German trans girl
believed world's youngest

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.)