Posted on 07/04/2015 5:33:31 PM PDT by ScottWalkerForPresident2016
What would you do if your 3-year-old son told you assuredly that he wanted to be a girl? An Oakland, Cali. couple told their child it was OK, and a sad boy become a joyful little girl.
It's controlled after-school anarchy at the Christian-Carter household. Seven-year-old Chloe has rolled herself up in an exercise mat in the living room of the family's lovely Oakland, Calif., home.
"Look I'm a burrito," Chloe shouts.
Her 4-year-old sister, Jackie, swoops in for a bite — and a hard push.
"Ow!" Chloe shouts. "Mom! Jackie pushed me!"
Just two sisters playing, occasionally sparring, as dad, James Christian, and mom, Mary Carter, watch nearby.
Jackie's birthday is in mid-October, but for Carter and Christian, a second date is seared in memory almost as intensely — what Carter calls "The Day."
Five Makeshift Ponytales
"It was May 15, 2014, and I remember the date because Jackie was out of school that day," she says. "We drove to drop her older sister off at kindergarten. And normally Jackie is quite happy and content to hang out with me and play."
Jackie was 3 then, and she was called Jack. Glancing into the backseat of her car, Mary noticed something different.
"Jackie just looked really, really sad; sadder than a 3-and-a-half-year-old should look," Carter says. "This weight that looked like it weighed more than she did, something she had to say and I didn't know what that was.
"So I asked. I said, 'Jackie, are you sad that you're not going to school today?' And Jackie was really quiet and put her head down and said 'No, I'm sad because I'm a boy.' "
Carter was taken aback. Her youngest had been wearing her big sister's dresses regularly and enjoyed donning pink boots. But this was new.
Carter wanted to confirm. "You're really not happy being a boy?" she asked.
"I thought a little bit longer and I said, 'Well, are you happy being you?' And that made Jackie smile," she says. "And I felt like for that moment, that was all that really mattered. That was 'The Day.' "
Carter took her to a chain drug store, and Jackie asked for elastic hair bands. Her hair wasn't long enough yet, but Carter put Jackie's hair up in five makeshift ponytails.
"And I've never seen such a happy child," she remembers. "To go from maybe an hour before this, this child who looks so sad, to that, I felt like I'd done something right by her."
In the months that followed, they started talking over girl names, with help from Jackie's pre-K teacher. On her fourth birthday, the family sang happy birthday for the first time to Jackie.
Jackie Stood Her Ground
A new job for Christian had prompted the family to move from Atlanta to Oakland two years ago. Carter and Christian say they feel lucky they've landed there. The Bay Area is one of the most LGBT friendly regions in the nation. The challenges ahead might be far greater, Christian says, if they'd stayed in the South.
He recalls the Fourth of July weekend last year, when they were back visiting Atlanta. At a community party, Christian noticed a group of kids gathering around Jackie, who still went by Jack back then.
"There was a point when some of the other boys, alpha males, talking about 15 kids surrounding Jackie," he says, "wanted to challenge this notion, 'Wait a minute, you said you're a boy but you're wearing a dress and have pony tails. I don't understand that.' "
Christian says he felt anger at first. "Then joy, when this girl of about 9 stepped in and said, 'This is Jack, he's my friend.' And Jackie stood her ground, and so that made me very proud," he says.
It's only been a little more than a year since Jack became Jackie. Neither of her parents has any illusions about the potential struggles ahead. Transgender people have alarmingly high rates of depression, substance abuse and suicide.
"There will be more challenges, certainly, as Jackie gets older and gets around more kids," Christian says. "Then puberty, and dating, and the challenges will be like a very steep curve. But I'm hoping that by the time she gets there, I hope, one, we've given her the tools and two, that there's more acceptance of this issue."
There is more acceptance now than there was even a few years ago, says psychologist Diane Ehrensaft at the UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital. Ehrensaft has worked with transgender youth for more than 20 years.
"We as a culture have lifted the lid so that kids can start speaking up, showing themselves and that we have a lens to understand it from," she says. "That's all very new. We are now much more commonly hearing very little children speak up, 'Please let me be the gender I am rather than the gender you think I am.' "
Experts in the field diverge on how to approach gender identity issues in the very young. Jackie's parents know some people may not understand their approach. It is even hard for them at times.
As Carter explains, her daughter Chloe is the only one in the family Jackie still allows to occasionally refer to her as "Jack," as "he" and as "brother."
"Chloe is very loving and protective and supportive," she says. "But I think for Chloe, she still attaches this memory of her little brother, of Jack. And it's right now hard for her to let that go. It's that last piece she's holding on to."
"I myself have times when I miss my boy," says James Christian. "And I look at the old clothes and the old pictures and I will miss Jack. And that's probably never going to go away. That's just going to take some time."
On a different angle entirely, true story, a family friend had the following conversation with her little girl:
Girl: I like helping sick people get better. I want to be a nurse.
Mom: That's nice, dear. But you could be a doctor if you want.
Girl: Girls can be doctors?
Mom: You can be anything you want.
Girl (delighted): Really? Oh, mommy, I want to be a boat!
Tell him to get over it.
I mentioned that the causes ay be multivalent. "Contribute to" can be significant for an individual who is, for other reasons, particularly vulnerable.
Myself, I've never met a gay person who didn't have a deeply unsatisfactory relationship with their same-sex parent. But, again, not everybody who has a crappy relationship with their same-sex parent turns out gay.
There could be a number of intersecting cumulative or contributing factors.
Yesterday, a girl, today a burrito, tomorrow a fire engine....
"Chicken hawks" look for young ones that are very vulnerable.
This reminds me of the rage I felt thirty years ago when I was writing ads for a silicone implant company...the ads were to go into a medical journal for plastic and reconstructive surgeons. I read a few issues of the magazine to get an idea of the topics the doctors were concerned with.
I was appalled by one article that set forth the psychological reasons why it was a good idea to install mammary implants in pre-pubescent girls, if they were obsessively worried that when their actual breasts grew in, they wouldn’t be big enough. Plus, an artificial rack would give the girls a social advantage and higher status in school.
Americans Don't Know Why We Celebrate 4th of July! -- A Conversation with the general public - video
Nah you wouldn’t.....you would be eat up faster than a burrito?
3G service just dropped off the face of the Earth here.
Very spotty.
Oh well.
Transcomestiblism for the taco souled!
/ kidding
Thank you. I’ve know 3 year old’s that wanted to be firetrucks, and ponies. Wonder if these parents would pay for surgery to turn Jack into a horse? If not have him live in a pasture and eat grass.
Idiots!
Pure child abuse.
No other word for it.
this child is being abused
“Transgender people have alarmingly high rates of depression, substance abuse and suicide.”
As do most mentally ill people.
We have to also remember the millions of women who have been taking massive dosses of artificial hormones to regulate their cycle and prevent birth.
When tens of millions of women of breeding age, mid teens to late forties or older, use artificial hormones and then expel them from their body, the sewage treatment plants do not remove these chemicals. They are deposited into our rivers and streams and become part of our drinking water.
Do they effect the fish and amphibian species? Do they effect the male children who use the water for drinking, making soft drinks and washing?
Most women themselves are unaware of the health risks associated with oral contraceptive use. Increases in certain types of cancer as well as benign tumors have been found as well as a serious increase in heart attack, stroke, hypertension and other circulatory related illnesses. Especially if a women smokes while talking the pill.
This would seem like common sense as a massive dose of any chemical natural or synthetic would have consequences on the body.
Of course the pill and abortion is what has allowed women to become as cavalier about sex as men so we can’t have any real investigation or information on possible negative side effects.
Agreed. What if their three-year-old told his parents that he wanted to eat only M&Ms for the rest of his life? Would they respect his decision?
Okay, that explains it.
Homosexuality is a Marxist theory construct to normalize sodomizing the boys again, like the homosexual cultures of the Samurai and Sparta. There is nothing rational or virtuous about the dehumanizing desires of homosexuals. It is unnatural and learned by child abuse and neglect.
Today’s muslim cultures are homosexual. All homosexual cultures are extremely sexist (hateful), they warp sexual desire of children (like the parents of this boy—they totally emasculated him-—made him hate being a “boy”. It is easy to do. Children are totally dependent on parents for their understanding of Reality (Truth) and how they feel about themselves.
Teaching this lifestyle is destroying the ability of children to be rational and virtuous. Their mind will be obsessed with sex, since they are hyper-sexualized-—much like a John Wayne Gacy—raped as a boy and had an obsession with raping boys and killing them—(looking at people as anal cavities destroys dignity).
This creation of a tribal worldview is to destroy the ability to be a critical thinker—to understand Natural Law and to destroy Unity (the family is the only basic unit, which can create autonomous,rugged individuality and unite the most diverse of human beings: Male and female. Rational, virtuous people would never accept the slavery in a Marxist Collective “utopia”.
They want a NWO-—and Christianity is incompatible with all tribal socialistic”thinking”: http://www.examiner.com/article/afghan-pedophilia-a-way-of-life-say-u-s-soldiers-and-journalists
Poly-cystic ovary syndrome is a biological condition that cause women to produce too much testosterone. The symptoms of it include hirsutism, including facial hair, and infertility. Guess what? POS is dramatically more prevalent among lesbians than among straight women. Pointing that out does not mean that I believe lesbians are entitled on account of their medical problem to have sex with women.
There doesn't have to be one acceptable conservative view of what causes homosexuality; conservatives need only be united in, for example, refusing to have institutions like marriage distorted to accommodate homosexuality.
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