I thought that article was already linked on Feministing... maybe I read it somewhere else.

you might want to choose a different clip. i'm pretty sure that one is a parody.

did you even watch that video? it's edited and kind of offensive.

I read this in the dead-tree edition of The Atlantic. There has been coverage of Ken Zucker, who is discussed in the article, at Feministe and I think here since the announcement that he will edit the Gender Identity Disorder section of the Diagnostic Statistical Manual.

The article does a really good job of giving a view to the world of families with a gender dismorphic child. There is a fork in the road at puberty, and either choice had permanent consequences. It's terrible for children in their tweens and early teens who know little about themselves and less about the world to have to make, with their families, permanent medical decisions. But there's no getting around it. Once puberty hits, if allowed to run its course, and physical changes will forever limit transition; putting the kid on blockers will limit puberty and virtually commit kids to transitioning. Either way, they have to decide at a very young age.

I can't help thinking that our rigid binary is a lot of the problem. Not the whole thing. (Dr. John Money, I'm looking at your gravestone. There's a biological aspect, and we still don't fully understand its parameters.) But if we accepted genderfluidity, would kids feel so conflicted and driven to be one or the other, male or female? Isn't it obvious that some of these kids would be better with a "neither/some of each/depends on the day" option? (And wouldn't all of us? But that's a bigger question.)

Zucker's methods are as subtle as a medieval battering ram. He indoctrinates kids with stereotypes, and tells parents to cut off and punish all nonconforming behavior. To Zucker, not-trans is a good outcome. But the article discusses one of his patients who does not want to transition; she's cisgendered, but she's miserable and cuts herself. I wonder if Zucker's outcomes are really any better from a happiness and wellbeing standpoint. Actually, I doubt that they are.

Zucker seems intent on hightening the dichotomy: widening the chasm to discourage kids from trying to jump across. That, it seems to me, is just the wrong way to go.

I'm glad to see this topic getting some attention. I'm currently completing my masters program in child psychology; I'm hoping to one day work with transgender children and their families exclusively. I've been involved with one family in particular who helped me to come to the decision to steer my career that way. They're loving parents who want to do what's best for their child, but are so far from understanding even the *idea* of what it means to be trans that it's difficult for them to make the right choices. Even just a little bit of guidance and resource provided for parents can go a long way in helping trans kids. The more people who acknowledge that these children exist in the first place, really, the better off they'll be.

Thanks for posting this article. NPR did a couple stories on this topic earlier this summer. Here's a link to one of them:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=91154157

I posted in my blog about this article awhile back.

As I said there, I think it's very important to not take what is said in this article at face value and interrogate they way the author is presenting gender, especially gender expression. As I said in my post, these approaches both reinforce an expectation to a "trans trauma threshold" (You must be this much of a dysfunctional basketcase post-therapy and express said trauma in certain acceptable ways to really be trans enough to eventually need treatment) and conflate innocence with binary gender expression. If a child doesn't fit into the classic, presumably "innocent" trans narrative, then their feelings regarding their own gender expression can be invalidated.

Also, Autumn Sandeen over at Pam's House Blend has a post right after the article came out with a comment from the director of TransYouth Family Allies, who took part in the article: "[Hanna Rosin] focused on the most vulnerable family she could have focused on, creating the illusion that this family was representative of all of the families -- and that's just not true. We trusted her, and we felt betrayed."

Some food for thought.

There's also this story

http://www.5280.com/issues/2008/0803/feature.php?pageID=1017

I wasn't able to login with Live Journal, an error with Movable or some such when I tried using my Live Journal ID.

I agree with much of what Thomas wrote. The only thing I disagree about those shows and articles trying to present transkids as ideal, is they focus on behavior and feminity/masculinity, reinforcing the idea to the larger society that transition is about gender roles, liking pink and wanting to wear dresses, and not about finding your body configuration wrong, even if it was devoid of social meaning.

It gives reason to the DSM diagnosis of GID, an archaic instrument dating since the 3rd edition, that presents gender roles and expression as the meter to measure the degree to which someone would want to transition. The nature of the diagnosis should change, definitely. It also gives waayy too much ammunition to Zucker and his ilk to "cure people" since its seen as behavior alone.

Given Zucker and Blanchard are on the panel, chances are it would only become even worst. Let's hope that whoever else is on the panel is able to counter them.