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from Gender Identity Disorders
Oprah Winfrey Show Features
Children with Gender Identity Disorder
Being "born in the wrong body" can be a source of beauty and wisdom, therapist says
September 2, 2004 - Talk show host Oprah Winfrey's August 24 show
featured a discussion of children who wish to have sex-change operations.
Winfrey interviewed her first guest, who appeared to be a normal 11-year-old
boy. In actuality, this boy was a girl but was living as a boy.
According to Winfrey, "right now, according to experts, there are thousands of
children who are living what appear to be very normal lives, but deep inside
they know something is terribly wrong or they feel that something is terribly
wrong, and these children are saying that they were born in the wrong bodies.
Their parents have to decide whether or not to let their children live as the
opposite sex."
Winfrey interviewed Jana Ekdahl, a self-described transgender therapist who told
parents that children can become transgendered in the womb, with brain
development going one direction and the body going the other, and that such a
state is a thing of beauty and a source of special wisdom.
According to Ekdahl's web site, she views "gender-variant youth" as "changing
the face of gender for us all. I sometimes view them as archetypal warriors on
the cutting edge of that space between the two polarities that we hold onto so
tightly. Perhaps it would serve us all to go to that place ... that special space
between genders ... and see what we find there."
Ekdahl says "I embrace the philosophy of Carl Jung and Depth Psychology. The
union of East and West is essential to my work, as I have studied to learn about
the modalities of each. Buddhist thought and Native American spirituality are
interwoven into the fabric of my psyche. I have access to this wisdom to share
with my clients, either directly or otherwise."
Dr. Joseph Nicolosi observed of Winfrey's show: "Oprah's compassion is badly
misplaced. A girl can't become a boy; she was designed to be a female, and to
tell a child she can be something she is not is an abdication of adult
responsibility. What if she were born black, but thought she was actually white?
Should her parents have her skin whitened?
"There are news stories now," he continued, "about people who believe they
really should have been born legless, and they ask a doctor to amputate their
legs. This, like gender confusion, is a sad delusion with which no doctor should
collaborate."
Updated: 3 September 2008
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