CLARA TORSTENSSON

Walking a mile in someone's else shoes
Born in the wrong body

According to Unicef 353 000 children are born every single day. Immediately we are categorized into to two different kinds of groups, boys or girls. The child must also behave like the sex they were given and form their whole lifestyle after that. The parents are supposed to raise their daughters to play with Barbies, dress in skirts and be emotional, cute and shy unlike the sons that should play with cars, dress in pants and be rough, strong and blatant. What if the parents finds out that their child does not want to be recognized with the sex they were born to be? What if the child instead more relates to the other sex? What if their little son wants to dress in dresses instead? Should the parents just let them or is it more complicated than that?

By study a documentary and different facts I want to be able to understand what is like to be a parent when your child tells you that they don’t belong in their own body. What does it take for the parent to understand that the children really mean what they say and how do they know that it is not only something that will pass over? My main question for this essay is therefore:

·         How do we know that transgender is not only a phase?

 “Real Life: Transgender Children” is a documentary about four different children, Jossi, Kayla, Bailey and Chris, they have in common that they all feel like they were born with the wrong sex. Jossi for example was born as a boy, but according to him that is not the right fact, instead Josef was absolutely sure of that he was a girl. Josefs parents did for a long time force him to be a boy and also behave like one. One day they found him with a knife in his hand – ready to cut his penis of. That incident changed it all for the family, Josef became from that day and for the future - Jossi. Josesfs mother explains about her guilt feelings she has because she did not take Jossis problems serious at first. Everybody in the family is now convinced over the fact the Jossi is a girl and will always be. Jossi is not comfortable with that she might have to go thru a surgery to completely be the sex Jossi wants so and therefore do the family lets the question rest for a couple of more years.

Chris is a teenage boy who loves to play basket, however has not that always been the case. Chris was born to be a girl named Julia. Chris father always wanted sons but ended up with two daughters instead. When Chris goes thru the transformation and he actually becomes a son instead of a daughter the father did not felt happy at all, instead the father does not want any contact with his new son.

Kaylas parents did at first only thought that their son was homosexual, his mum did not thought that homosexuality was something strange because her brother and some other family members had the same orientation. But her son did not just stop with liking the same sex, he started to dress in skirts and pink. Now Kayla is absolutely sure that she wants to use female hormones to complete her life.

Bailey was born to be a girl even though he never felt as one. When the interviewer asks Bailey how he can be so sure that this is not only a phase she answerers following “I’ve been living like this for five years or for years and I don’t like even have girl thoughts. I feel like a boy, I think about sports and football…” Baileys mother did first force him to wear dresses but now she does support his decision she lets him be who he truly indeed wants to.

The website Wikipedia says following about what transgender means: “Transgender is the state of one's gender identity or gender expression not matching one's assigned sex. Transgender is independent of sexual orientation; transgender people may identify as heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, etc; some may consider conventional sexual orientation labels inadequate or inapplicable to them.” Therefore must not transgender mean that people have to change their whole sex by surgery, it just means that the person does not identify with the gender they was born as.

An increase of transgender children has already the psychologists and psychiatrists established, but now children with a transgender sex discovers in lower ages. These children can find their solution in having hormones, but the way to get those medicines is far. In America a child must be diagnosed by a doctor with gender dysposia and that is not possible before the child has been visiting a doctor for many years and the child must also be in the early teenager, in spite of that there is now need of an approval in court, of course must the parents confirm. The first hormones that the child will have are hormone blockers, the medicines block the natural hormones that the child will develop in the puberty as oestrogen or testosterone. To then move on it is possible to have hormones of the desired sex, if the child and parents wants to move on. A sex change by an operation can also been made however is not possible in younger ages.

The government in Scotland is right now developing a new law that will make it possible for children to have a third sex. Countries as Australia and Germany have already established a similar law. It is important to develop a new law because people with a transgender sex do not have any kind of legally rights in the society. The future for the transgender people seems to be taken serious in these countries.

After reading all these facts I want to reach some conclusion for this essay, my main question was following: How do we know that transgender is not only a phase? I believe that this question can be answered very various dependently which child we are discussing. By watching the documentary I do think that all these four children is making the right decision by go thru the transformation and for them is not a phase, but I defiantly think that the ambient and the circumstances the he have been thru have played roll. One example is Chris that had a dad that would replace him with a son if it was possible when Chris was born as a daughter. I do believe that is an affecting factor to the decision of become a boy, he wanted to please his dad.

I think it is important that the transgender children should talk with a competent person in the area as a psychologist or a doctor like they do it in America, because while you have been done the surgery is not possible to take it back and it is consequently really important for the society to take responsibility for this children and to help them correctly, like they do in Scotland, Australia and Germany.

What does actually do make me concerned by the documentary is that this children think that they have to choose if they want to be boy or a girl so concrete and the social consequences of that. They section the different sex into two separate groups that are not the same as all, a girl can for example not like sports and a boy can not love pink. Their pictures of boys and girls are very stereotyped and forces children to be someone they do not want to be. I do think that we have to dispute the picture of what a man and a woman are. Why do we have to be so different in our society and how it does therefore affect our children? Gender is a social construction and we are not born so different, the differences are something we do develop on our own. Why do we hold on to this ancient behavior? When Bailey explains that he does not have any “girl thoughts” it shows us that he is a part of this structure.

Why does the sex play such a big roll, can we not just let people be who they truly are without have this strict rolls must we have a surgery to make it possible? Perhaps it is the society that has to change and not the children.  

My references

Internet

BBC NEWS. Campaign calls for legal recognition of third gender. Access 2015-01-28.
http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-29850756

Taylor, Lin. SBS. Transgender kids: Is it ‘just a phase’? Access 2015-02-10.
http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/09/17/transgender-kids-it-just-phase

Wikipedia. Transgender. Access 2015-02-12
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transgender

Youtube. Real life: Transgender children. Access 2015-01-15. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0BmtInLGt8

EMELIE OLSSON

Walking in someone else’s shoes

Nowadays cyberbullying has become more and more frequently in this society we are living in. Cyberbullying is way of abuse and can only take place online, on the Internet. The bullies are usually anonymous but can as well be well known by the victim. It depends on what sort of communication-chanel the bullies have used. It is common that the perpetrators use peer-pressure in order to make friends join to be bullies. The anonymity makes perpetrators more brave and it have an encouraging effect to expressing hurtful comments behind the screens. Sayings that would not have been said in the reality “face to face”.

The reasons why victims of cyberbullying are being attacked, often come from something someone have said or done that goes against the social norms. Sometimes it is all about jealousy. In the same way the attack can as well be about skin colors, religions, different lifestyles or even mental or physical inability. No matter how the bullying take place, each time it is going to hurt the victim in ways that create bad feelings and deep distress for instance.

In today’s technical society it is not a rare phenomenon that teenagers search for attention by different sorts of social medias. The most common place where cyberbullying take place is through e-mail, messages and “chatrooms” like Myspace, blogs and pictures and messages by mobile advices. Most of the he adolescents behave this way in order to get views on Youtube for instance, friends and popularity. It is strange how online bullying is more tolerated than offline bullying. In somehow online bullying is simply easier to tolerate. Therefore children do not tell their parents if they are being exposed in this way of abuse. Only 15 percent of the parents are aware about all this cyberbullying that is going on, surrounding the adolescents in the society these days.

One adult who is well known on the subject is Dr. Robin Kowalski, professor of psychology. She has come to the conclusion that emotional bullying often leaves heavy “baggage” with children. This is baggage that children are carrying for a long time in their lives and can be stressful. Emotional bullying leaves deep scars in the heart, compared with physical bullying where a scar heals by time. She has also come to a conclusion about who are the victims of the bullying. Those who has lowest self-esteem, depression and anxiety are that people. Why cyberbullying are considered as the most hurtful and worst way of bullying is because “regular” bullying usually causes physical and emotionally pain by the victim. By cyberbullying multiply tools are used in order to attack the victim. It often starts on the internet where offensive comments and sayings are being published about a person, and then it has been spread all over the internet. In the end it can all effect the victim’s relations with friends, among other. Why this problem escalates is because of the unlimited access of mobile advices in the teenager’s hands.

One consequence of the ability of anonymity is that the opportunity to be more and more indirect aggressive and promotes to more harassment. In statistic there are often more girls who use this method.

As a result of this society occupied with technology involving cyberbullying, it is almost impossible for parents to keep up. The parents often blame on the technology instead of the children’s behaviors, when talking about cyberbullying. There are some guidelines for parents to prevent cyberbullying from increasing. Deborah Temkin is an expert on cyberbullying and shared a few advices. She said an open communication between parents and children can provide cyberbullying in the future. As early as possible start talking about what consequences can be of online activity, even before facing cyberbullying. Temkin also mention it is truly important to make the child think one time extra to who the friends are and who the parents of the friend are. It is important to prepare the child of what he or she are getting herself or himself engaged into. Another prevailing advice providing cyberbullying according to Temkin is full access to the child’s online activity by the parents. By letting the child is of knowledge that the parent can check the mobile applications and online activity at any time, results in children are more carefully with what to post. The children also go easily to the parent if there is any problem or harassment. This active monitoring is one way to prevent and control the cyberbullying.

From the victim’s side there are methods to handle cyberbullying as well. Do not respond to comments and harassment, it is only going to make the situation worse. As a victim, try to collect evidence such as e-mails and messages. This could be useful if school or the police are being involved. If possible, try to find the perpetrators identity and what personal information he or she has got about the victim. It is not common that victims contact the police and the law to receive help. Children should show their parents their own personal contact information on the Internet to ensure that the online profile is not being too exposed.

There are young children around the world that committed suicide because they have been cyberbullied. This is a clear message, indicating that we surely should make adjustments about this cyber-world situation. There are some proposals of how we can help cyberbullying to decrease. One of them is an idea of flag hurtful messages before it is sent away. For example a box pops up before the message sends, saying “Do you really want to send this?” and then put the messages into different categories and mark them with flags if they considering as inappropriate or to hurtful. This can in order be seen as a bully- warning pop up.  Another idea is to help the victims that already are being harassed via cyberbullying. It is an idea that matches these people who have experienced same type of bullying. The meaning behind this idea is to help the victims to understand that they are not alone in this situation.

"Everyone has a piece of the puzzle. Industry can make safer online communities, young people can be educated better to deal with the issue, parents can offer better support rather than just banning their digital devices," says Mr Roberts.

Social Medias who have been much criticized are twitter and facebook. Twitter has been accused for not dealing with hate messages concerning racism, homophobic and sexism. To be real are these type of messages illegal in the UK. Twitter responded the accusation by the comment that there existing a “report tweet” function to use. Facebook has also been criticized for repeating upsetting activity, and they responded with a statement meaning that they “did not want interfere with users content”.

Cyberbulling is a more and more common amongst adolscents these days. Searching for attention is the most underlying reason behind this was of abuse from the bullies. Adolscents who break the social nroms or say or do something odd easily become victims of cyberbullying. Compared with bullying happening "face to face", cyberbullying is easier to get away with it as a bully. Emotional bullying often leaves heavy bagage with the victim. By using cyberbullying as a method of abuse there are multiply  tools to attack. The anonymity results in more indirect aggressive harassment. 

There has been a progress in guidelines in preventing this cyberbullying attacks. Guidelines for parents are to have an open communication with their child about consequences, an active monitoring and full access to the child's online activity. Guidelines for the victim are to not comment back to the harassments and try to collect evidence in case of contact with the police. Ideas of how to improve the open chat spaces are flag warnings and pop up warnings before sending messages if they are hurtful or inappropriate. 

Social medias as Twitter and Facebook are often confronted with not handling hurtful harassments and they usuallt do not want to interface the users activity, instead they refers to report buttons. In the future I hope that every parent understands and knows how to educate their chilldren to be safe on the internet by train their minds to do choose the right from the wrong. We can not assume that it always will be built in system in the social medias to prevent cyberbullying, it should be in the childrens' minds. Parents have a big role in this social society issue and need to be active and realize that the responsibilityy lays on their shoulders.

Sources:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/0/24955662
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo1rWtUy7pc
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-26121199
http://edition.cnn.com/videos/international/2013/09/16/exp-preventing-cyberbullying.cnn

JULIA KULLBERG

Walking a mile in someone else´s shoes

Log in, available, open chat and message sent. It seems innocent most of the times but it can end up horrifying. A study made by bullingstatistic.org confirm that more than 1 in 3 young people have received cyber threats online, over 25 % adults and youths have been over and over again bullied through their cellphones or internet.

At this time of stage we are more likely addicted to the internet, a need to be online on the social media. Social media such as Facebook or instagram have a great influence, to have a chance to contact other people and make friends, both in real life and in cyber. A great idea made to create contact everywhere. Unfortunately, behind the great ideas filled with positivity there will always be something evil, in this case bullying on the web. Studiously searching victims and anonymously victimize them.

But then, what is cyberbullying? The definition is when a child has been harassed, tormented, humiliated or threated by another child, this could also include preteens, using the internet, digital technologies or mobile phones. It most involves minors on the both side to call the victimized cyberbullying. Once an adult increases the conversation or the harassment the definition is involved to “adult-cyber harassment”.

The methods that are used by the children are limited because the child is in need of the right technology to continue the online harassment, witch not every child is able get. The fantasy is also needed. The imagination is not the major problem but come upon such horribly thoughts about another person are not common by children.

The conversation by the victim and the felony are regularly occurring plenty of times, it is unusual that threats on the web only happens one time by a person.  The conversation can involve death threats or threat of serious body harm. Of this have plenty of children died by committing suicide.

Whose gets affected of this crime and terribly bullying method? Often the bullying starts with an imbalance of power there one person are in need to be confirmed therefore act in an aggressive way to keep the position in the relation. Because of that the insecure people are an easy target; it is not unusual if persons with a greater status are harassed for the reason of jealousy. The target or the bullied person are often felt alone and are in need of a person but there is a difficulty, the feeling of not being seen and of that are desperate of attention, are not easy to tell others to. Their feeling are kept inside and the effect could be that no one are there to help cause they do not know the victims feeling or thoughts. Another effect could be that the victim are posting pictures or messages online for attention but it could also lead to more brutal harassments. Of all these perspectives, the victim will have psychological effects far ahead in life of the in secureness by another person or even worse. 

Megan could be seen as a result of this psychological effect. Through her life Megan had struggled with overweight and her disorder ADD. She had already been apart from her peers as an effect of her disorder and low self-stem. However, when Megan began eighth grade it seemed better. Megan had started to find more friends to associate with. As an effect of that Megan had begun to work out and had created a Myspace account there she had found a boy called Josh. She thought he looked cute and it also seemed that he liked her. They wrote messages to each other and Megan’s family was well involved with her internet activities, they knew what she wrote and acted on her Myspace account. Above all, Megan had lost her girlfriend witch was her neighbor. They had an intensive connection to each other after the loss and Megan suspected the old friend for saying evil things about her to Josh. As a result of this conclusions Megan spiraled into a depression. Tina, the mother to Megan, tried to put some distance between her daughter and Josh but also to the ex-best friend. However, Megan´s ADD made her to instantly check her Myspace page there the cyberbullying continued to rise.

At Megan´s fourteenth birthday she became more instable, she had arranged a party at Myspace to celebrate her birthday but no one came because of the horrible messages they had got about Megan. Tina took the computer from her daughter and told her to go to her bedroom. Meanwhile Tina prepared the meal she felt a strange feeling in her gut, she had never felt something similar before. Unconscious Tina understood that something terribly had happened to her daughter. Tina ran up to Megan´s room and she found her little girl died in the closet, Megan had hung herself.   

Tina searched weeks after the accidence for Josh, to confront him why he had spread rumor about her daughter. Unfortunately the search was not successful until a unit of detectives rang her and told the news about Josh. They had discovered that Josh did not exist, he was a false Myspace person created by Megan’s´ old best friends and her parents.

This case are among the worst but could still happened. To prevent you child from cyberbullying is it very important to have control over the child’s internet habits. The child is also in need of preventing and security from its parents, there could also be a possibility that the child would search for comfort by it teacher. When the child consigns a person with authority it is important to understand the child and help it therefor it is in need of being seen. 

The question still stands, how can cyberbullying be prevented?  One theory explains that the parents should be aware what the child does on the internet by knowing the sites the child visit and review the sites for the best security. It is also important to talk about internet habits and about bullying online. The key to secureness is openness between children and parents.

Other theories describes what parents should do to prevent the child by knowing its passwords to social Medias, ask one of the child´s friend if it could watch over the child with its activities on social medias. Also, the parents should encourage the child to tell anything, it ought to not be ashamed of anything.         

Even though this plan can be called safe and completed, still there are few flaws in the system. With these theories, the parents have a great roll for the child and there could be difficulties by that. The child can hide information because it is ashamed or the parents can have less knowledge about social Medias. This leads to continued victimization. One alternative could be the schools assignment. The school could teach children and even parents how to act on the internet with each other to avoid harassments online and even offline, also to get a greater knowledge about the internet and how powerful it actually is. If everyone knew that and live after that philosophy it could be a nicer place to live on, online as offline.    

Sources:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo1rWtUy7pc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yo1rWtUy7pc

http://stopcyberbullying.org/what_is_cyberbullying_exactly.html

http://www.bullyingstatistics.org/content/cyber-bullying-statistics.html

http://nobullying.com/cyber-bullying-stories/

                   

JOHANNA EVENSEN

Walking a mile in someone else’s shoes

What is it if you feel confined, confined in your own body? What is it to feel different, to feel different from the other children? What is it if you feel like you are in the wrong sex, and that you should have been the other gender? Therefore, these feelings and the disorder is named gender dysphoria. In this case, this article will bring you, as a reader, more information about the disorder, but also how it is to feel different and trapped in your own body.

In fact, the conditions for the disorder are described, by James Fletcher (and can be found in the article “Born in the wrong body”, at BBC news website), as “being born into one sex, but feels like they are the other”. Namely, Fletchers’ article talks about how children feel and what they have to go through, goes through before, during and after, they are confirmed with the disorder gender dysphoria.

As a result of this, it is many people that write about the topic; gender dysphoria, one of them is James Fletcher. Hence to write about the feeling of being confined, and the children emotions. In other words, it’s not an easy debate, since some people would say that a child is not ready to know neither decides something that big about their own lives. A quote that describes how a child is feeling, however, is “It used to make me feel ill and so horribly down. I’d just wish that I was not around. Everything to do with me being male was horrible; I just could not stand it”. In this case, the quote is from a “girl” named Nikki. As Fletcher writes, Nikki was born as a boy, accordingly to herself, never felt like a boy. In the article, Nikki is 16 years old, and lives her life like a girl, as for the gender she feels like she is. In an article named “Gender Dysphoria & Transgender” (from BBCs’ website) the reader can learn about how a child can feel when they have the disorder gender dysphoria. The article clarifies that a child with gender dysphoria is not sick or neither ill. The child just have a feeling of not being right. A sense of hiding their own identity, and because of the hiding, a lot of children suffer from great stress. In the article “5 things to know about gender identity” (From CNNs’ website, the author in the article is Jacque Wilson),  the readers can learn that transgender is not the same thing as the typical gender identities, such as gay, lesbian or bisexual. Transgender is something else. As Wilson writes, “Transgender is an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression, or behavior does not conform to that typically associated with the sex to which they are assigned at birth”.

As a consequence of change gender, bullying is very common. A reason for this is that the changes now are apparent. Due to the fact of puberty. In the article “Kids who veer from gender norms at higher risk for abuse”, from the CNN’s website, Madison Park writes about the bullying affect. In this case, they describe the bullying as a problem from teenagers and other children. It is when the child with gender dysphoria gets teased owing to reject conforming from the other teenagers. Reject conforming to the child’s biological gender roles. Owing to this, the bullying is expressed with misunderstanding, scorned of the peers or adult. In fact the bullying does not have to come from other teenagers, it might as well come from their own parents, other parents or merely from other teenagers or adults.

In the article “Gender Dysphoria & Transgender” the readers can learn about the fact that it is not always that clear about what a transgender is. It is not something that is remaining. One child can describe their sense of being in the wrong sex in one way, and another child can describe it in another way. As the article say “Only you can every say whether you are trans”. Also from the article “Transgender kids: Painful quest to be who they are”, the author Madison Park, writes about this; that gender nonconformity is not a disorder, the disorder is the gender dysphoria, but it is not a disorder where you can call the children/ humans mentally ill.

The common thing that all the articles and also the movie clip say is that; often a child with gender dysphoria knows that they are “different” already from a very young age. It is children from the age of three/ four years. The mutually thing is also that the children do not feel like they belong, they do not fit in, not in their bodies or neither in their society. As the article “Transgender kids: Painful quest to be who they are” written by Madison Park (can be found at the CNN’s website) brings up this subject. Park writes about a girl named Tammy, that already from the age at three knew that he was a girl, and not a boy that he was assigned with at birth. Also in the article “Kids who veer from gender norms at higher risk for abuse”, we can see an example at this again. Due to this article, Park writes about a boy named Cory, which also knew for a very young age that he was not a girl. In view of this, a conclusion can be drawn, that it is common for a child to feel different and confined at an early stage in their years.

However, what is the child supposed to do when they have decided that they want to be the other sex? As in the movie clip “Real Life: Transgender children”, the audience may learn about the fact that a child can take puberty blockers. As well as Fletcher, from BBC, writes about the puberty blocking. Fletcher writes that the child with strong gender dysphoria can be “treated” with drugs. The drugs are supposed to block the pubertal development. The blocker is known as hypothalamic blockers. The drugs are meant to block the child’s sex hormones.  Also the article “Gender dysphoria & transgender”, the reader may learn about hormone blockers. In fact in the article, the readers may learn that the hormone blockers are a safe method, and that the child may stop the medication at any time, that they want. The blocker is designed to help kids decide whether they want to continue with the blockers or if they want to remain in his usual sex. As a result of remaining of taking the drugs, when the children are older, over the age of 18, the child may be able to take different blockers, known as "Cross-sex hormones”. With these drugs, the child will “cross” and be able to see differences and change to the other sex. Nevertheless as the article says, the child would not be able to this until the age at 18; at least it has not been done yet (in the Great Britain).

As a result of the hormone blockers, it is a big discussion about the subject; when the child should receive drug blockers. In the Great Britain they do not give drug blocker until the “child” is in the late puberty, at around the year of 16. Many other countries instead have the age of 12. In this debate what is right? Due to the fact that the child should do it early in the puberty, so the child can decide what they want to do, or due to the fact that the child should do it later in the puberty when the child is older and more secure?

Summary, A quote that a girl in an article said, was “It’s your own body, it’s your choice, it’s not anyone else’s to decide for you, because that’s just taking away all the control that people want to have and people need to be sane”. This quote can summary the debate about transgender children, whether a child should be able to decide about their own lives. As well as you should be available to decide about your own hair, a transgender child should be available to decide about their own life, that is whether they should change their sex or not.

References:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R0BmtInLGt8

Jacque Wilson, “5 Things to know about gender identity”, CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/22/health/bradley-manning-gender-identity/index.html

Madison Park, “Kids who veer from gender norms at higher risk for abuse”, CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2012/02/20/health/child-gender-nonconformity/index.html

Madison Park, “Transgender kids: Painful quest to be who they are”, CNN, http://edition.cnn.com/2011/09/27/health/transgender-kids/index.html

James Fletcher, “Born in the wrong sex“, BBC, http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8330157.stm

“Gender dysphoria & transgender”, BBC, http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/articles/XZjhcLhQW08Ylw5b0p9xgH/gender-dysphoria-transgender