Yvette Stork, ages 4, 8, 12 and 16
Early 20th century humourous postcard.
Gender Identity Disorder is a " new" disorder, in the reckoning of other established medical disorders, which describes a situation where a child is born with the mind, personality and preference of one gender, but has a body of the opposite gender. While these " symptoms" have been around throughout human history, Gender Identity Disorder may only have attained its recent status as a clinincal illness due to the recent ability of doctors to treat it. The drup Lupron Depot was developed to inhibit the early onset of puberty in precocious children, however, it has recently been used in younger and younger children to slow down and in fact completely prevent puberty from ever occurring. In combination with " cross-hormone" drug treatment, doctors can now prevent puberty and begin the conversion to the opposite gender at younger and younger ages, as was the case with Yvette Stork shown above.Until these children have any sex change surgery, they remain in a state of semi-genderedness, being neither the sex they were physically born with nor the one they seek to become.