Something About Zucker I Read Today.

[Guest Nekomata]

I can't help but think "Hmm" or "male bovine crap" when I read things about Zucker.

This stood out.

The girl’s case was even more extreme in some ways. She insisted on peeing standing up and playing only with boys. When her mother bought her Barbies, she’d pop their heads off. Once, when she was 6, her father, Mike, said out of the blue: “Chris, you’re a girl.” In response, he recalls, she “started screaming and freaking out,” closing her hand into a fist and punching herself between the legs, over and over. After that, her parents took her to see Zucker. He connected Chris’s behavior to the early years of her parents’ marriage; her mother had gotten pregnant and Mike had been resentful of having to marry her, and verbally abusive. Chris, Zucker told them, saw her mother as weak and couldn’t identify with her. For four years, they saw no progress. When Chris turned 11 and other girls in school started getting their periods, her mother found her on the bed one night, weeping. She “said she wanted to kill herself,” her mother told me. “She said, ‘In my head, I’ve always been a boy.’”

But about a month after that, everything began to change. Chris had joined a softball team and made some female friends; her mother figured she had cottoned to the idea that girls could be tough and competitive. Then one day, Chris went to her mother and said, “Mom, I need to talk to you. We need to go shopping.” She bought clothes that were tighter and had her ears pierced. She let her hair grow out. Eventually she gave her boys’ clothes away.

Now Chris wears her hair in a ponytail, walks like a girl, and spends hours on the phone, talking to girlfriends about boys. Her mother recently watched her through a bedroom window as she was jumping on their trampoline, looking slyly at her own reflection and tossing her hair around. At her parents’ insistence, Chris has never been to a support group or a conference, never talked to another girl who wanted to be a boy. For all she knew, she was the only person in the world who felt as she once had felt.

The week before I arrived in Toronto, the Barbara Walters special about Jazz had been re-aired, and both sets of parents had seen it. “I was aghast,” said John’s mother. “It really affected us to see this poor little peanut, and her parents just going to the teacher and saying ‘He is a “she” now.’ Why would you assume a 4-year-old would understand the ramifications of that?”

“We were shocked,” Chris’s father said. “They gave up on their kid too early. Regardless of our beliefs and our values, you look at Chris, and you look at these kids, and they have to go through a sex-change operation and they’ll never look right and they’ll never have a normal life. Look at Chris’s chance for a happy, decent life, and look at theirs. Seeing those kids, it just broke our hearts.”

Now did this person go through reparative therapy? Their dysphoria seemed so strong, what would cause them to go in the complete opposite direction. Is it suppression followed by overly feminizing to keep up the suppression? I am not sure but based on what I know something about this story seems off.

[Guest]

According to the author there was no therapy at all which is amazing. Were there things left out of the story to suit the author's purposes? It's possible. Note though the suddenness of the change. Note too that similar incidents were reported by many users here in days past when child transition just wasn't done. It's not a cure but supression of ones true self. MANy here have gone through something similar including me, eons ago. Why? Self protection from ridicule and wanting to fit in as well as avoiding violence is the reason.

But about a month after that, everything began to change. Chris had joined a softball team and made some female friends; her mother figured she had cottoned to the idea that girls could be tough and competitive. Then one day, Chris went to her mother and said, “Mom, I need to talk to you. We need to go shopping.” She bought clothes that were tighter and had her ears pierced. She let her hair grow out. Eventually she gave her boys’ clothes away.

Why the sudden change? Zucker is trying to show you this was just a phase, not real "Gender Dysphoria". Imagine being a fly on the wall in the locker room of the team Chris joined. What do you think was said about her male appearance, clothing and mannerisms by her peers bearing in mind how cruel people can be? Peer pressure can be insurmountable to a kid. She has a choice, be alone and stand out in a crowd or conform and fit in. In my case and others here there was not only from peers calling me homophobic names and beating me up but my own parents put me down for acting girly. My parents did it because they were concerned about me coming home with blood on my shirts everyday. The message is conform or suffer the consequences. I conformed. Was I cured? NO! Gender Dysphoria doesn't go away but you can supress it for a while. Zucker though would say that I was cured? I wasn't. I did what I did for self protection. This has happened to many of us here. All Zucker is doing is forcing us to be something other than we are. This only creates severe Psychological problems and trauma later. Forcing people to conform is not the answer. Many older Tg's here Who were kids between the 50's and 80's were subjected to painful shock treatments and reparative therapy in an effort to get them to conform to gender norms. It was a traumatic disaster for many. Forcing our trueselves into the background is a suicide waiting to happen. 50% of transsexuals in a survey here had at least 1 suicide attempt by their 20th birthday. In the years beyond thousands of older TS's have had multiple actual attempt and many deaths as a result. Our suicide prevention crisis rooms have been loaded with victims of Zucker style philosophies on Gender Dysphoria. There are many victims.

It is traumatic to become something you are not. What this can do is split you into two developing 2 personalities or more. Unlike MPD though most are aware of the two sides. Stranger still is that the transgendered population has the highest incidents of MPD of any group. I can tell you from dealing with our users here that is very true from our experience as our chat moderators can tell you. Zucker, Baily, Blanchard and Dregar do not have access to large Transgender samplings like we do here with 6.6 million (number at bottom of page). Baily had 6 he met in a gay bar and Blanchard had 75. The numbers here blow them out of the water. Before the Internet it was hard to get transgender people in one place. Now it is much easier with sites like this.

The good new is our research Department is gathering support from universities and several "Real" gender therapists that treat us daily to make sense of our numbers and craft surveys that will research our issues using scientific methods. Don't forget a lot can be learned from our suicide prevention crisis rooms as so far we are the only ones doing this. So far what's been learned is amazing. Expect to see something soon.

CHris's sudden change is likley due to peer pressure and parental pressures. Her/his "Gender Dysphoria" isn't gone but supressed along with her "True Self". There are thousands of cases like that here that were similar in childhood. As a result it's going to come back with a vengance. If numbers here hold true she may become suicidal later in life.

Years ago when car bodies were all metal my father had an old rusting chevy he tried to patch with Bondo. The problem was he didn't prepare the surface properly and get rid of ALL the underlying rust first. At first you couldn't tell it was a patch since he used matching paint. Within a year though the patch not only fell off taking the headlight with it but there was a larger hole caused by the old unremoved rust which ate away at the metal like a cancer. The hole was twice as big. Why? because the original problem wasn't dealt with. Chris's issues weren't solved or given therapy to get at the root cause. Somebody just threw a bandaid or patch on the problem (peer pressure). She'll be ok for a while but eventually the original problem will resurface being worse than the original. Likely by that time her body as changed and will distress her. She'll have to do surgery she wouldn't have needed (top surgery) if the issue was dealt with originally with a gender therapist instead of a conformist.

The TRansgender Standards of Care are very specific, especially for kids. You don't go in one minute and come out the other sex through another door. Therapy takes time especially with a child. Every effort will be made to make sure it's not OCD or a whim or a phase. Few going through the system will get on demand SRS. There are checks and balances. Is it a perfect system, no. If you are honest with your therapist though you will be fine. Sweeping it under the rug like Zucker suggests is harmfull. We see it here every day in our crisis rooms. Surpressing your "True self" even for a little while is harmful. The most successful ones here are the ones who are treated early. The earlier the better. Remember up until a couple of years ago there was no early treatment for kids other then supression and reaprative therapy. Thank God that has changed.

If the Standards for kids holds and early treatment continues 50 years from now the number of pre-ops among those 30 through 70 will be drastically reduced. The suicide rate will be way down and the tragedies of lives here will be memories.

Laura