Note The Pronouns *SIGH*
Have been trying to formulate some sort of response to this, but have a monster headache so for now here it is as reported by The Age (on SMH website):
'Court lets girl, 17, remove breasts
* Karen Kissane
* May 4, 2009
THE Family Court has allowed a 17-year-old girl to have her breasts removed so she can be more like a boy.
The teenager, code-named "Alex", was on court-ordered hormone medication from the age of 13 to prevent menstruation and breast development. She returned to the court in December 2007 asking for a double mastectomy to make it easier for her to pass as a boy.
The Chief Justice of the Family Court, Diana Bryant, decided it was in the teenager's best interests to have the surgery immediately rather than wait until turning 18. The teenager had been diagnosed with "gender identity dysphoria", a psychological condition in which a person has the normal physical characteristics of one sex but longs to be the opposite sex. Justice Bryant said: "In the end, it wasn't a particularly difficult issue because the only real issue was, 'Would he (Alex) have it at 17 or once he's 18?' Then, he doesn't need permission.
"So the issue was, 'Was there any likelihood he would change his mind in the meantime, and was it in his best interests to have it at that time?'
"Overwhelmingly, the evidence was that it was in his interests. And I made that order. I wanted to make it quickly so that he could have the operation straightaway."
But ethicist Nick Tonti-Filippini said mainstream medicine did not recognise hormone treatments and surgery as treatment for gender dysphoria. He said it was a psychiatric disorder qualifying under American guidelines as a psychosis because "it's a belief out of accordance with reality". "What you are trying to do is make a biological reality correspond to that false belief."
The Chief Justice said Alex had not had any urgent plans to proceed with further surgery when he turned 18. She did not make Alex wait for the mastectomies until of age because the teenager had been living as a boy since the age of 13. "Everyone was absolutely adamant that he wasn't going to change his mind. He was very comfortable . . . that he was going to continue on this path."
The written judgement is due to be published soon. Justice Bryant said it was better for the teenager to have the surgery at 17 because this was an age where she would qualify for support from state social services. This was also a crucial time in her development: "It's a year when he's really cementing his friendships with peers that will stand him in good stead for moving into university and the wider world, and it was very important to him that he be able to do that confidently as a boy."
Justice Bryant said having breasts constrained Alex socially. She had to avoid being hugged by friends, could not go to the beach and had to wear binding. "So it was quite an impediment to his social development, which everyone thought was very important." The decision was not irrevocable: "You can have prostheses and things. So if he changed his mind later on, it's reversible."
Justice Bryant said she heard evidence from medical experts and from Alex, her counsellor and an independent children's lawyer, and she called in the Office of the Public Advocate "because I wanted a contradictor". The vidence was overwhelmingly in favour of the surgery, she said.
Mr Tonti-Filippini said he was also concerned that in previous Family Court cases involving gender dysphoria, the medical experts had been confined to a small group of Melbourne doctors who work with sex changes. Mr Tonti-Filippini said a Melbourne man who had had sex-change surgery at 22 was now suing his doctors because he regretted the decision and felt they had not explored his doubts at the time.
The Family Court's 2004 ruling allowing Alex to take hormones provoked a debate about when children are old enough to make serious medical decisions. There was another furore about a Family Court ruling in 2007 allowing a 12-year-old girl code-named "Brodie", who also wanted to be a boy, to begin a course of puberty-suppressing hormones. The court was told that Brodie had threatened self-harm at the prospect of her periods starting. It was later claimed by a relative that Brodie's mother had had postnatal depression and had "brainwashed" the child by buying her boy's clothing from the time she was a baby and fostering boyish behaviour. Brodie's father had opposed the hormone move.'
'Court lets girl, 17, remove breasts
* Karen Kissane
* May 4, 2009
THE Family Court has allowed a 17-year-old girl to have her breasts removed so she can be more like a boy.
The teenager, code-named "Alex", was on court-ordered hormone medication from the age of 13 to prevent menstruation and breast development. She returned to the court in December 2007 asking for a double mastectomy to make it easier for her to pass as a boy.
The Chief Justice of the Family Court, Diana Bryant, decided it was in the teenager's best interests to have the surgery immediately rather than wait until turning 18. The teenager had been diagnosed with "gender identity dysphoria", a psychological condition in which a person has the normal physical characteristics of one sex but longs to be the opposite sex. Justice Bryant said: "In the end, it wasn't a particularly difficult issue because the only real issue was, 'Would he (Alex) have it at 17 or once he's 18?' Then, he doesn't need permission.
"So the issue was, 'Was there any likelihood he would change his mind in the meantime, and was it in his best interests to have it at that time?'
"Overwhelmingly, the evidence was that it was in his interests. And I made that order. I wanted to make it quickly so that he could have the operation straightaway."
But ethicist Nick Tonti-Filippini said mainstream medicine did not recognise hormone treatments and surgery as treatment for gender dysphoria. He said it was a psychiatric disorder qualifying under American guidelines as a psychosis because "it's a belief out of accordance with reality". "What you are trying to do is make a biological reality correspond to that false belief."
The Chief Justice said Alex had not had any urgent plans to proceed with further surgery when he turned 18. She did not make Alex wait for the mastectomies until of age because the teenager had been living as a boy since the age of 13. "Everyone was absolutely adamant that he wasn't going to change his mind. He was very comfortable . . . that he was going to continue on this path."
The written judgement is due to be published soon. Justice Bryant said it was better for the teenager to have the surgery at 17 because this was an age where she would qualify for support from state social services. This was also a crucial time in her development: "It's a year when he's really cementing his friendships with peers that will stand him in good stead for moving into university and the wider world, and it was very important to him that he be able to do that confidently as a boy."
Justice Bryant said having breasts constrained Alex socially. She had to avoid being hugged by friends, could not go to the beach and had to wear binding. "So it was quite an impediment to his social development, which everyone thought was very important." The decision was not irrevocable: "You can have prostheses and things. So if he changed his mind later on, it's reversible."
Justice Bryant said she heard evidence from medical experts and from Alex, her counsellor and an independent children's lawyer, and she called in the Office of the Public Advocate "because I wanted a contradictor". The vidence was overwhelmingly in favour of the surgery, she said.
Mr Tonti-Filippini said he was also concerned that in previous Family Court cases involving gender dysphoria, the medical experts had been confined to a small group of Melbourne doctors who work with sex changes. Mr Tonti-Filippini said a Melbourne man who had had sex-change surgery at 22 was now suing his doctors because he regretted the decision and felt they had not explored his doubts at the time.
The Family Court's 2004 ruling allowing Alex to take hormones provoked a debate about when children are old enough to make serious medical decisions. There was another furore about a Family Court ruling in 2007 allowing a 12-year-old girl code-named "Brodie", who also wanted to be a boy, to begin a course of puberty-suppressing hormones. The court was told that Brodie had threatened self-harm at the prospect of her periods starting. It was later claimed by a relative that Brodie's mother had had postnatal depression and had "brainwashed" the child by buying her boy's clothing from the time she was a baby and fostering boyish behaviour. Brodie's father had opposed the hormone move.'
posted by Zoo at 12:16 pm
2 Comments:
I wrote a (ver proper) letter to the Age, we'll see if it gets published..
"Mr Tonti-Filippini’s commentary on the court decision regarding the 17 year old transsexual ‘Alex’ (Girl, 17, granted breast removal) is disingenuous and needs to be understood in context. The facts are that mainstream medicine – in the US, the UK, Australia and many other countries - recognises gender identity disorder as a psychological condition for which the treatment is the provision of surgical and medical interventions such as that authorized by the court. The ‘mainstream-ness’ of this view is in turn borne out by the existence of legislation all over the world that enables person’s to legally change their sex after undergoing such procedures.
But then one suspect that’s Mr Tonti-Filippini’s ‘ethical’ commentary, may be less about either the facts or genuine ethics and more about espousing his own religiously-based morality. After all, Mr Tonti-Filippini is also a lecturer at the John Paul II Institute in Melbourne and a fellow at the Southern Cross Bioethics Institute which is funded by the Knights of the Southern Cross, a society of Catholic men committed to promoting the “Christian way of life” throughout Australia.
Furthermore, it is dissapointing that the Age persists with using female pronouns to describe Alex. Alex has been living and accepted as male since at least the age of 13 and it would be appropriate to use language that reflects this fact. Doing so would, in fact, be keeping with the Associated Press' own guidelines for journalists."
brilliant letter young 'man' ;)
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