Children With Gender Identity Disorder ─ A Clinical, Ethical, and Legal Analysis

How should we understand transgenderism, especially as it affects children and adolescents? Psychiatric manuals include transgenderism among mental illnesses (Gender Identity Disorder). Such inclusion is relatively recent, and even the words transsexual and transgender were coined only a few decades ago. Yet stories of children with an in-between gender have always been, albeit symbolically, a part of popular culture. Drawing on fairy tales, as well as from personal narratives and clinical studies, this book explains how "Gender Identity Disorder" manifests in children, critically evaluating various clinical approaches and examining the ethical and legal issues surrounding the care and treatment of these youths. The book argues that Gender Identity Disorder is not pathology, and that medicine and society should assist children in expressing themselves, without attempting to force them to adapt to a gender that does not match with their perceived identity.

Simona Giordano is Reader of Bioethics at the University of Manchester.