Saturday, September 19, 2009
A 12 year old boy turned up to start the new academic year as a girl, at a school in
England
.
The boy, who will remain unnamed, arrived for his first day at secondary school in
Sussex
in southern England wearing a dress, and with long hair in ribboned pigtails. His parents have had his name changed to a girl's by deed poll, and the boy is now preparing for hormone treatment and eventual surgery.
Former classmates from primary school noticed the change, and the boy was the subject of taunting, including being asked by other children if he was "
gay
".
The school called an emergency assembly and ordered fellow pupils to treat the individual as female, and threatened tough disciplinary action if he wasn't treated as a girl or if his new name was not used.
Many parents were outraged by the assembly. One of them stated, "They behaved appallingly by throwing this hand grenade into the room and then leaving the inevitable questions about it for unprepared parents. Maybe we could have explained sexual politics and encouraged our kids to be more sensitive if we'd had a chance to be involved."
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Breaking news like this in a mass assembly without pre-briefing parents was crass and cruel
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?Deidre Sanders,
The Sun
|
Deidre Sanders, an
agony aunt
for British tabloid
The Sun
, which broke the story, gave her view: "It's ironic pupils will be disciplined if they fail to handle this child's sex change 'sensitively' — when their school could hardly have handled it less sensitively. Breaking news like this in a mass assembly without pre-briefing parents was crass and cruel — and added to this child's troubles."
Because of the tauntings, the boy was absent from school on Thursday. The family have been receiving threats and the house is now under police protection.
The Sun does know the identity of the boy but has refused to reveal it. The boy had told his classmates that for years he had wanted to be a girl. It is understood that the boy was treated as a male by his primary school principal, despite "girlie" behaviour such as wearing a bikini instead of shorts at swimming lessons, drying himself on
Barbie
towels, wearing pink ribbons in his hair and riding a pink scooter to school.
In an interview with
Sky News
Online, a spokesperson for the Gender Identity Research and Education Society (GIRES) said, "It is very unfortunate [...] It needs a careful process of familiarisation, not the big bang approach. The proper way would have been to train all staff before the term started, to work with the child's peer group and to prepare the teachers to be able to talk to the other pupils and their parents individually to answer their questions. What one school did was get the pupil to talk with peers in an interaction that was supervised by teachers. That kind of careful process is what's required."
Earlier this year, a
German
born by the name of Tim became Kim Petras after having medication at the age of 12 to suspend her
puberty
. She later had feminising hormone treatment and eventually gender confirmation surgery at the age of 16, making her the youngest
transsexual
in the world.
According to the Sun, this 12 year old boy is preparing to progress with hormone therapy and possibly undergo surgery that would make him one of the world's youngest sex-change patients.
Sources
- "
Sex-change boy 'faces crucial time'
" —
The Press Association
, September 18, 2009
- "
Schoolboy turns into girl
" —
The Argus
, September 18, 2009
- "
School Slammed Over 'Sex Change' Assembly
" —
Sky News
, September 18, 2009
- Brian Flynn and Virgina Wheeler. "
Boy, 12, turns into girl
" —
The Sun
, September 18, 2009
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This page is
archived
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Articles presented on Wikinews reflect the specific time at which they were written and published, and do not attempt to encompass events or knowledge which occur or become known after their publication.
Got a correction? Add the template {{
editprotected
}} to the
talk page
along with your corrections, and it will be
brought to the attention of
the
administrators
.
Please note that due to our
archival policy
, we will not alter or update the content of articles that are archived, but will only accept requests to make grammatical and formatting corrections.
Note that some listed sources or external links may no longer be available online due to age.
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