gender and puberty

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16211-delaying-puberty-could-help-genderconfused-teens-.html
"Delaying Puberty Could Help Gender-Confused Teens"
December 5, 2008
by Linda Gettes
NewScientist

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19426002.100-teenagers-trapped-in-the-wrong-body.html
"Teenagers Trapped in the Wrong Body"
April 20, 2007
by Alison George
NewScientist

The first article discusses how delaying puberty will help gender-confused teens mature and spend more time thinking about their decision before their changing bodies either make certain options more difficult (such as gender-reassignment surgery) or make them very unhappy. The basic idea is to give kids more time before a decision presses. (The second article discusses similar issues).

I find this rather interesting. What if the kid never wants to develop either way? What if they're pretty happy with their body as it is, and don't feel like becoming a full-fledged male or female? Or: it is funny that, while all these biological developments are showing that sex and gender are really a lot more fluid than they have once been thought to be, we're still only letting people pick one of two options: male or female.

(This is not to deny that there may be serious consequences of not going through puberty, and that twelve year olds may not be in the best position to consent to them. But what is a good age? 18 may, in fact, be a little arbitrary.)

Some more specific analyses (all from the second article):

"Even children with the most extreme symptoms of GID may later have a change of heart. "Despite doing very comprehensive psychological assessments, we find that around 20 per cent of young people who are convinced they are transsexual change their mind at puberty," says Viner."

The question may be: why do they have these changes of heart? Do they have good or bad genealogies - is it, perhaps, intense social pressure that results in it (whether or not that leaves behind psychological damage)? We might also ask: what does it matter how they'll feel about things in ten years? The individual is in front of us now. (This is complicated by the fact that they're teenagers).

As an example of genealogical concerns:

"On the other hand, it is possible that the drugs themselves could prevent some young people who are treated this early from changing their minds when they reach puberty. "We are unclear about the impact of pubertal hormones on gender identity development," says Di Ceglie."

On another note:

"It is still not clear how a "normal" sense of gender identity develops. We do know that children seem to develop an innate sense of being male or female very young, and by age 2 can identify which sex they belong to. By age 6, they have learned that gender is fixed - that they will stay male or female and won't change sex when they grow up. "Gender identity is not a matter of free choice," says Bern Meyenburg, a psychiatrist who runs a clinic for children and adolescents at the University of Frankfurt in Germany. "You are born with it or it is laid down in early life."

It is odd, in a way, to say that children learn that gender is fixed. First of all, one might want to say that sex is fixed. But what this article makes very obvious is that sex is not fixed. Given that we sort of know how to change these things - and perhaps soon enough we'll know a bit about how to chemically alter gender - it is very odd to say that these things are simply laid down.