Transgendered children

[Regina]

As I said before as well, a child is old enough to know. We have expected gender roles shoved down our throats from the moment we are born. You don't need a fully developed adult sense of self to notice if you don't identify with those gender expectations that are put on you.

Based on what?

Based on everything, all the messages we have hammered into us as kids about "this is what boys do, this is what girls do". I said it earlier, it's how right from day 1 we segregate out what colours we associate with boys (blue) and girls (pink). It's the way toys are often marketed as gender-specific, and if a child of the "wrong gender" takes a liking to them, they're promptly reminded "that's a girls toy, play with this instead". It's how young boys are looked at like they are abnormal if they're not obsessing over football.

It's drummed into us, so if you don't strictly identify with what society says you should indentify with, it does become painfully obvious from a very young age. You do anything that is not in society's comfortable little bubble of "males do x, females do y", then people won't hesitate to remind you what gender you've been labelled as, and what you are expected to do as said gender. To an extent I experienced this myself despite not being trans. So yes, it's easy for me to understand how a child can have full awareness that they are trans, even if they are too young to know the fancy name for their "condition".