{"id":1596,"date":"2021-11-17T01:00:18","date_gmt":"2021-11-17T09:00:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/?p=1596"},"modified":"2021-11-14T11:49:39","modified_gmt":"2021-11-14T19:49:39","slug":"transgender-and-gender-diverse-teens-how-to-talk-to-and-support-them","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/2021\/11\/17\/transgender-and-gender-diverse-teens-how-to-talk-to-and-support-them\/","title":{"rendered":"Transgender and gender diverse teens: How to talk to and support them"},"content":{"rendered":"
Transgender and gender diverse youth have become\u00a0more visible than ever<\/a>. How does transgender history inform us about where society is at in the United States?<\/h5>\n

Jules Gill-Peterson:<\/strong> A lot of the rhetoric around [trans] kids frames them as totally new \u2013 most people are getting to know that there are trans youth for the first time. The visibility that we\u2019re dealing with today is pretty unprecedented. But that doesn\u2019t mean [transgender] people themselves\u00a0haven\u2019t existed before<\/a>.<\/p>\n

One of the challenges that anyone who\u2019s trans faces is coming to an understanding of yourself in a culture that fundamentally doesn\u2019t recognize that you exist. One of the most remarkable things about trans youth is that they\u2019re able to stand up in this world that we\u2019ve created, that gives them no reason to know who they are, and say, \u201cHey, actually, I know something about myself that none of the adults in my life know.\u201d<\/p>\n

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I think history can be a really powerful grounding force to give young people a sense of lineage. It\u2019s not like you look back in time and you see yourself reflected, by any means. But I think it can be profoundly reassuring, in a moment of not just political backlash but the general isolation that trans people face in a cis-normative society, to be able to [see] that you\u2019re not the first person to ever go through this. [I think] that is just kind of a powerful message and one that I certainly subscribe to as an adult too, but I can imagine it\u2019s especially important for young people.<\/p>\n

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What does \u201ccis\u201d mean and where does it come from?<\/h5>\n

Jules Gill-Peterson:<\/strong> This is actually a term from chemistry. It\u2019s a prefix that you can put in front of words. So is the word \u201ctrans.\u201d Trans as a prefix means across \u2013 it\u2019s the spatial metaphor moving across something.\u00a0Cis<\/a>\u00a0means on the same side of. At some point on the internet, people started using that word; they were looking for a word to distinguish between people who are trans and people who are not. Cisgendered came to mean that your gender identity matches what was assigned at birth. That being said, it\u2019s not a totally kind of innocent or uncomplicated term. I\u2019m not sure how helpful it is to think of cisgender as something that people need to own up to, for example, in a pronoun circle (when people introduce themselves by name and by the pronouns they prefer).<\/p>\n

I think often the pressure for people to [identify] as cis doesn\u2019t make any sense, either. It\u2019s like, well, what makes you cisgender? Did you really go through that long process of deciding if your gender matched what\u2019s on your birth certificate, like trans people have to deal with? I tend to use the word cis in my work to describe large historical structures that created that very obligation in the first place.<\/p>\n

Kacie Kidd<\/strong>: To build off that, we as a people have a tendency to put people in boxes. And I\u2019m sure that many of us have had the experience of not neatly fitting into a box that society ascribed to us. And I think that\u2019s something that we all can connect to, and relate to, and understand that our job of putting people in boxes is not helpful, right? And there is no binary for most things, if not all things, and I think our realization of that helps to understand the broader [situation].<\/p>\n

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What are binders and gender-affirming procedures, and is there a right age for them?<\/h5>\n

Kacie Kidd<\/strong>: A binder is a garment that constricts chest tissue and has a variety of uses; elite athletes often use similar kinds of products. But [binders] can help make someone feel more in line with who they are and can help them kind of navigate the world. But the answer to your question is no, there isn\u2019t a perfect age. But these are long, thoughtful conversations and considerations.<\/p>\n

Jules Gill-Peterson<\/strong>: As a historian of medicine, one of the really interesting stories that I pulled in my book,\u00a0Histories of the Transgender Child<\/a>, for example, is that\u00a0gender affirming medicine<\/a>\u00a0originated long before it was seen as gender affirming. The medical techniques used now came out of studying trans and intersex people and under really horrific, barbaric, torturous conditions. But the goal of that research was actually not to help intersex and trans people \u2013 it was to force them to appear more \u201cnormal,\u201d but actually developed means to medically intervene into human sex and gender.<\/p>\n

One of the interesting truths here is that there really isn\u2019t that much of a meaningful difference. The only difference between trans medicine and non-trans medicine is who gets stigmatized for it. Who has to go get a psychiatric letter of evaluation, who has trouble getting insurance compensation? [For example,] who uses the most hormones in this country? Cisgender women and cisgender men. They just don\u2019t have to ask for it as much. Other kinds of surgeries that are exactly the same as gender affirming surgeries are called cosmetic surgeries.<\/p>\n

I worry about my trans daughter having regrets in the future, when going back won\u2019t be an option.<\/h5>\n

Jules Gill-Peterson:<\/strong> I understand the anxiety, but I want to make the case that [regret] is a red herring that\u2019s been planted in our mind. I think the concept of regret is often tied to this idea of \u201cde-transitioning,\u201d the idea that you can transition and then un-transition, which is not a very good way of thinking about it. When people do choose to de-transition, especially trans women, it is due to\u00a0overwhelming social pressure discrimination<\/a>\u00a0and loss of social support people.<\/p>\n

People de-transition when they lose their jobs, when their partners abandon them, when their families won\u2019t speak to them, when they\u2019re in dire financial straits, when they\u2019re experiencing street harassment and criminalization, and when they don\u2019t have the material resources they need to live. Those are the most concerning regrets.<\/p>\n

Our children\u2019s genders aren\u2019t something that belong to us, right? And so our job is to support them in life and try to avoid those regrets, or to avoid the regret of going through puberty you didn\u2019t want to go through, or having to, you know, spend years pretending to be someone you [are not]. I think those are things we should feel regretful for in society.<\/p>\n

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The Conversation U.S. on Oct. 21, 2021, hosted contributors\u00a0Jules Gill-Peterson<\/a>, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University, and\u00a0Dr. Kacie Kidd<\/a>, medical director of the pediatric Gender and Sexual Development Clinic at West Virginia University Medicine Children\u2019s Hospital, in a webinar titled \u201cTransgender and gender-diverse teens more visible than ever: Who they are, what they need and how to talk about sensitive issues.\u201d<\/p>\n

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This article first appeared in\u00a0The Conversation<\/a>\u00a0and is reprinted under Creative Commons license.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Transgender and gender diverse youth have become\u00a0more visible than ever. How does transgender history inform us about where society is at in the United States? Jules Gill-Peterson: A lot of the rhetoric around [trans] kids frames them as totally new \u2013 most people are getting to know that there are trans youth for the first […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[56,270,181,22],"tags":[370],"class_list":["post-1596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-experiences","category-medicine","category-science","category-videos","tag-transgender-youth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1596"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1597,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1596\/revisions\/1597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/treehousewriters.com\/wp53\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}