Melbourne's family court has allowed a 17-year-old biological female who wishes to live as a male to have surgery to remove her breasts. The Age newspaper reports that the teenager, codenamed 'Alex', has been on hormone treatment since she was 13 to prevent menstruation and breast growth. Alex is been diagnosed with "gender identity dysphoria'' and been granted permission to have a double mastectomy immediately, rather than wait until he turned 18. "The issue was: 'Was there any likelihood he would change his mind in the meantime, and was it in his best interests to have it at that time?' Justice Bryant told the newspaper. "Overwhelmingly, the evidence was that it was in his interests. And I made that order. I wanted to make it quickly so that he could have the operation straightaway.'' But ethicist Nick Tonti-Filippini disagrees with the decision, saying mainstream medicine does not recognise hormone treatments and surgery as treatment for gender dysphoria. He believes the psychiatric disorder qualifies under American guidelines as a 'psychosis' because "it's a belief out of accordance with reality". "What you are trying to do is make a biological reality correspond to that false belief," he said.
Credit: GayNZ.com Daily News Staff
First published: Monday, 4th May 2009 - 12:49pm