Insight turns focus onto trans kids

Having recently tackled the topic of marriage equality, SBS’s Insight forum will take a look at another LGBTI hot-button topic with host Jenny Brockie to be joined by a number of guests to discuss some of the issues facing transgender children in Australia today.

To air on Tuesday,  September 17, Brockie will be joined by both parents of trans kids as well as young transgender people to talk about the challenges they have faced as well as answer questions on how parents can be sure that their child is transgender.

Seven-year-old Maddi along with her parents, Roland and Beck, will share their family’s journey which began when Maddi was aged “about three or four” and told her parents she was a girl and wanted to wear dresses.

They will be joined by a mother, Kate, who believes that her son is only going through a phase despite her child admitting a preference for having breasts and a vagina and not the penis they were born with.

Crystal, an indigenous “sistergirl” from the Tiwi Islands, will discuss some of the difficulties involved in changing her identity despite there being a comparatively high number of male-to-female transgender people in her local area. While 16-year-old Riley Pederson (pictured), who received plenty of support after publicly coming out as transgender in a Sydney Morning Herald article last year, is expected to share her story and detail her experiences undergoing hormone treatment as well as the bullying by her peers which forced her to leave school.

In early August, the full bench of the Family Court ruled that parents would no longer need to receive court permission before their children can have access to hormone treatment designed to block puberty but instead be supervised by medical and mental health professionals in making their decision.

The Insight episode, to air tomorrow night, comes after a major study by Flinders University researchers found that an overhaul of the medical and mental health professions was required if trans people were to live healthier lives.

In a memorable episode of Insight last month, an Australian-Asian gay couple as well as openly-gay Finance Minister Penny Wong faced off with a number of hostile audience members, including ministers of religion, on their right to marry people of the same-sex.

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