From Gender Identity Disorder to Gender Identity Creativity: True Gender Self Child Therapy

Abstract

True gender self child therapy is based on the premise of gender as a web that weaves together nature, nurture, and culture and allows for a myriad of healthy gender outcomes. This article presents concepts of true gender self, false gender self, and gender creativity as they operationalize in clinical work with children who need therapeutic supports to establish an authentic gender self while developing strategies for negotiating an environment resistant to that self. Categories of gender nonconforming children are outlined and excerpts of a treatment of a young transgender child are presented to illustrate true gender self child therapy.

Keywords:

• gender
• gender identity
• gender identity disorder
• gender identity disorder of childhood
• gender identity disorder of adolescence
• gender variance
• transgender
• transsexual
• treatment

Notes

1. Presently, many gender theorists and practitioners use the term gender variant to refer to children and youth who function outside binary gender norms. Others, including myself, have replaced gender variant with the term gender nonconforming for the reasons that nonconforming is a less pathologizing term and that variant has connotations of deviation rather than difference. Throughout this article, gender nonconforming will be used but is interchangeable with gender variant in its referents.

2. In the present terminology of the transgender community and some gender theorists and specialists, affirmed gender is used to denote the gender an individual asserts him or herself to be, perhaps more accurately to mean self-affirmed gender. Throughout this discussion I will be using the word affirmed to allude to an individual's assertion of his or her declared gender.

3. Genderist refers to a systematic belief system in the binary dichotomy of male/masculine, female/feminine as the only true, natural, or correct gender identities and expressions.

4. Amy was in the room with Sophie. Many parents of transgender or gender nonconforming children understandably are hesitant to leave their child alone with a therapist, either as a result of previous bad experiences with therapists who cast blame on them and tried to “repair” their child or in light of general mistrust of the mental health community's aspersion on children who do not fit their gender norms.