citypaper.net – Doron Taussig
Can a 6-year-old make up his mind about being a her? Parents at a recent conference say “yes.”
Nine years ago, after five miscarriages and 11 rounds of in vitro fertilization, a 36-year-old New Jersey woman named Stephanie gave birth to twins ? one boy and one girl. She was ecstatic. She dressed her children in pink and blue and gave them traditional his and hers toys.
Her daughter grew into a happy, outgoing child. But her son was quiet, and often seemed sad, as though he were pondering something terribly important. When he began to speak, he said the damnedest thing: “I’m a girl.” Stephanie would try to explain that because he had a penis, he was a boy, but she couldn’t sell him on the idea. The child pouted when his sister wore dresses and he couldn’t; he seemed truly happy playing dress-up with her clothes.
When he was three, Stephanie walked into the bathroom to find her son poking his penis with an unopened nail clipper. “It doesn’t go there,” he explained. When he was five, as his mother tucked him into bed, he told her, “God made a mistake.”