The copy below is to what I think is an excellent article from The Guardian newspaper in Britain. My own opinion is that under 18 is possibly too young to transition, however I knew full well who I was inside at that age, and if I’d transitioned my life would have been far more productive and easier! (Sadly, it’s so long since I posted on here I’ve forgotten a lot of the tips!)
News : Society : Children
‘My body is wrong’
Should teenagers who believe they are transgender be helped to change sex? And if so, what about the four-year-olds who feel the same way? Viv Groskop meets the parents and doctors in favour of intervention
Viv Groskop – The Guardian, Thursday August 14 2008‘She was our first child,” recalls Sarah (not her real name), a mother of two who lives in the south of England. “But from age three we knew something was wrong. She was very introverted, isolated. When she started school at four she came home and said she was a freak. It seemed a strange word for a four-year-old to use. She was always quite a sad little person.”
Sarah’s daughter was born and grew up as a boy. Now 19, she is far happier in a woman’s body as a post-operative transsexual. It took two years for the family to get used to calling her “she”. Her mother says her daughter experienced her childhood as mental torture, especially during puberty. “Looking back, we could never find any tape in the house. It was because she was taping her genitals up every day. She said to us later that she thought it would all go right for her at puberty, that her willy would drop off and she would grow breasts. She said she was going completely crazy because she knew in her head that she was a girl.”
One day, when her daughter was 14, Sarah walked in on her in her bedroom. “She was there in front of the mirror with her genitals tucked away. She was very embarrassed. I said, ‘I don’t know what’s happening here but if you want to talk to me, you can.’ About 10 minutes later she came and lay on the bed next to me and said, ‘I want to be a girl. I’m not a boy. My body is wrong. Everything is wrong.'” For Sarah, this was more than shocking: “I had watched programmes on transgender, I’m very interested in people, it’s part of who I am to find out about these things … But you never imagine it’s going to happen to you.”
Sarah sought help from her GP – who laughed. Eventually, her daughter got a referral to the one London clinic that deals with gender identity disorder in children and adolescents. But obtaining treatment on the NHS in her daughter’s mid-teens was slow and difficult. Several suicide attempts followed and the family remortgaged their house to pay for private hormone treatment. Once Sarah’s daughter was 18, they also paid for an operation abroad.
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Filed under: News, Transgender | Tagged: child, children, sex change, transition, transsexual, transyouth, uk, united kingdom, young, youth | 1 Comment »
TRANScend GENDER 
Review – “BBC America Reveals: Sex Change Soldier”
I was a little apprehensive going into the latest episode of “BBC America Reveals” – titling it “Sex Change Soldier” made it sound like a tawdry tabloid exposé rather than a serious documentary on one person’s journey from male to female. But I knew they’d done previous respectful treatments of a young transman and three partners of transvestites, so I approached it with an open mind.
We are introduced to Jan, who tells us that she is a 42-year-old woman trapped in a man’s body. The narrator informs us that Jan will be the first officer in the (presumably British) armed forces to “undergo a sex change” – transition. She continues on to say that during the making of the documentary, she came to fully understand the price that Jan must pay to go through this.
Jan takes us through her daily routine of voice exercises, putting on makeup, tucking, and – after she shows us her thinning hair – putting on her wig. “I’m still Ian when I wake up.” Each morning she jogs four miles, in an effort go from 224 lbs and 14″ biceps, down to 154 lbs. Despite only having dressed in public for four months, Jan is ready to go to Thailand for FFS, “to have my face rebuilt to make me look like a woman”.
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Filed under: Commentary, Transgender | Tagged: armed forces, bbc america, Blackpool, documentary, Dr Suporn, facial feminization surgery, FFS, girlfriend, GRS, ian hamilton, jan hamilton, military, newspaper, paratroooper, review, sex change, sex change soldier, significant others, spouse, srs, tabloids, television, Thailand, transexual, Transgender, transsexual, tv, uk, united kingdom, wife | 24 Comments »