Insight: Sept 17

Next week Insight discusses the delicate subject of transgender children -how do families deal with a child insisting they are born in the wrong body?

“She started hitting herself to try and ‘get the boy out’… So then we just said ‘enough’s enough’.”
– Beck, Maddi’s mother

Seven-year-old school girl Maddi loves dancing, the colour pink and wearing dresses. But only a year ago Maddi was known to her friends and family as ‘Maddock’. She was born a boy.

Psychologists and psychiatrists say people are presenting as transgender at younger and younger ages.

But parents are at a loss to know whether their child is truly transgender or if it’s “just a phase”. And the stakes are high – especially with the availability of medical interventions like puberty blockers and hormone changers.

This week Insight speaks with children and their families, asking how parents can be sure whether their child is transgender and how they chose to deal with it.

Guests include:

Maddi
Maddi started life as a boy called Maddock. She says she was “about three or four” years old when she first wanted to be a girl and wear dresses. Now aged seven, Maddi goes by her new name and has recently enrolled at school as a girl.

Roland and Beck
Roland and Beck are Maddi’s parents. They say that Maddi was very angry when she had a male identity and had even started to hit herself “to get the boy out”. They say they are happy they supported her to transition to a female identity and wish they had done it sooner.

Riley Pederson
As a young child, Riley wore dresses and put tea towels on her head to pretend she had long hair. Now 16 years old, Riley ‘came out’ as a girl over a year ago and now takes hormone replacement therapy to develop female characteristics. Riley says she left school after being bullied.

“Kate”
Kate thinks her six year old son might be going through a phase. He’s drawn to pink and glittery clothes and shoes, and he’s gone further, stating that he wants to cut off his penis. He says he is saving up money so he can buy breasts and a vagina. Kate has not taken him to see any specialists or doctors.

Crystal
Crystal is known as a “sistergirl” – a word used in some Indigenous communities to mean male-to-female transgender. Crystal lives in the Tiwi Islands, where there are a comparatively high proportion of transgender people. Despite there being many other transgender people in her community, Crystal says there were still a lot of cultural difficulties in changing her identity.

Tuesday at 8.30pm on SBS ONE.