Transkinder: Lukas is now Lea!
Kim* has been sitting in the paediatrician's treatment room for half an hour. The seven-year-old slides around impatiently on the chair and listens to the doctor's questions.
«You're quite sure, Kim, that you want to be a boy?»
«Yes.»
«Right, Kim, you know that if you do want to be a girl, you can always say so.»
«Yes, I know.»
«Really, Kim, I mean that, anytime.»
«I know.»
«Really!»
«I know. Are we done?» Kim, a rather slight first-grader with short hair and sporty glasses, is not an impatient child. But he doesn't understand the constant questions about his gender. He was born in a female body - but he has never felt like a girl.
Lea*, 14, was born as Lukas. She says: «I can't remember ever feeling like a boy.» Lea, a teenager with long, blonde hair, also doesn't understand why the doctors keep asking her if she's sure: «You can tell I'm a girl!»
Lea is a trans girl, Kim is a trans boy. They are two of around 8,000 children in Switzerland who do not identify with their biological gender. Lea and Kim don't know each other, they live in different regions of Switzerland. And yet they have a lot in common. This is their story.
Dress-up clothes and Barbies - just a phase?
Lea, then Lukas, is three years old when her parents realise how interested their child is in her cousin's Barbies. And how much he loves playing dress-up with her little skirts. This wouldn't be unusual for a boy of this age - if Lukas didn't refuse to take the clothes off again afterwards.
Now you're just the boy!
The mother of Lukas
The parents think it's just a phase that happens to children. But with Lukas, the phase just won't end. Sometimes it seems like an obsession for the parents: Lukas tries on one skirt after the other and doesn't let himself be interrupted when his mother calls her child to the table.
The parents are worried: Is this normal? Should we allow this? Should we allow it? Even the make-up and nail polish? In between, the mum keeps losing patience: «Now you're just the boy!»
When Lukas is seven years old, his mother takes him to a Tupperware party. A friend strikes up a conversation with the supposed boy and asks: «If you were all alone in the world, what would you want to be?» Lukas doesn't hesitate for a second: «A girl.»
The mum is shocked.
«I'm not a princess, I'm a prince»
Kim is also three years old when he irritates his parents for the first time with his behaviour. His behaviour also revolves around skirts. The only difference is that he throws them at his parents instead of putting them on. When he is given princess dresses by well-meaning friends, he dutifully puts them on. Only to hide them in a safe place as soon as the visitor has left. «I'm not a princess, I'm a prince,» he says.
Kim accepts that his parents won't let him cut his hair short. But he certainly doesn't want his mum to cut his hair. His parents don't give it much thought at first either: «We don't want to force our children into the role of girls, they were always allowed to play with boys' clothes,» says his mother.
Everyone treats me like a girl, but I'm a boy!
Kim
The couple had three girls, as they thought at the time: one favoured pink and Lillifee, the others preferred to play with cars. When Kim starts kindergarten, his mother realises that there is something very different about Kim compared to his two sisters. One day he sits sadly at the kitchen table. His mum asks:
«What's wrong with you?»
«Everyone treats me like a girl,» Kim complains. «But I'm a boy!»
How do the parents react?
Kim is lucky that he can clearly express his gender - and that his mum already knew that there was such a thing. Lea, on the other hand, never told her parents: «I'm a girl.» Her mother says: «She tried to show us through her behaviour.» But they had never heard of trans children.
Kim's father is not sure at first whether they should really change completely, but is quickly persuaded by her mother. They decide that their child should no longer go through life as Kim, the girl, but as Kim, the boy, as is his wish.
No understanding in kindergarten?
When Kim starts school, everything takes a turn for the better. Kim's mum informs his future class teacher, who is also the headmistress, a year before he starts. The whole thing seems strange to her.
She has been in charge of the school for many years, but she has never had a case like this: a girl who says she is a boy? Can a child that age already know that? Don't the parents push them into the role of a boy just because they don't like wearing girls' clothes? And anyway, how is this supposed to work in everyday life if she wants to go to the boys' wardrobe and the boys' toilet?
The headmistress convenes a round table with Kim's parents, the kindergarten teachers, the special needs teacher, the other class teacher and Hannes Rudolph, psychologist and head of the specialist centre for trans people in Zurich. «The discussion opened my eyes,» she says.
The teacher learns that children sense at an early age which gender they belong to. And that it hurts their personality if they are not taken seriously. She says to herself: «Now it's about the child. And not my idea of whether it can be or not.»
The fact that Kim goes to the boys' cloakroom and the boys' toilet is still not an issue. «It's a normal thing for her classmates,» says the class teacher, «they have no problem with it, they're still children. For them, Kim is just a boy.»
Anyone who can't accept Kim as a boy has no place in our lives.
Kim's father
Some adults, on the other hand, find it difficult to see Kim as a boy. A neighbour demonstratively corrects herself when she slips out a «him» in conversation with her mother: «Er, her, I meant of course.» But friends and relatives react positively throughout. They also have no choice, as the father makes clear: «Anyone who can't accept Kim as a boy no longer has a place in our lives.»
There are only problems with a boy in his class and his older sister, both of whom - unlike Kim - are outsiders at school. They keep shouting at him: «You're not a boy at all! You're not a boy at all!» Kim's father tries to talk to his parents, but at some point they stop.
When is the right time to go public?
For Lea's mum, the moment at the Tupperware party when her supposed son spontaneously confessed to being a woman was a key moment, as she recounts: «I said to myself, 'Mum, wake up! "Now you have to make sure that your child is happy.»
She finds information on the internet and discusses it with her husband. The three of them seek advice from a sex therapist and go to a psychologist. Little by little, mother and father realise what their Lukas is: a girl born in a boy's body.
At first Lea wore boy's clothes, which are also suitable for girls.
From then on, they play what her mother calls «a double game»: At school, Lea wears jeans and jumpers, «boy's clothes that also work for girls». At home and on holiday, she wears skirts and leggings. The psychologist advises them to wait before going out in public.
Then, when Lukas is eleven, they decide to take the plunge. Lukas chooses a new name: Lea, after a character from a story she likes. They inform the class teacher and make an appointment with her, at which Lukas will tell his classmates that she is a girl and will be called Lea from now on.
Trans - an explanation of the term
- Transgender, trans person: generic term for all people who are trans. There is also the spelling «trans gender» and «trans person». Many people affected prefer this adjectival use of trans. This is to emphasise that although trans is part of them, it does not define their entire being.
- Cis people: People who are not trans (from the Latin cis for this side).
- Transidentity: This term for the phenomenon of «trans» is preferable to «transsexuality», which is commonly used in medicine, as it refers to gender identity and not sexual orientation. Like cis people, trans people can be heterosexual, homosexual or bisexual, or they can categorise themselves as having a different sexual orientation.
- Gender dysphoria, gender identity disorder, gender incongruence: official medical diagnosis for trans people. TGNS and other trans organisations criticise the use of this term as a «psychopathologisation» of trans people.
- Transition: The adjustment of the external gender assigned at birth to the internal gender. It includes personal steps such as informing those around you, legal steps such as changing your name and gender entry in your passport and possibly medical steps such as hormone therapy and surgery. However, only a small percentage of trans people decide to undergo gender reassignment surgery.
Lea is excited on her big day - but she's not scared. She doesn't need to be: by the afternoon, her classmates are already calling Lea by her new name. The big announcement, for which her mother and the sex therapist have also come to school, is not a big issue.
Lea shrugs her shoulders as she says: «My mates weren't surprised. I was already behaving like a girl beforehand.» For Lea, however, it is a great liberation: «I really blossomed afterwards!» she says.
«Why am I in this world?»
It is the start of a new life, one that finally feels right. For the mother, it is also a relief - but also a farewell: to Lukas. She cries again and again, mourns, saying goodbye to her «Büebeli» hurts. But it's a short phase: «I didn't lose anyone - it was more of a transformation.» However, switching from «Lukas» to «Lea» was more difficult for her than for her husband: «Especially when I was angry, I kept slipping out "Lukas» for a long time.
But now it's strange for me to mention the old name when we talk about the time when it was still called that." But now it's strange for me to use the old name when we talk about the time when she was still called that." Teasing is not an issue at school. But at home: her brother Benjamin keeps pinching her private parts - a good opportunity to tease her big sister.
But when it comes down to it, he steps into the breach for her. Lea's godfather, (until then) a friend of her father's, is the only person in the neighbourhood who doesn't accept the change in appearance from Lukas to Lea. When they argue about it in front of the children, three-year-old Benjamin stands in front of the unreasonable godfather and says: «Lukas is now Lea. That's it, that's it.»
They inform their neighbours by means of cards, which they drop into letterboxes together with Christmas and New Year wishes. Many write back, congratulating them on their courage, paying visits and bringing presents.
Lea's parents emphasise that they are unconditionally behind their daughter. But Lea has had some difficult times. Moments when she said to her mum: «Why am I in this world? Why doesn't anyone like me? I want to die.»
Today, the parents regret that they didn't know earlier: «I'm sorry for Lea,» says the mother. The father adds: «If I had known then what I know now, I would have said earlier: it's okay if you wear girls' clothes.»
What happens next?
Lea recently received good news from her doctor: He has given the go-ahead for her to start hormone therapy. «I'm so happy,» says Lea. «Things are finally moving forward!» She has been taking puberty blockers for three years to prevent the onset of male puberty. With hormone therapy, Lea will get female curves and become a woman. And she also wants to have gender reassignment surgery in a few years' time.
For Kim, puberty with all its turbulence is still theory, questions about hormone therapy or operations seem far away. Kim is happy just to be a boy. Her parents are happy that this is the case. And they hope it stays that way for as long as possible. Because, says her mother: «We realise that the hard times are still ahead.»
* All names have been changed: The families are open about their children's trans identity, but do not want to expose them too much in public to protect them from hostility.
