A couple of weeks ago while watching television with my cousin, we came across the Katie Couric Show. At first we were watching the show because we love Katie Couric, but it ended up being a really interesting show from which I learned a lot of new things. Katie had two young people on the show who are transgender. I thought this was interesting and maybe it caught my eye even more because they are young, rather than the older (mid or late twenties and up) people that I feel I always saw being interviewed on shows like Katie Couric's. I don't really know anyone who is transgender and I only knew what I saw on television on shows like Katie's being interviewed and talking about their transformation and the difficulties that they had to go through. I think that I always saw older older people on the show, people who were now independent and maybe didn't live at home any more, so seeing these younger people on the show talking about being transgender was interesting to me and it was something different.
One of the things that I found interesting about the two guests that Katie had on her show that day was that they were so young and their family was involved in their transformation (both cases from being born male and transforming into a female). Coy is only six years old and her family accepts her for who she is. They seem so supportive of her and they got her the help she needed. They even had her see a psychologist to be completely sure they knew what she was going through, and the psychologist told her parents that she in fact is transgender. I find it amazing that the parents are so supportive of Coy even though she is so young, and they immediately did what they could to make Coy feel better and feel like she belonged. The parents said that Coy always seemed to be attracted to the girl stuff more so than the boys' things, and at first they thought "it was just a stage" that Coy was wearing girl clothes. They also noticed that Coy's mood would change depending on what they had put out for her to wear. After they started acknowledging coy as a girl and did things so that she felt comfortable, they noticed that Coy was much happier and she was enjoying herself.
http://www.katiecouric.com/videos/exclusive-coy-mathis-transgender-child-fights-to-be-recognized-as-a-girl/
I thought this story of Coy's family being so supportive was amazing because I feel like parents, family, and maybe people close to those who are trying to find themselves are not always supportive. This can make their journey that much harder because I believe that it must be hard already to feel trapped in a body that they do not relate to, and the rejection or lack of support on behalf of those closest to them must add to their stress. That is why I found it so interesting and pleasing to know that there are people out there who do in fact support their children and do things so that their children are happy. The guest that Katie Couric had on her show next was also born a boy and she always knew she was a girl. In this case, the dad struggled a little more in accepting his son as a girl. Eventually the dad came to accept his son as now a daughter, Devon.
http://www.katiecouric.com/videos/transgender-teen-homecoming-queen/
In both these cases I just think I was so amazed that the two guests always knew they were girls. Devon says that "from the day [she] could talk, [she] would say 'Mommy, daddy, I'm a girl.'" I think that more and more we hear about cases such as this where people are transgender, but I don't think we always hear about people around them being supportive. It may take some time for their families to adjust to the idea that their child is identifying as being of the opposite sex, but as these cases show, it can be done. Having supportive parents and people closest to them can help their transition be easier and a little smoother. Devon also agrees that having a parent's support "plays a key role" in their transition.
These two stories also brought up a good point about supportive people, that even if their family is supportive and helpful to them, the outside world may not always be as supportive and they may have a hard time recognizing them as a girl. I saw Coy on most talk shows that whole week because they were bringing up the issue that Coy was facing at her school. Her school was not allowing Coy to use the little girl's bathroom anymore. Devon says she would go into the bathroom to change when she would get to school and her friends would ask her why she always changed when she got to school. I guess I never really thought about the hard time they would have with everyday things like this, such as which bathroom to go into at school. I would think that they would go into the bathroom of the sex they relate to, but this is obviously a problem for some, such as Coy's school.
Fascinating that you posted this, I saw a snippet of Bill O'Reilly essentially mocking a state law Massachusetts passed, allowing trans children to go into restrooms of their preferred gender pronouns. http://youtu.be/4e2dJTkCjQgn
ReplyDeleteHis justification for disagreeing with the legislation is the fact that the parents or legal guardians do not need to be notified of the transition. The man has absolutely no concept of what trans youth face and the potential backlash of forcibly making a private matter conscious to the parents. The children need provide medical clearance so the concept of a child doing it to be unruly is out of the question. I mean, need I even mention how incredibly disrespectful and demeaning these three people were in mocking the process of transitioning, and in a country where 41% of trans people have attempted suicide?