UK: 'I've felt like a boy for a long time'
http://guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2009/aug/29/transgender-documentary-channel-4
'I've felt like a boy for a long time'
He suffered years of depression and bullying. Now, as he begins the process of becoming a man, Jon wants to help other transgender teenagers
Viv Groskop
The Guardian, Saturday 29 August 2009
In his checked shirt and ripped jeans, his gelled hair artfully messed up, Jon, 16, comes across as an average teenage boy. He starts sixth form in September, describes himself as a "metalhead" and wants to be a journalist after university. One thing, however, is unusual: he was born a girl.
He knew he was a boy from about the age of six. "I just always identified as one of the lads. I liked playing rough and tumble games. I didn't like sitting with the girls in the playground." His mother, Luisa, didn't worry in the least: "He was just happiest with the boys and all his friends were boys. I just thought, 'I've got such a tomboy.'"
This week Jon and his mother Luisa, 46, appear in a Channel 4 documentary, which follows Jon as he starts the testosterone treatment that will push his female body into male puberty. It is the first time in the UK that a family with a transgender child has agreed to be identified on camera.
Jon started treatment at the beginning of this year and simultaneously began attending school for the first time as a boy. Initially there was daily verbal bullying. "I've been called 'chick with a dick', which is a pretty moronic insult as I obviously don't have one," he jokes. "One student said to me: 'You're a tranny and you have AIDS.' That was a low blow. But I went back for my sixth-form induction week recently and there was pretty much nothing going on. I have some good friends at school who have stuck by me."
It is thought that "gender dysphoria" affects about 100 British children a year: some eventually change gender, some don't. Very few transgender children and their families are willing to be publicly identified. Many are subject to regular physical and verbal abuse as it is; many report becoming suicidal over their condition and the response to it. Jon and Luisa wanted to show that "this is something that happens to real people". "It's still taboo," says Luisa, who describes herself as a "single working parent" (she has brought Jon up on her own since her divorce 10 years ago): "A lot of people think it's freaky or a lifestyle choice. It's not. And life is too short to live with such great unhappiness."
Like many parents of transgender children, Luisa is concerned that there is not enough support available to them in the UK. Jon's testosterone treatment (a gel which is applied to the skin) is available on the NHS but they had to go private to kickstart the programme.
The only place in the UK where children with gender identity issues can be treated on the NHS is the Tavistock Clinic in London. Here, they insist on lengthy counselling and wanted Jon to wait until he was 17. But he and Luisa wanted to speed up the process because Jon had already been talking to experts for a long time about his feelings about being transgender. "You can understand the NHS's caution," says Luisa, "but their protocol does not allow for individual cases where a young person is already ready, has done their research and knows who they are. He said to me: 'I can't bear this for another year. I don't think I'll be able to make it.' I thought, 'I'm not letting my child go through this depression - and worse - knowing that by the end of your teens, it's too late.' There are tragic cases of young people losing their lives over this." Timing is crucial: once a child is in established puberty, any future attempts to change gender are more complicated, more painful and less likely to be successful. In the US and in the Netherlands, treatment is available from the age of 12 or 13.
Evidence that gender dysphoria - as the condition is known - may be biologically determined emerged in the 1990s when studies of transgender women born as men showed that some had a female brain structure. Last year research from Melbourne, Australia, concluded that "biological factors are increasingly implicated in gender identity".
Jon is convinced that it is a fact for him - not a choice. "Basically, being trans is about the difference between your mental gender and your physical gender. All trans people suffer with their bodies to some extent. I know of extreme cases of mutilation, trans women cutting their genitals or their breasts … I wear a [chest] binder because I don't want my breasts there. I don't like them. And I wish I had male genitalia. But that's probably not going to happen in this lifetime."
Jon has more or less ruled out gender reassignment surgery because phalloplasty (surgery to create a penis using skin found elsewhere on the body) is an extremely complicated process involving multiple operations - and is rarely successful. He hopes to have a double mastectomy on the NHS when he is 18. None of this is anything you would put yourself through as a "lifestyle choice", he says. "I just couldn't see myself living as a female. When I was about 14 I found a support website, Queer Youth Network - I now work with them as a volunteer. That basically saved my life. I only came out to my mum last year."
Luisa was shocked by Jon's disclosure and, a year on, is still coming to terms with the loss of her daughter, Natasha - whose name is never mentioned because Jon finds it too distressing. It has taken time to get used to calling the person she knew as her daughter "he".
"Jon had been quite distressed for a while. He was just a very unhappy young person, things weren't good at school - he was isolated, depressed, distraught. Eventually I said: 'Tell me what's wrong.' He said: 'I can't. It's too embarrassing.' 'There is nothing embarrassing between us,' I replied. My first thought was, 'My daughter is on drugs - how could I not have known that?' Then I thought: 'My daughter is pregnant.' The things most parents think of. And then my daughter said: 'I'm a boy and I've felt like a boy for a very long time - since before I was six.' My reaction was to just to hold my child very tight and say, 'We'll deal with this.'"
Was she never tempted to stop her child going through all this? After five months the changes caused by the testosterone treatment - hair growth, deepening of the voice - are already irreversible. "One friend did say to me: 'Did you ever doubt your child?' And I can honestly say that I never have. Because it was way too big a thing. Jon has incredible self-belief that this is right and this is how he has to live his life."
While their decision to go public with this documentary feels brave, you have to wonder how it might affect Jon's future (although they have been careful to conceal aspects of their identity such as their surname). "Trans is very important to my identity," says Jon, who already sees himself as a campaigner for trans people, "but of course I want to 'pass' as a man. Because I am one. But I wanted to do this for all the young trans people out there. To make it known and to look at it in a non-sensationalist way."
Luisa is still getting used to having a new child - a son. "The physical process has been hard for me," she says, "before, I could still see my daughter's face." In the film she says it's like having twins - a boy and a girl - and one of them has died. "My daughter is still a part of me and always will be. Sometimes I panic when I see Jon becoming the boy he is because I feel I am losing the memory of the daughter I had. It helps to talk to other parents who have been through the same thing." "All trans people don't like their parents holding on to the person that they were," Jon interjects. "But you see there is a loss?" asks Luisa. "Yes," says Jon, "But you have to understand: it's not a loss - it's a redefinition."
First Cut: The Boy Who Was Born A Girl, Friday 4 September, 8pm on Channel 4
'I've felt like a boy for a long time'
He suffered years of depression and bullying. Now, as he begins the process of becoming a man, Jon wants to help other transgender teenagers
Viv Groskop
The Guardian, Saturday 29 August 2009
In his checked shirt and ripped jeans, his gelled hair artfully messed up, Jon, 16, comes across as an average teenage boy. He starts sixth form in September, describes himself as a "metalhead" and wants to be a journalist after university. One thing, however, is unusual: he was born a girl.
He knew he was a boy from about the age of six. "I just always identified as one of the lads. I liked playing rough and tumble games. I didn't like sitting with the girls in the playground." His mother, Luisa, didn't worry in the least: "He was just happiest with the boys and all his friends were boys. I just thought, 'I've got such a tomboy.'"
This week Jon and his mother Luisa, 46, appear in a Channel 4 documentary, which follows Jon as he starts the testosterone treatment that will push his female body into male puberty. It is the first time in the UK that a family with a transgender child has agreed to be identified on camera.
Jon started treatment at the beginning of this year and simultaneously began attending school for the first time as a boy. Initially there was daily verbal bullying. "I've been called 'chick with a dick', which is a pretty moronic insult as I obviously don't have one," he jokes. "One student said to me: 'You're a tranny and you have AIDS.' That was a low blow. But I went back for my sixth-form induction week recently and there was pretty much nothing going on. I have some good friends at school who have stuck by me."
It is thought that "gender dysphoria" affects about 100 British children a year: some eventually change gender, some don't. Very few transgender children and their families are willing to be publicly identified. Many are subject to regular physical and verbal abuse as it is; many report becoming suicidal over their condition and the response to it. Jon and Luisa wanted to show that "this is something that happens to real people". "It's still taboo," says Luisa, who describes herself as a "single working parent" (she has brought Jon up on her own since her divorce 10 years ago): "A lot of people think it's freaky or a lifestyle choice. It's not. And life is too short to live with such great unhappiness."
Like many parents of transgender children, Luisa is concerned that there is not enough support available to them in the UK. Jon's testosterone treatment (a gel which is applied to the skin) is available on the NHS but they had to go private to kickstart the programme.
The only place in the UK where children with gender identity issues can be treated on the NHS is the Tavistock Clinic in London. Here, they insist on lengthy counselling and wanted Jon to wait until he was 17. But he and Luisa wanted to speed up the process because Jon had already been talking to experts for a long time about his feelings about being transgender. "You can understand the NHS's caution," says Luisa, "but their protocol does not allow for individual cases where a young person is already ready, has done their research and knows who they are. He said to me: 'I can't bear this for another year. I don't think I'll be able to make it.' I thought, 'I'm not letting my child go through this depression - and worse - knowing that by the end of your teens, it's too late.' There are tragic cases of young people losing their lives over this." Timing is crucial: once a child is in established puberty, any future attempts to change gender are more complicated, more painful and less likely to be successful. In the US and in the Netherlands, treatment is available from the age of 12 or 13.
Evidence that gender dysphoria - as the condition is known - may be biologically determined emerged in the 1990s when studies of transgender women born as men showed that some had a female brain structure. Last year research from Melbourne, Australia, concluded that "biological factors are increasingly implicated in gender identity".
Jon is convinced that it is a fact for him - not a choice. "Basically, being trans is about the difference between your mental gender and your physical gender. All trans people suffer with their bodies to some extent. I know of extreme cases of mutilation, trans women cutting their genitals or their breasts … I wear a [chest] binder because I don't want my breasts there. I don't like them. And I wish I had male genitalia. But that's probably not going to happen in this lifetime."
Jon has more or less ruled out gender reassignment surgery because phalloplasty (surgery to create a penis using skin found elsewhere on the body) is an extremely complicated process involving multiple operations - and is rarely successful. He hopes to have a double mastectomy on the NHS when he is 18. None of this is anything you would put yourself through as a "lifestyle choice", he says. "I just couldn't see myself living as a female. When I was about 14 I found a support website, Queer Youth Network - I now work with them as a volunteer. That basically saved my life. I only came out to my mum last year."
Luisa was shocked by Jon's disclosure and, a year on, is still coming to terms with the loss of her daughter, Natasha - whose name is never mentioned because Jon finds it too distressing. It has taken time to get used to calling the person she knew as her daughter "he".
"Jon had been quite distressed for a while. He was just a very unhappy young person, things weren't good at school - he was isolated, depressed, distraught. Eventually I said: 'Tell me what's wrong.' He said: 'I can't. It's too embarrassing.' 'There is nothing embarrassing between us,' I replied. My first thought was, 'My daughter is on drugs - how could I not have known that?' Then I thought: 'My daughter is pregnant.' The things most parents think of. And then my daughter said: 'I'm a boy and I've felt like a boy for a very long time - since before I was six.' My reaction was to just to hold my child very tight and say, 'We'll deal with this.'"
Was she never tempted to stop her child going through all this? After five months the changes caused by the testosterone treatment - hair growth, deepening of the voice - are already irreversible. "One friend did say to me: 'Did you ever doubt your child?' And I can honestly say that I never have. Because it was way too big a thing. Jon has incredible self-belief that this is right and this is how he has to live his life."
While their decision to go public with this documentary feels brave, you have to wonder how it might affect Jon's future (although they have been careful to conceal aspects of their identity such as their surname). "Trans is very important to my identity," says Jon, who already sees himself as a campaigner for trans people, "but of course I want to 'pass' as a man. Because I am one. But I wanted to do this for all the young trans people out there. To make it known and to look at it in a non-sensationalist way."
Luisa is still getting used to having a new child - a son. "The physical process has been hard for me," she says, "before, I could still see my daughter's face." In the film she says it's like having twins - a boy and a girl - and one of them has died. "My daughter is still a part of me and always will be. Sometimes I panic when I see Jon becoming the boy he is because I feel I am losing the memory of the daughter I had. It helps to talk to other parents who have been through the same thing." "All trans people don't like their parents holding on to the person that they were," Jon interjects. "But you see there is a loss?" asks Luisa. "Yes," says Jon, "But you have to understand: it's not a loss - it's a redefinition."
First Cut: The Boy Who Was Born A Girl, Friday 4 September, 8pm on Channel 4