School faces parents' queries on Transgendered Student's Bathrrom Usage

Methuen school faces parents' queries on student's gender issue
Officials back girl who seeks treatment as boy

By Tracy Jan, Boston Globe Staff
March 5, 2005

Dozens of parents flooded the Methuen school system with phone calls yesterday after a local newspaper reported that a fourth-grade girl had returned from the February school break requesting to be treated as a boy.

The child's parents told school officials that he had always considered himself a boy, rejecting feminine dress and name, and they were agreeing to raise him as a male.

<snip>

Many parents sought reassurance that ''this wasn't just some frivolous happening with the youngster," Littlefield said. ''There is a medical condition that exists here, and this is not something irresponsible on the part of the parents. These are wonderful parents who care very, very deeply about their child."

Most parents who called, however, simply wanted to know which bathroom the child uses, according to Littlefield, who said he told them the youngster uses a separate bathroom, and people say, ''Oh, wow, that's cool."

More:
http://www.boston.com/news/education/k_12/articles/2005/03/05/methuen_school_faces_parents_queries_on_students_gender_issue/


Also:
Basic TG/TS/IS Information
by Lynn Conway
http://www.lynnconway.com/
http://ai.eecs.umich.edu/people/conway/TS/TS-IIa.html

Youth trans-action
Transgendered teens are taking control of their issues and demanding respect in school
By Victoria Scanlan-Stefanakos
From The Advocate, April 10, 2001
http://www.advocate.com/html/stories/835/835_cvr_transaction.asp


National Transgender Advocacy Coalition
12/04/00
Appeals Court Agrees:
Transgender Student May Remain in School
http://www.ntac.org/news/00/12/04glad.html

Data Lounge: School Officials Challenge Transgendered Student's ..
http://www.datalounge.com/datalounge/news/record.html%3Frecord=11583


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Why do people think the school made this decision without thinking it through?

Also, I should mention that not every school comes up with a good, enlightened approach like this. Many TS/TG'ers in transition end up essentially being persecuted, forbidden from using any reasonable restroom facility.

decision?

I don't have any problem with transgendered persons, but I don't think that a 4th grader has enough life experience to make this kind of decision.

I had some gender identity issues when I was younger, so I can empathize. And if the process was as acceptable then as it is now, who knows what I might have done. But all in all, I'm happy in my own skin now, and glad that I'm a man.

Results 1 - 100 of about 19,700 for "transgendered" and "murdered"
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=mozclient&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&q=%22transgendered%22+and+%22murdered%22


Transgendered Woman Murdered In Toronto - www.ezboard.com
http://p074.ezboard.com/fbutchdykeboy5326frm7.showMessage?topicID=679.topic

GLAAD: Transgendered Person Murdered in Georgia
http://www.glaad.org/publications/archive_detail.php?id=672

More transgendered teenagers murdered
http://www.edifyingspectacle.org/sexuality/blog/archives/gender_outsiders_transgendered_others/more_transgendered_teenag.php

Gender Outsiders: Transgendered & Others Archives
http://www.edifyingspectacle.org/sexuality/blog/archives/gender_outsiders_transgendered_others/index.php

VENEZUELA: TRANSGENDERED PERSON MURDERED
http://www.ntac.org/news/00/08/28ven.html

Transgendered Woman Murdered In Cleveland
http://www.gpac.org/archive/news/notitle.html?cmd=view&msgnum=0189

19 transgendered victims murdered in Canada
http://www.dailytexanonline.com/news/2003/11/21/TopStories/Day-To.Remember.Transgendered-565316.shtml

27 reported transgendered people murdered within the last year
http://transyouth.net/

Rita Hester, a transgendered woman, was murdered near Boston
http://www.gendernet.org/quill/pr000006.htm

Armani, whose legal name was Samuel Eugene Daily, was the first transgendered person murdered in the Atlanta area since October 11, 1995
http://murdervictims.proboards18.com/index.cgi?board=news&action=display&num=1082264074

Two Transgendered Women Murdered and One Injured
http://www.differentavenues.org/TransgenderAttacks.html

Remembering Our Dead - Transgendered - A website dedicated to preserving the memory of transgender individuals murdered by hate and killed by predjudice
http://www.reference.com/Dir/Society/Transgendered/

Two transgendered youths were brutally murdered in southeast Washington, DC in the early morning August 12
http://gaycitynews.com/GCN12/transgendered.html

List of transgendered people: Information From Answers.com
http://www.answers.com/topic/list-of-transgendered-people

Transsexual murdered in Namibia. Transsexual Murdered At Okahandja
http://www.lauras-playground.com/trans_news.htm

Teena Brandon, a transgendered person, who was murdered along
with two others in 1993 in rural Nebraska
http://www.pc530.net/14/464/38188.htm


Gwen Araujo (the a 17 year old transgendered teen murdered in Newark, California in 2002
http://www.gayly.com/articleprintview.ASP?articleid=81530670920050215094605

Barretta Williams, a transgendered person murdered on Chicago’s
http://www.cabn.org/archives/1999/092999supportbuilds.html

two transgendered women,
Bella Evangelista and Emonie Spaulding, who were murdered in separate ...
http://www.nswp.org/nswp/pr/pr-030911.html

This year, twenty-five people identifying in some way as transgendered, have been
murdered. The assaults are typically extremely brutal in nature. ...
http://www.tampabaycoalition.com/files/1112Roanoke7PressRelease.htm

The symbolic measure was known as the Angel Initiative, named for Angel Lopez, a San Francisco transgendered prostitute murdered in 1993. ...
http://www.swop-usa.org/in%20the%20fray%20magazine.html

... transgendered woman in Miami was murdered. Last month, Amanda Milan, a
25-year-old black transgendered woman was murdered in New York. ...
http://www.saxakali.com/CommunityLinkups/hatecrimes2.htm

Over the past year almost three dozen people, including two in Houston, have been murdered based on bias against transgendered people. ...
http://www.interfaithadvocateslgbt.org/events2003.html

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http://members.aol.com/sfrosalyne/antihate.htm

A transgendered person has been murdered every two weeks for the past two years.
Far too few of the killers have been found and brought to justice. ...
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Recently there was a Transgendered female murdered near
where I live.
http://www.bodieslikeours.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-106.html

Firestone, Ford Face Charges. WNU: Transgendered Woman Murdered
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According to their figures, currently in the United
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The Day of Remembrance began as a way to publicly grieve for Rita Hester, a transgendered woman murdered on November 28, 1998
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Personally, I didn't know what to call it when I was in the 4th grade. I was different and I learned that I needed to hide it. Somehow, I had an understanding of a very complex situation.

Maybe this child is just as prescient as I was - even if they don't think of 'it' in the same terms as adults?

Hell, I still feel different most of the time. And I hope that you didn't think that I was slamming this kid - or you by extension.

I guess that I have some radical ideas about sexuality. I think that we're all basically bi-sexual and that there is masculine and feminine qualities in all of us.

I just wonder how my of the desire to change ones sexual orientation is brought own by our society demanding conformance to set behaviors for a gender.

I'm familiar with your posts here at DU. I don't think you're so radical regarding sexuality, although I think there are some who are exclusively straight and exclusively gay. :D :thumbsup:

Wish we could have more discussion which explored anthropological perspectives. To be continued... :hi:

I don't want to put words into the mouths of the transgendered folks, because I can't possibly presume to have any idea what it's like.


But I'll answer as best I can for now, just so things aren't left hanging.

Being transgendered is NOT who you're attracted to. Being transgendered is a matter of who you ARE, not who you love.

You don't have to understand anything about sex or relationships or gender roles. You just feel you who are and know who you are.

You know who you ARE much earlier-- and more clearly-- than you know who you are destined to love. You don't even need to understand-- you just know and feel.

We've got a bunch of transgendered people here, and I will leave it to them to correct me or elaborate if they see fit.

I apologize if I may have gotten anything wrong.

That said, I will make one small proviso: There are a very small minority of gay/lesbian individuals who are so averse to the idea of being homosexual that they will then say something like, "I want to sleep with men, therefore the only way for that to be right is for me to be female."

Only they were never actually gender dysphoric. They had no particular desire to be female. So what happens? They end up BEING gender dysphoric after transition and surgery!

I personally am entirely bisexual. I like both men and women, for different reasons. The problem was that before I got myself to the right gender, I wasn't much interested in ANYBODY -- because I couldn't make love in the way I wanted.

Yes, a good therapist will explore to make certain that the person -- whether adult or child -- is simply having issues with being homosexual. I remember being asked those questions, on more than one occasion, and I answered truthfully and honestly. Part of the whole diagnostic process is one of screening to make sure the condition really *is* transgenderism, and not some other pathology.

You got it right though, IanDB1, and thanks for speaking up for us. :)

-Stealther

that can harm their psyche. This child is being treated the least invasive way through FREEDOM to be who he is. Seems the most conservative approach. No surgery, just an opportunity to be. Children are less bound to their decisions than adults.

That's what makes this story so affirming, in my view. No one's flapping around trying to find "cures," but no one's committing this dear child to anything, either. They're just giving him space to create his identity, while providing the love and nurturing that EVERY child deserves.

I love the way you describe the treatment, NSMA: Freedom simply to be. :)

but nothing here is irreversable. I would have thought long and hard about remaining in the same school but given the support that is apparent I can see why they stayed. Hopefully all will go well here.

Only I didn't have the courage to say so.

The child could be wrong. All I know is that I wasn't -- but it took me 25 years more before I was brave enough to accept my true nature, and admit it to those around me.

I haven't seen anything that insinuates that this child has been influenced into this behavior pattern, merely allowed to take this direction as he desires. If he was getting hormones, THAT I'd be opposed to.

The only part of this that genuinely concerns me, is I know the experience of being hospitalized by other grade schoolers on the playground, and that's just because I was generically unpopular. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this child stays physically safe. If it were my child, I'd probably take a somewhat different route than this one just for his safety.

... gender specific rest rooms, as long as there are private stalls. Which there should be anyway.

They can be perverted little creeps (I should know, I was one of them). Enough ghastly things happen in gender specific rest rooms, I wouldn't want to think about the results of a co-ed bathroom at that age.