Transgender Children

Abstract

The scholarly literature on transgender children spans many disciplines including medicine, law, humanities, the social sciences, and the emergent field of transgender studies. However, the most contentious discipline to claim epistemological ownership over knowledge of the trans child is psychology. In 1980, “Transsexualism” as well as the accompanying child diagnosis, “Gender Identity Disorder in Childhood” (GIDC), first entered the lexicon of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), thereby setting transgender children on a trajectory of being understood in Western discourse as mentally disordered. The DSM, published by the American Psychiatric Association, sets out a common international language and the standard criteria for the classification and diagnosis of all mental disorders and therefore has wide implications for governing the legal, social, and medical experience of trans people. Refusing the construction of gender variance as disordered, a growing chorus of voices in recent years has contested the pathologization of transgender lives and the dominance of medical-scientific narratives about trans experience. Many parents of transgender children, trans adults, and trans children themselves have become outspoken activists, demanding authentic supports and safe spaces for children whose gender expression diverges from their natal sex and the socially constructed meanings attributed to this sex. In turn, scholars, particularly in the field of transgender studies, have interrogated the assumptions that tie particular gender expressions and identifications to biology. Rather than confine the debate about trans children to how they should be psychologically or medically treated, these scholars challenge the social and cultural forces that regulate bodies and restrict or enable diverse forms of gender expression and embodiment. The struggle of trans people, youth, and children for the right to a gender existence not threatened by pathologization, violence, and exclusion may be read as one of the defining questions of our time and is one that is still rapidly unfolding.