/sex are much less legible to political scientists and to the mainstream of LGBTQ equality movements. Moreover, the illegibility of trans politics outside the law produces its own effects, recursively reifying a “transnormative” subject of rights. In other words, illegibility can help constitute and reinforce what a “normal” trans person must be like. This essay will first briefly review the successes of the mainstream transgender rights movement in the US.  We will then shift our analysis and examine the embodied practices of trans political resistance. Embodiment includes the lived realities of transgender people, from gender expression to varied gender identities, as they are performed outside of the law’s rational gaze.  We frame our analysis with the concept of epistemic injustice, using it to critique the erasure of lives, experiences, and the variability of trans politics at the level of shared knowledge. It is our hope to resituate trans resistance in ways that do justice to their political lives highlighting the embodied and epistemic frontiers they inhabit.

Since the 1960's, children who fail to conform to expected gender roles (gender non-conforming children) have been the recipients of troubling psychological treatments designed to bring their gender expression in line with social norms. Proponents of these programs deem them necessary to alleviate children's " distress " and " discomfort " while critics charge clinicians with doing harm to children through a reprehensible practice. In this paper, I apply Foucauldian theories of power to the work of two clinicians (George Rekers and Kenneth Zucker) to explore how families with gender non-conforming children are governed in corrective treatment programs. While it is frequently noted that gender non-conforming children face rejection and exclusion, I argue for consideration of corrective treatment programs as a calculated and dangerous form of inclusion – an ensemble of disciplinary techniques drawing these children and their families into an enclosure of dangerous power relations. I propose that these treatments are reflective of the historical shift in the exercise of power in modern liberal democracies whereby populations are increasingly governed through expert knowledge, the administration of shame and the exploitation of the desire for success and normality. I outline a politic of response based on Butler's concept of intelligibility and the goal of doing justice to someone.

Language for transgender people and transgender talk. Or how transgender individuals are shaped and shape themselves in language.
Special Issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language (IJSL) De Gruyter Mouton
Editor: Emilia Di Martino (Università di Napoli Suor Orsola Benincasa) ; Co-editor: Luise von Flotow (University of Ottawa)

Discussion about the language of transgender is rare. There has been little systematic study of the relationship between transgenderism and language. Episodes such as the backlash against tweets that was directed at Catherine McGregor on the Australian talk show Q&A (October 2014) have recently brought the issue of trans-etiquette to the fore. In a culture moving  beyond  mere  tolerance toward embracing diversity, the focus could now be on how transgender individuals, who have chosen a multilayered and flexible identity, shape themselves in language. This issue of the International Journal of the Sociology of Language  invites contributions that explore transgenderism and the permeability of boundaries from the perspective of language, focusing on how transgender individuals are constrained by language other people use to talk about them but also on how they manipulate those constraints when talking about themselves or using language to engender others.
Theoretical reflections as well as analytical explorations of newspaper and magazine articles, Internet groups discussions, interviews, films, TV series, documentaries, and other written and/or audiovisual materials connected with the themes identified and produced in English-speaking countries are encouraged. Intercultural and interdisciplinary approaches are most welcome.

Keira Bell’s case against the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust challenged the notion that children can consent to certain forms of gender-affirming care, and the subsequent trial has sparked global effects. This paper considers the unconscious fantasies and anxieties that surround both this trail and trans childhood more broadly. Although psychic phenomenon, the normalized defenses of adults continue to inform policy, healthcare, and have a significant impact on the materiality of trans lives. Drawing from Elizabeth Young-Bruehl, I argue that gender non-conforming children become an extension of their caregiver’s subjectivity and provide a unique container for adult’s projected, unbearable thoughts and feelings. In particular, Young-Bruehl’s use of three Freudian personality structures is helpful for tracing symptomatic expressions of childism and conceptualizing the different unconscious motivational forces behind otherwise disparate, public discourses of concern for the child’s wellbeing.

Purpose:
In this thesis the perception that high rates of suicidality can be found in transgender children and young people in Denmark is sought to be explored through several paths of inquiry, which seek to understand this possible prevalence of suicidality and how it may be prevented and intercepted. Additionally, the role of the state in regards to both suicide ideation and suicide prevention is examined, whereto early access to gender-affirming healthcare is explored as a possible element in trans-specific suicide prevention.

Theory:
Biopower, Necropolitics, Critical Suicidology, Transstudies, Queer Theory.

Method:
Critical Suicidology, WPR, Transstudies, semi-structured interviews.

Result:
As suicide ideation and suicide prevention are found to be within the influence of governmental priorities and politics, effective suicide prevention programmes should be government-funded and supported through local authorities. As specialised knowledge is needed to provide effective strategies, research must be conducted on the wellbeing of transgender children and young people below the age of 15, in Denmark. Furthermore, a literature review on international studies researching suicidality in transgender children and young people, as well as interviews with three Danish transgender rights activists, provided lived experience and evidence-based recommendations on how to improve the quality of life and wellbeing of transgender children and young people.

Many comparative studies have evaluated the behavioral and functional differences between the male and female sexes. Fewer studies have evaluated the gender identity in addition to these findings. This literature review attempts to provide an outline of the most commonly referenced behavioral differences between the male and female sex as well as explain the neural mechanisms associated with the behaviors. Special attention will be allotted to studies with conflicting methodologies and results as a tool to illustrate the gaps in knowledge required for simple diagnostic methods of empirical evaluation required for concrete evidential support for transitioning transsexual patients. Furthermore, regardless of differences in participant size, or conflicting results of behavioral, and neuroimaging studies, the role of hormones in the formation and regulation of the brain does establish unchanging gender identity prevalent throughout a lifetime. The role of hormones as a prevalent factor in the establishment, maintenance, and possible modification of brain structure and corresponding behavior is imperative in the identification for the early transition of transsexual youth.