Quote Originally Posted by kathybiker View Post

I'd be wondering whether I might change her desire to be a boy, not out of discomfort with what anybody else thinks, but because I'd like her to accept her gender and have the most access to positive choices in her life.

It's easy to accept the idea, "I am a girl," because it is simple and true. It is harder to accept the statement, "I am a girl who wants to be a boy," or "I am a woman who wants to be a man," because both of these involve painful contradictions.

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Kathy biker, I wonder if you have had children. You can't CHANGE their desires.
Not to be boys or girls or wear the color green. You can change their behavior, to a degree, but their desires? please, don't make me laugh!
I raised two sons and one liked to dress like a dandy and the other didn't care. There was nothing I could do to change that, not all the cajoling in the world.
When I was a little girl, in the worst way I wanted high top boys's sneakers. I saw a picture in a book of a little girl wearing them. I didn't get a pair of my own until i was 30. And I probably DID want to be a boy somewhere back there when I was little and the boys were throwing rocks at me and the girls were playing dumb games. And no one CHANGED my desires, I grew out of them.
If the kid wants to wear a suit, she'll look cool and cute and dressy, and she might never want to again, or she will.
One of the best things about being a girl is that it is acceptable for girls to wear boy's clothes AND girl's clothes.