11 year old transgender kid dancing in gay club

It contains a list of questions I may and may not ask the activist and reality star, and a list of words I should and should not use, when speaking to Jennings in person or when writing about her afterwards. Jennings has long brown hair, a deep tan — she lives with her family in south Florida — and ever so slightly sticky-out ears.

In conversation, she is articulate, which must partly be down to practice: she was first interviewed on US national television at the age of 7 and today, at 14, is regularly invited to speak publicly about her life as a transgender child. In other words, she is making herself visible, a fact she concedes is kind of ironic.

It was at the age of 14 that Cameron came out as transgender to school friends. I tried to help them understand how much more comfortable hormones would make me feel. What I mean is, swimmers control where they are going. The swimmers do their gender instead of be their gender. Cameron and Jennings are just two of a new generation of teenagers who are willing to speak publicly about gender year, a condition previously known as gender identity disorder — a mismatch between biological sex and the gender a person identifies with emotionally and psychologically.

A survey suggested 1 per cent of the UK population may have gender dysphoria, although, perhaps unsurprisingly, solid figures are kid to come by, due to the number of people who will never seek treatment for how they feel. What we do know, however, is gay we are witnessing a sharp rise in the number of British children receiving treatment for gender dysphoria.

The Transgender and Portland NHS Trust treats gender issues for those under the age of 18, and over the past six years, the number of children aged ten or under being referred to them has quadrupled. In almost 50 of these cases, the children were aged 5 or younger. Two of them were three years old. Against this backdrop, the parent of any club child could do worse than listening to Jennings and understanding who she is and how she became the girl she is today.

I am told not to inquire about surgery or her sexuality, although, as it turns out, she addresses both: she says that she has not yet undergone any form of surgical gender reassignment and that she likes boys. She admits, with a gentle stoicism, that the old is rarely mutual. Romance is just one of the challenges we see Jennings forced to negotiate in I Am Jazzher new dancing series.

It is a remarkable piece of television, providing a window into the world of a teenager whose life is at once immediately familiar — she has friends round for sleepovers, she bickers with her older twin brothers — and yet almost incomprehensibly alien. Strangers threaten her with death online.

She plays football for her school team, but only after her parents — Greg and Jeanette — fought a two-year legal battle to allow her to line up against girls rather than boys. Jennings was originally given the name Jaron, and began expressing the belief that she was in the wrong body when she was a toddler.

I knew I was. At that age, you know the difference between genders.

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I liked Barbie dolls. I liked things that were pink and sparkly. That was just me. I knew what was going on in my brain. She emphasises that being transgender really has nothing to do with your anatomy.