Dr. Norman Spack, a pediatric specialist at [Boston’s Children’s Hospital], has launched a clinic for transgendered kids — boys who feel like girls, girls who want to be boys — and he’s opening his doors to patients as young as 7.Spack offers his younger patients counseling and drugs that delay the onset of puberty. The drugs stop the natural flood of hormones that would make it difficult to have a sex alteration later in life, allowing patients more time to decide whether they want to make the change.
Just so we’re clear – we’re talking about pre-pubertal children. You know, kids at an age where they want to be an astronaut in the summer and a snow plough driver in the winter. The age when they plan to live at home at 47 because they can’t imagine ever sleeping more than 3 meters away from Mummy. Kids who are too young, by several years, to vote, drive, get a job without their parents’ permission, get married, or even decide they’re done with school. And this guy is proposing to let them take drugs, the long-term health consequences of which are totally unknown, while they try to decide what gender they want to be?
I really hope my esteemed colleagues, and our valued readers, speak up, because I truly don’t know what else to say, just that there is a whole lot more that must be said.
_____________________________
Brigitte adds: A new slogan for the age might be “You’re Never Too Young To Pump Your Body Full of Hormones”, or perhaps “It’s Never Too Early to Get Confused”. I would have been a candidate for such a clinic back when I was 7 years old. I used to think being a girl stank, because you weren’t supposed to do fun things like drive go-karts or climb trees (at least, I wasn’t) and I always thought the boys were having more fun. Somehow I managed to stay off puberty-delaying hormones and eventually I outgrew my gender unhappiness. Am I meant to feel aggrieved because my “condition” went “untreated”?
by 
Leave a Reply