Sexual Reassignment Surgery at Sixteen?
• Gender Outsiders: Transgendered & Others
Aged twelve Kim appears to be the youngest mtf transsexual on record. She wants sexual reassignment surgery when she turns sixteen. German law doesn’t permit it until the person turns eighteen.
Since my own beloved has only a few months ago finally been able to begin hormone replacement therapy I’m familiar with the urgency. Still it must be confusing for parents and the medical authorities in position of responsibility.
Kim’s mother, who has not been named, said: “If your child has a heart defect you send him to a specialist, but when your child is transsexual, everyone seems to have an opinion.”
Kim’s family turned to Dr. Bernd Meyenburg, head of a clinic for children with identity disturbances at Frankfurt university. He has studied transsexuality since the 1970s but said Kim was a “real dilemma”.
He said: “If we do something about it, it’s irreversible. And if we allow nature to take its course, that too is irreversible.” He added however that: “it would have been a crime to let Kim grow up as a man”.