We would like to show you a description here but the site won’t allow blogger.com more essay definition: 1. a short piece of writing on a particular subject, especially one done by students as part of the. Learn more The Profile in Courage Essay Contest opens for submissions on September 1, The contest deadline is January 14, Learn More Contest Topic and Information. The John F. Kennedy Library Foundation invites U.S. high school students to describe and analyze an act of political courage by a U.S. elected official who served during or
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From the earliest days, my home life was unhappy. My parents—a white Englishwoman and a black American who got together while he was in Britain with the U. Air Force—divorced when I was about 5. My mother, community profile essay, who was on welfare, descended into alcoholism and mental illness. Although my father remained in England, he was emotionally distant to me and my younger sister.
I was a classic tomboy, which was one of the healthier parts of my early community profile essay in Letchworth, a town of about 30, people, an hour outside London. Early in childhood, community profile essay, I was accepted by the boys—I dressed in typically boy clothing and was athletic.
Then puberty hit, and everything changed for the worse. I thought I was the only one who hated how my hips and breasts were growing. Then my periods started, and they were disabling. I was often in pain and drained of energy. Eventually, I had no friends to invite. I became more alienated and solitary. I had been moving a lot too, community profile essay, and I had to start over at different schools, which compounded my problems.
By the time I was 14, I was severely depressed and had given up: I stopped going to school; I stopped going outside. I just stayed in my room, avoiding my mother, playing video games, getting lost in my favorite music, and surfing the internet. Something else was happening: I became attracted to girls. This made me wonder if there was something inherently wrong with me. I then found community profile essay websites about females transitioning to male.
Shortly after, I moved in with my father and his then-partner. She asked me the same question my mother had. I told her that I thought I was a boy and that I wanted to become one. As I look back, I see how everything led me to conclude it would be best if I stopped becoming a woman. I began seeing a psychologist through the National Health Service, or NHS, community profile essay. When I was 15—because I kept insisting that I wanted to be a boy—I was referred community profile essay the Gender Identity Development Service, at the Tavistock and Portman clinic in London.
There, I was diagnosed with gender dysphoria, community profile essay, which is psychological distress because of a mismatch between your biological sex and your perceived gender identity.
By the time I got to the Tavistock, I was adamant that I needed to transition. What was really going on was that I was a girl insecure in my body who had experienced parental abandonment, felt alienated from my peers, suffered from anxiety and depression, and struggled with my sexual orientation, community profile essay.
After a series of superficial conversations with social workers, I was put on puberty blockers at age A year later, I was receiving testosterone shots.
When 20, I had a double mastectomy. But this was not the case for me. As I matured, I recognized that gender dysphoria was a symptom of my overall misery, not its cause. Five years after beginning my medical transition to becoming male, I began the process of detransitioning. One of the first signs that I was becoming Keira again was that—thankfully, at last—I was able to cry. And I had a lot to cry about. The consequences of what happened to me have been profound : possible infertility, community profile essay, loss of my breasts and inability to breastfeed, atrophied genitals, a permanently changed voice, facial hair.
When I was seen at the Tavistock clinic, I had so many issues that it was comforting to think I really had only one that needed solving: I was a male in a female body, community profile essay. But it was the job of the professionals to consider all my co-morbidities, not just to affirm my naïve hope that everything could be solved with hormones and surgery.
Last year, I became a claimant against the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust in a judicial-review case, which allows petitioners in Britain to bring action against a public body they deem to have violated its legal duties. Few judicial reviews get anywhere ; only a fraction obtain a full hearing. But ours did, with a panel of three High Court judges considering whether youths under treatment at the clinic could meaningfully consent to such medical interventions.
My team argued that the Tavistock had failed to protect young patients who sought its services, and that—instead of careful, individualized treatment—the clinic had conducted what amounted to uncontrolled experiments on us. Last December, we won a unanimous verdict. In their ruling, the judges repeatedly expressed surprise at what had been going on at the Tavistock, particularly its failure to gather basic data on its patients.
They noted the community profile essay of community profile essay for putting children as young as 10 years old on drugs to block puberty, a treatment that is community profile essay universally followed by cross-sex hormones, which must be taken for life to maintain the transition.
Notably, a growing wave of girls has been seeking treatment for gender dysphoria. That ratio started to reverse a few years later as the overall number of referrals soared. Over half of referrals were for those aged 14 or community profile essay some were as young as 3 years old. The ruling does not completely prevent a minor from beginning a medical transition.
All this made it more difficult to think clearly about what I should do. By the end of a year of this treatment, when I was presented with the option of moving on to testosterone, I jumped at it—I wanted to feel like a young man, not an old woman.
I was eager for the shots to start, and the changes this would bring, community profile essay. At first, the testosterone gave me a big boost in confidence. One of the earliest effects was that my voice dropped, which made me feel more commanding. Over the next couple of years, my voice deepened further, my beard came in, community profile essay, and my fat redistributed. I continued to wear my breast binder every day, especially now that I was completely passing as male, but it was painful and obstructed my breathing.
By the time I was 20, I was being treated at the adult clinic. The testosterone and the binder affected the appearance of my breasts, and I hated them even more.
Community profile essay also wanted to align my face and my body, so got a referral for a double mastectomy. My relationship with my parents continued to be difficult. I was no longer speaking to my mother, community profile essay. My father had kicked me out of his apartment shortly after I turned 17, and I went to live in a youth hostel.
He and I community profile essay still in touch, community profile essay he was adamantly opposed to my transition. Reluctantly, he took me for the surgery. But I had been put on a pathway—puberty blockers to testosterone to surgery—when I was a troubled teen. If I am able to have children, I will never breastfeed them. Around the end of that first year post-surgery, something started happening: My brain was maturing. I started realizing how many flaws there had been in my thought process, and how they had interacted with claims about gender that are increasingly found in the larger culture and that have been adopted at the Tavistock.
I remembered my idea as a year-old, that hormones and surgery would turn me into someone who appeared to be a man. Now, I was that person. But I recognized that I was very physically different from men. Living as a trans man helped me acknowledge that I was still a woman.
I was also concerned about the effect my transition would have on my ability to find a sexual partner. Then there was the fact that no one really knew the long-term effects of the treatment. For instance, community profile essay, the puberty blockers and testosterone caused me to have to deal with vaginal atrophya thinning and fragility of the vaginal walls that normally occurs after menopause. I started feeling really bad about myself again. I decided to stop, cold turkey. When I was due for community profile essay next testosterone shot, I canceled the appointment.
After I came to this decision, I found a subreddit for detransitioners. The number of people on it started rising, as if all these young women had come to a collective realization of the medical scandal we had been a part of. It was a place we could talk about our experiences and support each other. I felt liberated. What happened to me is happening across the Western world. Little of my case was a surprise to those paying attention to the Tavistock whistle-blowers who in recent years have community profile essay out in alarm to the media, sometimes anonymously.
Some have left the service because of these concerns. But the transgender issue is now highly political and wrapped up in questions of identity politics.
Some who have done so have been community profile essay and had their careers threatened. Affirmative care is being adopted as a model in many places. But former Tavistock practitioners have cited varied problems suffered by the kids who sought help, such as sexual abuse, trauma, parental abandonment, homophobia in the family or at school, depression, anxiety, being on the autism spectrum, having ADHD.
These profound issues, and how they might be tied up with feelings of dysphoria, have often been ignored in favor of making transition the all-purpose solution.
Christopher Gillberg, a professor of child and adolescent psychiatry at Gothenburg University in Sweden and a specialist in autism, was an expert witness for our case. Gillberg said in his court statement that over his 45 years of treating children with autism, it was rare to have patients with gender dysphoria—but their numbers started exploding inand most were biological girls.
I had suicidal thoughts as a teen. Suicidal thoughts indicate serious mental health problems that need assessment and proper care. When I told them at the Tavistock about these thoughts, community profile essay, that became another reason to put me on hormones quickly to improve my well-being.
But after the court ruling, the Tavistock released an internal study of a group of 44 patients who had started taking puberty blockers at ages 12 to It is giving a push, community profile essay.
Before beginning on testosterone, community profile essay, I was asked if I wanted children, community profile essay, or if I wanted to consider freezing my eggs because of the possibility that transition would make me infertile.
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, time: 5:32Leeward Community College: At a Glance | University of Hawaii System
Apr 02, · The big question on every applicant’s mind is, What is Stanford GSB looking for?" We won’t give you a checklist to mark off, because there isn’t one. There is no typical Stanford MBA student, no ideal for applicants to chase If you wish to enhance the writing process and enforce the standards that have been placed by the teacher, it is time to use our essay writing service. Let our professional writers take care of it! Place a secure order and enjoy high-quality content at the best price Mar 17, · Leeward Community College specializes in liberal arts education, with strong career and technical programs that provide opportunities for employment or transfer. Location. Leeward Community College is located on the Pearl City peninsula between the Pearl City and Waipahu communities. The upper campus provides a magnificent view of Pearl Harbor
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