this is such wonderful news, yes! my six year old niece is about to deal with a similar situation at school this year re: which restroom to use and I hope with all my heart that Ohio is as progressive and accepting as Colorado was in this case. the principal at least seems to be pretty accommodating but who knows what assholes will figure it out and make her life difficult :/
Forgive me my ignorance, but is there a reason that the school has to know anything? No one on staff should be looking down her underwear, so...why tell them?
It just seems like, if she's a girl, she's a girl, you take her to school and say 'here's my daughter' - who's going to contradict you?
Like i said, though - please tell me if i'm overlooking something really obvious here.
In case there's some kind of medical issue or injury, they would probably need to know. A child with a penis slipping and having a monkey bar smashed between their legs or kicked between the legs by another child will have a bit of a different issue than one with a vulva, for instance. Also if the child is in a school that requires group showers after PE or swimming class because accommodations such as using a private stall would most likely need to be made as that's a situation where genitals would be seen.
I suppose that's so, though at least group showers won't be an issue until high school. (Or, they weren't when i went to school, though only about three people ever used them, they were nasty.) My daughter's a junior this year and she has never showered at school at all.
They were discussing this on the radio this morning... awkwardly misgendering and saying that while it's a good thing, it will "definitely cause distractions". Am I the only one that went to an elementary school that had stalls dividing the toilets...? You know, like... bathrooms tend to have?
Yeah, I ended up leaving a comment on the article to this effect. No one will be distracted because no one else using the bathroom will know. She's going to go in, sit down (I'm assuming), do her thing, wash her hands, and leave, just like any other girl. It's not like she's going to be naked in there. Considering she's been presenting (if this is the wrong term, please let me know) as a girl for pretty much literally her entire life, it's highly unlikely that any of her classmates even know she was born male or is any different from the other girls in the class.
The only way this will be a 'distraction' is if the adults around her make it one.
No, I think they're overreacting. There's no situation I can think of where normal bathroom use could cause confusion over genitalia. All toilets are divided by stalls. Unless someone is peeking under the divider, no one's going to see anything, and no one should peek under dividers because it's really weird and creepy.
have any of these people ever worked with elementary aged kids?? if you've ever had the joy of trying to take an entire class for a bathroom break, the real fun is when they are done using the toilet (oh, the messes kids can make with paper towels and water)
I was a little surprised by the "she has identified as female since 18 months old" though. Are 18 month olds actually capable of grasping those concepts? I don't really know much about child development when it comes to things like gender identity & sexuality.
I was kind of taken aback by that, too, and wonder how much her identity is based in liking stereotypical girl things like long hair and dresses and dolls and such. However, other articles I've seen has said that she's referred to herself as a girl and insisted on those pronouns since she could talk, and has asked when she can "have her body fixed". Bran scans have shown that trans* folks' brains match cis people of that gender, so it would make total sense that she'd realize that from a young age. It's just interesting to me that a child that young would have a concept of what gender is.
It's awesome that the parents took her seriously but, yeah, considering my friend watches a 3 year old who still mixes up inside/outside, it's fascinating that a child that young could 'get it'.
Of course, it's also fascinating to me that male & female brains are different on brain scans.
Medics are keen to find concrete physical evidence to help those children who feel they are trapped in the body of the opposite sex. One key brain region involved is the BSTc, an area of grey matter. But the region is too small to scan in a living person so differences have only been picked up at post-mortem
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my home state, makin' me proud.
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It just seems like, if she's a girl, she's a girl, you take her to school and say 'here's my daughter' - who's going to contradict you?
Like i said, though - please tell me if i'm overlooking something really obvious here.
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The only way this will be a 'distraction' is if the adults around her make it one.
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I was a little surprised by the "she has identified as female since 18 months old" though. Are 18 month olds actually capable of grasping those concepts? I don't really know much about child development when it comes to things like gender identity & sexuality.
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Of course, it's also fascinating to me that male & female brains are different on brain scans.
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http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn20032-transsexual-differences-caught-on-brain-scan.html#.UcncrCbD-Ul
Medics are keen to find concrete physical evidence to help those children who feel they are trapped in the body of the opposite sex. One key brain region involved is the BSTc, an area of grey matter. But the region is too small to scan in a living person so differences have only been picked up at post-mortem ( ... )
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