Transgender Children

From my research into the variations in male and female faces I learnt that pre-pubescent children are very similar in how there faces are made up and can easily be mixed up without the markers of hair and clothing. This is an interesting aspect of gender research because  it questions what does make us certain genders - are we born knowing gender norms or are they imposed by society and only our sex is set in stone? Something which shows this question is gender dysphoria in children. It's said in one documentary that we begin to understand our gender identities around age 3 and children as young as this have shows signs of having gender dysphoria and some have been diagnosed as young as 5.

Gender dysphoria is a condition where a person experiences discomfort or distress because there is a mismatch between their biological sex and their gender identity. It mostly happens in teens but can occur in children, and this causes a lot of dispute about whether children should be able to identify as the gender they feel they are.

46 - Zach Avery

47 - Jazz Jennings aged 6

48 - Jazz Jennings aged 11

The following videos helped me to better understand transexuals and gender dysphoria in children and see first hand that pre-pubescent boys and girls faces are practically identical. In all the cases it is impossible to tell that the children are the opposite gender.

49

This documentary was most interesting in it's focus on the parents reaction to their children's gender dysphoria as I feel it shows how society often feels about our discomfort with gender that doesn't conform to norms.

50

I think this is one of the most powerful documentaries in Jazz's very early diagnosis of gender dysphoria. It is clear from this documentary that it isn't the parents influence that made the child believe they were the wrong gender as some people believe but came completely from the child. It is also very powerful seeing how self-aware Jazz is at such a young age and her strong beliefs in people choosing to be whatever gender and sexuality they want to be.

51

The most powerful part of this documentary was the description of the girl going to cut her penis off with nail scissors and the mother saying to the interviewer 'I'd rather have an alive daughter than a dead son'. Suicide is almost 4 times higher in transgender people and the mothers support in this documentary was very moving.

 Seeing these cases where children idenitified with the opposite gender from as young as 3 is evidence I feel towards the post-modern feminist theory that gender isn't based on sex but is a socially constructed concept. The children didn't have any knowledge of the transexual community before identifyinhg strongly with the opposite gender. It also helped to see how strongly boys and girls look the same before puberty and that what gender we assume a child is is based on the outward appearance of their hair and clothes. This makes me want to explore later on doing a makeup on a younger child that takes away their gender identifiers eg. hair to see the difference in how they look.