Current Events > "She just started blooming", or: How to write about trans kids

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https://www.theguardian.com/society/2020/jun/15/trans-transgender-children-gender-family-project
The short answer is that you actually talk to and write about trans people, rather than just what doctors and studies think about us. Certainly, for some reason, most journalists have no issue platforming TERFs, Gender Criticals, i.e. transphobes and letting them explain themselves and their beliefs and presenting them as worthy even while they ignore us.
I'll post some choice quotes.

Seph, a seven-year-old boy with sweeping blond hair, sat between his mom and me in the backseat of a Lyft for the ride to an indoor playground in the familys New York neighborhood.
Are we going here so that you can see how I play with other kids? he asked, turning to me.
The question took me aback it was so clear in that moment Seph understood he was being watched and examined because he is different, because he is transgender.
Kids like Seph bring into sharp focus what it means to be male, female or something else. There is still widespread belief that minors with gender dysphoria the clinical term for the distress caused by a mismatch between a persons sense of their gender and their birth-assigned sex should not be encouraged to transition. At least eight states have proposed bills that would criminalize doctors who prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to trans adolescents.
On one side of the debate are people who think Sephs gender dysphoria will fade by adulthood. On the other are the vast majority of mental health professionals who study gender dysphoria insisting that affirming a child in whatever way they express their gender is beneficial to their mental health.

At the center are the lives of trans and gender-variant kids who have immediate needs a safe family home and a supportive school environment regardless of what gendered adult outcome other people are hoping for. It was meeting those needs that prompted Jean Malpas, a therapist and mental health counselor, to start the Gender and Family Project (GFP) at Ackerman Institute in Manhattan in 2010 to serve trans and variant kids from age three to 19 and their families.

When he was four, Seph began identifying with Catboy, the silly male protagonist of the Disney Junior show PJ Masks. By the end of preschool, hed become more persistent in telling teachers and friends that he was a boy. Lindsay had an idea that Seph might be transgender but didnt want to say the actual words. I felt like if I put a name to it, it would make it real. So she kept Sephs hair long and didnt raise the issue at school. It was a call from Sephs dad that finally woke her up. He told me that Seph had said, I wish I was never born because no one gets me, recalled Lindsey. No one should feel that way at age five. Soon after her realization, a friend connected her to GFP.

I hated hearing my name, 14-year-old Bryce said about the name given to him at birth, his deep voice resonating through our Zoom call. I just hated how it sounded. It just didnt feel like it fit what I felt inside. I felt like what I was on the outside didnt fit what I felt on the inside.
Both Bryce and his mother, Emma Stovall, remember a day when he was about six and first vocalized that he was trans. They were watching a Dr Phil show about trans people and after the show, Bryce turned to his mom and told her he was actually a boy. I didnt notice [any signs] at all, to be honest with you, she said from their home in Roosevelt Island, New York.
Bryces transition started with cutting his then waist-long hair at about nine years old. We first started by cutting off like the sides. We did it little by little and then eventually we just chopped it all off and now he had short hair, said Emma. I almost wanted to cry because the look on his face was like that of liberation. It was completely priceless.

Similarly, 12-year-old Zions father came around more slowly than her mother it started with him not approving of the feminine way Zion expressed herself and blaming Zions mother, Natalie, for forcing gender stuff on their child. Like Emma, Natalie said she felt a lot of pressure from others in her extended family and community to squash Zions gender expression. Meanwhile, she watched her child get bullied.
Bullying which according to a 2017 GLSEN survey happens to 75% of trans students over her gender expression quickly emerged at the childs elementary school. Zion remembered an incident from when she was about seven years old, before she socially transitioned, when two bullies hid her lunchbox at her East Williamsburg public school because they thought the lunchbox was too effeminate.
At the time, Zion went by he, and so they would just emotionally, socially and physically abuse Zion, said Natalie. Another time, bullies put her in a headlock and threw her off the top of the jungle gym. But when she tried to go to a teacher for help, she was unfortunately turned away. She said, Im just lying for attention. She didnt believe it, Zion said, sighing in frustration.

Seph was all smiles at the indoor playground. He and I played a game of air hockey, which I accidentally won. After that he disappeared into the crowd of kids and I sat down again with his mom.
Lindsay told me that she purposely builds a bubble around Seph. She worries how hes going to react when he realizes that there are so many people in the world who either hate him or wish he doesnt exist. She prays that her child can keep the effervescent personality thats emerged from his social transition through it all.
I leaned in and asked how she thought Seph would be now if she had decided not to ever accept his gender identity. She paused for what seemed like a few minutes. I think I would see an unhappy, suicidal child, she said. Its a sentiment echoed by each of the parents I spoke with for this story.

Of course, the Guardian no longer employs Katelyn Burns, who is a trans woman, but it does fill its editorial page with anti-trans bigotry.
Happy Pride!

I really appreciate these topics EV, thank you for always being such a positive voice for us. Im fortunate to know you

DespondentDeity posted...

I really appreciate these topics EV, thank you for always being such a positive voice for us. Im fortunate to know you

It's what I'm going into social work for. The only thing that makes being trans difficult, expensive, dangerous, and painful is our society. None of that comes from within ourselves.

Bump for this.