Thomas Lobel: the 11 year-old boy who started sex change process.

The lesbian mothers of Thomas , an 11-year-old boy who is undergoing the process of becoming a girl last night defended the decision, claiming it was better for a child to have a sex change when young.

Thomas Lobel, who now calls himself Tammy, is undergoing controversial hormone blocking treatment in Berkeley, California to stop him going through puberty as a boy.

and warn that children with gender identity disorder forced to postpone transitioning could face a higher risk of suicide.

The women say that one of the first things that their son Thomas Lobel told them when he learned sign language aged three – because of a speech impediment – was, “I am a girl”.

At age seven, after threatening genital mutilation on himself, psychiatrists diagnosed Thomas Lobel with gender identity disorder. By the age of eight, the little boy began transitioning.

 

Tammy Lobel photo
Thomas Lobel photo

Thomas Lobel

Thomas Lobels two lesbian adopted mothers Debra left and Pauline right say that they have not forced their son to become a girl photo

Thomas Lobel's two lesbian adopted mothers, Debra, left, and Pauline, right, say that they have not forced their son to become a girl

This summer, Thomas Lobel started taking hormone-blocking drugs, which will stop him from experiencing puberty.

The hormone-suppressant, implanted in Thomas Lobel upper left arm, will postpone his developing broad shoulders, deep voice and facial hair.

The lesbian mothers faced intense criticism from friends and family as a result.

“Everybody was angry with us. <<How could you be doing this? You might be ruining his whole life!>>,” said Pauline Moreno.

Citing a statistic from the Youth Suicide Prevention Program, Pauline Moreno noted over 50% of transgender youth will have had at least one suicide attempt by their 20th birthday.

And ignoring their son’s incessant pleas, Pauline Moreno said, simply was not worth the risk.

“What is so frightening to me is that you would be willing to say <<no>> just because you don’t like it – even though your child could lose their life?”

Thomas Lobel’s adolescent transition, she hopes, will help him have a less conflicted adulthood.

“The whole idea now is let’s stop creating a third (gender) that is neither one thing or the other, so we transitioned her,” she said.

“The protocol now is to transition these children as soon as you can make a diagnosis, because otherwise they end up being not one thing or the other… because they experienced puberty.”

Pauline Moreno recalled the first step of Thomas’ transition to becoming female by letting him pick his own clothes.

Thomas Lobel favoured headbands to baseball hats and picked out bras and dresses to start wearing when given choice in clothing to wear. And the change in his personality, Pauline Moreno says, was instant.

“He was in his own world just completely detached and that was a problem we always had was getting Thomas to participate in life,” she said.

“What we saw emerge when Tammy was allowed to be Tammy is, <<Whoa!>>… It was an immediate transformation. She was so giggly and she was now interacting she was now making it a point to defend herself.”

The diagnosis has been hard to accept for Thomas Lobel’s parents.

Thomas Lobel Tammy favours headbands to baseball hats and picked out bras and dresses to start wearing when given choice in clothing to wear photo

Thomas Lobel (Tammy) favours headbands to baseball hats and picked out bras and dresses to start wearing when given choice in clothing to wear

The lesbian couple was married in 1990 by a rabbi and has two older sons and grandchildren. But they insist their sexuality has nothing to do with it.

“It was odd to us,” the mothers said.

“Even though she has lesbians as parents, this is all new to us in every possible way. We know what it’s like to feel different – we’ve got that one. But to feel like you’re not in the right body was just something we could not put our heads around.”

Fortunately, the family of Thomas Lobel has a vast support system. The couple credits Tammy’s teachers and officials at Children’s Learning Center in Alameda, California, and their religious community, for being open-minded about their son’s decision.

“We live in the Bay area where lots of alternative lifestyles are in place… and we belong to a religious community that was incredibly supportive. They make it a point when we’re in synagogue to come over and tell Tammy, <<Oh, you look so pretty today>>,” Pauline Moreno said, adding, “There’s never going to be enough gratitude for them.”

The mothers say the hormone treatment will give him time to figure out if he wants to fully transition to being female or go through puberty as a boy.

If Thomas Lobel chooses to stop taking the drugs, he will undergo natural male puberty at a later stage and his future fertility would not be impacted.

Should their son decide to transition to an adult female, he can take female hormones as well, which would raise his voice, allow him to grow breasts and develop other feminine physical characteristics.

San Francisco, right by Berkeley, is one of four cities in the United States with a hospital that has a program for .

The University of California San Francisco is home to the Center of Excellence for Transgender Health.

Children like Thomas Lobel are seen at length by mental health professionals and then treated by pediatric endocrinologists.

Others cities with youth programs are Boston, Seattle and Los Angeles.

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Short URL: http://www.bellenews.com/?p=6557

Posted by on Sep 30 2011. Filed under Front Page, Health, U.S. News, World. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
  • http://jenab6.livejournal.com/ David Sims

    I wonder how many children Thomas Lobel will have when he grows up.

    I think it is possible that these lesbians are just practicing hatred against an enemy “male,” castrating him while he is young and helpless to defend himself. I believe that they might be conditioning their approval of him, which he naturally craves if he views them as his parents, upon his acceptance of their plans. I also believe that a great effort in PR and in leftist propaganda is being made to conceal the pressure on the boy to conform to the wishes of the adults in his life.

    This is why lesbians should never have custody of children. Thomas Lobel might be saying that he “wants” a sex change because that is what his “two mommies” want him to say. If he gets that sex change, it won’t make him truly a woman, since it won’t give him the power to conceive, bear, and suckle children, but it will leave him very truly unmanned.

    One thing I’m rather sure about is this: If it turns out that Thomas Lobel is going through a passing phase in which he wants to be a girl because he perceives girls as having advantages that boys don’t get, or because he sees females as being the in-charge sex and wants to emulate females on that account, and, upon growing older, changes his mind and asks his lesbian parents to let him become a boy again, after his male reproductive organs are long destroyed and gone, then the leftist influenced mass media WILL NEVER REPORT IT TO US.

    • Grego

      Of you could read the whole article before commenting, as opposed to just the title and first sentence.

  • michael masterson

    Well said David Sims!!!

  • http://dietsandvitamins.com Diana

    I love how the part about if he chooses to be male everything will be peachy and his fertility will not be impacted is high lighted. Are you kidding me? You have noooooooooo idea how this will affect his fertility, growth or anything else! Why people just read things and believe them I will never know? Where is the common sense? Perhaps if they continue his body will be affected in only a mild or moderate way but maybe he will be affected drastically and you have no idea!

    Maybe, when he grows up and decides he wants to be male, and has to go through puberty at 18 there will be even bigger emotional issues he has to now deal with. I have a hard time believing he wasn’t influenced, whether on purpose or more likely, just by the lifestyle they live. He has no father like role model and yes many don’t I didn’t but I did not have 2 mom’s either. I mean come on? Threatening to mutilate himself? There is something wrong other than gender if he is wanting to do something so violent to himself at 7. My daughter didn’t even know what that meant at 7. Why is this his focus at 7? Someone else is making this his focus, whether consciously or unconsciously.

    • Dachshund

      How do they know? Because this drug is hardly new. It’s been used for years to treat early puberty in children and various other hormonal disorders that people experience. The Netherlands have been using this to treat transgender kids for a long time. The US has been using it for other disorders for a long time. The drug has been researched and many people who have taken it have gone on to have kids. Maybe you should do some research.

  • Kepha

    This is child abuse

  • Kepha

    This is child abuse. Moreno, Lobel, some social workers, and a judge ought to be wearing orange jumpsuits and picking up trash beside the highway.

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