A Boy's Life

[babylonsister]

Since he could speak, Brandon, now 8, has insisted that he was meant to be a girl. This summer, his parents decided to let him grow up as one. His case, and a rising number of others like it, illuminates a heated scientific debate about the nature of gender—and raises troubling questions about whether the limits of child indulgence have stretched too far.

by Hanna Rosin
A Boy's Life

Brandon Simms at age 5 in a Disney princess costume
(Courtesy of the family)


The local newspaper recorded that Brandon Simms was the first millennium baby born in his tiny southern town, at 12:50 a.m. He weighed eight pounds, two ounces and, as his mother, Tina, later wrote to him in his baby book, “had a darlin’ little face that told me right away you were innocent.” Tina saved the white knit hat with the powder-blue ribbon that hospitals routinely give to new baby boys. But after that, the milestones took an unusual turn. As a toddler, Brandon would scour the house for something to drape over his head—a towel, a doily, a moons-and-stars bandanna he’d snatch from his mother’s drawer. “I figure he wanted something that felt like hair,” his mother later guessed. He spoke his first full sentence at a local Italian restaurant: “I like your high heels,” he told a woman in a fancy red dress. At home, he would rip off his clothes as soon as Tina put them on him, and instead try on something from her closet—a purple undershirt, lingerie, shoes. “He ruined all my heels in the sandbox,” she recalls.

At the toy store, Brandon would head straight for the aisles with the Barbies or the pink and purple dollhouses. Tina wouldn’t buy them, instead steering him to neutral toys: puzzles or building blocks or cool neon markers. One weekend, when Brandon was 2½, she took him to visit her 10-year-old cousin. When Brandon took to one of the many dolls in her huge collection—a blonde Barbie in a pink sparkly dress—Tina let him bring it home. He carried it everywhere, “even slept with it, like a teddy bear.”

For his third Christmas, Tina bought Brandon a first-rate Army set—complete with a Kevlar hat, walkie-talkies, and a hand grenade. Both Tina and Brandon’s father had served in the Army, and she thought their son might identify with the toys. A photo from that day shows him wearing a towel around his head, a bandanna around his waist, and a glum expression. The Army set sits unopened at his feet. Tina recalls his joy, by contrast, on a day later that year. One afternoon, while Tina was on the phone, Brandon climbed out of the bathtub. When she found him, he was dancing in front of the mirror with his penis tucked between his legs. “Look, Mom, I’m a girl,” he told her. “Happy as can be,” she recalls.

“Brandon, God made you a boy for a special reason,” she told him before they said prayers one night when he was 5, the first part of a speech she’d prepared. But he cut her off: “God made a mistake,” he said.

more...

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200811/transgender-children

[devinkay]

1. Thank you

for one of the fairest and most thorough articles I've read on the subject of transsexualism.

Kenneth Zucker is a crackpot fraud who belongs with the pray-away-the-gay nuts. His methods are certainly no different, and his attitude toward transpeople is dogmatic, patriarchal, callous and hopelessly entrenched. He has no more business chairing the committee to determine whether transsexualism remains in the DSMV than that whack-job gay hater Fred Phelps.

The "why" of transsexualism is merely academic. We *know* who we are from our earliest self-awareness, and no one, no matter how sincere their concerns, should presume to impose their preconceptions on another.

Puberty was a special kind of hell for me. I couldn't have been any more horrified and disgusted if spiders had begun crawling out of my flesh. What I wouldn't have given for the chance to arrest those changes or, better yet, begin transition. Instead, I bowed to the inescapable social pressures of my day and spent the better part of my life hating myself -- which is precisely the path Zucker sets his patients on.

[babylonsister]

2. You are very welcome, devinkay, and welcome to DU.

I thought this boy was some kind of lucky to have such loving parents who accept him as he is. I know many people remain closeted and can't imagine the pain that goes along with not being able to be yourself.