"Zucker, who has worked with this population for close to 30 years, has a very specific method for treating these children. Whenever Zucker encounters a child younger than 10 with gender identity disorder, he tries to make the child comfortable with the sex he or she was born with.
So, to treat Bradley, Zucker explained to Carol that she and her husband would have to radically change their parenting. Bradley would no longer be allowed to spend time with girls. He would no longer be allowed to play with girlish toys or pretend that he was a female character. Zucker said that all of these activities were dangerous to a kid with gender identity disorder. He explained that unless Carol and her husband helped the child to change his behavior, as Bradley grew older, he likely would be rejected by both peer groups. Boys would find his feminine interests unappealing. Girls would want more boyish boys. Bradley would be an outcast."
I was raised this way. It doesn't work. It just wastes time.
I had the same experience Darlie. All it did was delay the inevitable and make me miserable in the interim. I learned how to lie about how I felt, how to put on a "happy shell" even though I was miserable inside, how to withdraw from those around me and become a loner, an outcast. Didn't matter that well meaning folk were trying to "help me be a man", it just wasn't who I was. And the longer that who I really was inside was denied the more depressed I became. Suicide attempts, drug addiction, not continuing with education, etc., all manifested out of a denial of my spirit. Following Zucker's path only results in more damaged unhappy individuals, contrasted with the compassionate approach taken to treat the other child who was happy and growing. It was obvious from the way the parents of Bradley were talking that she was not happy, was not comfortable with the sex that she was born with, and that all Zucker was doing was making things worse, not better.
It's about time that our condition be recognized for what it is, just another variation of the human spirit and a cause for celebration, not denial. I hope that I get to see this in my lifetime. Meanwhile, I've got letters to write....
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