Kids grow up so fast.  You leave for summer a fresh-faced boy and you come back as a young man, struggling through puberty.  Or you leave for the summer a fresh-faced boy and come back to school in the fall as a fresh-faced girl.  One English preteen arrived at secondary school with a new name and new female identity only to be outed by classmates as a boy, requiring the school to have an emergency assembly to address the issue.  Oh right, did I mention s/he is only 12 years old, making him one of the youngest sex swap patients in the world?

Apparently he has always felt like a girl, and as such, his parents have allowed him to begin the process of legally changing his gender from boy to girl.  Not surprisingly, this has caused an uproar in the local community.  After all, we’re talking about a preteen; she’s not even a teenager yet!  Just imagine how bad it’d be if he wanted to be an athlete as well as a female?

Genetic mix-ups happen.  Some unlucky people live between the sexes, or feel trapped in the wrong body.  But at age 12?  That seems incredibly early to start tampering with genetics, doesn’t it?  I mean, he’s not even started becoming a man yet, and already he wants to start becoming a woman?

This is a huge life change for a young child to make; if I had to live with what I wanted as a 12-year-old, I’d be working at a hot dog cart on the street corner in a big city right now!  At the very least, he or she needs to undergo many years of counseling before being allowed to make any permanent alterations to his body.  This isn’t the kind of decision that needs to be made rashly.

Tags: gender, sex change operation, sex change, 12-year-old boy has sex change, unusual medical conditions, gender dysphoria, human body, England

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