Primetime Nightline is presenting a special on transgender kids this evening at 10 pm (9 Central) on ABC, called Primetime Nightline's (Extra)Ordinary Family: My Kid is Transgender.
I'd like to invite everyone to watch and see what all the work has been about.
The program will feature Jackie, a 10-year old from Ohio who, though born male, is now attending school as a girl; Vanessa, a 19-year old transwoman living in New York City; "Princess Boy" Dyson Kilodavis; pop sensation Kim Petras, who became the world's youngest transsexual person at 16 and is now 19; and for some god-awful reason, the 54-year old Charles Kane, who is trotted out by the right wing to prove continually to prove that transsexual people are just confused (Kane had a sex change when he was 44 and transitioned back to male 7 years later).
Jackie:
I'm a girl and I can't do this anymore.
Video
Vanessa
Vanessa's immigrant family struggled to accept her until she decided to have surgery. She is paying for that surgery through working as a prostitute.
"Primetime Nightline" goes along with her to Guadalajara, Mexico, where a wad of $6,500 cash will buy her six surgeries in two hours as she struggles to become the woman she's always wanted to be.
Dyson
Dyson has loved to wear dresses since he was 2.
"I said, 'boys are not princesses. Girls are.' And he looked right back, very, very strong, and said, 'I am a princess boy.'"
--Cheryl Kilodavis
Cheryl then wrote the book, My Princess Boy.
Kim
Charles had a lot of money, so he skipped all the preparatory work that goes into a person discovering who they are and just paid for the surgery to change him from Sam Hashimi to Samantha Kane. Seven years later he discovered that it wasn't working for him.
He hated the way female hormones made him moody and emotional. Shopping bored him and sex was a disappointment.
The really disappointing thing is that Charles thinks his disappointment means surgery is wrong for everyone else.
People who think they are a woman trapped in a male body are, in my opinion, completely deluded. I certainly was. I needed counselling, not a sex-change operation.
Perhaps if he had gotten the former, he could have made an informed decision about the latter. Many of us do both.