I rarely see news as pleasing as this report about parents supporting a child precociously voicing gender dysphoria. I hope (against all reason) that this may be the first of many such cases.

I am a 58-yr-old male-to-female transsexual. I have been living in my proper gender now for thirteen years. Despite all the excellent therapy I had before, during and after my transition, I am still to this day discovering more and more how badly I was psychologically damaged by the insane homophobia of my upbringing in the fities and sixties. The person I really was -- the little girl, who should have become a woman -- was smashed and destroyed, and finally buried out of sight until I painfully unravelled my dilemma in my mid-adulthood.

How often I have thought what a different world it would be for transgendered people if they could simply be taken at their word, and allowed to live with whatever gender expression they want. I knew at age three that I was not a boy. How much happier I would have been -- and would be today -- if I had been able to live my real life. I will always feel cheated and empty of a great deal of life experience; and damaged in many painful ways.

One family in Florida is not going to change society right away. But by their example, they can illustrate to people, who would like to understand, that the individual of any age is the best indicator and arbiter of who they are.

I always say "I am who I say I am" -- meaning, not who you or anyone else says I ought to be. And to the kid in Florida, I say "Go girl!"

Katherine Collins

late of SanFran

now in Vancouver BC