Should We Lock Away The Different?

Yet another story of a kid with such a strong sense of gender identity, that before she could "learn" who she was expected to be, she already knew who she was.  That seems to scare onlookers when :"who she is" doesn't fit the status quo of who she should be. Why do adults believe that when a kid feels something so strongly that they (the adults) actually know better the internal feelings of the child?

I would argue that a child -- who has not yet had any social conditioning -- is better in touch with who they are than adults are.  How many adults follow a life's path based on the expectations of others?  They have passions as a child and teenager, and then are molded by parents, teachers, and/or peer groups to fulfill the agenda of someone else.

When I am out and about, I've had so many "straight" men tell me that they admired the freedom that I display in being who I am, or choose to be. Is there a component in our society that inhibits men from being open and pursuing what makes them happy?

The kid in question is being torn between parents, who divorced over the issue.  But the father has  gotten a court to commit the child, while the mother filed an appeal.



Transgender rights activists have taken up the cause of an 11-year-old transsexual child who wants hormone treatment to grow up as a girl but faces being sent to The child, identified as “Alex,” has male genitalia but considers herself a girl. She lives with her mother, who supports her wishes. But her father strongly disputes this gender identity and has lobbied the Berlin youth welfare office to have the child taken from its mother’s care and put into a psychiatric institution. The two parents separated and divorced over the issue. 

Daily newspaper Die Tageszeitung reported last month that a local district court upheld the youth office’s request, but that the mother is appealing to the higher regional court. A spokesman for the higher court told The Local that because of the private nature of the case, this could not be discussed. “For legal reasons, I cannot confirm or deny that such a case exists here,” the spokesman said in an email. 

Alex’s body will soon develop more masculine traits in puberty, but she told Die Tageszeitung that she has always felt she was a girl and wants to undergo oestrogen treatment. She officially changed her sex and her name, from Alexander to Alexandra, before entering primary school, where she was accepted as a girl. The father reportedly wrote 170 pages of letters to the youth welfare office, describing his former wife as a psychologically disturbed woman who is pressuring their child to become a girl. Alex’s mother, meanwhile, says that her former husband’s judgement is affected by the fact that his family has a history of transsexualism.  

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