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Aussie court allows girl, 13, to become boy
THURSDAY , 15 APRIL 2004
By DEBORAH GOUGH
The Family Court has allowed a 13-year-old girl to begin treatment to become a boy.
Chief Justice Alastair Nicholson, in a landmark judgement, described testimony that painted the picture of a child who had lived as a boy from a young age, shunning dresses and dolls for tanks and swords.
The child's primary school principal told Justice Nicholson that the child had worn nappies rather than use the girls' toilets. "When he went on camp, for the grade 6 camp, (he) did Indian arm wrestles with all the boys and, of course, beat everybody," the principal told the Family Court.
The child joined the cricket team and refused to line up with girls at school assemblies.
The judge has agreed to allow the girl to take oestrogen and progestogen and, at 16 years, testosterone. The testosterone will have irreversible effects on the child's voice, facial and body hair and promote muscular development and an enlarged clitoris. She would not be eligible for surgery until she was 18 years old.
The girl is known to the court as "Alex" and is referred to as "he" by Justice Nicholson throughout his judgement.
Normally, even with parental consent, people under 18 cannot have medical intervention that may reduce their capacity to reproduce unless there is court involvement.
Alex cannot be identified. She is estranged from her mother, lives with her aunt and migrated to Australia after her father's death.
She is under the guardianship of a government department, which brought the case to court with the support of her aunt and school after Alex started to develop suicidal and self-harm tendencies when she entered puberty. The court could not contact her mother.
"The evidence speaks with one voice as to the distress that Alex is genuinely suffering in a body which feels alien to him and disgusts him, particularly due to menstruation," Justice Nicholson said.
"It is also consistent as to his unwavering and profound wish to present as the male he feels himself to be."
Chief Justice Nicholson discounted the possibility that Alex was emerging as a lesbian after evidence from expert psychiatric witnesses.
The judge also allowed that Alex could change her name on her birth certificate to the boy's name. He criticised New South Wales, Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania and Queensland, which require surgery before the sex on a birth certificate can be changed. Victoria is drafting similar laws.
Consultant ethicist Nicholas Tonti-Filippini questioned the Family Court's right to hear the case and called on federal and state attorneys-general to review the case and take it to a higher court.
Dr Tonti-Filippini said his views on gender reassignment had hardened after recent controversy in which a woman complained she had been persuaded by doctors to take treatment to become a man. She later realised she would rather be a woman.
He said Johns Hopkins University in the US had also stopped work on gender reassignments for all patients. He said doctors were using hormone therapy to treat a mental illness. "The girl won't become a man and what's being obliterated won't be replaced," he said.
TransGender Victoria co-convener Lauren Christopher applauded the decision, saying that adolescence was the worst time for transgender people committing suicide.
But Alan Finch, spokesman for the Gender Identity Awareness Association, questioned whether Alex was aware that some people treated her problem as a psychological one rather than with medical intervention.
"She is much, much too young to make this decision," Mr Finch said.
- with Liz Gooch
Aussie court allows girl, 13, to become boy
THURSDAY , 15 APRIL 2004
By DEBORAH GOUGH
The Family Court has allowed a 13-year-old girl to begin treatment to become a boy.
Chief Justice Alastair Nicholson, in a landmark judgement, described testimony that painted the picture of a child who had lived as a boy from a young age, shunning dresses and dolls for tanks and swords.
The child's primary school principal told Justice Nicholson that the child had worn nappies rather than use the girls' toilets. "When he went on camp, for the grade 6 camp, (he) did Indian arm wrestles with all the boys and, of course, beat everybody," the principal told the Family Court.
The child joined the cricket team and refused to line up with girls at school assemblies.
The judge has agreed to allow the girl to take oestrogen and progestogen and, at 16 years, testosterone. The testosterone will have irreversible effects on the child's voice, facial and body hair and promote muscular development and an enlarged clitoris. She would not be eligible for surgery until she was 18 years old.
The girl is known to the court as "Alex" and is referred to as "he" by Justice Nicholson throughout his judgement.
Normally, even with parental consent, people under 18 cannot have medical intervention that may reduce their capacity to reproduce unless there is court involvement.
Alex cannot be identified. She is estranged from her mother, lives with her aunt and migrated to Australia after her father's death.
She is under the guardianship of a government department, which brought the case to court with the support of her aunt and school after Alex started to develop suicidal and self-harm tendencies when she entered puberty. The court could not contact her mother.
"The evidence speaks with one voice as to the distress that Alex is genuinely suffering in a body which feels alien to him and disgusts him, particularly due to menstruation," Justice Nicholson said.
"It is also consistent as to his unwavering and profound wish to present as the male he feels himself to be."
Chief Justice Nicholson discounted the possibility that Alex was emerging as a lesbian after evidence from expert psychiatric witnesses.
The judge also allowed that Alex could change her name on her birth certificate to the boy's name. He criticised New South Wales, Northern Territory, the Australian Capital Territory, Tasmania and Queensland, which require surgery before the sex on a birth certificate can be changed. Victoria is drafting similar laws.
Consultant ethicist Nicholas Tonti-Filippini questioned the Family Court's right to hear the case and called on federal and state attorneys-general to review the case and take it to a higher court.
Dr Tonti-Filippini said his views on gender reassignment had hardened after recent controversy in which a woman complained she had been persuaded by doctors to take treatment to become a man. She later realised she would rather be a woman.
He said Johns Hopkins University in the US had also stopped work on gender reassignments for all patients. He said doctors were using hormone therapy to treat a mental illness. "The girl won't become a man and what's being obliterated won't be replaced," he said.
TransGender Victoria co-convener Lauren Christopher applauded the decision, saying that adolescence was the worst time for transgender people committing suicide.
But Alan Finch, spokesman for the Gender Identity Awareness Association, questioned whether Alex was aware that some people treated her problem as a psychological one rather than with medical intervention.
"She is much, much too young to make this decision," Mr Finch said.
- with Liz Gooch
