Transgender children ’I don’t want to grow a beard’ 变性儿童-我不想长胡子

Lastyear,theVictoriaDerbyshireprogrammemetchild...



Last year, the Victoria Derbyshire programme met children going through a period of extraordinary change - but what’s happened to two of the UK’s youngest transgender children since?

去年，维多利亚德比郡项目迎来了一群儿童，他们的人生经历过巨大变化-然而自那以后，这两位英国最年轻的变性儿童究竟怎么样了呢？

Last May, Lily, seven, went to school wearing a skirt and was called by a girl’s name for the first time. She was born a boy, and "skirt day" marked her transition to life as a girl.

去年五月，七岁的莉莉首次穿着短裙到学校，并被称呼为女孩的名字。她生来是个男孩，而“短裙日”则标志着她转向女孩的人生。

It seems both she and her classmates took it in their stride. "When I went to school that day, everyone was saying, ’Hi Lily, you look nice in a skirt’. And I was like ’ooh thanks,’" she says.

她和同班同学似乎对这点很从容。“那天我到学校后，所有人都跟我说，‘莉莉你穿短裙很漂亮。’然后我就说‘哦是吗谢谢’。”她说。

"It felt a bit natural, but mostly embarrassing because the tights were making me itch a lot. It stopped becoming embarrassing after a while."

“感觉还挺自然的，最大的尴尬是裙子太紧，我觉得有点痒，不过没过多久就好了。”

Lily - not her real name - had recently begun dressing as a girl in January 2015. "It feels a bit different but mostly the same because I just get on with it like I did when I was a boy," she says.

莉莉（化名）从2015年1月分开始打扮成女孩模样。“感觉有点不同，但大部分都没变，就和我是男孩时一样，我很快就适应了。”她说。

Transgender is a term used to describe a person who doesn’t identify as the gender that was assigned to them when they were born - they may wish to be seen as a different gender or no gender at all.

跨性别者用来描述那些不认同自己出生时性别的人-他们也许希望被当作不同性别甚至无性别人。

The UK’s only centre specialising in gender issues in under 18s is the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust which has clinics in London and Leeds.

英国唯一一家专门研究18岁以下性别问题的机构是塔维斯托克和波特曼国家医疗服务系统基金会，它在伦敦和利兹设有诊所。

In the last year, 167 children aged 10 or under have been referred to clinics, almost double the number the previous year. They include three children aged three. It’s something psychologists there put down to society becoming more accepting.

去年有167位10岁及不到10岁的儿童被送至诊所，人数比前年几乎翻了一番，其中包括3个年仅三岁的儿童，心理学家认为这是因为社会正在变得越来越包容。

The other young girl we met last January is Jessica - not her real name - who is now nine. Then she had been going to school as a girl for two months.

去年我们见到的另一个小女孩是杰西卡（化名），她今年九岁了，过去的两个多月她一直打扮成女孩去上学。

When she describes her excitement at getting her ears pierced, she sounds like a typical young girl. "I just wanted to look like a girl, I wanted to do it straight away," she says.

当谈到她穿耳洞的激动之情时，她听起来就是一个典型的小姑娘。“我就是想看起来像个女生，想要马上这么做。”她说。

But her parents say her life is starting to get a little difficult.

然而她的父母说，她的人生开始变得有点艰难。

Her mother Ella explains: "It’s been a really good year, school’s going really well and now she can get her name changed [to Jessica] legally as we have her dad’s permission.

母亲艾拉解释道：“今年情况很好，学校方面很顺利，由于征得了她爸爸的同意，现在她的名字也合法更改[成杰西卡]。

"But she’s been having nightmares - that she’s going to die a man, she’s going to have a beard. She’s already started requesting [hormone] blockers."

“但她一直做噩梦-梦到她作为男人死去，梦到她长胡子。她现在已经开始需要荷尔蒙阻滞剂了。”

Her stepfather adds: "The thing with kids is they think it’s going to happen instantly, that she’s going to wake up and that’s it, it’s going to have happened."

她继父补充：“孩子们认为他们想什么就会立刻发生，她醒来后觉得事情就会发生。”

They think hormones may be responsible and say they hoped for another "straightforward year" before the onset of puberty.

他们觉得可能和荷尔蒙激素有关，他们希望在孩子青春期到来前能够再过个“简单的一年”。

She says she’s looking forward to the day her gender is no longer an issue. "I’m not going to end up being a boy forever, because I will be a girl and I know that. Sometimes it doesn’t feel like that though."

她说她很期望有一天自己的性别不再是问题。“我不会永远做男孩，因为我确信我会成为一个女生，尽管有时候感觉并非如此。”

Younger transgender children can receive treatment on the NHS, but at that age it takes the form of counselling and support sessions. Medical intervention isn’t considered until they approach puberty, when hormone blockers might be offered.

年轻的跨性别儿童可在国家医疗服务系统基金会接受治疗，但在这个年龄阶段主要是咨询及支持治疗。孩子们青春期之前不会考虑药物干涉，青春期可能会需要荷尔蒙阻滞剂。

Blockers delay the physical changes associated with puberty, giving the young person longer to decide if they want to live as a man or a woman. At the age of 16 a patient can then take cross-sex hormones, with full surgery only offered after the age of 18. The estimated cost of gender reassignment surgery on the NHS is around 10,000 pounds.

阻滞剂能够延缓青春期相关的生理变化，给这些年轻人更长时间考虑究竟想成为男人还是女人。16岁以后病人可以采用跨性别激素，直到18岁以后才能接受全面手术。国家医疗服务系统基金会变性手术费用预计在1万英镑左右。

Jay Stewart, director of Gendered Intelligence - an organisation that supports young trans people - says it’s common to find life more difficult during puberty. He says a combination of social, psychological and physiological support can help.

一家支持年轻人变性的机构-“性别情报”主任杰伊斯图尔特说，这个群体普遍在青春期发觉人生变得更加艰难。社会、心理和生理支持的结合能够帮助他们。

"Such difficulties don’t affect all trans people, but there is a narrative of young people where their bodies are developing in a way that is not welcome.

“并不是所有跨性别人都会觉得困难，但年轻人们反映这期间他们的身体会朝着自己并不认同的方向发育。

"Services, such as schools, must be aware that such visible changes that puberty brings can feel stressful because we know that that will have an impact on the way that we are treated in society."

“像学校之类的服务机构必须察觉，这种青春期带来的可见的变化会使他们感到压力，因为我们知道，这样的变化会影响社会中其他人对待我们的方式。”

Lily’s parents say she appears to be happy and not yet thinking in depth about the future. But it’s also been a big year for her family.

莉莉的父母说她似乎很开心，还没有对未来想太多。然而对她的家庭来说这也是重要的一年。

Lily, who had been asking to live as a girl for several years, took control of the pace of change by telling her school she wanted to be known as a girl. "She just ran ahead with it really," her mother Jen says.

莉莉多年来一直要求像一个女孩一样生活，她告诉学校她想要被当成女孩从而掌控了变化的步伐。“她真的在跟随内心走。”妈妈珍说。

The family had numerous meetings with the school to plan the transition. Then on the day she wore a skirt for the first time, Lily’s headteacher led the whole school in an assembly focused on accepting differences.

家人和学校关于计划转变一事开过无数会议，当她第一次穿着短裙出现时，莉莉的校长带领全校同学集合，专门强调如何接受不同。

For Jen, it was an emotional time. "It felt like a really important day, an official day where that boy was no more and now we are having a girl."

对珍来说，那是一个感人的时刻。“我觉得那真是极其重要的一天，好像在这一天那个男孩不在了，而现在我们拥有了一个女儿。”

Lily’s nine-year-old brother first noticed she was different when she wanted to buy pink dresses and play with dolls and fairies. But now he says their relationship is "just normal".

莉莉九岁大的哥哥第一次注意到她的不同，是当她想要买粉色裙子并且玩洋娃娃和精灵时。但现在他说他们的关系“很正常”。

They both go to the same primary school - where, he says, everyone is "fine with it now".

他们上同一所小学-他说学校所有人“现在都能够接受了”。

"They [other pupils] used to ask me, before we started assembly, ’why does your brother like girls’ stuff and things’. And I would say ’because that’s how she is’. I’m very proud of what she’s gone through, she’s doing really well at the moment and no-one’s bullying her or anything, so it’s fine," he says.

“开集会前其他同学常常问我‘为什么你弟弟喜欢女孩子的东西’，而我会回答‘因为她就是这样子的’。我为她所经历的一切感到骄傲，目前她做的非常棒，没有人欺负她，所以现在很好。”他说。

Jessica’s home life has seen a big change too.

杰西卡的家庭生活也发生非常大的变化。

Her biological parents split up and her mother has been in a relationship with another woman, Alex, since she was a baby. In February 2015, Alex also decided to transition and start living as a man.

她亲生父母离婚了，在她很小的时候妈妈就与另一个女人亚力克斯在一起了。2015年2月，亚力克斯也决定变性成为一个男人。

"I didn’t want to do anything about it until I felt that Jessica and the family were in a more stable place - I thought now was the time I needed to be more true to myself I guess," he explains.

“我本来并不打算做这些，直到我发现杰西卡和这个家庭处在一个更加稳定的状态-我想现在是时候需要更加坦诚面对自我了。”他解释。

"I’ve pretty much felt the same as Jessica, but didn’t understand or know until I researched what was going on with Jessica. Then, I instantly knew myself."

“我以前和杰西卡的感受差不多，但我并不理解或不知道，直到我研究了杰西卡的经历，那时候我立刻明白了我自己。”

But the couple do not believe the fact Alex has transitioned shows they have influenced Jessica.

但这对夫妻并不认为亚力克斯的变性对杰西卡造成了影响。

"If it was the other way round and Alex had transitioned first, and then Jessica, then I would think it was an influence," Ella says.

“如果倒过来是亚力克斯先变性了，然后再是杰西卡，那我会觉得可能是影响的原因。”艾拉说。

Some people might think this is just a phase, which the children will grow out of. Lily’s mother, Jen, says it’s hard for people to understand unless they’ve lived with a child in the same situation.

有些人可能认为这只是阶段性的，孩子最终会走出这个阶段。莉莉的妈妈珍说，除非是和有同样情况的孩子一起生活，否则普通人很难理解。

"This is a medical condition, it’s not a choice, it’s how they were born. You can hear people who are going through transition at adulthood say that they knew at this early age.

“这是一种疾病，而并非一种选择，他们生来如此。那些成年后变性的人会告诉你他们很小的时候就明白这件事了。

"We’re just trying to support our children so they can have longer in their lives being who they want to be," she says.

“我们只是尽力给孩子支持和帮助，这样他们人生中就会有更长久的时间成为他们想成为的人。”她说。

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