Transgender kids get help navigating a difficult path

Amber is one of an increasing number who are getting specialized care. The 12-year-old takes puberty-blocking drugs and hopes to have gender reassignment surgery at 16.  Amber, a soft-spoken, feminine 12-year-old who loves Hello Kitty and fashion design, lives with a secret. It is a secret most sixth-graders can't fathom, one she hides behind pink skirts and makeup. It is a secret that led to all her baby pictures being tucked away as though her childhood had never happened. Amber was born a boy. When she was 10, she stopped going by her given name, Aaron, and began dressing as a girl. Last year, she started taking medication to keep her from going through puberty. 

"I can be who I am," Amber said. "I can be a girl."  An increasing number of children like Amber are realizing they are transgender and seeking care at clinics around the nation. Because of their age, the complex and emotional journey is as much their parents' as their own. Families are forced to make tough decisions about therapy and medication, and about what to tell friends and relatives. They are trying to give their children a normal upbringing with summer camps and sleepovers while protecting them from harm and embarrassment.

"How do you move through society with a gender-variant child?" said Nancy Quay, a psychotherapist at the University of Michigan gender services program. "What do you tell your neighbors? How do you keep your child safe?"  For Amber's parents, Michelle and Jamie, the last few years have been a roller coaster of emotions — guilt for not recognizing earlier that their daughter was transgender, grief over losing Aaron and worries about Amber's future. Michelle said their family and others close to them know about Amber's transition. Telling their story, she said, "is the right thing to do.... Hopefully it will bring more awareness and help other families." Michelle said she believes that letting Amber take the medication and live as she wants is the only real choice. "We are confident this is her authentic self," she said.
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Transgender college student tells positive story of male transition

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  SHANNON LITZ/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

  Dana Pardee says he sees "just a shell of the person who I used to be" in his high school senior photo, bottom left, when he still lived as a woman.

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SHANNON LITZ/THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Dana Pardee says he sees "just a shell of the person who I used to be" in his high school senior photo, bottom left, when he still lived as a woman.

GARDNERVILLE - When Dana Pardee looks at his 2007 high school graduation picture, he sees a beautiful young woman smiling back at him. "Aww," he says. "She's pretty, but she's not me. She's just a shell of the person who I used to be."

Dana, 23, is a year into the process of changing his gender identity from female to male. With family and friends, Dana corrects pronoun usage from "she" to "he" and "hers" to "his" when he is the topic of the conversation.

Once a week, he gives himself a shot of testosterone. Last year, he underwent "top surgery" in Florida.

He's updated his driver s license and passport, changing the sex from "F" to "M". And Dana is ready to share the news with Carson Valley, where he grew up as a girl with his sister, Rita, playing sports, graduating from Douglas High School, and worshipping every weekend with his family at St. Gall Catholic Church.

It's the place where his father, Skip Pardee, has had a thriving chiropractic practice for three decades, where his father and mother, Veronica, have long been involved in community activities.

"I finally acknowledged and came out as transgender last winter, and since then, I have socially and physically transitioned to living full-time as a man," Dana said. "I am happier overall and much more at peace with who I am."

The Pardees are aware of potential backlash with Dana sharing his story in a conservative community. But, they agree, it's time. And they believe that the people who knew and loved Dana as a girl won't change their minds.

"I feel like a lot of people in rural areas think these types of social issues do not exist where they live, but that is definitely not true," he said. Just before heading back to the University of Nevada, Reno, where Dana is a senior, he talked about his new life in an interview at his parents' Gardnerville home.

"I want to be able to reach out to people in our community who may be struggling with similar issues," Dana said. "I've recently started doing lots of public speaking and advocacy work, and I absolutely love it." What has eased the transition is the support of his family. "It's so rare for a transgender to hear this," he said. "I want people to know you can have a good experience. It's not as scary as you think."

None of the Pardees said Dana's decision came as a surprise. "Growing up with Dana, when he came out to us, it was like this is who you have been all your life," Rita Pardee said. "It's just a new pronoun. I don't think I've really seen a big change, except that he is incredibly, incredibly happy now."

Dana said he was anxious about coming out to his parents. He confided in his mother two months before he told his father. "I was terrified to tell them," he said. "Tapes would start playing in my head, fears I would not be welcomed home. That's all you heard about in the transgender community. Every scenario I picked was wrong. I thought A-B-C would happen. I was completely wrong. When I told my dad, he said, 'That's nothing I didn't know.' It was the most anti­climactic moment of my life."

Veronica said one comment she hears frequently is, "I can't believe you guys are so OK with it." "What's the alternative?" she said. "Denial, depression, drugs or suicide? I don't want any of that. Dana is a person with character and a strong moral compass. It was a no-brainer."
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Successful TransMen: Links and Photos by Lynn Conway

Many thousands of people have made female-to-male (FtM) gender transitions and are now living fully and successfully as men. Many thousands more are now in the process of FtM transition. The numbers are far larger than commonly thought.

These men quietly struggle with many difficult medical, physical, family, social, legal, employment and relationship issues in order to transition and build their new lives. After those transitional difficulties, most transmen live in "stealth" and leave their pasts behind. They "hide in plain sight" in order to avoid social stigmatization and get on with their new lives. Their personal successes insure that they assimilate and blend right into society. As a result they are then almost totally "invisible" as having had transsexual pasts.

Recently the veil of invisibity has been lifting, as a number of transmen have begun creating websites to tell their stories and help others. You can put a compelling human face on their lives by looking at the websites below - websites containing valuable information about the FtM experience. There you will find links to the stories and experiences of successful men who can serve as role models for young FtM's. The websites, stories and experiences of these men are a valuable source of first-hand information about gender transitions to masculinity.

These men's stories can provide hope, encouragement and role models to others, especially to young transsexual teens facing FtM gender transition. Those teens (and their parents and loved ones) need to learn that successful FtM gender transition is now possible. Without visible role models such as the men below, it can be difficult for them to visualize what is now possible. Then, if parents can learn to see their transsexual child as a "boy with a physical problem" rather than a "girl with a mental problem", that child's future is especially hopeful. With parental love and support, a young transsexual boy can now really reach for his dreams, and go on to live a full life as a man.
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The Ten Most Innovative Companies and the LGBTs Who Got Them to the Top

Every year, we look at the LGBT people who are making strides in their fields, pushing beyond the conventional wisdom to improve their workplaces or propel their industries forward. This year we look at 10 innovative companies, all of which have high-ranking employees who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.

Megan Smith, 47, is the vice president for new business development at Google, making her one of the highest-ranking lesbians in a company that has earned its stripes as an inclusive innovator. Smith is a pioneer in her own right, as the former CEO of the LGBT corporation PlanetOut, before it was purchased by Here Media [The Advocate’s parent company]. Smith is also juggling work and motherhood: She and her wife, journalist Kara Swisher, have two sons, Louie, 10, and Alex, 7.

Smith’s involvement with Google began nearly 15 years ago, when PlanetOut signed on as one of Google’s earliest partners in 1998. Smith officially joined Team Google in 2003, after working with the company’s founder and key higher-ups whom she met as fellow early innovators in online technology. According to Smith, Google’s founding philosophy of innovation and creativity, and its mantra “Don’t be evil,” make the company an ideal place to work.

 “It’s an amazing place not only for LGBT people but for anyone to work,” Smith says. “Anyone who wants to innovate in the world is very welcome there.” Cementing its status as a groundbreaker, Smith points to the lead Google has taken on workplace issues, including domestic-partner benefits. In addition to offering employee benefits to domestic partners, in 2010 Google became one of the first major companies to compensate its partnered same-sex employees to offset the federal taxes imposed on spousal benefits, a practice called “grossing up.” Google crunched the numbers to discover the exact amount of this additional tax burden and then issued payments to affected employees. Several other large employers and many universities have since adopted similar policies.
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Door half open to transgender people

HA NOI (VNS)— At Chao Coffee Shop, Tran Ngoc Ly, a male-to-female transgender person, gives a waiter a gentle smile as she sits down at a window-side table. 

She strokes her wind-swept short hair. Her glossy, thick lips and red nails make her attractive. Most of the people in the cafe eye Ly curiously, not only because of her beauty but because other parts of her body hint at her original gender.

Ly, one of nearly 170,000 transgender people in Viet Nam, says she has gotten used to such a reaction over the years.

"No matter what happens, I feel comfortable and happy in myself. I am proud to live according to my gender identity, not my biological gender."

"I have my family, who consider me their lovely daughter, and a group of transgender friends who share my sadness and happiness and improve my knowledge about my gender identity. These are my safest and most comfortable places whenever I get lost or feel upset."

However, 21-year-old Ly experienced a tough fight in gaining her family's acceptance as a girl.

Ly was interested in playing with dolls and wearing colourful dresses and make-up from a young age, and felt angry whenever she wore boy's clothes. When she turned 16, Ly became confused and even scared whenever she acknowledged her "abnormality".

"I called centres for psychological consultations and they advised me not to think and live differently to others, but it was impossible for me to believe that I was anything other than a girl."

With professionals offering little in the way of help or guidance, Ly took to the internet to find information about her situation. It was there that she discovered the term ‘transgender person'.

Le Quang Binh, director of the Institute for Studies of Society, Economy and Environment, says transgender people's expectations of their gender differ from that of their actual biological gender. The term ‘transgender' is relevant to gender identity while homosexuality and lesbianism are related to one's sexual orientation, he adds.

Binh's colleague, Dr Pham Quynh Phuong, says, unlike homosexuals and lesbians, who only realise their sexual orientation when they fall in love with someome of the same gender, transgender people express and realise their gender identity from a young age.

She says that when a transgender person grows up, they enter into a psychological crisis trying to figure out who they are, while facing discrimination from others at school or in public places because of their differences.

A survey of transgender people in Ha Noi and HCM City, recently released by the institute, shows that many of the interviewees have experienced such persecution.
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Oprah: Transgender Transition

In high school, Paul McKerrow was the starting quarterback and valedictorian. His classmates voted him best looking and most likely to succeed, but today, some may not recognize Helena High's golden boy.

After many years of struggling with his gender identity, Paul decided to become a woman. The transition into Kimberly Reed, a lesbian filmmaker, began in San Francisco just a few years after Paul learned to throw the perfect spiral on Helena High's football field. Kim documents her journey to womanhood in her film Prodigal Sons.

Watch a clip from the film Prodigal Sons. 

Before her transition, Kim was one of three sons in her family. When her parents, Lorne and Carol, thought they were unable to have children, they adopted a baby boy named Marc. Soon after, they were surprised to learn they were expecting. "The day they picked him up was probably the day they conceived me," Kim says.

A year later, along came another surprise...Paul and Marc's younger brother, Todd. "It looks like a fairytale childhood," she says. "But appearances can be deceiving."
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A Father’s Day Transgender Surprise

The last time Maria Chico’s father saw her, she was a baby boy. Would her dad accept her 30 years later—as a woman? As told to Samantha Marshall. The last thing my father knew, he had a son.

He could only ever remember me as a baby boy, swaddled in my mother’s arms. He had no idea that I was male by gender only, or that I was miserable, alone, and confused, until, at age 21, I completed a series of operations to become the person I was meant to be—a woman. So when I drove out to see him last week, our first encounter in 30 years, I felt sick with anticipation. Would he reject me, like so many other people had done before? From left: Maria Chico as a boy named Danny and today.

 My whole life, I’ve longed to know my birth father. There were so many unanswered questions. My mother’s explanation was that he’d abandoned us. But I always wondered if that was the full story. Did he really leave me, or was it just the bitterness of his breakup with my mother that had torn us apart? Did he ever try to find me? If he had, it couldn't have been easy.
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Andy South, Transgender

A popular "Project Runway" contestantwho appeared on the series as a gay man is now living as a woman.

E! Online reports that Andy South, who starred in the eighth season of the hit Lifetime series and made it into the top 3, now identifies as female on Facebook, and has changed his name to Nong Ariyaphon Southiphong. In addition, the designer now appears in a series of profile photos with long hair and in full make-up.

"Thank you to my fans and friends who have supported me all the way. To my family for seeing me for me and for all the love I am surrounded with," the 25-year-old Hawaii native wrote on June 3, according to RadarOnline. "I am blessed to be so accepted and welcomed just the way I am. May that love flow through me and onto many others. Live in love for the world needs it."

She also noted: "Much has changed in a year. And much has not. Love my cousin and sister. A year of intense growth shared."

Take a look at 20 transgender pioneers in the article
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