Dana Bevan looks at the four ways that trans kids are being treated by doctors. From affirming care to attempting to change a child’s gender through therapy or applying psychotherapy to “fix” children, the professional medical community has factions that embrace each of the treatment options. It can be confusing but Dana tries to make it easy to understand.
Dina Amberle ties on her apron and hits the kitchen like a whirlwind. She has whipped up some amazing entrees for the menu today at Dina’s Diner. First though, to clear the palette, she serves up a bit of information on the possibilities of finding out by testing which children might grow up and be trans. Then she serves up the supposition that many of the recent depictions of drag and trans characters on TV and in films are not as positive as they might seem. After that she fills a plate with the wonderfulness of sheer inserts in feminine attire, and then provides a potpourri of smaller dessert items. So tasty. Don’t miss Dina’s Diner!
A gender clinic in Canada was diagnosing children as transgender and then subjecting them to “reparative” therapy. The clinic claimed that their therapy was effective in getting eighty percent of the children to stop acting out trans behavior. There was only one major flaw in their data (along with several small flaws). The majority of the children were not transgender. Dr. Dana Bevan looks at the studies based on data from the now-closed clinic and shows why it was wrong and how it has been used to dismiss the accepted fact that being trans is something you are born with.
When “scientific studies” present conclusions about the nature or occurrence of transgenderism our resident scientist Dr. Dana J. Bevan digs into the data and takes a closer look at the numbers. Recently conservatives have based their opposition to treating trans children by giving them hormone blockers and letting them express their true gender by saying that there is no evidence that trans children won’t “grow out of it.” They base this assertion on “clinical data” from psychiatric gender clinics. Dr. Bevan examines that clinical data and comes to a different conclusion.
Trans children are gaining more recognition in the world but there are still far too many who are experiencing rejection by their families, bullying and harassment from their peers and many end up homeless. Cate O’Malley feels it’s up to us, the members of the trans community, to treat these children as if they were our own. She feels it’s up to us to lend our experience and information to the kids and to any parents, guardians or agencies tasked with helping trans kids.
Dana Bevan looks into what’s going on with today’s trans kids. Unlike the old days when trans kids kept quiet about their gender identity today’s trans kids are coming out much sooner. Is that good for trans children? What problems will they face that are different from the older generation’s who came out later in life? What advantages will they have for coming out at a young age? Dana takes a look at the available data and provides some insights into what we know, and makes recommendations for further study.
