News
2007-01-31
German trans girl
believed world's youngest
Twelve-year-old
Kim is believed to be the youngest person to begin gender
reassignment.
Biologically male
Twelve-year-old
Kim is believed to be the youngest person to begin gender
reassignment.
Biologically male
and originally named Tim by her parents, Kim was
officially diagnosed as a transsexual two years ago and has
been undergoing hormone treatments.
In the United
Kingdom and the United States, doctors generally avoid
gender-reassignment surgery until the patients are over 18.
The Harry Benjamin International Gender Dysphoria
Association's guidelines state that "surgical
intervention should not be carried out prior to
adulthood" and that hormones should not be given to those
under 16.
However,
following extensive mental and physical examinations, German
doctors have been given the go-ahead. The child's parents
have also expressed enthusiasm to begin immediately.
Kim's father,
identified as Lutz P., spoke candidly to German
newsmagazines Stern and Der Spiegel about what
he considered the nonissue of Kim living as a girl.
"We saw Kim as a girl, but not as a problem. Our life
was surprisingly normal," he said.
However, once the
child encountered puberty, she showed signs of
resistance and frustration. "At that stage we realized that
she was terrified of growing facial hair and her voice
breaking."
While it is
unusual to begin treatments for someone so young, Kim's
doctors insist that in would be in her best interest to take
steps toward surgery because growing up as a man could
be psychologically damaging.
"Kim is a
mentally well-developed child who appears happy and
balanced," Bern Meyenburg, who specializes in transsexuality
at Frankfurt University, wrote in his diagnosis.
"There is no doubt of the determined wish that was
already detectable since early childhood. It would
have been very wrong to let Kim grow up to be a man. It is
rare to have such a clear-cut case."
The Concerned
Women for America's Matt Barber has rendered his own
long-distance diagnosis in the case. "This poor kid's
situation really undercuts the homosexual lobby's
deceptive equality-fluff and hyperbole," Barber said
in a statement Monday on the right-wing group's Web
site. "It casts a bright light on the truly destructive,
bleak, and evil nature of the homosexual agenda.... Rather
than addressing the emotional or chemical problems
responsible for Tim's gender confusion, his parents
and doctors have bought into the homosexual lobby's PC
puffery hook, line, and sinker. They're about to rob him of
his ability to father a child and render him horribly
disfigured and further confused." (Hassan Mirza,
Gay.com U.K.)
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