32 min listen
Strange Fruit #155: How Do Doctors Treat Transgender Kids?
FromStrange Fruit
ratings:
Length:
30 minutes
Released:
Jan 15, 2016
Format:
Podcast episode
Description
We're lucky enough to live in a time when more and more parents of transgender kids are accepting, loving, and trying to help their children be their authentic selves. And the medical community is developing new ways for trans kids to achieve their physical goals, but experts disagree on what the treatment protocol should be — and how early they should start. That's the subject of an article in this month's issue of Scientific American Mind, and the author of that article, Francine Russo, joins us this week to talk about it. Russo says drugs known as puberty blockers can essentially put the brakes on a child's sexual development while they and their doctors determine what to do next. The officially-accepted standard of care is to start puberty blockers at the first sign of puberty, then start cross-sex hormones at age 16. "And that's where the controversy in the field is," Russo explains. "Some doctors feel if the child is so clearly trans, and has been for a very long time - what they say in the field is the child has been 'insistent, persistent, and consistent' over time - those children, some doctors feel, should get cross-sex hormones and start going through puberty as early as 14 or 15, although the professional standards say don't do it before 16." We also asked Russo about a sidebar in her story about brain imaging studies done on trans people. Early results of these studies seem to show differences in the brains of trans people and cisgender people, and also hint that sometimes a trans woman's brain, for example, reacts to stimuli in ways that a cis woman's brain would — not in ways that a cis gender man's brain would. In Juicy Fruit this week, we remember David Bowie, specifically in terms of his championing of black people and his lovely longtime marriage to Iman.
Released:
Jan 15, 2016
Format:
Podcast episode
Titles in the series (100)
Strange Fruit #40: Don Lemon Says Don't Litter!: While we spent the week celebrating Jai's birthday and recovering from [EOY](http://www.eoy.net/), CNN's Don Lemon was busy making people mad and [agreeing with Bill O'Reilly](http://www.cnn.com/video/data/2.0/video/bestoftv/2013/07/27/nr-lemon-no-talking-points.cnn.html). In our Juicy Fruit segment this week, we deconstruct his list of advice for black folks. The video is worth a watch, but if you're pressed for time, it boils down to pulling up your pants and not having babies out of wedlock. It was a disappointing reminder that just because someone's family doesn't make them immune to the lure of respectability politics. But as Doc said, he's certainly no [Boykin](http://keithboykin.com/) (and we did agree with him that littering is gross). Also this week we bring you part two of our chat with Louisville activist Carla Wallace, and author Chris Crass. Chris was in town recently to celebrate the release of his book, [Towards Collective by Strange Fruit