Every time I talk about transgender, I feel clumsy. People correct me when I use inadequate terminology; and actually, it is quite delicate. “Children know from the beginning that they are a boy or a girl. They don’t see themselves as transgender”, Prof. Claudia Maier-Höfer explains. Not at all addressing them as trans, but instead just as boy or girl or whatever gender they have - according to themselves - would be the right choice. Choosing one’s gender has a lot to do with the right to self-determination. And this right, argues Claudia Maier-Höfer, must be given to children as well.

Local Matters is about transgender children and youth this week. For our first piece of the week, we had Prof. Claudia Maier-Höfer on the phone. In her research, she focusses on childhood and transgender children. In our interview, she tells us about the difficulties that children have – not necessarily with their gender, but with the deviation between their gender and the environment’s expectations. “Parents need to transition”, Claudia Maier-Höfer says. The problem for the children is not coping with the gender, but with the environment. Listen to the whole interview above on this site.

Claudia Maier-Höfer this week delivers a conference on the self-perception of trans youth in Luxembourg. The conference is part of an event series on transgender children and youth organized by Dr. Erik Schneider, president of the NGO Intersex & Transgender Luxembourg Asbl. For more information on the event series or on transgender in general, check out www.itgl.lu.