| Introducing my peer in graduate school, Sage Croft. Her story is inspiring as well as courageous!! Thank you, Sage, for allowing me to share this wonderful story on my blog. ~Robbyn Wallace~ |
Imagine yourself going to kindergarten. You've been looking forward to going to school like a big girl, filled with excitement and dread in equal measure, and by the time that special day arrives you've built it up into something so huge you're hardly able to contain all the emotions inside. You get to the school and all the kids look so much bigger than you had expected. You feel pretty small, but you're determined to go forward. Without realizing it, your fingers clench a little tighter to your mother's hand. Belying your inner turmoil, you hold your head up so as not to miss a thing, and you walk into your very first classroom.
Everything is coming at you at once, leaving you a bit dizzy from the overload. Then the ringing in your ears is replaced with your teacher's first sentence welcoming you to her class. Only, something's not quite right; the words "little boy" are echoing in your ears. Surely she wasn't talking about you, right? After all, you are a little girl. There have been some others that have called you a boy before, but you really expected your teacher to get it right. How could this be happening?
You are directed to a group of a few other children playing. These children are playing with blocks and trucks, and the teacher is gently steering you toward them. On your way there, you see another small group of kids playing with dolls and kitchenware. You change the course of your steps to go in that direction to play with the little girls, where you belong. But no, the teacher says you are to play with the boys.
This goes on all day and again the next. In fact, it goes on every day for as long as you can possibly stand it. The heartbreak is too great, and the pressure has built to the point where you really believe your very being is sure to break in two. You aren't in any way able to express these feelings or make things right because, whenever you try, you get into trouble. Your teacher is frustrated with you. Your mom is always mad at you. Your dad doesn't know what to do with you. Nobody wants to be your friend or play with you. You are all alone with all of these bad feelings and WRONG is just growing bigger every day.
The doctor has given you medicine that is supposed to help you calm down. Other medicine is supposed to help you sleep. Another doctor gives you more medicine to stop the twitching. In fact, there are so many medicines that you don’t even know what they are all for anymore. All of the medicine doesn’t stop the WRONG from growing.
Now imagine, at this point, someone finally sees the real you. What if this someone, your mother perhaps, could see that you really are a little girl? What if she helped you tell your teacher, your dad, and the other kids in your class, that you are really supposed to go play with the dolls and kitchenware? Instead of taking you to the barbershop at the end of this month, she takes you to buy a pretty, pink brush. When she finds that horrible G.I. Joe t-shirt you hid under your bed again, this time your mother throws it away. Finally, when you pull her toward the pretty clothes in the store, she actually follows you!
The noise is dying down in your head. You don’t have to let a tiny bit of the bad out by throwing yourself on the floor and crying yourself to exhaustion. Your teacher smiles at you. Other kids let you play with them at recess. Daddy looks at you with wonder when you start giggling during dinner.
Soon, like the distress you had been feeling for so long, the medications begin to fall away. Each of the 14 drugs you had been forced to take in an effort to make you “normal” simply disappears. You were a walking pharmacy. But nothing was wrong with you. Society was forcing you into a mold that simply didn’t fit. They saw your penis and assumed you were a boy. It was more than you could handle and, over time, you started to come undone. Once everyone learned how to really listen to you and understand what was going on, they stopped forcing a role on you that wasn’t yours to play. With the freedom of being allowed to live authentically, the WRONG went away.
Many people have commented on how you’re a different child now. But really, you were always there. Everyone was pushing you down into this really small part of who you were. You were being buried under all the stuff they were trying to turn you into. After discontinuing your posturing and removing your disguise, you are shining, resulting in a visible change. You really do look like a different child in every way, but you always knew who you were.
Thank you for reading this far. Being exposed to stories such as this one, or through films such as Boys Don’t Cry, “can help build empathy for and understanding of the issues and prejudices faced by transgender individuals” (Gladding & Newsome, 2010, p. 87).
The particular client population that I envision advocating for is transgender children. This demographic needs advocacy for the freedom to live authentically, to bring their gender expression into congruence with their gender identity, and to no longer be pathologized, discriminated against, and dehumanized for being trans.
Promoted by Dr. Kenneth Zucker, a punitive approach was adopted in the 1970’s for treating transgender children. Zucker’s reparative therapy techniques prescribed corporal punishment for gender nonconforming behavior in children, most especially in natal males who displayed female tendencies (WPATH, 2011). The 7th edition of the Standards of Care put forth through the World Professional Association of Transgender Health (2011) no longer sanctions Zucker’s technique. There is not an established protocol for treating transgender children, but WPATH advises that clinicians adopt an individualized approach of support when treating this population group.
For those “born in the wrong bodies,” the relationship between gender identity and gender expression often results in efforts at bringing the two into congruence. Released just two years ago was the first of its kind, in-depth research on the findings of transgender specific outcomes in American society; however, even this comprehensive report failed to include research on pre-adolescent members of this population. Findings of the study reflect adolescent and adult transgender people suffer long-term consequences that are a direct result of discrimination against their transgender status in the community (Grant, et al., 2011). While scientists are starting to discover the outcomes of successful transitions in adults, as well as the problems inherent in not transitioning, there has been exceedingly little research done on any of the factors relating to transgender children.
Of the limited information that has been collected on transgender youth, being denied social acceptance for their gender identity and expression was identified as the primary contributing factor for suicidal behavior. Some of the variables that influenced the degree to which acceptance was achieved center around who the transgender person was with. Acceptance among family, friends, at school or the workplace, in a place of worship, at the doctor’s office, with a landlord, contact with police, or interacting with strangers are likely to elicit profoundly differing degrees of understanding and acceptance for the transgender person (Grant, et al., 2011).
These findings illustrate the tremendous pressure transgender children are faced with, and the potential damage such expectations for conformity can have on them as individuals and to society as a whole. Social perceptions of transgender children place a stigma on the parents during the child’s early years, and the shame shifts to the individual as he or she grows older. With the advances in the professional community that have begun promoting compassion, there is hope for increased tolerance in the general population resulting from greater understanding through continued education.
What draws me to this client population and issue? I am the lucky mother of an incredible transgender child who has taught me the true meaning of courage as she simply goes about living.
-Sage Croft
References:
Gladding, S. T., & Newsome, D. W. (2010). Clinical mental health counseling in community and agency settings (3rd ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Merrill.
Grant, J. M., Mottet, L. A., Tanis, J., Harrison, J., Herman, J. L., & Keisling, M. (2011). Injustice at every turn: A report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey, executive summary. Washington, DC: National Center for Transgender Equality and National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. Retrieved from http://endtransdiscrimination.org/PDFs/NTDS_Report.pdf
WPATH (2011). Standards of care, 7th edition. World Professional Association of Transgender Health. Retrieved from http://www.wpath.org/documents/Standards%20of%20Care%20V7%20-%202011%20WPATH.pdf
