MANY children and adolescents are identifying as transgender because they are confused about sexuality or think it will make them “different”.

Psychiatrist Dr Stephen Stathis, who runs a gender clinic, said he had seen girls who had been sexually abused and wanted to identify as transgender.

media_camera Psychiatrist Dr Stephen Stathis. Picture: Jamie Hanson

“The girls say, ‘If only I had been a male I wouldn’t have been abused’,’’ Dr Stathis said.

He said the new statewide gender service at Brisbane’s Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital expected to see about 180 children with gender issues this year, but only a minority would be diagnosed with gender dysphoria.

Dr Stathis said by the time they reached puberty, most of those identify as their birth gender.

Gender dysphoria is a strong, persistent feeling of identification with the opposite gender and discomfort with one’s own assigned gender.

He said he had seen a lot of adolescents “trying out being transgender” to stand out.

“One said to me, ‘Dr Steve ... I want to be transgender, it’s the new black’,” he said.

The psychiatrist has also seen transgender children so desperate to start puberty blockers then progress to irreversible hormone treatment they harm themselves.

“I’ve seen genital mutilation, some who try to cut off their penis,’’ he said.

‘‘The thought of touching their genitals is so abhorrent they don’t wash them and get infections.’’

At the end of last year, there was a two-year waiting list of 100 children wanting to be assessed at the hospital. With state funding, the wait is now down to three or four months, and the new gender service has seen more than 60 patients since December.

KEEP THE COURTS OUT OF IT

JACK’’, 18, feels he has had a new start in life since he obtained court approval to take hormones to make him masculine and had breast removal surgery.

Jack felt he was a boy and dressed like one from the age of six.

“I remember having a bit of a cry to my Mum and saying ‘Why can’t I be like the other boys?’. We didn’t know what transgender was,’’ he said. His primary school friends were accepting, but after he went to a different high school he forced himself to be feminine for a couple of years, rather than be an outcast.

“I sometimes had to wear a girl’s uniform, instead of the unisex one, but I preferred getting detention for not wearing it,’’ he said.

A school counsellor guided him toward seeking advice about gender dysphoria.

Jack said he told his fellow students: “I am male in my brain, but I was born biologically female and I’m trying to transition to a male.’’

Jack was binding his breasts from the age of 14, when he began taking puberty blockers.

When he was 17 he went to court to get approval for irreversible Stage 2 hormone treatment. He said the thought of a court denying him what he had wanted for years was stressful, and courts did not need to be involved in the process. “I’ve had no doubts. I honestly couldn’t ever see myself as a female,’’ Jack said. The labourer has been taking male hormones since last year and said his workmates had no idea he was born a girl.