Transgendered second graders? Really?

I find something very obtuse about the way this story is presented.

http://www.wptz.com/family/19491867/detail.html

It's as if there is something "natural" or "inherent" about girls liking the color aqua. And "she’s reading a Junie B. Jones book that made her giggle when she talked about the plot"? That's an innate trait? Is there something that precludes eight year old boys from giggling?

The crux of the matter is that these theorists have separated sex from gender, so that your sex (male) and gender (female) can be at odds. But the gender attributes are so culturally and historically specific that they are meaningless. The dishonesty is in separating sex and gender and then pretending that gender is more determinative than sex, when the whole point of separating them in the first place was to say that gender is a cultural construct that has nothing to do with a person's essence. Feminists separated sex and gender so they could say traditional femininity was not natural or biologically determined, but rather a gender "role" forced on girls against their will, something they could throw off in claiming their equality. But now gender "roles" are so powerful that a little boy MUST wear a skirt and a ponytail. Little girls, we're told, can play with trucks and can play hockey and don't need to play with dollies or be girly. But this boy is somehow trapped in the traditional girly gender role?

The more I think about it, the crazier it sounds. The only people who MUST be girly are transgendered boys. I suppose conversely the only people who MUST be masculine are transgendered girls.

I am a lesbian trapped in a man's body.

I see your point about relegating "girly attributes" to girls. Isn't that a bit sexisits.

The world was so much simplar when we had tom-boys and fems.

Do you believe the one in 500 statistic? What are they considering attributes? I use the world "beautifull" once in awhile. Does that qualify me as a transgender?

something that I've tried to articulate before, about gender and the "transgender" phenomemnon. I'd be interested to know how this breaks down along --dare I say it--gender lines: I suspect there are far more boys who feel "trapped" in boys bodies than vice versa.

So, no creadit cards, but abortions and gender changes? Perfect for children. :(

is absurd, to me.

I also have observed (from watching several television programs on the matter) that you're right that it's almost always men who are really women who just happen to be men, poor souls, and almost never women who are really men. Just as there are a thousand drag queens for every drag king.

I recall reading a theorist in grad school who said that because male subjectivity is read as universal and transcendent, men feel they can occupy any subject position. Women, poor dears, are so bound by their own bodies that they can only be women.

wrapping my head around the concept of men having extensive and expensive mutilating surgery and hormonal treatments so that they can become women who can them live with-or be married to-a woman who was always a woman. It seems a shame to me that they can't buck whatever sexual sterotypes they think that exist so that they can just keep their original bodies and just do cross dressing in private as some heterosexual men do if that's part of the issue. Is it a reaction to being told that they are too "effeminate" by other people so if they are told so often rather than fight it they might as well go all the way? I do think it's probably hard for transgendered people as they are still looked at with some skepticism by both straights and gays. I can see if you were a hermaphrodite wanting to choose a particular sex, but otherwise I don't get it. Then again, I've never felt trapped in my body.