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Starke Von Oben

8-year-old boy has sex change

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http://www.mid-day.com/news/2009/oct/171009-Josie-sex-change-Joey-Romero-surgery.htm

Joey Romero (8), has become a girl called Josie in a remarkable gender-swap case in the US. Josie was diagnosed as transgender at the age of six.

Her sex has been legally changed and she will undergo surgery and drug treatment to help her grow up as a woman.

Her mother Venessia (42), said, "As a toddler she wrapped up her army figures and rocked them like a baby.

As she started to talk, she'd say, 'I'm a girl'. We used to correct her and say, 'No you're a boy'. By the time she was four she was insisting, 'No, I really am a girl'."

Her father Joseph, an engineer in the US Air Force, said, "I had mourned the loss of my son. When I came to terms with it, I knew I had gained a daughter." The girl has been educated at home in Arizona after the family suffered taunts."

Josie will be given drugs to prevent male adolescence and, at 12, get female hormones.


...what do you think?

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I don't see anything wrong with it. If the boy really was convinced that he was a girl and the parents decided it was the best thing to do, then it isn't hurting anyone.

inb4 "gender change is genital mutilation"

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I just hope they get it right, it'd suck to go through all that then hit your 20s and go "Er actually... I was just a kid, wtf would you listen to me?"

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I found the following bit to be the most disturbing:


"The girl has been educated at home in Arizona after the family suffered taunts."


I can't help but thing that if everybody just yielded, minded his own business and didn't break the others' balls, the world would be a better place.

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arrrgh said:

I don't see anything wrong with it. If the boy really was convinced that he was a girl and the parents decided it was the best thing to do, then it isn't hurting anyone.


Yes because we let eight year old vote, drink and have sex because they show incredible maturity at that age /sarcasm

We have rules governing what age people can, and can't do something for a reason. Who the heck knows what they want at age eight!?! They simply have not had the mental development to make decisions like that yet. My God it is going to be incredibly sad if he/she, gets older and discovers that they got it wrong.

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If (s)he really wants to, I'd say let her(him) get the change. Her/his body, enough said.

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I've definitely heard worse. There was a particular case where a baby boy lost his penis due to a botched circumcision, and so it was decided to force a sex change on him and make him a girl. The parents went so far as to try to prevent any behavior they perceived as masculine. For a long time it was used as an argument that gender identity is shaped primarily by outside forces, but as an adult, he underwent another sex change operation to become a man again.

I don't know if an 8-year-old is old enough to make that kind of a decision, but I do know that in the other case, trying to force a gender identity on the kid created a lot of problems.

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Phil1984 said:

Yes because we let eight year old vote, drink and have sex because they show incredible maturity at that age /sarcasm

We have rules governing what age people can, and can't do something for a reason. Who the heck knows what they want at age eight!?! They simply have not had the mental development to make decisions like that yet. My God it is going to be incredibly sad if he/she, gets older and discovers that they got it wrong.



I think much more harm would be done if such children were denied their wish. They still have 4 years until something irreversible needs to be done so there's still enough time to let him/her change his/her mind.

Experience shows that it won't happen though if children show such a strong desire to change gender at a young age.

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This was already done once under slightly different circumstances to David Reimer, who always resented being raised as a girl, had another reassignment surgery later in life to return to male, and eventually killed himself. I bring it up because of the later developmental problems faced by Reimer seem inescapable.

I've known a few transgender folks, and they all seemed perfectly healthy and normal, but they made their decision as consenting adults knowing full well the consequences that could arise. I'm not sure about philosophically, but medically I can't say I can condone an elective procedure of this breadth for a person who has not yet reached pysical--or mental--maturity.

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its much better for her to have a sex change to physically be a female, otherwise she could have ended up going through both male and female puberty - as is the case for some hermaphrodites.

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I actually remember reading about David Reimer in a Rolling Stone article a long time ago. I didn't know he had since killed himself.

Anyway, they're not going to start HRT until the kid is 12, and probably won't do surgery until age 16 at least (that's the earliest I've heard it done), so there's still time to tell if it's just a phase or whatever.

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Phil1984 said:

Yes because we let eight year old vote, drink and have sex because they show incredible maturity at that age /sarcasm

We have rules governing what age people can, and can't do something for a reason. Who the heck knows what they want at age eight!?! They simply have not had the mental development to make decisions like that yet. My God it is going to be incredibly sad if he/she, gets older and discovers that they got it wrong.


I agree with this post.

Taking the argument to it's logical extreme, you may as well allow children at the age of eight to have sex with adults if they so consent. After all, it's their body and they can do what they like with it - many paedophiles even say that the children they sleep with do so "willingly", which clearly shows that children are easily manipulated and seduced.

The truth is that at the age of eight you don't know what's right for you, certainly not regarding your own gender. This boy isn't even at a sexually developed age yet to even feel sexual arousal as an adult would, so how on earth can it make such a far reaching choice as to whether or not it wants to be a girl or a boy.

I've heard a lot of wishy-washy arguments that it may harm the child more in the long run if it's wishes aren't fulfilled - I hardly think so. You will find more often than not that the people who ask for gender reassignment are turned down since they actually have some psychological issues that need clearing.

I personally think the political leanings of the so-called "psychologists" and the judge who gave the all clear to this child should be called into question. This clearly wasn't done objectively but with the full application of political correctness.

Drugs to prevent male adolescence and, at 12, get female hormones? Gender reassignment should carry with it a minimum age of at least 18 in my opinion, which includes hormone replacement drugs and the like.

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We've all heard of the circumstances that surround these famous botched circumcisions which ultimately show that the brain differs between the genders, and that gender-specific cognition and behaviour is not purely a social construct. But the question remains: if a brain is distinctly one gender or the other, does this mean that, when people seem to have a gender mismatch between brain and body, we should change the body; or does this mean that it is foolish to even postulate that such mismatches can occur, when genetics will be identical in brain and body? In the latter case, the patient's experience of gender-mismatch is a psychological and not physiological problem, and transgender surgery is unjustified, as it merely creates a disconnect that was not present previously.

I know liberal-minded folk are supposed to be unilaterally pro-choice in each and every way, but these are complicated issues. Sure, let the kid pretend to be a girl if he wants to, but to have him undergo irreparable surgery is not necessarily the best plan at this point. The brain is ultimately more flexible than the rest of the body and may yet adapt to its station. Also, even if a brain never does come to accept what its genes are telling it, perhaps being one gender while feeling like the other is simply one's lot in life - a problem that should be accepted in lieu of the, in many cases, greater problems that will be created by the ol' switcheroo.

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Transexuality isn't quite as "vague" as sexual orientation. They literally are "a woman trapped in a man's body". While it's possible for horny teenagers to not know what thier preferences are as they get turned on by anything, it's quite easy for somebody to know that thier body is wrong as soon as they are aware there's even a difference. It'd be like being born with an arm missing, your brain "knows" there's supposed to be something there that isn't.

Also it says "was diagnosed", presumably by medical professionals with MRI scanners and stuff. It's not like the kid just went "Get me a sex change" and the parents went "LOL K"

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You can be damn sure that before such a decision there were extensive psychological evaluations. No one would be able to officially change gender on a whim.

The article contains far too little information to make any kind of informed judgment. But my guess is that if an 8 year old gets granted such a thing there's serious indicators that it's what s/he needs.

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My thoughts are that gender is not only dictated by your body, but also your mind. I imagine it is possible to have discrepancies between body and mind, but when you're 8 years old, I don't think that anyone can truly know whether or not these discrepancies exist. Maybe he's simply gay, or likes girly things, or something other than "a woman in a man's body." I think that I'd have waited a few more years to make this decision. As creafish mentioned, gender identity is not simply a social construction, so if at some point down the line, he realizes that he's just a dude with girly interests, that can't end well.

If he truly wanted to be a girl, he could have waited 8 more years to be one.

When I was 8, I was absolutely set on being an astronaut. In retrospect, I hate math and wouldn't have been good at it seeing as I'm afraid of heights. But when I was 8, if I could have been an astronaut instantaneously overnight, you bet your ass I would have.

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Patrick said:

If he truly wanted to be a girl, he could have waited 8 more years to be one.



You truly have no idea what this is about. If you had read any good articles about this subject matter it should be clear that the psychological harm of not letting this child be who she wants to be is much, much greater as it means forcing her to pretend to be a boy - which 'doing nothing' would amount to.

Sometimes doing nothing is the same as doing the wrong thing and I'm sure that the psychologists involved in such a case have made damn well certain that this is the best course of action.

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Graf Zahl said:

You truly have no idea what this is about. If you had read any good articles about this subject matter it should be clear that the psychological harm of not letting this child be who she wants to be is much, much greater as it means forcing her to pretend to be a boy - which 'doing nothing' would amount to.


I'm sorry but I don't think you have any idea what this is about either to be frank. You think reading a few popular articles on psychology makes you any more of a competent judge on the matter than Patrick? You're no more qualified than he is, and your opinions aren't the slightest more considered than his.

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Starke Von Oben said:

I'm sorry but I don't think you have any idea what this is about either to be frank. You think reading a few popular articles on psychology makes you any more of a competent judge on the matter than Patrick? You're no more qualified than he is, and your opinions aren't the slightest more considered than his.



No, but I don't make the wild assumption that this was just done to please the kid.

If you read the article carefully you will notice that s/he has been convinced being a girl for 4 years and officially diagnosed as being transgendered for 2.

I think one can assume that in such a long time period there have been countless evaluations and exams to make absolutely certain that the decision was the right one.

The only issue here is what is going to do more harm: Let the child live as a boy or as a girl. One is not going to be correct - and just saying that 'wait this out' is always the proper solution may just be ignoring the facts.

These are decisions best left to experts which you can be certain have been heavily involved in such a case.

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I am no expert in this at all, so my claims are only based on my own experience. I don't know how I'd cope if I had a transexual disorder, but I would think that a better solution would be to let her know that they're going to make that change when she is mature and developed enough to make that change. I would have given her counseling so that she understands that its ok to feel the way she does and that when she's mature enough, she can make the change. I just dont think that an 8 year old can be informed or fully understand what she is getting herself into. I understand how important it is to enable children to be what they want to be, but sometimes children don't have enough knowledge to know what they want to be. I recieved a pretty shitty education when I was young and lived with poor parents, but I like to think I'm intelligent enough nowadays to make informed decisions. I had to deal with kids on the block having N64s and all the stuff they could want while I didn't have nearly as much as they did. Comparing having toys to gender isnt a fair comparison, but they're both based on a certain internal desire. It is never healthy to give children their every desire, as a child wants everything. I had to deal with the fact that we were poor, I wasn't suddenly given a shit ton of money because it would help my development, and I don't think its affected my ability to be who I want or interact in this world. But ultimately, Graf is right, I honestly don'y know enough about this sort of thing to make a serious judgement, those are my own thoughts.

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Patrick said:

I am no expert in this at all, so my claims are only based on my own experience. I don't know how I'd cope if I had a transexual disorder, but I would think that a better solution would be to let her know that they're going to make that change when she is mature and developed enough to make that change.



They are going to do that. Actual change cannot occur before the onset of puberty (and surgery isn't even legal before the person is an adult in most countries) so right now it's only letting her live as a girl, that's all.

I think most here are misreading the article. This is not about permanently altering the child's body. It's just about officially registering the sex change and changing her name legally.

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