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Transgender child aged 6

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    #2
    Annasopra
    Registered Users Posts: 40,982 ✭✭✭✭Annasopra


    BattleCorp wrote: »
    http://news.sky.com/story/1107686/transgender-girl-coy-mathis-wins-toilets-case


    Can a child of 6 know that they are transgender or are the parents pushing the child that way?

    I know a friend who has a daughter that doesn't like to (won't) wear girls clothes but I wouldn't say she's transgender at 6 years of age.

    Honestly I do think that yes a child can know at the age of 6 that they are transgender. In this case the parents did not just decide overnight that Coy was a girl.

    http://www.lgbtqnation.com/2013/02/coy-mathis-a-familys-journey-to-support-understand-their-transgender-child/
    Coy is a triplet, with a brother, Max, and a sister, Lily. At 5 months old, Coy was already expressing a preference for items associated with girls, the Mathises recalled. A friend gave them baby blankets, and Coy took a pink blanket meant for Lily. The Mathises didn’t think too much of it.

    They bought Coy toys normally associated with boys, but she showed little interest. While Max was excited when Coy opened her Christmas present in 2009 to find a toy car from the Disney movie “Cars,” Coy simply set it down and walked away.

    As Coy got older, she found and wore her older sister’s bathing suit, which had fringe that made it look like a tutu.

    Still they pressed on in raising a boy, encouraging Coy to wear boy clothes and bought shirts that had pictures of sports, monsters and dinosaurs on them. She showed little interest, and refused to leave the house if she had to wear boy’s clothes.

    It didn’t bother her father, an ex-Marine, that Coy liked to wear pink bows and dress up in girls clothes. That is, until Coy insisted on leaving the house with them on.

    “She would see the stereotypical outfits laid out and then get this look of defeat and then would go, ‘I’d just rather stay home,’” her mother said. “It wasn’t about the pink. It was about people knowing she was a girl.”

    When Coy asked to be taken to the doctor to be “fixed,” they took her to a psychologist who diagnosed her.

    Coy started kindergarten in August 2011 but once the Mathises learned that Coy’s behavior wasn’t a phase, they allowed her to wear dresses and identify herself as a girl in the middle of the school year. The withdrawn child who was lagging behind in school began to flourish.

    It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

    Terry Pratchet



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    #3
    jaffacakesyum
    Closed Accounts Posts: 2,207 ✭✭✭jaffacakesyum


    I don't think a child can possibly know aged 6 about gender identity. It's a very complicated issue that even adults have difficulty understanding about themselves. Children go through all sorts of phases.


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    #4
    Rachiee
    Registered Users Posts: 880 ✭✭✭Rachiee


    Its pretty complicated 6 year olds know if they are biologically a boy or a girl and they are taught from about age of 2 about gender norms ( girls play with dolls boys play with cars) so if a 6 year old isnt hung up on his/her genetalia and identifies more with the other gender based on their understanding of gender norms I'd say they have a fairly good idea. I know my cousin who was born female now male from the age of three expressed that she thought she was a boy. Id say from the age of 7 it was pretty obvious he was right.


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    #5
    baby and crumble
    Registered Users Posts: 8,512 ✭✭✭baby and crumble


    jaffacakesyum wrote: »
    I don't think a child can possibly know aged 6 about gender identity. It's a very complicated issue that even adults have difficulty understanding about themselves. Children go through all sorts of phases.

    I think adults make it difficult. Once we start attaching social values to gender, that's when gender identity becomes a problem. If you remove societal influences on gender, it's actually pretty simple.

    "I feel like I am a girl"= female.

    "I feel like I am a boy"= male.

    Adults complicate everything. I mean if you explain "gay" to a 5 year old, they'll mostly just go "oh, ok. so boys can like boys and girls can like girls? Grand. Let's get icecream".

    I personally never went through a "phase" where I thought I was a boy. I did however, once I got a bit older (7+), pretend to be a boy when I was on holidays because I knew that boys played the more fun games (to me) but that the boys in the playgrounds on the campsites we stayed in wouldn't play with me if they knew I was a girl.


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    #6
    elfy4eva
    Registered Users Posts: 1,204 ✭✭✭elfy4eva


    Unless a child comes right out and says, I feel i'm in the wrong body,
    I would feel it's wrong to assume they were TG based purely on their
    behaviour.

    However if a child does say that they feel they're in the wrong body
    then I would be of the opinion that it's a parents duty to support
    their childs personal identity and reinforce that being transgendered
    is a natural occurance.

    Please forgive me if I say something silly, as I am not informed of the
    legal perspective to this area. However I'd be interested to know from a
    state perspective. Are parents allowed to change their childs gender?
    And Is there a process for this in Ireland?


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    #7
    Hilly Bill
    Registered Users Posts: 6,039 ✭✭✭Hilly Bill


    http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=83431754


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    #8
    cassid
    Registered Users Posts: 811 ✭✭✭cassid


    I think its a little young at 6 to be honest.


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    #9
    wonderfulname
    Registered Users Posts: 3,943 ✭✭✭wonderfulname


    I think 6 is a little young to enforce social norms on a person against their understanding, why do young children amongst themselves even need gendered bathrooms? What could humanly be wrong with any personal expression they may have? Enforcing adult concepts on children is something I have no time for, what's the harm in letting them be who they see themselves as?


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    #10
    baby and crumble
    Registered Users Posts: 8,512 ✭✭✭baby and crumble


    I actually find gendered public bathrooms weird. What's the point of them? Just make all bathrooms have loads of cubicles and you're done.


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    #11
    will.i.am
    Site Banned Posts: 192 ✭✭will.i.am


    baby and crumble wrote: »
    I actually find gendered public bathrooms weird. What's the point of them? Just make all bathrooms have loads of cubicles and you're done.

    Then the poor guys would have to queue for the women to finish.

    Back to the question tough, I think 6 is a bit young for the kid to know something like that.


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    #12
    BattleCorp
    Registered Users Posts: 11,758 ✭✭✭✭BattleCorp


    baby and crumble wrote: »
    I actually find gendered public bathrooms weird. What's the point of them? Just make all bathrooms have loads of cubicles and you're done.


    Would you drop your knickers in a cubicle if you knew a man was the other side of a flimsy partition? And all he had to do to see your naughty bits was to peek over or under the door?

    I don't know too many women who would be comfortable with that.


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    #13
    bodice ripper
    Registered Users Posts: 4,681 ✭✭✭bodice ripper


    BattleCorp wrote: »
    Would you drop your knickers in a cubicle if you knew a man was the other side of a flimsy partition? And all he had to do to see your naughty bits was to peek over or under the door?

    I don't know too many women who would be comfortable with that.


    I would be fine with it. is everyone else living in terror or something?


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    #14
    wonderfulname
    Registered Users Posts: 3,943 ✭✭✭wonderfulname


    There are arguments for gendered bathrooms, pretty much all based on the notion all men are potential predators but no women, it's not really applicable to kids. I personally despise them, they make me uncomfortable and using the one I'm 'supposed' to has resulted in altercations, which makes me extra wary of where I'm apparently not supposed to be, it's all very confusing.


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    #15
    baby and crumble
    Registered Users Posts: 8,512 ✭✭✭baby and crumble


    BattleCorp wrote: »
    Would you drop your knickers in a cubicle if you knew a man was the other side of a flimsy partition? And all he had to do to see your naughty bits was to peek over or under the door?

    I don't know too many women who would be comfortable with that.

    Ummm, you do know how women pee, right? We don't strip naked and straddle the loo or anything. It's basically just sitting. What would this hypothetical peeper actually see? Also, how paranoid do you have to be to worry about stuff like that? For goodness sake, it's like changing rooms in shops. You never get completely undressed, people would see more of your skin at the beach. Don't get me wrong I'm not some crazy person advocating no boundaries, I just think that we should give men more respect than to assume their main goal in life is to see me pee.


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    #16
    gcgirl
    Closed Accounts Posts: 4,044 ✭✭✭gcgirl


    BattleCorp wrote: »
    Would you drop your knickers in a cubicle if you knew a man was the other side of a flimsy partition? And all he had to do to see your naughty bits was to peek over or under the door?

    I don't know too many women who would be comfortable with that.

    Theres many a time I went onto the lads because the ladies was chocca


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    #17
    BattleCorp
    Registered Users Posts: 11,758 ✭✭✭✭BattleCorp


    baby and crumble wrote: »
    Ummm, you do know how women pee, right? We don't strip naked and straddle the loo or anything. It's basically just sitting. What would this hypothetical peeper actually see? Also, how paranoid do you have to be to worry about stuff like that? For goodness sake, it's like changing rooms in shops. You never get completely undressed, people would see more of your skin at the beach. Don't get me wrong I'm not some crazy person advocating no boundaries, I just think that we should give men more respect than to assume their main goal in life is to see me pee.


    I was teaching a class of seven women today and I asked them would they use a unisex bathroom, i.e. would they pee if myself or another man that they didn't know was in the cubicle next to them. They all said no, they wouldn't if they could at all help it.

    I'm not saying that they speak for all women everywhere, but that was their opinion.


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    #18
    baby and crumble
    Registered Users Posts: 8,512 ✭✭✭baby and crumble


    BattleCorp wrote: »
    I was teaching a class of seven women today and I asked them would they use a unisex bathroom, i.e. would they pee if myself or another man that they didn't know was in the cubicle next to them. They all said no, they wouldn't if they could at all help it.

    I'm not saying that they speak for all women everywhere, but that was their opinion.

    I was going to say I'm surprised at that but I'm not. Most women are disturbingly paranoid.


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    #19
    JupiterKid
    Moderators, Social & Fun Moderators Posts: 12,631 Mod ✭✭✭✭JupiterKid


    6 is very young but I do think that many children have a reasonably good idea about their gender identity and sexual orientation at a young age.

    When I was about 7 or 8 years of age I pretty much knew I was gay although I couldn't really understand, express or verbalise it in the deeply homophobic Ireland of the 1980s.


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    #20
    Annasopra
    Registered Users Posts: 40,982 ✭✭✭✭Annasopra


    Interesting

    http://bitchmagazine.org/post/believe-me—my-daughter-is-transgender

    It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

    Terry Pratchet



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    #21
    Annasopra
    Registered Users Posts: 40,982 ✭✭✭✭Annasopra


    This article is very good


    http://globalnews.ca/news/815052/11-year-old-transgender-boy-shares-story-at-school/

    It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

    Terry Pratchet



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    #22
    PucaMama
    Registered Users Posts: 3,129 ✭✭✭PucaMama


    I dont think its fair to label a child transgender at 6. Boys and girls should be free to play with watever toys they want. Just because he wanted girls toys etc doesnt mean hes transgendered its perfectly normal.


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    #23
    Annasopra
    Registered Users Posts: 40,982 ✭✭✭✭Annasopra


    PucaMama wrote: »
    I dont think its fair to label a child transgender at 6. Boys and girls should be free to play with watever toys they want. Just because he wanted girls toys etc doesnt mean hes transgendered its perfectly normal.

    That's missing the point

    She didn't just want to play with girls toys - there was a lot more to her wishes than that showing that she wanted to live life as a girl

    It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

    Terry Pratchet



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    #24
    PucaMama
    Registered Users Posts: 3,129 ✭✭✭PucaMama


    mango salsa wrote: »
    That's missing the point

    She didn't just want to play with girls toys - there was a lot more to her wishes than that showing that she wanted to live life as a girl

    I dont think such important decisions should made by a 6 year old child. Children shouldn't have to worry about gender issues. Children want a lot of things its up to the parents to deal with things the right way and I dont think they were right in this case.


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    #25
    Annasopra
    Registered Users Posts: 40,982 ✭✭✭✭Annasopra


    PucaMama wrote: »
    I dont think such important decisions should made by a 6 year old child. Children shouldn't have to worry about gender issues. Children want a lot of things its up to the parents to deal with things the right way and I dont think they were right in this case.

    But it wasn't just the parents - a Psychologist confirmed it.

    It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

    Terry Pratchet



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    #26
    PucaMama
    Registered Users Posts: 3,129 ✭✭✭PucaMama


    mango salsa wrote: »
    But it wasn't just the parents - a Psychologist confirmed it.

    Was the psychologist involved from the start


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    #27
    Annasopra
    Registered Users Posts: 40,982 ✭✭✭✭Annasopra


    PucaMama wrote: »
    Was the psychologist involved from the start

    I'm not sure what you mean? or how it is relevant?

    It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

    Terry Pratchet



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    #28
    PucaMama
    Registered Users Posts: 3,129 ✭✭✭PucaMama


    mango salsa wrote: »
    I'm not sure what you mean? or how it is relevant?

    Im just asking was the psychologist involved since thr child first said they felt they were transgender


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    #29
    Annasopra
    Registered Users Posts: 40,982 ✭✭✭✭Annasopra


    PucaMama wrote: »
    Im just asking was the psychologist involved since thr child first said they felt they were transgender

    I don't know but again I'm not sure how that is relevant

    It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

    Terry Pratchet



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    #30
    PucaMama
    Registered Users Posts: 3,129 ✭✭✭PucaMama


    mango salsa wrote: »
    I don't know but again I'm not sure how that is relevant

    I just dont see how a six year old knows what transgender is let alone say they are it. Far too young for that. Should be only interested in school toys friends etc at that age.


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    #31
    Annasopra
    Registered Users Posts: 40,982 ✭✭✭✭Annasopra


    PucaMama wrote: »
    I just dont see how a six year old knows what transgender is let alone say they are it. Far too young for that. Should be only interested in school toys friends etc at that age.

    My understanding is that "'He wanted to know when we were going to take him to the doctor so that they would give him girl parts so that his body would be a girl."

    Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2347149/Coy-Mathis-Transgender-child-6-Colorado-wins-civil-rights-case-use-girls-bathroom-school.html#ixzz2drflj7le
    Follow us: @MailOnline on Twitter | DailyMail on Facebook

    It was so much easier to blame it on Them. It was bleakly depressing to think that They were Us. If it was Them, then nothing was anyone's fault. If it was us, what did that make Me? After all, I'm one of Us. I must be. I've certainly never thought of myself as one of Them. No one ever thinks of themselves as one of Them. We're always one of Us. It's Them that do the bad things.

    Terry Pratchet



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