Thought for the Day

[bcholmes]

In 1995, the Clarke Institute undertook a study of physical attractiveness in girls diagnosed with [Gender Identity Disorder]. [...]

Little vignettes were included in the study, the most disturbing of which concerned a four-year-old girl who entered a preschool and was thought to be a boy. "Her [white] teacher was convinced, based on her appearance, that her parents had erred in identifying her on the school registration form as a girl. Because this girl came from a non-Western [East Indian] culture, her teacher was unable to determine her actual sex based on her given name. She was unable to ask the girl about her sex because she did not speak English. The teacher reported that she took this little girl to the washroom and pulled down her blue jeans 'to check'" The researcher stated, "The sequence of events led to the clinical referral." Make no mistake about it: The researchers were not reporting this anecdote in order to expose a neurotically sex-typed teacher who could not endure spending one day in the preschool room with a child whose sex was not clear. The child was the identified patient, not the teacher.

-- Phyllis Burke, Gender Shock: Exploding the Myths of Male and Female