Kids Trapped In The Wrong Body

A new documentary explores the agony of what it’s like to be a transgender child

- Pieter Van Zyl

LOOKING at the kid doing cartwheels on the lawn, you see a happy little girl. But nine-year-old Warner was in fact born a boy.

“I think God made a mistake,” Warner had told his parents.

Instead of being shocked or trying to force their child into a gender role, it’s they who’ve done the adapting: they’ve accepted that instead of a son they now have a daughter. They refer to their child as “she” and support all her choices. She likes to wear her hair long and has a preference for sparkles and the colour pink, explains her mother, Melissa, from Ottawa in Canada.

Warner is just one of the children featured in the new BBC documentary Transgender Kids: Who Knows Best? which is airing on DStv. They talk about what it’s like to be a transgender child and adolescent, and feeling trapped in the wrong body.

The documentary focuses on the transgender children and adolescents who experience gender dysphoria – in other words, they experience constant discomfort and distress because their gender identity doesn’t match the gender assigned to them at birth.

“There’s nothing wrong with being a boy, but I don’t enjoy being a boy,” Warner explains. “I’m not the full puzzle – there are a couple of pieces missing. My life’s journey is to find the missing pieces.”

But it’s not going to be easy. Somewhere down the road she’ll need to decide if she wants to be placed on treatment that will pause her puberty process – if she chooses this route it will mean her development will be delayed so she won’t develop distinctive male features such as a prominent Adam’s apple, facial hair, muscles and a deep voice.

This will buy her time while she decides whether she wants to start oestrogen therapy to fully transition.