CaptLex
07-17-2007, 04:59 PM
I got this article from my therapist today. It's kind of long, so here's only the first part of it. If you want to read the rest, follow the link below that:
The breast bud popped up about six months ago, and Marty knew something had to be done. It was the slightest of puckers, just on one side, so small you wouldn't even notice it through a T-shirt. Still, boys don't get breasts, and this had the unsettling potential to blow his cover big-time.
That's because Marty was born, by conventional measures of modern science, a girl. Marty has two X sex chromosomes, like most females, and the hardware concurs. Yet ever since Marty's parents flew back from China in 1998 with their 11-month-old adopted baby, their daughter seemed to be programmed male. She refused dresses by age two and half and mastered peeing while standing by three. She would identify herself as a girl only when grilled.
When Marty was about six, doctors said she was no tomboy. She seemed to fit the diagnosis of gender identity disorder (GID), and though dubbing it a disorder whips up a maelstrom of controversy, the basic sentiment is this: not only feeling an intense discomfort with one's biological gender, but also feeling profoundly, compellingly, like the other.
Enrolled in a new school last year as a boy where only the staff knew otherwise, the nine-year-old passed without a hitch in his wardrobe of Nike trainers and T-shirts, paired with a crew cut, boyish build, and aggressive basketball moves at recess. (To keep his secret, the names of the boy and his parents have been changed.) But the days when the only outward markers of gender lie in haircuts, clothes, and personality only last so long. Deep inside Marty's brain, a time bomb known as the hypothalamus waited to stage a hormone-armed mutiny. Breasts would sprout. Hips would widen. The uterus would shed blood on a monthly basis. Marty didn't want any of it.
So when the bud appeared, his Bay Area parents hustled him to an appointment with an endocrinologist at Children's Hospital and Research Center Oakland, who said the bud might progress no further and puberty could still be a few years off, his parents recall. They were temporarily relieved. Marty treated the bump as a boy would — poking at it at the dinner table, feeling it through his button-down shirts. Waiting.
Then, in May, Marty came to his mom frantically: "Mommy, feel this lump! You have to do something!"
The other breast had budded.
His parents called Children's because now, due to the efforts of a small but growing number of doctors around the world, something actually could be done about emerging puberty. The endocrinologist agreed that Mother Nature was revving up, preparing to take Marty the way of trainer bras, Tampax, and, as his parents and doctors predicted, increasing distress as his body developed into a sex that to him seemed a cruel trick of birth. The changes would make living as a boy impossible in the present, and he'd potentially face scarring surgery to remove unwanted breasts down the road. What's more, the upsurge in estrogen would slow and stop his growth, making it harder for him to ever pass as a male. Of course, that's if Marty would end up living as a man. As boyish as Marty is, no one could know for sure.
But in the present, nature could be tricked. If they all agreed, Marty would never have to develop into a woman.
It was time to put puberty on hold.
http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-07-11/news/girl-boy-interrupted/
The breast bud popped up about six months ago, and Marty knew something had to be done. It was the slightest of puckers, just on one side, so small you wouldn't even notice it through a T-shirt. Still, boys don't get breasts, and this had the unsettling potential to blow his cover big-time.
That's because Marty was born, by conventional measures of modern science, a girl. Marty has two X sex chromosomes, like most females, and the hardware concurs. Yet ever since Marty's parents flew back from China in 1998 with their 11-month-old adopted baby, their daughter seemed to be programmed male. She refused dresses by age two and half and mastered peeing while standing by three. She would identify herself as a girl only when grilled.
When Marty was about six, doctors said she was no tomboy. She seemed to fit the diagnosis of gender identity disorder (GID), and though dubbing it a disorder whips up a maelstrom of controversy, the basic sentiment is this: not only feeling an intense discomfort with one's biological gender, but also feeling profoundly, compellingly, like the other.
Enrolled in a new school last year as a boy where only the staff knew otherwise, the nine-year-old passed without a hitch in his wardrobe of Nike trainers and T-shirts, paired with a crew cut, boyish build, and aggressive basketball moves at recess. (To keep his secret, the names of the boy and his parents have been changed.) But the days when the only outward markers of gender lie in haircuts, clothes, and personality only last so long. Deep inside Marty's brain, a time bomb known as the hypothalamus waited to stage a hormone-armed mutiny. Breasts would sprout. Hips would widen. The uterus would shed blood on a monthly basis. Marty didn't want any of it.
So when the bud appeared, his Bay Area parents hustled him to an appointment with an endocrinologist at Children's Hospital and Research Center Oakland, who said the bud might progress no further and puberty could still be a few years off, his parents recall. They were temporarily relieved. Marty treated the bump as a boy would — poking at it at the dinner table, feeling it through his button-down shirts. Waiting.
Then, in May, Marty came to his mom frantically: "Mommy, feel this lump! You have to do something!"
The other breast had budded.
His parents called Children's because now, due to the efforts of a small but growing number of doctors around the world, something actually could be done about emerging puberty. The endocrinologist agreed that Mother Nature was revving up, preparing to take Marty the way of trainer bras, Tampax, and, as his parents and doctors predicted, increasing distress as his body developed into a sex that to him seemed a cruel trick of birth. The changes would make living as a boy impossible in the present, and he'd potentially face scarring surgery to remove unwanted breasts down the road. What's more, the upsurge in estrogen would slow and stop his growth, making it harder for him to ever pass as a male. Of course, that's if Marty would end up living as a man. As boyish as Marty is, no one could know for sure.
But in the present, nature could be tricked. If they all agreed, Marty would never have to develop into a woman.
It was time to put puberty on hold.
http://www.sfweekly.com/2007-07-11/news/girl-boy-interrupted/