Thanks for that insight, Pam. I think you've nailed the key problems with child transitioning.

I also totally agree with this: 'Some people need to realize that it is okay to be an effeminate boy or a masculine girl.'

Absolutely. Bizarrely, we seem to have moved away from what was a growing idea that there are many ways to be male and many ways to be female and in some ways stepped back towards more fixed notions of masculinity and femininity, by default - if people who are simply a more masculine girl or a more feminine boy are identifying, or being encouraged to identify, as the other gender because they don't seem to fit comfortably into a standard notion of what male and female are like... it seems a retrograde step to me.

Many of us feel at various times, particularly when growing up, as if we don't entirely fit our gender - we see a particular way of being male or female on tv, in our schools, in culture generally and it doesn't reflect us and that can make us question ourselves in various ways. I think there is a danger in misreading that as somehow akin to the far more profound (as I understand it) sense of dislocation and wrongness that transgender people experience. And it speaks to a tightening of gender conceptions if to be a more masculine girl means you must therefore be male, or to be a more feminine boy means you must therefore be female.

Hmm...

Who in the world imagines that parents objected to ear piercings (on a girl, no less!) in 2000? You'd have to go back to at least 1950 for that attitude, I'd guess. First panel should be "bellybutton" instead. (Y'know, since no one asked for my critique and all...)

She seems to be referring to one ear and has her hand on the right side of her face. I thought that right side piercing being indicative of gay/lesbian sexual orientation was less prevalent by 2000; but, that could be what it's about.

Depends on the age of the girl, also on ethnicity. Some people of Portuguese, Spanish, and Italian descent in New England do baby girls before their first birthday, others make them wait till High School.

Parents can be so unpredictable and exasperating. :lol:

Lifesite News?

They're about as credible as your standard UK tabloid.

Besides, that's Canada and they're sorry. ;)

I don't know anything about the site, the story is what caught my eye.

Is the story wrong?

If it was on Lifesite, it is automatically at least suspect. They're pretty infamous for just making things up, or deliberately misrepresenting things.

It's amusing how transparently biased that article is. They report on a gender issue and make the editorial decision to refer to the child as "she" and when the judge refers to the child as "he" they throw a [SIC] in after it.

Lifesite doesn't make any pretense of being unbiased.

So: the site is biased.

Okay.

Best I can tell pretty much all outlets are.

But: is the story wrong?

But up to 2014 we all would have expected the [sic]

This reflects a cultural bias that reflects a majority* opinion. She is a 15-year-old girl who wants to be a boy and is in transition. Most people would insist that AB's pronouns reflect her current biological categorization, especially as a teenager. It doesn't really matter what she wants, legally; and it doesn't automatically change if she is taking hormones on the way to transition.

That attitude may be, um, wrong; who knows, it is a crazy issue.

However, in Canada, it is damn near illegal to refer to a transitioning person with anything other than their chosen pronoun.

The article is clarifying the judge's incorrect language for its readers.



*I have no evidence it is majority, that is just a guess on my part

Oh and I wouldn't trust the article.

It does us the favor of linking to the actual court transcript though. The actual facts will be in there.