There is an interview on youtube with Kim Petras. She had SRS not long after she turned 16. But she started hormones already at age 12. She never broke his voice.

No comments. Many questions I've heard here answered by herself.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RDJXR1wXofA

"She never broke his voice."

Now there is an interesting sentence.

She never broke his voice.

That is the kind of grammatically improbably, but absolutely correct sentence that I hope we will be able to hear more often in the future. It refers to a young person who was born into a male body that was able to receive puberty-delaying hormones at age 12 (essentially chemical castration) so that “his” body never went through male puberty and “his” voice never changed.

After significant psychiatric and medical counseling, female hormones and sexual reassignment surgery were made available so that the female brain received a body to match. The body is now feminized and is referred to as “she” to match her gender.

While Kim Petras, the subject of this TV interview, is German, it has been the Dutch who have pioneered transitioning at such a young age. There have been very few cases elsewhere in the world yet, though there is hope that publication of the DSM-5 (http://www.eunuch.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=17439) may make it more common in the United States. (But only if the suggested revisions are accepted!)

While the individual’s name was not, of course, disclosed during an academic presentation, there was a slide show of the SRS of a 16 year-old MtF given at the WPATH meeting in Oslo last year. There’s a brief description of it in Post #8 in Meeting Notes (http://www.eunuch.org/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=16059). It was amazing to watch the process of turning a penis and scrotum that were little boy size into the labia and vagina of an adult woman.

I hope news items like this become more common in the future.

In so many (I think most) cases, the transgender person knows early on in life that they are a different gender inside than their outside body. Forcing male to female transitioners to undergo masculinizing puberty is just cruel and wrong. It is also wrong for a female to male trasitioner to have to endure the feminizing effects of puberty.

I know that getting the medical establishment to make even the slightests changes is difficult, but at least in the transgender department I think a radical change is long overdue. Were it up to me, I would make gender reassignment surgery available to any sane person at age 16, maybe even 14, and puberty delaying and/or desired gender hormone therapy available no later than age 12 for any youth who shows clear transgender indications.

punkypink (imported) wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2010 9:40 am "She never broke his voice."

Now there is an interesting sentence.

Yes, I put some thought into writing this. It seemed most correct and shortest sentence.

I think you wrote the sentence very well and I understood and appreciated it immediately.

DeaconBlues (imported) wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2010 12:32 pm I hope news items like this become more common in the future.

.....................

DeaconBlues (imported) wrote: Sat Feb 20, 2010 12:32 pm I know that getting the medical establishment to make even the slightests changes is difficult, but at least in the transgender department I think a radical change is long overdue. Were it up to me, I would make gender reassignment surgery available to any sane person at age 16, maybe even 14, and puberty delaying and/or desired gender hormone therapy available no later than age 12 for any youth who shows clear transgender indications.

That is great in theory. However, at any of those ages, you have to get your parents to agree with the treatment. How many do you think will agree?

I would have liked to have prevented many aspects of male puberty. However, I would not have even dared to suggest it to my parents.

Also, other boys can be very cruel at that age. If you don't develop at a rate which they consider to be normal, You will get teased as sissy, girlie, or even other more demeaning terms.

Do the girls do the same to other girls who develop slowly? How do girls react to slow developing boys? How do boys react to slow developing girls?

Mac (imported) wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2010 8:50 am That is great in theory. However, at any of those ages, you have to get your parents to agree with the treatment. How many do you think will agree?

I would have liked to have prevented many aspects of male puberty. However, I would not have even dared to suggest it to my parents.

Also, other boys can be very cruel at that age. If you don't develop at a rate which they consider to be normal, You will get teased as sissy, girlie, or even other more demeaning terms.

Do the girls do the same to other girls who develop slowly? How do girls react to slow developing boys? How do boys react to slow developing girls?

This is my huge concern too.

Mac (imported) wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2010 8:50 am That is great in theory. However, at any of those ages, you have to get your parents to agree with the treatment. How many do you think will agree?

When you and I were kids, not many parents would have accepted it or even understood it, but seriously, times have changed. Today, I do believe many adults, who are the grown up gen-x-ers who got to see first hand the hypocracy of a lot of the baby boomers, are now thinking quite differently.

Mac (imported) wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2010 8:50 am I would have liked to have prevented many aspects of male puberty. However, I would not have even dared to suggest it to my parents.

Again, I tell you times have changed. I had a short, sweet and simple talk with my son a few years ago. I made it clear to him that he never needs to keep a secret from me, but if he wanted to keep somethings secret I would respect his privacy. I also made clear that whatever he thought of his own sexuality, straigh, gay or bi, or gender, male, female or any other thing, I would accept him, I would never condemn or condone anyone elses personal choice in such a private and personal area. Did your mother or father ever speak that way with you? Mine sure did not.

Mac (imported) wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2010 8:50 am Also, other boys can be very cruel at that age. If you don't develop at a rate which they consider to be normal, You will get teased as sissy, girlie, or even other more demeaning terms.

Uh-oh, I know I am beginning to sound like a broken record here. One more time, "times have changed." There will always be the bullying sort of brats in schools, and with the apathetic and lethargic school administrators and teachers there is actually very little being done by them to improve that situation - but there IS something that is very effective that is being done by others to greatly improve that situation. Who? The people who are really guiding our children today, the so called "pop icons" and such. Compare for example, Elvis/President Nixon/Arthur Godfrey or even The Beatles versus Michael Jackson/President Obama/Oprah Winfrey. Would President Nixon have ever appointed any transsexual to any position in his administration? Yet President Obama just did that very thing. These men and women do greatly influence our children.

Mac (imported) wrote: Sun Feb 21, 2010 8:50 am Do the girls do the same to other girls who develop slowly? How do girls react to slow developing boys? How do boys react to slow developing girls?

From what little I know of it, it seems to me that girls are even worse than boys about ostricizing and scorning the ones they don't like, girls are generally not as physically confrontational, but are in my opinion much more cruel and unforgiving... So I suppose that a female to male transitioner would have to face some cruelty as "she" left "her" feminine past and became masculine. So do you think that just because, in our current climate the transitioning youth would face a lot of troubles, we should just let things continue as they are?

I stand by my first post, where I suggest that puberty arresting therapies and desired gender hormones should be made available to younger transitioners as a rule, and NOT the exception. If anything, I think that even younger ages should be considered. From what I have read, seen and heard, nearly every transgendered person knew very well that they were transgendered at a very early age, most by the time they were six years old. Forcing a transgendered youth to try to "live up to" the incorrect assumptions/expectations of others is just wrong and cruel. If I were to forcibly raise a non-transgendered girl to live, dress and act like a boy, I would be quite clearly guilty of child abuse, same thing if I were to forcibly raise a non-transgendered boy to live, dress and act like a girl. Equally, I believe that it is clearly wrong and abusive to force, or even to compel with shame or guilt trips, a person to live or dress in the gender that does not suit them, even if the person is young, and even if it appears to me that the person is only indulging in a passing phase of gender identity experimentation.

When I was a kid, I knew several "sissy/girly" boys and a few "tom-boy" girls, and sadly, these sort of children were cruelly teased by the other children, it was NEVER the right thing to do. In our very ignorant and backward thinking at that time, we justified this sickness by telling ourselves that we were doing good to "toughen up that sissy boy!" (I still shudder with nauseating shame when I remember the way I thought and acted back then!) It was wrong, very wrong and just plain sick to think that way, but that is what our popular icons of the times seemed to be telling us to do.

Times are changing, and in this arena at least, things seem to be changing for the better. Let's keep the change going in the right direction.

I think many people who are transgendered know well before puberty they are stuck with the wrong sexual parts. You pose the question of parents who would not accept this and I imagine its the same issue as people who are narrow minded and find out their daughter is a lesbian or their son is gay. I hope that we have moved beyond this being shameful or whatever it is that makes people act like jerks. I wonder if this is similar to people who marry outside the religion or race etc and how that used to be just beyond the pale?

RFK once said, 'Some men see things as they are and say why. I dream things that never were and say why not.' Great Words!

If we accept that a person can be diagnosed with Gender Identity Disorder at an early age why NOT accept that? In other words treat a child who has GID and treat them so that they may transition without all the added pain etc of removing the male (or female) characteristics that come with puberty? And live a proper life when its so much easier to accomplish?