The Wound Nobody Could Heal

For most of my life, I have withdrawn from people when I felt they were getting close--or, more precisely, too close for my comfort.

And what do I mean by "too close for my comfort"?  Well, I always knew that deep within myself, there was a pain, a wound, that nobody could make better--and, I believed, nobody else could understand.  It made me very, very angry and whenever people who might have been acting from the purest of motives tried to "help" me, it almost invariably made me feel worse.  Sometimes I would be angry at those people.  I never expressed that rage physically, but I said a lot of things I shouldn't have and walked out on a few people who deserved better.  

Sometimes I withdrew simply to try to spare someone my wrath.  If I and that person were lucky, I could somehow pre-empt that person's attempt at charity or mercy or compassion, which I knew I never could reciporacate and would never make me a happier or better person.  And there were a few people whom I simply wanted to spare from grief and self-blame, to whatever degree I could. 

In fact, there were two occasions in which I stopped myself from committing suicide only because I knew that the only two people about whom I cared at that point in my life--my mother and a very close friend--would blame themselves. Both of those occasions came within weeks after another friend committed suicide not long after the deaths of an uncle to whom I was close and my grandmother.

I will never know exactly what was in Kyler Prescott's mind and heart.  I, like most people, hadn't heard of the 14-year-old Californian until today.  However, I suspect he was suffering in a way similar to what I've described.  From what I've read and heard, I don't doubt that his mother, Katherine Prescott, did everything she could to support him from the day he announced that he was a boy, not the girl indicated on his birth certificate.  But the pain of having to live in a body that didn't conform to his gender--and the bullying he experienced online and in person--marked him with wounds that even the most resilient and resourceful teenager or parent would have trouble healing.

If there is any window into Kyler Prescott's mind and soul, it might be this poem he wrote:

                     My mirror does not define me:

Not the stranger that looks back at me

Not the smooth face that belongs to someone else

Not the eyes that gleam with sadness

When I look for him and can only see her.

My body does not define me:

Not the slim shoulders that will not change

Not the hips that give me away

Not the chest I can’t stand to look at

When I look for him and can only see her.

My clothes do not define me:

Not the shirt and the jeans

That would look so perfect on him

But that I know would never fit me

When I look for him and can only find her.

And I’ve been looking for him for years,

But I seem to grow farther away from him

With each passing day.

He’s trapped inside this body,

Wrapped in society’s chains

That keep him from escaping.

But one day I will break those chains.

One day I will set him free.

And I’ll finally look in the mirror

And see me--

The boy I was always meant to be.

Ms. Prescott is calling for greater empathy, support and acceptance for transgender and other non-gender-conforming teenagers.  She has done what she could, she is doing what she can and is trying to do better.  Nobody can ask more.  I don't think her son would, or could, have.

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Ash Haffner: Transgender Teen Commits Suicide

As if it wasn't bad enough that transgender women are being murdered simply for being who they are, transgender teenagers are taking their own lives for the same reason.

More precisely, they are killing themselves because of the bullying, harassment and other mistreatment they incur because others don't accept them.  And trans women are being murdered by people who hate them.  It's almost as if their killers are those schoolyard bullies, a bit older and with more brute strength and lethal weapons.

The difference is, of course, that the trans women I mentioned were killed by someone else, while the trans teens--including the one I'm going to tell you about--killed themselves.

Ash Haffner stepped into oncoming traffic near his North Carolina home this past Friday. That, of course, is the way Leelah Alcorn killed herself in Ohio.  Like her, 16-year-old Ash left a suicide note.

However, their messages were very different.  This is what Ash left on his iPad:

'Please be WHO YOU ARE... Do it for yourself. Do it for your happiness. That's what matters in YOUR life. You don't need approval on who you are. Don't let people or society change who you are just because they're not satisfied with your image.' 

I wish he could have continued to live by his own advice.  But, I have long reckoned that any human being can only take so much.  And, as we know, it's harder for a 16-year-old to believe "It Gets Better" --which, of course, is the reason why Dan Savage does everything he can to bring that message to young people.  The bullying, intense as it was, got worse after he cut his hair and asked to be referred to as "he".

According to the report I read, his mother supported his transition but continued to use the pronoun "she".  Some may say she didn't help his self-esteem.  But I know, from experience, that when someone has known you all of your life in the gender and by the names you were given at birth, it's difficult for that person to switch names and pronouns. Sometimes that person will "slip up" even long after the rest of the world sees you as being of the gender in which you're living.  Somehow I think Ash understood this and had no intention of implicating his mother or family.

But at least Ash's message is some attempt to give others the hope he lost.  That is in marked contrast to what Leelah, a year older, wrote in the last post of her blog, which her family deleted:


If you are reading this, it means that I have committed suicide and obviously failed to delete this post from my queue.

Please don’t be sad, it’s for the better. The life I would’ve lived isn’t worth living in… because I’m transgender. I could go into detail explaining why I feel that way, but this note is probably going to be lengthy enough as it is. To put it simply, I feel like a girl trapped in a boy’s body, and I’ve felt that way ever since I was 4. I never knew there was a word for that feeling, nor was it possible for a boy to become a girl, so I never told anyone and I just continued to do traditionally “boyish” things to try to fit in.

When I was 14, I learned what transgender meant and cried of happiness. After 10 years of confusion I finally understood who I was. I immediately told my mom, and she reacted extremely negatively, telling me that it was a phase, that I would never truly be a girl, that God doesn’t make mistakes, that I am wrong. If you are reading this, parents, please don’t tell this to your kids. Even if you are Christian or are against transgender people don’t ever say that to someone, especially your kid. That won’t do anything but make them hate them self. That’s exactly what it did to me.

My mom started taking me to a therapist, but would only take me to christian therapists, (who were all very biased) so I never actually got the therapy I needed to cure me of my depression. I only got more christians telling me that I was selfish and wrong and that I should look to God for help.

When I was 16 I realized that my parents would never come around, and that I would have to wait until I was 18 to start any sort of transitioning treatment, which absolutely broke my heart. The longer you wait, the harder it is to transition. I felt hopeless, that I was just going to look like a man in drag for the rest of my life. On my 16th birthday, when I didn’t receive consent from my parents to start transitioning, I cried myself to sleep.

I formed a sort of a “fuck you” attitude towards my parents and came out as gay at school, thinking that maybe if I eased into coming out as trans it would be less of a shock. Although the reaction from my friends was positive, my parents were pissed. They felt like I was attacking their image, and that I was an embarrassment to them. They wanted me to be their perfect little straight christian boy, and that’s obviously not what I wanted.

So they took me out of public school, took away my laptop and phone, and forbid me of getting on any sort of social media, completely isolating me from my friends. This was probably the part of my life when I was the most depressed, and I’m surprised I didn’t kill myself. I was completely alone for 5 months. No friends, no support, no love. Just my parent’s disappointment and the cruelty of loneliness.

At the end of the school year, my parents finally came around and gave me my phone and let me back on social media. I was excited, I finally had my friends back. They were extremely excited to see me and talk to me, but only at first. Eventually they realized they didn’t actually give a shit about me, and I felt even lonelier than I did before. The only friends I thought I had only liked me because they saw me five times a week.

After a summer of having almost no friends plus the weight of having to think about college, save money for moving out, keep my grades up, go to church each week and feel like shit because everyone there is against everything I live for, I have decided I’ve had enough. I’m never going to transition successfully, even when I move out. I’m never going to be happy with the way I look or sound. I’m never going to have enough friends to satisfy me. I’m never going to have enough love to satisfy me. I’m never going to find a man who loves me. I’m never going to be happy. Either I live the rest of my life as a lonely man who wishes he were a woman or I live my life as a lonelier woman who hates herself. There’s no winning. There’s no way out. I’m sad enough already, I don’t need my life to get any worse. People say “it gets better” but that isn’t true in my case. It gets worse. Each day I get worse.

That’s the gist of it, that’s why I feel like killing myself. Sorry if that’s not a good enough reason for you, it’s good enough for me. As for my will, I want 100% of the things that I legally own to be sold and the money (plus my money in the bank) to be given to trans civil rights movements and support groups, I don’t give a shit which one. The only way I will rest in peace is if one day transgender people aren’t treated the way I was, they’re treated like humans, with valid feelings and human rights. Gender needs to be taught about in schools, the earlier the better. My death needs to mean something. My death needs to be counted in the number of transgender people who commit suicide this year. I want someone to look at that number and say “that’s fucked up” and fix it. Fix society. Please.

Goodbye,
(Leelah) Josh Alcorn

More than anything, her message reflects the lack of whatever support Ash had.  Leelah ends her message about what needs to be done in society, but has resigned herself to not seeing it. Still, her blog post, like Ash's note, is an example of what Miguel de Unamuno meant by "Hombre muere de frio, no de oscuridad" (Man dies of cold, not of darkness.)  Both teens killed themselves because they were left out in the cold.  All we can do is take them in, take in their spirits and take in those who are left.

The Truth She Owes Leelah

On doit des egards aux vivants; on ne doit aux morts que la verite.

Voltaire wrote that to the living we owe respect, but to the dead we owe nothing but the truth.

His message, however crudely I've translated it, is one that hasn't reached the family of Leelah Alcorn.

You see, they contacted Tumblr and requested that Leelah's blog--which ended with the suicide note I reproduced in one of my posts last week--be removed.  And those fucking cowards at Tumlr went along with it.

I didn't read the entire blog, but I read parts of it--including some that ranted and railed against her family, particularly her mother, who wouldn't recognize her as the girl she was.  

It's one thing to say that your trans kid is "going through a phase."  It's still another to deny your kid's identity and create a fiction about her suicide.  That is what Mrs. Alcorn did in this note:

"My sweet 16 year old son, Joshua Ryan Alcorn went home to Heaven this morning.  He went out for an early morning walk and was hit by a truck."

You fucking clueless bitch, your daughter Leelah walked in front of truck barreling down the interstate.  She wasn't the victim of some random unfortunate incident; you killed her with your unwillingness to listen to her.  

I mean, if you don't want to acknowledge her as the person she was, why can't you at least admit the truth about her death?  Maybe you can't give her all of the truth you--and we--owe her, but at least it would be a start.

Instead, you've chosen, in essence, to eliminate all traces of the existence of your daughter.

It looks like you were born a few decades too late to pursue your true calling:  You should have been an information or propoganda or some such minister for Hitler or Mao.  After all, they wanted to erase the existence of certain people from history.  

Since you can't follow that line of work--and look at where it left them in history!--why don't you just honor the love you claim to have had for your child with the only thing it, and she, deserve--the truth.

Give Leelah What She Deserves

The funeral for Leelah Alcorn was moved because of threats to disrupt it.

When I heard about that, I thought that perhaps the Westboro Baptist Church folks and others of their ilk were going to show up with signs reading "God Hates Fags!" or other profundities for which they're known.

Nobody is saying who made the threats or what the "disruptions" would be.  In fact, the first article I read about the change in venue said only that the family received threats, but did not specify that they were threats to "disrupt" the funeral.

This all sounds really fishy to me.  It seems that someone in the news media is upset or scared that we're starting to make some gains in our campaign for equality and that there's been an uproar over the way Leelah's mother reacted to her death.  So that someone--perhaps there's more than one--wants to portray us as a menace that we're not.

If threats were indeed made by our allies, I don't support or condone them.  If anything, they only make us look as if we're stooping to the level of the Westboro people and other haters.  Not only is it bad public relations, it is corrosive to the spirit.  We need all the spirit, all the courage, all of the intelligence, all the creativity, all the compassion we can muster; we can't afford to let the haters take any of it from us. 

I'm not saying we shouldn't be angry with Leelah's mother or do everything we can to convince her to bury her with "Leelah" on the tombstone.  I just think that in order to accomplish that--or to achieve any other victories--we simply must not become like the haters from whom people like Leelah's mother take their cues, however blindly.

I say these things, not only because I am a transsexual woman, but because I have begun, within the past year and a half, to follow the dictates of my faith and become active in a church.  One reason I had denied those things to myself for a long time--even after I realized that my gender transition has been a profoundly spiritual experience--was that people used their religion as a basis for hating and even killing us.  But I have learned that there are many people who don't use their religion in that way, and that I have no choice but to become one of them. Perhaps some of the haters will, too.  Perhaps Mrs. Alcorn will understand this.  I want that even more than I want her to recognizer her daughter as her daughter and bury her with the name she chose to reflect her female spirit.
 

A Prison Within A Prison

A 16-year-old is imprisoned as a form of therapy.

Sounds good so far, right?  Well, it gets even better.

The teenager in question has been a ward of the state since the age of five.   During the next decade, this teen was beaten, raped, denied food and trafficked for sex--and endured homelessness. 

Oh, wait, there's more:  This kid is in a boys' detention center.  But she's a girl.

Yes, she's transgender.  Joette Katz, the Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Children and Families, recommended the detention of the teenager, who is identified only as Jane Doe.  Ms. Katz's reasoning--impeccable, as she used to be a judge, right?---is that Ms. Doe was "too violent" for the juvenile facilities in which she had been housed.

Forget that, according to some, the charges against Ms. Doe were overstated.  Even if they weren't, staffers at such facilities are accustomed to much worse than Ms. Doe dished out.  Besides, how is locking up someone--in solitary confinement, no less--going to make someone whose anger issues are probably linked to PTSD and having to deal with her gender identity less volatile?

Ms. Katz hasn't said.  So, Ms. Doe's lawyers are filing an amended suit in which Ms. Doe's Constitutional rights are being violated when prison staffers and officials refer to her by her birth name and male pronouns, force her to wear boys' uniforms and don't allow her to wear wigs and makeup.  These charges were added to the one that said that her Constitutional rights were being violated when she was kept in solitary confinement.

Whoaa...Solitary confinement?  In a boys' detention facility?  Even though she was never charged with any indictable offense before the incaluculably wise Ms. Katz put her in prison?

Such a gem of jurisprudence, coming from a former judge.  And people wonder why there are so many lawsuits--including the one on behalf of Jane Doe.

Trans Teen Pimped On Streets, Then By State

George Orwell would've had a field day with this:  Putting someone in prison can be therapeutic.


Someone actually said that.  Not in those words, of course:  After all, the person who gave us that pearl of wisdom is a bureaucrat.  That means that if she ever had the ability to speak forthrightly, it was beaten out of her or she gave it up willingly in order to preserve her lifestyle.


The "someone" in question is Joette Katz, Commissioner of the Connecticut Department of Children and Families.  Before becoming Commissioner, she was a judge.  That experience, it seems, honed the skills she's using in her current position, especially when it comes to cases like that of a 16-year-old transgender identified only as "Jane Doe".


Granted, she assaulted staff members at juvenile facilities in which she's been housed.  But staffers in such places are used to such things, and there's no indication that her attacks--if she indeed perpetrated them--were any more intense than others they've experienced.  And, it could be argued that with the proper care, Ms. Doe won't attack anybody again.


However,  Ms. Katz is accused of overstating Ms. Doe's offenses--and of not mentioning that one of the staffers involved in one of the incidents has been terminated.  Worse, Katz never mentioned that Ms. Doe has been a ward of the state through most of her life, during which she has suffered beatings, been raped and denied food.  Moreover, she has been homeless and trafficked for sex. If she isn't suffering from even the mildest form of PTSD, Ms. Doe must be one of the most resilient (or emotionally numb) human beings ever to walk the face of the Earth.


Now tell me:  How would putting her in a male prison for adults--and keeping her in solitary confinement, to boot--help her to recover from the trauma she no doubt carries?  And how would such incarceration make her less likely to assault others (if, indeed, she actually did such a thing), especially given that she has never been charged with a crime.


Think about that:  a sixteen-year-old who was removed from her mother's custody at age four, locked up--no, worse, placed in isolation--without having committed any indictable offense.  Could such a young person end up becoming a criminal simply from the anger issues she'd develop over such an ordeal. D'ya think?


But Joette Katz, the former judge, somehow believes that prison personnel--and fellow inmates of a gender different from hers--will accomplish what psychiatrists, nurses, counselors and other employees of the juvenile facilities in which she's spent much of her life couldn't do for her.


In other words, this estimable Ms. Katz believes that prison will give a young, vulnerable trans person the therapy she needs.


Oh, you're accusing me of sarcasm now, are you?  All right, I'll lay off and let you tell me whether, instead of looking out for Ms. Doe's best interests, the high commissioner is using her as a bargaining chip to placate state legislators who oversee her budget.


Could it be that Ms. Doe has gone from being pimped on the streets to being pimped by a megalomaniacal state official?


Nothing a little time alone among men won't cure, right?

Too Unconventional

Maspeth is a Queens neigborhood only two miles from my apartment.  I pass through it frequently and even stop once in a while, as one of my favorite Italian-American bakeries--the Russo Bakery--is there.

For a long time, it was a conservative blue-collar enclave inhabited mainly by immigrant and second- and third-generation Italian and German families.  More recently, Poles and Albanians have moved there, fleeing the poverty of their native lands.  It is a quiet neighborhood, long regarded as safe. 

However, it has not been terribly welcoming of diversity.  Along with the Poles and Albanians, Mexicans and other Latin Americans have been moving there, to the displeasure of some longtime residents.

It's also been a religious--mainly Roman Catholic--enclave.  On Sundays, the churches are full and, during services, streets are deserted.  Once the masses and services end, families throng down the streets or flock into their cars for long Sunday brunches or dinners at the homes of family members and friends, or in the local restaurants.

In such a milieu (Such a word would never be uttered there!), it's not surprising that not many gay people, let alone couples, move in.  Or that a young woman is told she can't bring her boyfriend to the prom because he's too "unconventional".



Actually, Anais Celin was informed that Nathaniel Baez's gender transition was "too unconventional" for the pastor at Martin Luther High School.  The school is affiliated with the Missouri Synod, as are most Lutheran churches in the eastern United States. While the Evangelical Lutheran Church has allowed the ordination of non-celebite gay clergy members and has consummated same-sex unions for the past five years, the Missouri Synod does not permit either.

Even though Maspeth has remained a largely conservative community, it's still part of the most diverse county--Queens, as in the borough of New York City--in the nation.  I cannot understand how a school in such a setting, even if it is affiliated with a church that takes the stance it does on homosexuality, can deny a young woman the right to bring her boyfriend to the prom because his gender identity and expression are "too unconventional".

Then again, Maspeth is next door to Ridgewood, where trans woman Amanda Gonzalez-Andujar was brutally murdered four years ago. And the school is named for Martin Luther, a notorious homophobe, even for his time and place.

What Young Love Might Have Been Like

I began my gender transition in my 40's and had my surgery three days after I turned 51.  While I am glad for the time I've had--and whatever time I have remaining--to live as a woman, I cannot help to think about what might have been.

Other trans people I know who transitioned in the middle of their lives have similar feelings.  While it was undoubtedly easier to transition when I did than it would have been, say, in my 20's, I still can't help but to wonder what my life might have been like had I done so.  Would I have made different choices about school, work, relationships or other areas of my life?  Would I have lived in different places from the ones in which I've lived?  

Then again, I also realize I might not be alive now had I started my transition when I was young.  As difficult as things are for trans people now, they could only have been more so thirty or twenty years ago.  Perhaps I would have done sex work, which I think would have destroyed me mentally, if not physically.   

Still, I occasionally fantasize about having hopped on my bike or taken a bus, train or plane the day after I graduated high school (or even sooner) and ended up some place where nobody knew me.  I imagine having started a new life, under a new name and identity, among (or away from) people who did not know of my life as a boy.

I also wonder what kind of love life I might have had.  You see, I didn't date when I was in high school.  I didn't attend my senior prom, even though I served on the committee that organized it.  And, in college, even though I had a few scattered dates, I felt even more isolated than I did in high school:  I felt even more pressure to fit in with other males and to conform to ideas about maleness I'd learned up to that point in my life.

I especially think about what wasn't, and what might have been, in my youth when I hear about children and teenagers who transition.  Reading about Arin Andrews and Katie Hill really made me wonder about what my life might have been like:  They have transitioned together.  Arin is now 17 and Katie 19 and both talk about the strength each drew from seeing the other's transition.  And now they can share the comfort they feel in their own bodies, in their own selves.  

Denying A Wolfe At Red Lion

Last month, people all over the United States were shocked to learn that, in their own country, there are still high schools that hold separate proms for white and black students.  So, students who have spent hundreds of hours with each other in classrooms, played on sports teams (or cheered them on) together, fought, hugged--and, in some cases, dated--could not dance with each other as they were about to graduate.

One such school was in Wilcox County, Georgia.  The state in which I was born (but spent only the first seven months of my life) has, to be sure, been one of the most atavistic when it comes to race relations.  It was one of the last states to repeal Jim Crow laws, and only in Missisippi were more African-Americans lynched between 1892 and 1968.  Still, it's hard to believe that even in such a place, such a frankly barbaric practice as a segregated prom could continue.

That is, until its students dragged out of the 19th Century and into the 21st.  Four girls--two white, two black--took it upon themselves to organize a prom to which all of their classmates were invited.  Roughly equal numbers of students of both races attended, and DJs, photographers and other people came from as far away as New York to volunteer their services.

I mention this story becuase it is, after all, prom season, and another group of people is facing discrimination.

I'm talking about transgender students who aren't allowed to attend in the gender in which they identify.  In one of the most egregious examples of this, Mark Shue, the principal of Red Lion (PA) Area  High School, changed Isaak Wolfe's bid to become the prom king to one to become the prom queen.  He did this without notifying Isaak.  Moreover, he said that Wolfe's female name would be read at graduation.

Shue's rationale for his actions is that Isaak Wolfe's name has not yet become legal.  He is working on that change, and he has been living by his male name--and in his male gender--for some time.  I don't know anything about Pennsylvania law, but I would think that it may well be possible that Wolfe's name change won't become official until he turns 18.  Still, if Wolfe has been living as a boy, with a boy's name--and that is how his classmates, teachers and family know him--he should be allowed to attend the prom and campaign for a title as the person he is.  As he told reporters, had he known Shue would change his petition, he never would have competed.  "It's humiliating," he said.

I call it bullying.  


I say that as someone who didn't attend her prom, and participate in many other activities and rituals that are normal parts of most people's lives, because I couldn't do so as the person I am.  Not being able to live with such integrity, I came to see rejection, exclusion and pure-and-simple meanness as normal.  You've probably heard songs about how love was for other people.  That is how I felt, and still feel sometimes.  When you are subjected to such treatment throughout your life, you have a more difficult time starting or maintaining relationships, or even believing that they are possible.  In other words, you internalize the bullying and bigotry to which you're subjected.

Principal Shue has already humiliated Isaak Wolfe.  I hope he realizes the error of his way and doesn't contribute to a cycle of alienation and despair that has claimed far too many young people.

Not Standing Idly By Transgendered Youth

There are days when I wish I'd gotten on a bus, or my bike, the day after I graduated high school and gone to some place where nobody knew me.  Then, I could have done whatever I needed to do to begin my transition into my life as a woman.

However, I also realize that such a thing would have been infinitely more difficult than it is now.  Part of the reason for that, of course, has to do with societal attitudes.  While many of us still face ostracism, and worse, there was even less understanding of, and hostility directed toward, us three and a half decades ago than there is now.

Another reason why transitioning into a life in my true gender would have been more difficult is, of course, the cost. I, like most new high school graduates, didn't have the money necessary for everything from psychotherapy and hormonal treatments--let alone surgery.  In fact, about the only way I could have gained access (legally, anyway) to that much money was through a loan--which I could have used only to go to college.

Still another thing that would have made my journey much more arduous and perilous than it has been is the lack of facilities and competent (let alone willing) providers of health care and other services for transgenders.  In most places, such facilities and services didn't exist at all; those services and techniques in use at the time were, at best, primitive compared to what we have today, simply because so few providers and policy-makers understood our needs and concerns.

So, it is heartening to read about resources and people available to trans people, especially the young, that weren't available in my youth.  

In particular, I'm glad to see someone like Dr. Norman Spack doing the kind of work he does.

Dr. Spack has worked at the Boston Children's Hospital for 39 years.  In his early days at the hospital, he treated street kids as a volunteer on a medical van.  Some of those young people were "throwaways" who were rejected by their families and communities because of their gender variance.    That is how he first learned of the difficulties faced by transgender children and teenagers.

Later, a colleague referred a young transgender adult, who was a Harvard graduate, to him.  This patient introduced the doctor to other transgender young adults.  Dr. Spack would become one of the few doctors who was willing to provide care and treatment for transgenders.  Even today, many doctors are reluctant or unwilling to take on trans patients, let alone those who are young adults or children.

Five years ago, Dr. Spack co-founded the Gender Management Services Clinic, or GeMS, at the hospital.  This clinic provides many services to transgender children and teenagers.  Among the most controversial is treatment with hormonal suppressants that delay the onset of puberty.  In addition to relieving depression and cutting down on self-destructive behaviors, the treatment buys time for the transgendered child.  A teenager is better able to decide whether or not to start taking the hormones of the "opposite" that trigger permanent physical changes.  Hormonal suppression treatments, on the other hand, are fully reversible.

Dr. Spack's work at the clinic is not limited to medical treatments.  He, who comes from a family of noted Jewish educators, does what he can to reassure this young patients that God has not played a trick on them.  "Things happen," he tells them. "It's not because of anything you did.  It's our job to find a way for you to be balanced, to be happy."

His inspiration for his work, he says, comes from Leviticus:  If your neighbor is bleeding by the side of the road, you shall not stand idly by the blood of your neighbor."