Raising Awareness, Building Acceptance: Educating Parents on Gender Diversity
Raising Awareness, Building Acceptance: Educating Parents on Gender Diversity
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Issue Date
2025-03
Authors
Inkster, Nadine
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
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Abstract
The focus of this capstone is to provide an overview of how gender is defined and the journey a transgender or gender-diverse (TGD) child or youth may take. Specifically, this capstone is intended to offer insight for cisgender, heterosexual parents and caregivers or the population in general who have questions or confusion surrounding this important topic. Gender incongruence is a widely misunderstood topic for people who live life in a binary black-and-white fashion. My objective is to provide sufficient information to foster understanding of this topic, thereby reducing stigma, discrimination, and the numerous psychological challenges faced by this population. Moreover, I aim to highlight that gender-affirming care for TGD children and youth is equally as valuable and necessary as it is for cisgender children experiencing precocious puberty or adults requiring hormone supplements or sexual enhancement prescriptions. The prevalence of TGD individuals is approximately 2% around the world. There has been a noticeable increase in children and youth socially transitioning prior to seeking out gender-affirming care in the past decade. I outline the psychosocial co-morbidities of the TGD population, as well as necessary protective factors. I write about assessment and psychological and medical interventions as they relate to creating positive transition outcomes and the ethics of gatekeeping gender-affirming care. I provide information on transition and detransition as it relates to a journey of gender discovery rather than a treatment endpoint. I provide insight into how viewing our world from a binary lens is harmful and restricts the expectations of the TGD population and how gender should be expressed on an individual basis without societal pressure for what it thinks it should be. Finally, Chapter 3 contains a semi-scripted presentation that I have created for caregivers at Foundry Langley, BC, Canada.
Description
Keywords
transgender , gender diverse , gender dysphoria , mental health , protective factors , detransition
License
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 United States , openAccess