The day transgender kids started sending Emma Watson drawings to thank her for her support

A reminder: Back in 2018 Nick Duffy of Pink News reported on transgender children thanking Emma Watson for supporting trans kids.

The actor shared a photo of herself wearing a “Trans Rights are Human Rights” t-shirt on social media back in 2018, an act of support trans people has not forgotten. Watson tagged transgender groups including the children’s charity Mermaids.

More recently she has argued against JK Rowling’s transphobic activism.

Nick wrote:

The drawings were submitted by trans kids and their relatives from across the world, and shared on Twitter by blogger @FierceMum, the mother of a transgender girl.
Some of the drawings include tributes to Watson’s famous Harry Potter and Beauty and the Beast characters.
Others included rainbows and messages of thanks.

Watson, a UN Women’s Goodwill Ambassador, responded with a new tweet:

“#WontBeErased Thank you for these beautiful drawings!! #ProtectTransKids #TransRightsAreHumanRights.”

So why am I writing about this story now? Because these drawings make the transgender kids who are suffering from transphobia and the bigotry visible. They are kids like other kids, and they deserve our love, our support and our protection.

A pediatrician and mother talks about what she learned from her transgender child

Paria Hassouri tells the story of how she and her husband changed the way they treated their transgender child as soon as they understood that they were hurting her.

She writes in the New York Times:

Once our daughter came out, the language in our home became predominantly negative. Are you sure? Your life is going to be so much harder and you’ll be discriminated against. You are so smart with so much potential, but some people won’t see that. You’ll have a more difficult time getting a job. You’ll have to work harder to prove your worth. You could be the victim of a hate crime.
Even if my husband and I weren’t always making these statements directly to our daughter, fear and worry pervaded all of our conversations, creating an overall negative energy in our home. One day we found our daughter moping around on the couch, dismayed about her future, and realized it was all our fault.
We decided right then and there to stop being pessimists. We told her that with her big heart, intelligence and family support, there were no limits on what she could accomplish. We shifted our focus from all the negative trans media coverage and began highlighting the positive, citing examples of trans people living full lives and making a difference in the world. We said that we expect all three of our children to pursue their passions wholeheartedly, and that she was no exception. The more positively we spoke, the more optimistic I became.
Your child is dealing with enough negativity from the media and outside world. Make your home a safe space. Don’t be a pessimist. Instead of telling your child they have a long and limited road ahead, tell them their future is bright with no limits on what they can accomplish or who they can be.

She repeats that you must make your decisions on the basis of love, not fear. Ask: “What does my child need from me today?”

She adds that there is not one way to transition, one perfect transgender journey that follows a single roadmap.She learned not every trans person presents at the same age or in the same way. Trans identity can emerge during childhood, adolescence or beyond.

She also warns people against mixing gender expression and gender identity. She herself, as a cis woman, expresses her own gender in a wide variety of ways. The same applies to trans people. As she puts it: “Gender identity is not a choice, but how we express our gender is. “

More over at The New York Times (there may be a paywall.)

Photo from Hassouri’s web site.

Hassouri is the author of the book Found in Transition: A Mother’s Evolution during Her Child’s Gender Change

The trans girl who came out to her classmates, won over her bullies and became a published author, all before 11

Pink News presents AJ Nesbitt, a trans girl who proves that you can thrive as your true self!

AJ decided to use the Coronoa lock down to write a book together with her mother.

True You Super You, the first of a planned series, tells the story of how AJ began her journey of truth, coming out to her teachers and classmates, and standing up to her bullies with the help of her best friends: the Sass Pack.
“At first I would get angry and sass back at them,” AJ says of her bullies.
“My mum taught me to try to be honest with them. Instead of yelling back at them and starting a fight, to try to let them know how they are hurting my feelings. I also tried to be honest with my feelings with the teachers so they could help and for the most part they did.”

More here!

A Mum on Her Transgender Daughter: “Ryder Is a Normal, Happy Child”

Anne Bruinn from Canada is sharing her experience from raising a transgender daughter over at PopSugar:

“At first, I thought ‘it’s just a phase’ because that’s what people kept saying. You hear that a lot from people. Kids go through phases, sure. There’s the toddler rant phase and the teenage phase, but beyond that, there’s something deeper. When Ryder wanted to wear dresses and ponytails to preschool, I let her because it made her happy. I told her people might think it strange, but that she was going to be their teacher and show them it’s OK for people to wear what they want and be happy.”

In the early years she was worried about how others would treat Ryder. Now she feels sorry for those who reject Ryder, although she does not stand for any “advice” as regards Ryder seeing a psychiatrist:

“People are who they are and there’s no need for a psychiatrist to read into anything,. People are different and what’s normal for some isn’t normal for others. Ryder is a normal, happy child. If she had a broken leg, I’d take her to a doctor. For cavities, I take her to a dentist. For education, she goes to school.”

So far, Ryder’s classmates and teachers have been extremely supportive of her decision to transition.

Read the whole story here.

Puberty blockers linked to lower suicide risk for transgender people

A new study lead by Dr. Jack Turban, a resident psychiatrist at the Harvard Medical School, concludes that transgender individuals who received puberty blockers during adolescence have a lower risk of suicidal thoughts as adults than those who wanted the medication but could not access them.

The study is presented in a new paper published in the journal Pediatrics.

“Puberty blockers” are types of medication that delay puberty in children. They give gender variant youth time to reflect on their true gender, without having to cope with the negative effects puberty will have on their bodies if they decide to transition later on. If they decide to live as their assigned gender, they can just stop taking the medication and natural puberty resumes.

Turban says the findings add to the “growing evidence base suggesting that gender-affirming medical care for transgender youth is associated with superior mental health outcomes in adulthood.”

“It certainly argues against the misguided notion that gender-affirming care is inherently harmful and should be legislatively banned,” Turban says in a statement, referring to a number of recently introduced state bills seeking to limit transition-related care for minors.

Here’s the conclusion from the paper itself:

This is the first study in which associations between access to pubertal suppression and suicidality are examined. There is a significant inverse association between treatment with pubertal suppression during adolescence and lifetime suicidal ideation among transgender adults who ever wanted this treatment. These results align with past literature, suggesting that pubertal suppression for transgender adolescents who want this treatment is associated with favorable mental health outcomes.

More about this study here!

See also my post: Puberty Blockers – Overview of Research

Photo: Katarzyna Bialasiewicz

This Is Latin America’s First Primarily Transgender School

At the Amaranta School in Santiago, Chile, most of the students are transgender. It’s a welcoming place of learning for kids who were bullied or discriminated against at their previous schools.

NBC reports:

The school was launched in 2017 as a way to help families of trans children, who often skip classes or even fail to finish their studies as result of discrimination, said Selenna Foundation President Evelyn Silva. Classes began in April 2018 in a space loaned by a community center in the Chilean capital of Santiago. Courses include math, science, history and English, as well as workshops on art and photography.

Must see video!

Top photo: Children embrace their teacher, Teani Cortes, on the last day of school at the Amaranta Gomez school in Santiago, Chile, on Dec. 12, 2018. Photo: Esteban Felix

Too Many European Countries are Failing Transgender Children

Growing Up Transgender has presented an interactive map showing where the different European nations stand as regards the treatment of transgender children.

In the map red means “Actively hostile with little or no fundamental rights for trans children.”
Amber means: “Rudimentary rights for trans children.”
Yellow: “Moderate fundamental rights for trans children.”
Green: “Fundamental rights for trans children are met.”

Only 4% (two countries), meet all the fundamental rights of trans children and young people: Spain and Malta.

You can access the interactive map here.

Growing up Transgender says that the map is based on data from the index of TGEU (Transgender Europe), which presents key indicators on trans rights.

The parents that run the Growing up Transgender site add:

“We need rights organisations (Stonewall, Amnesty, TGEU, Save the Children, UNICEF, Plan International) to collect data, and analyse this data, to help us hold government’s to account for the gross failings towards the rights of trans children across Europe. We need TGEU members to start asking TGEU to provide analysis specific to trans children and young people.”

More here.

You can follow Growing up Trans on twitter.

Update: The map was created by Trans Rights Info.

Growing up transgender in the UK, now and then

Growing Up Trans tells this story about how being a trans kid now is often different from what it was in the past.

//I know a handful of trans adults in their latter years, who were supported at an early age. They are still trans decades later, living their lives, growing old, surviving. One lady in her 70s came to speak to me after meeting our family, including our trans daughter.

She told us how happy she was to meet us, & that we were supportive & accepting of our child as trans. Then, fighting back tears, she said, do you know I’m trans too, & I was a trans child.

She told us after transition she’d had to move away from home, & had never disclosed her trans history to anyone outside her immediate family. She said that colleagues she’d worked with for years, & her close friends had no knowledge she was transgender.

Her parents had supported her during childhood but she was told or had learned to hide that aspect of herself. To access medical care she moved across the country. She said she had led a happy life, with a loving partner, and a rewarding career.

She was so happy to see our child was happy, supported & loved, & she saw a future for trans children, where they did not have to hide. Where trans children are accepted & supported.

The [British] Gender Recognition Act 2004 provided a formal (though expensive, & pathologising) process for changing legal gender for trans adults. The Equality Act 2010, gave trans school children legal protections to protect them from discrimination & abuse.

Trans children have always been there, its just that only recently have they had legal rights. They’ve only recently had formalised access to established international standards of health care, & only recently not been forced to undergo years of stigmatising psychotherapy.

The current government might be able to change the laws to remove protections, they might be able to remove supportive policies from schools which protect trans (& LGBT kids) from bullying but they can’t mandate trans kids out of existence.

This generation of trans kids will not go back into hiding. They will not suffer another Section 28 or be forced into silence & shame. They are here, they are thriving, they are living. They need all our support to be given a voice, to be heard, #SupportTransKids #TansKidsLiving //

How to support transgender kids in school

Trans Actual UK comments on local authorities in Britain dropping trans inclusion guidance for schools.

That is not OK! Below find links to resources that will be of help to trans kid supporters.

//We’re dismayed to find out that a number of local authorities have dropped their trans inclusion guidance for schools - not because the guidance is incorrect but because of pressure from a litigious pressure group.

Just to be clear, schools still have a duty under the Equality Act (2010) to #SupportTransKids and that won’t change, it’s just that many local authorities don’t have a best practice document that explains how to do it. Thankfully the education unions do.

But imagine being so committed to taking support away from one of the most marginalised groups of society that you’d take a local authority to court. Let’s get this straight: it’s possible to #SupportTransKids AND cis girls and young women.

Actually a lot of steps taken by schools to be trans inclusive can also help break down gender stereotypes and be supportive for cis children.

1. Opening up the school uniform policy so that it acknowledges that children of any gender may wish to wear a skirt or makeup and that children of any gender may wish to wear trousers means that a wide range of children and young people will benefit.

2. Gender neutral facilities can help reduce bullying. Furthermore, just because there’s a gender neutral toilet facility doesn’t mean there can’t also be facilities specifically for girls and facilities specifically for boys.

3. It’s best practice to offer mixed gender PE. This means that children of all genders have access to a range of sports (and gets away from netball for girls, basketball for boys etc). In Australia they’ve had mixed PE for decades.

4. Thoughtful use of language helps schools get away from gender stereotypes and helps teachers to identify the gendered language and stereotypes they didn’t realise they were perpetuating (eg referring to individual boys as “champ” and girls as “poppet”).

5. Introductions with pronouns at the start of an academic year can help gender non-conforming cis children as well as trans kids. Plenty of cis girls get mistaken for boys, often just because they have short hair or a more masculine appearance.

And also, there is a wealth of peer reviewed research that shows that a supportive environment can improve mental health outcomes for trans children & young people. 92% of trans young people have considered taking their own life & 45% of trans young people have attempted to.

Sources:

Imagine being the sort of person that would campaign against guidance that could help schools potentially save someone’s life. Today and every day we say #SupportTransKids.

If you work in a school, here’s where you’ll find some reliable guidance:

my-autistic-things:

Part of my job is processing all the new incoming books and putting our property stamp on them and barcodes, so I get to also see all the adorable new kid’s books too with wonderful gorgeous art in them but ANYWAYS THIS NEW ONE CAME IN AND
ALT
“It Feels Good To Be Yourself. A book about gender identity” written by Theresa Thorn and illustrated by Noah Grigni. The cover shows the four main characters, one is a transgender girl, two are nonbinary in different ways, and one is a cis boy who is the little brother to the trans girl.
I typically don’t read the kids books even when they are super cute but this one I HAD to read. So I start reading. And I just–
Here’s a few pages: (short image description below)
Quick image description: Above are 5 pictures I took of pages that I really liked and made me extra happy. The first two are back to back pages of the book’s introduction of JJ, who is a wheelchair user and is “neither a girl or a boy” and uses they/them pronouns. This is the text from the next two back to back pages depicting the four friends playing outside and coloring on the sidewalk: “Some kids don’t feel exactly like a girl or a boy – they feel like neither. Some kids feel like their gender identity isn’t always the same – it’s often changing.” [Next page] “And even with all these possible ways to be, some kids don’t feel like any of the words they know fit them exactly right. There are a never-ending number of ways to be yourself in the world.” The last page shows Ruthie after she came out to her parents as transgender. Her whole family (mom, dad, little brother, her, and a dog on the side) are hugging. The text reads “Oops! Ruthie was a girl all along – they just didn’t know it at first.” End ID.
SO OBVIOUSLY IM ALMOST SOBBING AT WORK NOW OMG
This book is absolutely beautiful and so sweet and I encourage everyone to go see if they can borrow it at their library. It’s a quick 2-3 min read, maybe 15 if you start getting emotional like my queer little heart did. I’m assuming there’s a regular print version more widely available, and maybe a LT version too, and if my Hawaii library has a copy of the braille version I’m guessing others already have it too.
OH AND HERE’S THE BACK COVER I DIDNT NOTICE UNTIL AFTER I PROCESSED IT AND THIS PART REALLY GOT ME OKAY (text written below)
“No matter what your gender identity is, you are okay exactly the way you are. And you are loved.”