Gender change as a child

[FlyingJesus]

Well you can

[Lewis]

i love coming back to habbox to read the drivel that undertaker spews... i swear in 5 or so years his views and opinions haven't matured and broadened.
what about, for example, egyptian men? they wear dresses, kiss each other and hold hands down the street. certain things that are considered effeminate in the western world really aren't elsewhere.

defining people by their gender is regressive and oppressive.

ETA: when i was a kid i slicked my hair back, didn't wear makeup, wore boys school uniform and boys clothes in general - didn't get bullied at all at that stage in my life. if my kid wanted to do the same i'd be cool with it.

To your first comment, that's a completely different culture though--just like men wearing kilts in Scotland as one example. Also to be fair I think in this day you're more likely to be bullied if you're a male going to school in a dress, makeup, or whatever else that's feminine than a female going to school with boy-like clothes and no makeup... Or maybe that's just my area.

Just by judging around about where I live, it is a very prejudice place. It is probably unlikely that a girl dressing up as a boy would get really teased or bullied at all, but a boy in girl's clothes... that would be a completely different story.

If my child (I don't want a child anyway) wanted to do things of the opposite gender, sure. But in no way would I let, for example, my son go out wearing anything extremely feminine. They'd get non-stop bullying. Although when it comes to a girl, that just doesn't seem to happen as much but there would still be limits.

I have nothing against gender change at all though, and if they wanted to go through with it at an older and maturer age, they can feel free knowing that I'm with them all the way.

[MKR&*42]

What I find most amusing about this thread is that a lot of you would say 'no I wouldn't let my child act/dress up as the opposite sex cause they'd get bullied' yet I guarantee you if I asked you "does that mean you wouldn't ever let your ... let's say 14 year old child ... come out as gay to his friends (if he asked you about it) because he'd get bullied" then your response would be different.

Just because someone might get bullied it doesn't mean you have the right to do even more damaging emotional effects by denying them the right to be as gender "mixed" as they desire. Bullying sucks but there are always people in the world who will try and bring you down. By denying your child freedom of expression you are just as bad, if not worse.

[karter]

^^ I think she meant that all societies and cultures don't have a rigid definition of male and female gender norms. There's also presence of more than two genders in a lot of cultures (e.g: South Indian sects of Hinduism). Femininity and masculinity are aspects of one's personality. Rest of the correlation of strength and leadership and aggressiveness to males and sensitivity to females are gender stereotypes and nothing else.

I agree that a 7 year old shouldn't be able to make those decisions to have a sex change, as they're probably too young to comprehend what it actually is, although if you think about it and they got it done whilst so young that they would probably not get bullied by peers when in high school (as people do get bullied for it) if they decided to do it as a teenager. It would also give them more time to get over it if people were judgemental. Personally, I wouldn't allow it at that age though.

What do you think is the appropriate age then? (Keep in mind that the gender change we're talking about here is merely related to appearance and change of name)

[e5]

^^ I think she meant that all societies and cultures don't have a rigid definition of male and female gender norms. There's also presence of more than two genders in a lot of cultures (e.g: South Indian sects of Hinduism). Femininity and masculinity are aspects of one's personality. Rest of the correlation of strength and leadership and aggressiveness to males and sensitivity to females are gender stereotypes and nothing else.



What do you think is the appropriate age then? (Keep in mind that the gender change we're talking about here is merely related to appearance and change of name)

For some reason I automatically assumed it would be a full transformation, or atleast drugs to make it so they grew body hair and took male hormone drugs or whatever.

if it's as simple as change of clothes and name then it's not so bad

[Empired]

What I find most amusing about this thread is that a lot of you would say 'no I wouldn't let my child act/dress up as the opposite sex cause they'd get bullied' yet I guarantee you if I asked you "does that mean you wouldn't ever let your ... let's say 14 year old child ... come out as gay to his friends (if he asked you about it) because he'd get bullied" then your response would be different.

What I find funniest is people saying "I wouldn't let my child...". How exactly do you plan to stop your child from dressing up as the opposite gender, asking their friends to call them by another name? Sure, you probably can whilst they're young but the second they hit 12 or 13 they will do whatever the hell they like and short of locking them up in a Tangled-style tower, there's nothing you can do as a parent