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UK: Born in the wrong body
Nov. 5th, 2009 12:40 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ftmichaelhttp://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8330157.stm
Born in the wrong body
By James Fletcher
BBC News
Doctors in Britain are reviewing guidelines for the treatment of people under 18 with gender dysphoria. This is a condition where someone is born one sex but feels they are really the other. A key issue is the age at which young people can be prescribed drugs which pause puberty.
Around 1 in 4,000 people in the UK are receiving help for gender dysphoria
Sitting in her kitchen, 16 year old Nikki (name changed to protect her identity) looks and acts like any other teenage girl.
She gossips with her mum, teases her younger brothers, and giggles as she texts her new boyfriend.
The only difference is that Nikki was born biologically a boy.
"I've always felt like a girl," she says. As a child, she dressed up in girls' clothing, played with girls' toys, and gravitated towards other girls.
As she got older, Nikki realised there was a difference between what she felt and her body.
"It used to make me feel ill and so horribly down," she remembers. "I'd just wish that I wasn't around. Everything to do with me being male was horrible, I just couldn't stand it."
When she was seven Nikki was diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Her parents initially tried to steer her towards accepting she was a boy, but by eight she was living as a girl at home, and by nine was going to school as a girl.
"I loved it," she says, "people picked on me a lot, but it was amazing in my eyes because I was allowed to show everyone who I was."
( Read more... )
Born in the wrong body
By James Fletcher
BBC News
Doctors in Britain are reviewing guidelines for the treatment of people under 18 with gender dysphoria. This is a condition where someone is born one sex but feels they are really the other. A key issue is the age at which young people can be prescribed drugs which pause puberty.
Around 1 in 4,000 people in the UK are receiving help for gender dysphoria
Sitting in her kitchen, 16 year old Nikki (name changed to protect her identity) looks and acts like any other teenage girl.
She gossips with her mum, teases her younger brothers, and giggles as she texts her new boyfriend.
The only difference is that Nikki was born biologically a boy.
"I've always felt like a girl," she says. As a child, she dressed up in girls' clothing, played with girls' toys, and gravitated towards other girls.
As she got older, Nikki realised there was a difference between what she felt and her body.
"It used to make me feel ill and so horribly down," she remembers. "I'd just wish that I wasn't around. Everything to do with me being male was horrible, I just couldn't stand it."
When she was seven Nikki was diagnosed with gender dysphoria. Her parents initially tried to steer her towards accepting she was a boy, but by eight she was living as a girl at home, and by nine was going to school as a girl.
"I loved it," she says, "people picked on me a lot, but it was amazing in my eyes because I was allowed to show everyone who I was."
( Read more... )
