Gender Dysphoria

NHS Website

So I've been doing some research on Gender Identity and found the medical definition of being transgender: Gender Dysphoria. NHS Definition: Gender Dysphoria is a condition where a person experiences discomfort or distress because this is a mismatch between their biological sex and gender identity.

I also found an article about Gender Dysphoria and Teenagers, one of the things that struck me was the suggested articles at the side of the page. Whilst all helpful and I'm sure appreciated by people who need them, the fact that transphobic bullying exists the extent that the NHS website has to advise young people on how to deal with it says a lot about todays society.

If you Google Transgender Teens you get 1,040,000 results in 0.22 seconds. On the first page you get a mixture of parents accounts of their child coming out as transgender and suicide rates in correlation to parental acceptance.

I did come across an interesting link that simply linked me to all the articles on trans people from the Huffington Post  when I was going down the list the first three articles caught my eye, 2 were about Leelah Alcorn and the publics reaction to her death, and the other was about parental acceptance. The article titled ' 24 Powerfull Reactions to Leelah Alcorn's Death' was definitely interesting as it was split between people reacting solely from her death and others starting another hashtag #RealLifeTransAdult in which they gave hope to other young trans kids who could be going through Leelah's tag and having similar experiences to the ones she had, the ones in which she didn't have any hope to continue with her life because it wasn't going to get better.

Transphobia is an epidemic-- it's literally killing people. Get educated. Educate others. Spread awareness.
— Leo Sheng (@iLeoSheng) December 30, 2014

It's Twitter trends like these that are going to make a difference in todays society and we rely more and more on social media to tell us news and more importantly, the actual news. Not something that has been deemed important by a middle class business man sat in a huge office at the BBC, but something that the general public has deemed important, such as the death of a young girl that could have easily been prevented if people were a little more open minded.

The next article was aptly titled 'Fixing Society in the Wake of Leelah Alcorns death with take Empathy and Understanding from loved ones' followed by an article based on how parental acceptance is important to Trans Youth, and that it's not 'just a phase'. In the article they feedback on an experiment in which they asked Trans and Cis children questions. They found that Trans-Boys mirrored Cis-Boys answer and Trans-Girls mirrored Cis-Girls answers. 

I also watched a short documentary following a young girl named Josie, she transitioned when she was 6 and is searching for a US doctor who will allow her to have hormone treatment. This is a young girl who has the unwavering support of her family as they scour the country trying to find a doctor to treat her before her male puberty kicks in. A quote that sticks with me and backs up the importance of Leelahs story is:

Interviewer: A Decision is being made as to wether of not Josie will have her own biological children in the future.
Doctor: That's why the role (Hormone) blockers is so important, they get an opportunity for 2/3 years to really work with a mental health therapist on what it's going to mean to be transgender.
Interviewer: To me it seems ridiculous to have a kid at age 12/13/14 deciding wether they want to have biological children when they're 20/30/40.
Doctor: Well they make the decision to kill themselves at 12/13, that's a pretty powerful decision.



So that's all the research I have for now, however whilst I was writing this I saw interesting post on Tumblr that really hit home for me the power of social media in these situations and how if it wan't for social media and it's coverage of many big news stories, we would not have known the truth.

For instance if it wasn't for Leelahs suicide note on Tumblr, we would have believed her parents speech about their 'son' who was 16 (not 17 like Leelah actually was) and how 'he' died by taking a walk early morning and was in a accident with a truck.

The post is here for anyone who wants to read the full extent of what social media has done in the past 6 months.