Word: genderism
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...anymore. After struggling with their six-year-old's nonconforming gender behavior for years, Sherry and Paul Lipscomb decided a few months ago to treat their little one like a girl, at least at home. In kindergarten last year, he was Zachary, but after school, she was Aurora--Rori for short--a name the Lipscombs say their child chose in honor of the princess in Sleeping Beauty. Over the summer, when the child asked to have pierced ears and announced to neighbors, "I'm a girl," the Lipscombs came to believe that it was wrong not to "let Aurora express...
Thus a complicated family dynamic became a legal struggle. And a public event--the Lipscombs insisted on turning their child over to social workers before cameras at a local TV-news station. (The parents say the media scrutiny will keep the children's services office in check.) Gender PAC, a Washington-based group that lobbies for equality for transgendered people, has also helped publicize the case. Transgender activists around the world have contacted the county children's agency in protest. A growing media circus greets each court development. Last week the child's case was stalled while everyone argued...
...child overnight. ("They are both too hotheaded," she explained.) She said she has occasionally become overwhelmed by the many physical and psychological needs of her child, who has been found to have Asperger's syndrome (which is related to autism), bipolar illness and obsessive-compulsive disorder, in addition to gender-identity disorder. And although he hadn't come out in public until an interview with TIME, Paul now says he believes he too has gender-identity disorder and that he intends to make the transition from male to female. For now, Sherry is supporting Paul as he writes this...
What's best for this youngster? Unfortunately, few experts study children with persistent gender variance, and the ones who do are in disagreement about what to do about it, if anything. "I think it's just the way they are born," says Catherine Tuerk, a mental-health nurse who runs a Washington support group for parents of kids who are gender-atypical. Her group has nine families at the moment, and Tuerk encourages them to support their children's unconventional gender expression "in a world where they will be stigmatized...
Some child psychologists, on the other hand, believe that children who express discomfort with their birth gender probably have larger problems. "There's a lot of pain in many of these families, and part of the way the child has dealt with the pain is to have this fantasy solution," says Ken Zucker, a psychologist who runs the Child and Adolescent Gender Identity Clinic in Toronto. Zucker also encourages children and parents to recognize that boys and girls don't have to maintain rigid gender roles to remain boys and girls. Zucker says that widening his young patients' conception...