TV pediatrician on CNN says something stupid about transgender girls

blueelm

IIRC at six years old we could not get enough of looking at the different parts because they were different!

If the fact that some kids have penises is scary to girls then a) they must not have little brothers and b) some one taught them to find it scary.

It seems like there’s a risk of harassment either way, so why not let the kid at least get potentially harassed while going to the restroom that validates her femininity though?

thaum

That supposes that elementary school girls regularly look at each others’ genitals.
Diogenes

You’re experience was quite different from mine.
http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

We had daily penis examinations at Catholic School. That’s normal right?

/s

el_gallo

I didn’t walk around bathrooms with my penis exposed until after I was old enough to drink…

MurasakiMadness

I dunno…being raised by a single mom, my son didn’t see the inside of a men’s room until he was 5, and to hear his stepdad tell it, he totally dropped trou and walked around to use the urinal.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Ender-Wiggin/100000885624281 Ender Wiggin

hell…i can’t even start a stream if there’s someone else in the room to this day.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100005139005562 David Craig

I don’t understand how a child, who hasn’t gone through puberty, can have adopted a sexual identity? In a case like this, I always worry if there’s a hyperactive parent reinforcing the behavior that the child will ultimately reject? There’s been several disastrous cases by adults attempting to change a child’s gender identity (most famously David Reimer who ultimately committed suicicde). Just because a little boy enjoys wearing skirts, tries putting on makeup, or prefers the company of little girls, does NOT mean they’re wanting to change gender identity. As the only boy with a bunch of sisters, I learned all traditional female roles, as well as doing all sorts of girly things. But my gender identity is still male to this day.

Encourage your child to be who they are and pursue the things that interest them, but don’t go proclaiming your child is transgender when the child doesn’t have the faculties to determine that on their own, or the sexual maturity to realize its full implications.

Drew_Gehringer

sexual identity =/= gender identity.
- charliekrustovnovitchgeschalt
  
  Bingo. Sex is anything I or anyone else enjoy doing together, or alone. Gender is the isle I shop for clothes in.
- http://www.facebook.com/joan.opyr Joan Opyr
  
  Bingo! Though I did, in fact, grow up to be lesbian, long before I went to school, I knew *with absolute certainty* that I did not belong in girls’ clothes. That has never changed. Even when I was dating men, and even when I was married to a man, I did not wear women’s clothing if I could avoid it. When I was pressured into a dress and a pair of heels, I felt like Milton Berle. Miserable. In drag. Not authentic. Not me. Biology is not destiny. If this kid says she’s a girl, then she’s a girl. And if someone should see her penis, so what? It’s a body part. Let’s quit making a fetish out of it.
snowmentality

It’s hard for cisgendered people, like me, to understand, because it’s so far from anything I’ve ever experienced.
But this article from NYMag.com has a great quote that exemplifies it:

He’d say things like, “I want to have long hair that moves.” The Benders would counter: Well, there’s the dad at the bus stop whose hair is like that, and he’s a boy; you can be a boy like that. “But I don’t want to be a boy with those things,” Mark would answer. “I want to be a girl with those things.”

If someone had seen you playing with your sister’s dolls, and had tried to force you into being a girl, insisted that you were a girl, told others you were a girl, dealt with you in all ways as a girl — you would have said something like “No. I want to be a boy who plays with dolls.”

Imagining something like that is as close as I can come to the experience I’ve heard trans people describe. It’s not about puberty or sexuality. It’s not about fitting stereotypical gender roles or not. It’s just a down-deep knowledge of your gender identity.

(That NYMag.com article does a good job of grappling with the questions and concerns you’ve raised here.)
- glaborous_immolate
  
  I was thinking, the other day, about atheists like Dawkins who frame theism as belief that is just out of touch with reality. And i wondered, if you view theists who are totally sure there is a God and that their imaginary friend is someone they can talk to as bonkers in need of waking up to reality, then how can the same atheists ever countenance the fancies of,adults (or especially little children) who are just as convinced that their ‘real’ sex/gender is not the same as what their body says.
  - Darren Meyer
    
    Because there is empirical evidence that gender identity is distinct from physical sex? It’s quite telling that you consider gender identity to be a “fancy”…
    - Brainspore
      
      Though I’d be curious to read a copy of Gender Identity Fancy magazine.
    - orangedesperado
      
      I am waiting for Fancy Gender Identity Quarterly myself.
    - mccrum
      
      Splitter!
    - Prinzrob
      
      Mr Rogers told me that everybody’s fancy: http://youtu.be/zcKrIa65FUc
    - glaborous_immolate
      
      There is empirical evidence that the existence of intangible invisible beings is distinct from beliefs about their existence. I used ‘fancy’ just for purposes of the balanced analogy with how religion is regarded by [many] atheists.
      
      Since gender is socially constructed, it seems harder to rationalize it as just empirical Or does the existence of transgender indicate that maybe gender identity isn’t really socially constructed?
    - fireshadow
      
      The NYMag article linked above points to four components of gender: biological gender, gender style/expression, sexual orientation, and gender identity. Perhaps gender style/expression is socially constructed but gender identity is not?
    - margaretpoa
      
      “There is empirical evidence that the existence of intangible invisible beings is distinct from beliefs about their existence”.
      
      Really? That’s quite a claim, considering there is no empirical evidence of the existence of “intangible, invisible beings” at all. That’s some evidence I’d like to evaluate for myself.
    - teapot
      
      Of course religion is regarded like that by many atheists because there is no evidence that your guy-in-the-sky™ exists.
      
      The are thousands and thousands of cases of transgender behavior observable throughout human and animal populations, AND in isolation from mainstream social systems.
    - CH
      
      I’m preeeeeetty sure that gender is not socially constructed. And I don’t see how transgenders has anything to do with gender identity being or not being a social construct. I don’t see gender identity as a pure social construct, but I certainly see it as having a very strong social influence part (I grew up as a “tomboy”, with “girl” as my gender identity but not fitting in into the social “how I should feel as a girl”). We are “socialized” to how to be small girls and boys, and a lot of “how girls and boys are” are social constructs. I think we would see more of a sliding scale of gender identity if we weren’t molded into a binary system of gender identity.
      
      … you sure are starting to sound like somebody who haves a heart attack if a boy of his/hers (it’s usually a “he”) plays with a doll. Because… you know… he might be… … gay!!!! Or it might fall off!!! Aaaaaaaaa!!!!
    - robotanna
      
      “Since gender is socially constructed” [citation needed], also the implication that because something is a social construct it doesn’t matter is really fucking dumb
    - glaborous_immolate
      
      On social construction of gender, see the World Health Organization
      “Gender” refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for men and women.http://www.who.int/gender/whatisgender/en/index.html
      
      ISTM when a girl child says “I want to be a boy” he is saying “I want to participate in the roles, behaviours, activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for a boy”
      
      And since those things are all influenced by society, even a society that is oppressive to girls, how can it be something in the child’s ‘nature’. or do we see they have a ‘boy’ soul now?
  - blueelm
    
    So how often are children born who insist there is a god when all of society and their parents say there isn’t one?
    
    Just curious?
    - mccrum
      
      Well, there was Joe Smith, followed later on by L. Ron Hubbard. I’m sure there were a few more, but once ever hundred years or so.
    - dculberson
      
      Pretty sure both those people lived in a society that believed in a god.
    - ocker3
      
      Hubbard’s motivations for insisting on his God have some pretty serious questions raised about them, and Smith’s as well.
    - http://twitter.com/LeeroyBerlin Leeroy Berlin
      
      Every day? Seeing as the psychiatric wards are full of them…
    - CH
      
      Psychiatric wards are full of gods?
  - CH
    
    What??? What has one to do with the other? And “fancies”? Is your gender identity just a “fancy”? You change your gender identity daily, according to your fancies, depending on if you feel like being a male or a female today?
  - http://twitter.com/Cola82 Cola Johnson
    
    I recommend you actually interrogate the science before postulating wildly about whether sex and gender are purely imaginary. http://scienceblogs.com/gregladen/2012/11/11/skeptically-speaking-189-gay-straight-and-the-reason-why/
- bcsizemo
  
  It’s just a down-deep knowledge of your gender identity.
  
  But that’s where I have a problem.
  
  When I was 6 I didn’t see myself different than the girls I played with (male btw) other than I’m male and they are female. I didn’t think about the clothes they wore or how they acted. We were just kids riding bikes and playing outside. I didn’t even think about sexual things at that age, I mean maybe other than the old standby of girls have cooties. Now move that forward 8-10 years then yes all those things came into play. Girls were interesting and for more reasons than just sexual. At 6 years old I have a very hard time believing this child truly understands what it means when they have said I want a sex change operation.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    When I was 6 I didn’t see myself different than the girls I played with
    
    A) Your experience is irrelevant to anyone else’s. B) I seriously question your memory of your identity at age six. C) What if you had been dressed as a girl and pushed into doing ‘girl’ things? Because that’s what transgender people experience.
    - orangedesperado
      
      Yes, and no one performs sex reassignment surgery on children. The only tragic exception are people born intersexed, with ambiguous genitalia. For years this was treated as some sort of cosmetic surgery/gender emergency, and children’s genitals were surgically mutilated under the premise of appearing normal/not making other children/adults “uncomfortable”. This generally meant cutting that “thing” off and pushing the intersexed person into a female identity. The child had zero say about how they defined or experienced their gender identity, especially as many of these surgeries were done on very young babies, who certainly could not verbalize their gender identity. This surgery left many with genitals that had damaged nerves, dysfunctional urinary structures, etc. Horrifying, basically.
      
      Much of this was thanks to the completely evil Dr. John Money’s theory and research. See the book “As Nature Made Him” by J. Colapinto for a more specific explanation of how damaging and traumatic this theory/practice was, and how John Money essentially LIED about his research.
    - tubacat
      
      Also those interested might want to read Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides. Very good book about an intersex individual…
    - robotanna
      
      “no one performs sex reassignment surgery on children”
      
      why is this the first thing you bring up, as to imply it’s the most important thing?
    - Jorpho
      
      But David Reimer (already mentioned in previous comments) was not born intersexed and was raised counter to his biological gender.
    - orangedesperado
      
      Robotanna: I think that for many people, the concept of transgenderism = sex change surgery. I don’t think that surgery is the most important thing. It is a big thing, a complicated painful expensive thing. My reply was referencing David Craig’s post (above) about the suspicion that parents of some transgendered children are somehow pushing them to this identity by being accepting and open about this, while others state that their child went through a dysphoric phase that reversed itself on its own or worked out differently than they anticipated.
      
      In Canada, people who are gender dysphoric, who take the legal process to change their gender on their ID, etc. must go through a progression including therapy, living a social identity as the “new” gender for a specific period of time, hormone treatments before they can get gender reassignment surgery (ie bottom surgery). However, this does not prevent anyone to live as the gender they feel they are without doing any of these steps.
      
      I just wanted to speak up, in case anyone was thinking that parents of possibly gender dysphoric children were having gender reassignment surgery performed on young children, some of whom may have a more fluid expression of their identity that may change/modify/evolve over time.
    - orangedesperado
      
      Yes Jorpho, I understand that. However, it was Dr. John Money’s theories on gender that affected many individuals that were born intersexed, who were surgically given the default identity as female on the basis of their “inadequate” or ambiguous male genitals. It’s not like a baby can speak up to express their gender. Many people (including David Reimer’s parents) wanted to believe what the medical professionals told them about the psychological impact of their imposition of gender on a child (ie no penis = female).
    - TheBehinder
      
      Says the non-transgender individual.
      What makes your opinion any more valid than bcsizemo’s?
    - Antinous / Moderator
      
      What makes your opinion any more valid than bcsizemo’s?
      
      I’m not claiming that the child in the story has to fit into my personal narrative.
    - teapot
      
      burnnnnnnnn
  - bo_burger
    
    In this era of the Disney princess plague, kids are very aware of boy vs girl by age 3 or 4 in my experience.
    - Jorpho
      
      There was a seemingly thoughtful essay on HuffPo the other day about how lately boys may be negatively portrayed (or at least not as positively portrayed) in the media they consume.
      http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dresden-shumaker/raising-a-son-within-princess-culture_b_2727874.html
      
      Not that I’m particularly qualified to judge its relevance, being rather uninterested in child-rearing presently.
  - http://ravenlunatick.wordpress.com/ ravenlunatick
    
    I dunno, my 6 year old lamented not being a boy almost daily, because ‘boys get all the cool stuff’. Doesn’t seem to matter that I’ve always let her wear khakis and gaming t-shirts (or bridesmaids dresses and tiaras) whenever she wants to. Or that I’ve never discouraged any stereotypical ‘boy’ activities.
    Since I told her it was possible to have surgery to become a boy when she is an adult, if she still feels that way, she seems to have stopped worrying about it.
    Will she still feel that way as an adult? I have no idea. Does she have any idea what a sex change entails? Nope. In fact she doesn;t have a really good idea what makes one a girl rather than a boy. But the bare knowledge that it is possible to change from one to the other seems to have calmed her fears.
Brainspore

I don’t understand how a child, who hasn’t gone through puberty, can have adopted a sexual identity?

I certainly thought of myself as a “boy” long before I hit puberty.

I’m raising boy/girl twin toddlers right now. They have equal access to toys, entertainment, clothes and whatnot, they even share a bunk bed. Yet my son gravitates toward cars, action figures, dinosaurs, and things he can smack with other things while my daughter likes dolls and dresses and bunny puppets and fairies. It’s possible some of this behavior is due to unconscious modeling by myself, my wife and the rest of society, but I think it’s mostly just how they’re wired.

Meanwhile, a colleague of mine has biologically male twins of about the same age but one identifies as a girl. Some people are just wired differently.
- peregrinus
  
  Yep. Wiring. Gravitating. Until I had kids I was sure 10% nature 90% nurture. The number fluctuates from individual to individual. And when they arrived, my kids definitely had character stamped all over them that endures to this day.
  - vonbobo
    
    I had a cousin that played soccer, and his younger brother (maybe 3 yo?) would stand on the sideline and cheer with routines. Today, he is a very talented hair stylist. :)
    - dculberson
      
      That is so totally awesome.
- CH
  
  It was probably also due to conscious modeling, too. What is the difference between action figures and dolls? Why are boys “drawn” to action figures but girls to dolls? What is so inherently “girl” about fairies? Kids see models all around them all the time, telling them how to behave as “girls” and “boys”, it’s _very_ hard to go against that. Even if you did model playing with dolls with your son (did you?), and he still chose to ignore them in favor of action figures, how about the environment, did it encourage playing with dolls or did it send him messages that boys do not play with dolls, boys play with action figures?
  
  I grew up a tomboy, my daughter favors “boy” things. No genetic link between us. Coincidence? Perhaps. But the type of toys we bought were neutral or “boy” toys, and even though she had some “girl” toys, too she definitely has always gravitated towards “boy toys”. Perhaps she would have become a tomboy even though she would have grown up with a pink-pink-princess-pink-barbie-pink pushing mom, but somehow I feel that that mom would be explaining how she just naturally was drawn to princesses and pink. But… I identify myself as girl, she identifies herself as girl, gender identity and how one expresses one’s gender identity is two different things.
  - Brainspore
    
    Actually in our case the first and only Barbie doll in the house was bought as an accessory for my last Halloween costume (I was King Kong and needed a Fay Wray prop). Afterwards our girl was clearly more interested in playing with it than our boy so I let her keep it, though she still called it “Daddy’s dolly” for a while.
thaum

“Encourage your child to be who they are”
This child sounds like they *are* who they are.
Lydia9

There is a huge distinction between sexual identity and gender identity. You’d be hard pressed to find a six year old kid who couldn’t identify their gender, even though they’re only just beginning to have a sense of what their sexuality might be. This child’s gender identity and gender expression are both that of a girl. Transgender kids know who they are, and it’s different from when kids experiment with dress-up.

I’m a cis-gendered woman, but I spent my entire childhood wearing boy clothes, playing boy games, and wishing I was a boy (at times), but I never for a single moment thought I actually WAS a boy, which is the difference between experimenting with your gender expression (which most kids do) and knowing your identity. Want to hear something else that might blow your mind? I’m also on the spectrum of intersex diagnoses: my androgen makeup is more male than female, yet I’ve always identified as a woman, I present as femme, and am a happy, well adjusted hetro lady with big boobs and messed up blood tests. I know transgender people who started saving for their transitions when they were kids, and some who changed their minds after years of passing as something else. This stuff is complicated! And it’s kind of awesome how varied people are!

You don’t know what is going on in that kid’s head/body, but these are by in large not just things that people decide to do one day based on some kind of intellectual reasoning. This kid knows she is a girl. There are plenty of transgender kids who figure this out very early, some who have to hide it until they’re in an environment where safe, some who need to try out different modes of expression before they settle on one, and some who take years to figure out who and what they are. This isn’t an issue of indulgent parenting, or of making assumptions about who a little kid might one day find themselves attracted to (she might be straight, gay, queer, bi, asexual, whatever), this is simply making an accommodation so that a kid doesn’t have to force herself to pretend to be something she’s not. I have transgender friends who are in their 40′s and they are STILL brought to tears when they are strongarmed into using the wrong public bathroom: this shit is real. As for the implications of being thought of by as a weirdo? She’s going to live with them either way. And it’s not like she’s announced that she thinks she’s a pony, this is a real thing: yes, gender is fluid (don’t even get be started on how stupid the binary is) and she might decide someday that she no longer identifies as a girl. But people survive all kinds of things, and in the long run it’s probably better to deal with some shit based on being who you are than it is to spend all of your time hiding it out of shame and then having to deal with it anyway.
http://www.develsaa.com Develsaa

My understanding is that it has nothing to do with sex. As quoted in the cnn article - http://www.cnn.com/2013/02/28/us/colorado-transgender-girl-school/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

“Gender identity is often confused with sexual orientation. The difference is that “gender identity is who you are, and sexual orientation is who you want to have sex with,” said Dr. Johanna Olson, a professor of clinical pediatrics at the University of Southern California, who treats transgender children.”
- margaretpoa
  
  Put in the simplest possible terms, sex is between the legs, gender is between the ears.
margaretpoa

You couldn’t be more wrong. First, gender identity and sexual identity are two different things. Gender is between the ears while sex is between the legs. And FWIW, I knew I was really a girl when I realized there was a difference. As near as I can figure it, sometime between the ages of one and three. The case you cite was assigning female gender to a biological infant male because of a botched circumcision.There was and still is the practice of assigning a gender due to ambiguous genitalia. These practices have been widely and thoroughly discredited and no ethical physician will do that these days. I would suggest doing a bit of research as you seem to be a reasonable and intelligent but woefully incorrect, person.
class_enemy

One thing I’m fairly sure of is that a six year old child is not “suing the school district”.
http://www.facebook.com/cookie7474 Becky Miller

I was very much a “Tomboy” when I was younger. I hated wearing dresses, never played with dolls and loved playing baseball and “cowboy and Indians”. My brother was closest to me in age so I just followed his lead. Around 5th grade I started hanging out with my girlfriends, got a doll for Christmas and developed a crush on a boy in my class. I am thankful my parents let me be and made no judgements. I have been happily married for 43 years and have two kids and 3 grandchildren.
- IronEdithKidd
  
  Did you ask for that doll? I had one show up around the same age. I’m still mad about it. I asked for Legos and a slot car track, and they got me a fucking Barbie. I am a hetero female. I still love Legos and slot car tracks. I still hate Barbie.
  
  My son will probably have some bone to pick with me about toys when he’s older, but at least he’s got Legos and a slot car track.

vonbobo

Med doctors… I’m completely underwhelmed with the majority I have had personal experience with.

Other than our societies blind faith in doctors, what gives this guy any eligibility to be on this panel? He clearly cannot contribute rational points to the discussion, he’s not needed here.

quesarah

@DavidCraig: The sad case of David Reimer actually suggests the opposite of what you’re saying. David was “reassigned” and raised as a girl after a circumcism “destroyed his penis”. It failed – he eventually changed back to living as a man, but ended up ending his own life. Doesn’t that suggest gender identity is present at least partly at birth?

orangedesperado

I believe that both David Reimer and his identical twin brother wound up suiciding as adults (at different times) after enduring some extremely inappropriate experimental therapy with Dr. John Money that helped to ruin their mental/emotional lives. Things like being pre-pubertal children who were told (during therapy sessions) to take their clothes off and look at each others genitals, and assume “man”/”woman” sexual positions. This PhD was esteemed in his profession – not a shady DIY quack…
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Urgh.
- CH
  
  Urgh, indeed!
  
  He might have been an esteemed PhD in his profession… but I would still go with “shady DIY quack”. And it sounds like he might have been a bit… too much interested in small children, and after reading his Wikipedia page where there is a quote http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Money#Pedophilia_tolerance where he is defending “concensual” pedophilia… urgh… yeah.

http://twitter.com/heartffruit Heartfruit

Further evidence that TV doctors deserve to be ignored.

Antinous / Moderator

Further evidence that TV doctors deserve(s) to be ignored. FTFY.
Snig

Don’t get me started on Dr. Oz.

nehpetsE

So what are the reasons for maintaining coed bathrooms, jails, etc?

Other than maintaining the mystique of gender differences what good reason is there?

The instant we had a coed army, coed bathrooms & jails became archaic.

Boundegar

Well, coed jail might quickly become rape camp. But my campus bar was so old and so tiny that, although they let women in back in the 70′s, there was no possible way to build a second restroom. So we made do with one, and it didn’t seem to cause problems.
- allenels
  
  Jails for men and for women is already, as you say, “Rape camp.” It’s sad that as an educated society we accept easily that these conditions exist and yet we do nothing, because, well you know, “they’re criminals, so they must deserve it.” Somehow being s criminal (whether you do the time or not) in America, translates into “less human”.
Brainspore

Largely to avoid rape. Feel free to argue for or against this rationale as you will.
- The Rizz
  
  Non-coed prisons are filled with rape, anyway. Going coed might make it worse (if things are otherwise kept like they currently are), or might become better (since there could be enough of an uproar to finally crack down on the prison rape).
  
  Coed bathrooms are no easier to rape people in than non-coed bathrooms (i.e. easy if the location it’s attached to is deserted and/or noisy).
Darren Meyer

Our society isn’t ready to separate nudity from sexuality. Until it is, there will be a large portion of people who feel extremely uncomfortable in any mixed-sex situation where they might be partly or totally naked (changing rooms, bathrooms, locker rooms, and so on).

That sex-separation actually extends to the military, with a fair amount of effort going toward the avoidance of mixed-sex showers and the like.
- dan7000
  
  Mixed sex bathrooms are becoming more common. I was at a restaurant last night with a mixed-sex bathroom. And this was a large, expensive, popular restaurant so it’s not some fringe thing. A bar in my neighborhood has one. They are common in night clubs. I know of at least one other restaurant that does this too. It’s probably more efficient because it cuts down on the unequal wait-time problem and it eliminates the problem of finding right-gendered maintenance people. It is also more equitable because men and women get the same amount of space/resources (if I recall correctly, unequal bathroom resources has been an issue in lawsuits against public universities). More importantly, it eliminates the problem the little girl in this story is having.
  - AnthonyC
    
    Do they use urinals?
    - http://twitter.com/james4765 Jim Nelson
      
      The places I’ve been in with unisex bathrooms had them in some but not all. Granted, they had just recently converted, instead of building out from scratch…

Antinous / Moderator

I clearly went to the wrong grammar school. I don’t think that I saw another boy’s bits until the first time that I paid for dinner and a movie. Is flashing the new marbles?

Donald Petersen

I’ve been going to all the wrong places. I’ve used the public Gents’ room for most of my 43 years, and I don’t recall ever catching sight of another fellow’s wedding tackle therein except at the trough-urinal at Jack Murphy Stadium.
- Donald Petersen
  
  This reminds me of the tempest-in-a-teapot controversy over where a dad (or uncle or other male guardian) should take his young daughter (or other female charge) when she’s gotta go. I mean, if she’s a bit too young to be sent to a public ladies’ room unattended. Some guys feel it’s best to knock on the ladies’ room door, announce one’s gender and situation and intent, and take the little girl in there for relief, presumably to protect her tender sensibilities from the skanky penis-filled Thunderdome of the men’s room. And I’ve even heard a couple people recommend the guy collar some sympathetic female stranger to take his daughter into the ladies’ room, which strikes me as unreasonable for multiple reasons.
  
  I’ve always just taken my (now kindergarten-age) daughter into the men’s room if her mom isn’t available. My daughter knows that men have penises and can pee standing up, and she’s seen both her little brother’s penis and my own countless times at home (as well as preschool classmates on occasion in the unisex bathroom there), so she finds it perfectly natural to accompany me into the men’s room when the occasion necessitates. Since she’s not in danger of being shocked by anything we might find in a reasonably well-maintained men’s room, the only concern would be on behalf of any men inside. And I’ve never met any guys who were unduly terrorized by the sight of my little girl stepping in for a quick wee. At any rate, I think the risk of me discomfiting the occupants of the ladies’ room would be higher, so why go down that road?
  
  It’s one thing to worry about sex offenders and such, but I’ve always been slightly mystified by people who seem to find it advantageous to preserve the utter mystery of the other sex’s bathroom equipment and habits from their small children.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Guard your carnal treasure.
  - Jerril
    
    When I was a little girl, my father regularly took me with him into the mens changeroom when we went to the pool. I know now there were men in there who were naked, or close enough for this conversation, and yet the only thing that registered with me was learning that ‘flossing’ your crotch with your towel is a great way to get rid of clammy wet butt-crack.
    
    Hey, I was like, 3, this was an amazing trick for me. And my older sister probably already had her first picture book about where babies come from, so penises weren’t going to be a surprise either.
    
    I was not scarred for life by seeing naked men, and I didn’t scar my parents for life with awkward questions. Amazing how that works, isn’t it?
- orangedesperado
  
  The thing is, you need to be interested enough to LOOK.
teapot

Cmon man… don’t tell me you never had a “sword fight” with another kid at the urinal. Sword fights were like the only reason that peeing was fun!
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Gay children often do everything possible to avoid public bathrooms. We don’t usually have the same outcome as Ender.
Tynam

Did your grammar school not make students shower after sports?

(But then, I was at an old-school English grammar school, i.e. still-required-by-law-to-teach-Greek-and-Latin levels of old-school. I’m not sure if it’s the same thing in other countries.)
- IronEdithKidd
  
  That was one odd thing from John Huges movies. I grew up feeling bad for those kids in Illinois. Where I went to school, the only time we showered after gym was the swimming unit in junior high, and we weren’t compelled to.
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  Grammar school didn’t have organized phys ed, just a playground.

http://www.facebook.com/people/Nell-Anvoid/100002383626402 Nell Anvoid

I don’t even faintly recall wandering the boys room with my equipment hanging out … drunk, sober, on an adolescent sugar high…whatever. Makes me wonder what happened to Mr. Pediatrician that this is what comes to mind when pontificating over this issue…

fuzzyfuzzyfungus

I’m guessing either excessive exposure to Motorhead, or a special secret that he isn’t supposed to tell anybody about.
Jake Rennie

Early childhood penis exposure can radically affect one’s bathroom habits and perception of bathroom culture. As a young man in a pre-school lavatory, I was the subject of a demonstration of the special procedure another boy had to do in order to use the urinal. Since then, I have been a Stallman. Perhaps the doctor in question had a similar experience, except involved all of the other little boys.
- CH
  
  “Early childhood penis exposure can radically affect one’s bathroom habits and perception of bathroom culture.”
  Um… in what way? I have a seriously hard time figuring out your comment. Or do you mean seeing a penis of a non-family-member? (I assume from your comment that you are from the US, where nudity seems to be extremely taboo, to the point that children don’t ever see their parents naked… if I have understood it correctly.) But still… I would assume most kids in my country have seen in addition to their parents also others of at least their own gender naked. So… what kind of radically affected bathroom habits do we suffer from?
  - Jake Rennie
    
    I’m sorry, I should have made it clearer that I was being tongue in cheek.

Brainspore

Christ, what an asshole, MD.

Asshole MD? You mean a proctologist?

Fred Robel

That’s a hugely broad thing to say. When I was six, myself and every other boy that I knew, were extremely private in the bathroom.

Maybe we were just uptight six year olds back in 1977, who knows?

margaretpoa

Ummm. “most boys” also don’t believe they are really girls. Stupid asshole.

http://www.facebook.com/maxzadow Maximilian Paul Zadow

A lot of people who have been through this feel a need to explain based on the life-time experience they have had since childhood. Some other people commenting based on the weight of their cultural experience and being negative. This is a young human being who sees herself as a girl. She is a kid. She can worry about what reproductive organs she was born with later. I hope this young woman (if she decides so later) sees this debate in some archive as a record of a barbaric time before she could be happy.

margaretpoa

What a wonderful and thoughtful comment. Yes, this is ultimately something the young lady is going to have to decide but based on personal experience, she won’t be changing her mind.

http://twitter.com/SackOfOwls Steven Barrett

I was a six year old boy once. I am now a 32 year old boy (harhar).

It has been my experience that most boys/men go out of their way to make sure no one sees their penis or that they see anyone elses while in the bathroom. I mean there are unspoken rules as to which urinal you use so that you don’t stand next to someone else who is using one!

g

Xeni –You got this all wrong. This is NOT an insult to transgender people. This is an insult to young humans with penises.

The kid in question (apparently) wants to walk around *any* bathroom with penis exposed, just like any/all other little boys (apparently) do, because they have a penis, not because they are transgender.

The only reason why transgender even enters the question, is that it could alter the set of rooms that this behavior is conducted it. Transgender doesn’t create the behavior, it just changes the room/audience.

This isn’t a generalization about Transgenders. It is a generalization about little boys.

[Yes, yes: it is insulting ignoring gender dysphoria (and the fact that is probably the last behavior that kid wants to engage it), but there is a much larger insult here.]

Christopher Houser

I’m sure some people might find this offensive, but part of me can’t help but think that gender identity strongly encourages behavior like this. What, exactly, does genital acknowledgement do for us? Why do we have to say “I want to be a boy” or “I want to be a girl” when it’s ultimately very arbitrary? What does labeling yourself as a girl give you that labeling as a boy wouldn’t?

Antinous / Moderator

So you’re fine with everyone referring to you as a woman? Wait until you get your dry cleaning bill.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Nell-Anvoid/100002383626402 Nell Anvoid
  
  Now THAT is dangerous territory. Ask any man in a relationship with a woman.
CH

I’m not quite sure what you are referring to with “behavior like this” (so I don’t know if I agree or not), but I do agree with the rest of it. Why do we have to be “choose one” boy or girl? In most situations it’s pretty irrelevant. Why does it matter if a child with boy parts identifies and wants others to identify her a girl? It should be a non-issue.

The issue is mainly that society is built around a binary gender structure, where everything is labeled according to what you carry between your legs. And when somebody doesn’t fit into that mold the “non-visible” gender structure is suddenly pretty visible… and resistant.

cherry shiva

i can’t help wondering if all this focus on “identity” just reinforces the problem. why can’t we just identify as human? who really cares what the sign on the bathroom door says? i’m all for empowerment strategies, but “identity” is essentially mythology. i know it sounds insensitive, but it baffles me. today i’m masculine, tomorrow i’m feminine, later still i’ll be neither, or both. so much emphasis on identity seems to perpetuate the myths we could be leaving behind. just a thought. carry on.

wysinwyg

Camus might argue that as meaning-seeking beings in an utterly meaningless physical existence most of us have no choice but to engage in mythology — or another way to say it, to engage in meaning-making. I think there’s other reasons to believe that the physical universe is too information-rich and varied for us to be able to make sense of it on its own terms, necessitating that we come up with a sort of short-hand — representing patterns in time, space, and our social realities with symbols — which are another sort of pattern. Another term might be “archetypes.” Another might be “myths”.

Another thing to ponder: if we absolutely need a mythology to help us understand the world is it possible that every time we think we are leaving a myth behind we’re in reality replacing it with another myth? Or even simply transmuting an existing myth into another form?

Just a thought. Carry on.

Diogenes

In our house, all the bathrooms are coed.

danimagoo

I used the men’s rooms through the age of 39. At 6, to be honest, I did not consider myself to be a girl trapped in a boy’s body. I was different … I was mostly confused, and didn’t really know where I was supposed to fit in, but I was also pretty smart and I knew boys had a penis, and I had a penis, therefore I must be a boy. For me, the gender identity issues came later. Why? I have no idea. I started taking hormones in my mid to late 30′s. At the age of 39, I was on a business trip, and went into the men’s room at O’Hare in Chicago. I was still living mostly as a male, and was presenting male … or at least I thought I was. Plaid shirt, jeans, steel toed Doc Martins, and hair in a pony tail. As I entered the men’s room, I heard a man outside say, “Did you see that? That woman just went into the men’s room!” That was the moment I knew it was time to go ahead and make the transition to living and working full time as a woman.

My point is, I’m one of the lucky ones (at least for those of us transitioning well past puberty) who “passes” well (I hate that term, but can’t think of a better one right now .. it’s 1am). I still have a penis, though, so legally I am supposedly required to use the men’s room in public. There’s even a gay bar here in Kansas City that has a sign on the women’s restroom saying if you are legally male, you can’t go in there, and if you do they will escort you off the property. They actually have a transgender bathroom … which really pisses me off. If I went into a men’s room in public today, it would cause a problem. No one in there would think I was in the right place, and I sure as hell wouldn’t feel safe.

Also, when I was 6 I didn’t go around in the bathroom with my penis hanging out. And, like I said, I identified as a boy at the time. Bathroom issues suck for transgender people, and there’s no reason for it other than people’s fear and ignorance.

ffabian

You are legally required to use the appropriate restroom in the US (or some states of the US)? Over here (Germany) a bar owner (or any other private business open to the public) could use/make domiciliary/property rules to regulate such things but there is no law. I thought it’s more a matter of decency or manners. What’s the punishment?
- Antinous / Moderator
  
  I’ve used the ladies’ room many times. Never been arrested for it.
  - http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher
    
    And on several occasions I’ve been told I was in the “wrong” restroom by men who were apparently drunk enough to think I was a woman, or who were simply thrown off by my long hair. I can’t say it’s ever been a problem, though. It didn’t bother me, and while in most cases the other guy has been briefly discombobulated he gets over it.
  - blueelm
    
    I have to admit I’ve totally peed in the men’s room when there is an hour line for the women’s. (why does that happen? It takes like 30 seconds to pee and just a few more to wash hands.)
    
    I have managed not to be arrested or raped for it. It’s not my first choice, but hey…
    
    Personally I don’t mind the unisex toilets some places have these days. Most people in the toilet are just really focused on their mission.

class_enemy

There don’t appear to be many comments here from XX-chromosomed women as to whether they are OK sharing the restroom with those whose femininity is between the ears and not between the legs.

If the consensus of those women is “fine with me”, then who am I to disagree.

renleigh

As one of those XX-chromosomed women, it’s fine with me, though of course I don’t speak for all such people.
IronEdithKidd

Did you read Danimagoo’s comment just a little higher up-thread than yours? I’d rather she feel safe than have to comply with some ignorant law. XX, I am.
blueelm

This woman doesn’t care about sharing restrooms with XX, XY or XXY or really if your chromosomes are even mostly human. If there’s a hole somewhere and I can pee in it then we’re cool.
CH

Totally fine with me. I don’t have a problem sharing a restroom with men, either. Well… why would it be a problem? I can see it being a bit more problematic in mens’ restrooms where there are urinals, but then I never have understood why one would want to stand shoulder to shoulder peeing with strangers. Anyway, I love unisex restrooms, it just makes things simpler. Unfortunately I have run into just one public one, so far.
sabotabby

Another cisgendered woman here who has no problem with it.
Frank Lee Scarlett

XX woman here. And I’m perfectly comfortable with this potential topic of concern of yours.

I’d also like to thank you for introducing this potential topic of concern in the interest of XX women to whom mightn’t have occurred. As they say around here, “Good lookin’ out!”

http://www.facebook.com/kitmoss2012 Christopher Hawthorne Moss

Let me ask everyone something… If for some weird science fiction reason you had to choose whether to keep your mind or your bobdy, which would you choose? Most people will say mind, because that’s where YOU exist, Your perceptiions, your personality, your senses. You are not your body. That’s just what others identify you as.

OK, there are two times gender hormones are applied in utero. Once is at the time of conception when the ova’s receoptors attach to the sperm’s. That makes your body male or female.. or maybe not, because you would not believe how many different combinations there are. The second time is when the fetus’s brain is developing. If you are a biological female and the hormone flood is testerosterone, your brain will be male. That’s my situation.

Now go back to that choice.. if you choose mind, then you choose the gender the mind developed into, in my case male.

The reason I think I get this so thoroughly is that I did not come out as trans until I was SIXTY. Imagine going your whole life feeling like you are in drag. Aleays seeing things in a different way than the others who have the same nauyghty bits as you do. Identifyiung with guys. No wonder I thought I was a lesbian… but then I figured out I wasn’t… and for forty years I just said I flunked “Girl”.

It came to a head last year. The gender dysphorea kicked in and I was as miserable anad confused as I have ever been.

Now back to the trans girl in the school bathroom… if you think the other girls will be traumatized by a penis.. imagine how this trans girl will geel going into the boys roomand getting the crap beaten out of her ?

I use the men’s room now.. and I get told I am in the wrong one occasionally.. but I knwo if I went into the women’s room someone would call security.

Yes, you are right.. it is not about sex. That is a separate issue. It’s about who you ALWAYS have been. Believe me, no one goes through this much crap for fun.

Chrisopher Moss

margaretpoa

Gender is artificial. It’s a social construct.

Empirically untrue. That is the same theory that led some physicians to arbitrarily assign gender when a child is born with ambiguous genitalia and others to assign the female gender to biological males who were victims of a botched circumcision. In almost every case, it ended badly. While dress and some behaviors are social constructs, the identity of gender clearly is not. Gender is such a basic part of who we all are that to be uncomfortable with one’s born gender is a huge handicap. If it was entirely a social construct as you suggest, I imagine the suicide rate among transgendered persons would approximate that of cisgendered persons and that’s also empirically not the case. The reason you are “baffled” and you “can’t wrap (your) head” around it is because you are entirely mistaken.

Francis Danforth

Can’t help but read portions of this post in Stephen Colbert’s “I don’t see race”-voice.

blueelm

This is the gender version of being “color blind” though.

Most women want to live as women, just not to be disrespected because of that. Most trans people want to just live in harmony with their gender. It’s mainly about being recognized as who you are and accepted. Unlike you I am not at all ambiguous. I may enjoy some things that are considered masculine, but I *know* that I’m a woman and I *like* being a woman. I don’t like misogyny and the disadvantages that come from the way our culture treats women, but I wouldn’t want to have to become a man either.Hearing a man say “gender just needs to be done away with” is a lot like when a white person says “I don’t even see race” to me.

The wrongness is the assumed default gender, the assumed normality of maleness. Consider that even androgyny is a step away from femaleness.

The treatment needs to change, but obliterating all identities but the tacitly male? No, thank you.