Slate.com – By Hanna Rosin
Ann, thank you for bringing up my Atlantic story on transgender children. When I was reporting, I felt the opposite: Culture weighed very heavily on the boys and not so much on the girls. A girl could go a long time in gym shorts and cropped hair before anyone thought she was anything but a tomboy. But a boy in a ponytail and a skirt? Totally unacceptable. The girls I talked to generally never showed up at a psychologist’s office until about age 8 or 9, which is when their love of toy guns and spy gear suddenly seemed conspicuous and when puberty was looming. Boys showed up at age 4, with parents already worried that their sons played with Barbies or dressed up in tutus.