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His school counselor had him on the radar even before that, and before long Junior was eating lunch in the counselor's office every other day for a couple weeks, as the counselor had called in a psychologist, a specialist in diagnosing, treating, and advising the parents of the young and transgendered.\n\nThe Dutch model, developed over the course of the early aughties to the late twenty-teens, recommends an early intervention in cases of transgendered youth. It recommends beginning with reversible interventions, especially hormone blocking before puberty. This then transitions smoothly to the semi-reversible, (in humans, hormone-replacement therapy for the target sex) and finally to the irreversible - surgery. That said, that was the protocol when it was introduced to the US in 2007. Notions of reversibility and impact have changed considerably since the advent of in-vitro tissue culture, nanomachine regenerative treatments, and cybernetic implants have reached mainstream medicine.\n\nSo when Junior's parents were called in for a (so-called) parent-'teacher' conference, it was the school's nurse, counselor, and the district's psychologist that greeted them, not teachers or principles or deans of discipline. They sat down, and over a pot of coffee, (decaffeinated, for it was late in the afternoon when his parents flew in for the visit) discussed that Junior's behavior wasn't just disruptive, or a phase, or an attempt to get attention, but that while this flavor of gender dysphoria was uncommon and poorly understood by the public, it was well enough documented in the medical literature and understood by specialist practitioners (which his parents hadn't yet understood the need to see for advice) that an intervention could succeed in improving long-term outcomes - which is a very diplomatic, long-winded way of saying that they should take Junior's request seriously, before he started acting out more seriously or spent the next decade or two in the closet, neither of which they considered terribly desirable outcomes. And both were likely to create trouble that landed on their desk, at some point.\n\nThey promised that they'd look at the literature that they had been provided at the end of the meeting, and investigate support forums for parents of transgendered children. True to their word, they educated themselves, and had a series of some very awkward, honest and long conversations - for it took them all a while to first adequately understand their own feelings, and then to overcome their hesitancy to admit these feelings, and finally to explain them clearly (and, perhaps, honestly).\n\nThus, it was a week later, after considerable discussion within the home, that the three of them found themselves at a snipping drive trailer clinic, parked for the day in the outskirts of a mall parking lot, said mall having overbuilt parking and more interested about cash flow than controversy. (Or perhaps, more cynically, considering that any publicity is good publicity, and perhaps hoping for a protest that would be covered by the local news. I suppose it's possible that someone in management took a principled stand on morphological freedom, but personally, I would not bet on that.) Junior was bouncing between nervous and excited, and bouncing literally (as young dragons with more energy than patience are wont to do), with his plastic piggy bank either guarded by his parents, or held by its curly tail in his jaws, and though his parents had helped him change his stock of change into a cash card, it had been decided that Junior's having made the decision himself, and done the legwork, deserved to own not just the outcome, but also the process, and indeed the afternoon. He was so proud that he hadn't stopped to consider that they might pay for his snipping, but unknown to the little dragon, they intended to make it up to him - in the form of a collar matching his father's favorite, and (though his father hadn't mentioned it to either of the others, and had no plans to mention it until the stitches were in and the bandage on), a Reindeer Project hormone implant, purchased from someone who knew someone who had access to a quarter-box of the nearly-expired devices. He figured he owed it to his son, since it was probably part of what had persuaded the dragonet, and it was as close to the authentic experience as the little one would be able to get. A few tens of minutes later, Junior had tapped his card, and, nibbling on a tranquilizer jelly, followed the nurse back to be cleaned up and numbed up, and the retired reindeer had quietly flagged down an attendant to pass the sterile-packed syringe to the surgeon. (As an aside, he had two more in the dresser under a stack of sweaters - he planned on injecting the second into himself later tonight, and offering the last to his wife with a knowing grin.) And only a few minutes after that, they were watching the small surgery through an air-conditioner-fogged window, both silently and anxiously wondering what they had just done. (Both decided that since the other wasn't acting nervous, they'd not mention it for the time being. While they both remained silent, they leaned against one another without fully understanding the emotional subtext.) \n\nA few minutes later, they collared their drowsy dragonet, who probably would have been thrilled by that had he been entirely awake, a tech taped on an Elizabethan collar and updated the medical record linked to the little dragon's microchip implant, and sent them on their way. As promised, they detoured through the Bodyshoppe - junior wanted the side trip as much to show off, as to pick over collars and an end-of-season sale, where his parents hoped to find him a windbreaker or rain jacket before he started school. (Though dragons didn't mind the rain, computers did, and secondhand rain was just as good at wrecking keyboards. Far better to be able to take the wet off and leave it in a corner.)\n\n\n\nA week later, most of the initial worries had passed, perhaps thanks in part to the father's presumably purloined syringes, and thanks in larger part to the absence of catastrophe. So, when they found themselves sprawled in a pile on top of the living room futon and passing the popcorn back and forth in front of a movie, it was fairly typical for the trio.\n\n\n\nYears later, shortly after graduating college, Junior (the nickname never having fully left him) is raising three (adopted) children with his fiancee, and owns a food truck.\n\n----------\n\nJunior will start kindergarten at two; this occurs about eight months after the last picture. The relevant educators got to know him in the pre-K program in which he is currently enrolled.\n\nhttp://www.ted.com/talks/norman_spack_how_i_help_transgender_teens_become_who_they_want_to_be\n\nhttp://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/08/why-do-humans-grow-so-slowly-blame-brain\n\nIt’s real science, folks. In dragons, prenatal brain development doesn’t have to be delayed in order to squeeze the resulting brain through a biped’s pelvis. Net result? Natural born dragons do a lot of early development in the eggshell. They're toddlers the day they hatch, and develop quickly from there. Furthermore, the \"best practices\" described in 2059 are in fact the cutting edge of current medicine.\n\n----------\n\nThis was the first drawing and first conception of the littlest lapdragon; my first idea was that he found a child advocate who found him a pro bono lawyer; his parents had no strong opinion, but the providers refused to cooperate. That started the idea bouncing around - how do you handle someone who desperately wants to be something they're not allowed to be? Not \"can't be\", for that's somewhat self-correcting, but someone who willingly faces social condemnation for making some kind of profound change. To quote NPR today, \"There are some places it's life-threatening to be trans.\" I certainly hope we can come up with a better way to disagree than physical violence in the next thirty years, for it's likely to actually become an issue as transhuman technologies become more prevalent and affordable. Another look at this question that's been rattling around in my head since at least last year is the book \"Amped.\" I'd continue to opine on the intersection of transgender and transhumanism, but Valkyrie Ice has written on it at much greater length already, and I want lunch now.", "description_bbcode_parsed": "After Junior snuck out with his piggy bank and made his way to a vet's office, pretending to be seventeen, and was brought back home by a pair of very embarrassed parents, events settled down for a while… on the surface.  His school counselor had him on the radar even before that, and before long Junior was eating lunch in the counselor's office every other day for a couple weeks, as the counselor had called in a psychologist, a specialist in diagnosing, treating, and advising the parents of the young and transgendered.

The Dutch model, developed over the course of the early aughties to the late twenty-teens, recommends an early intervention in cases of transgendered youth.  It recommends beginning with reversible interventions, especially hormone blocking before puberty.  This then transitions smoothly to the semi-reversible, (in humans, hormone-replacement therapy for the target sex) and finally to the irreversible - surgery.  That said, that was the protocol when it was introduced to the US in 2007.  Notions of reversibility and impact have changed considerably since the advent of in-vitro tissue culture, nanomachine regenerative treatments, and cybernetic implants have reached mainstream medicine.

So when Junior's parents were called in for a (so-called) parent-'teacher' conference, it was the school's nurse, counselor, and the district's psychologist that greeted them, not teachers or principles or deans of discipline.  They sat down, and over a pot of coffee, (decaffeinated, for it was late in the afternoon when his parents flew in for the visit) discussed that Junior's behavior wasn't just disruptive, or a phase, or an attempt to get attention, but that while this flavor of gender dysphoria was uncommon and poorly understood by the public, it was well enough documented in the medical literature and understood by specialist practitioners (which his parents hadn't yet understood the need to see for advice) that an intervention could succeed in improving long-term outcomes - which is a very diplomatic, long-winded way of saying that they should take Junior's request seriously, before he started acting out more seriously or spent the next decade or two in the closet, neither of which they considered terribly desirable outcomes.  And both were likely to create trouble that landed on their desk, at some point.

They promised that they'd look at the literature that they had been provided at the end of the meeting, and investigate support forums for parents of transgendered children.  True to their word, they educated themselves, and had a series of some very awkward, honest and long conversations - for it took them all a while to first adequately understand their own feelings, and then to overcome their hesitancy to admit these feelings, and finally to explain them clearly (and, perhaps, honestly).

Thus, it was a week later, after considerable discussion within the home, that the three of them found themselves at a snipping drive trailer clinic, parked for the day in the outskirts of a mall parking lot, said mall having overbuilt parking and more interested about cash flow than controversy.  (Or perhaps, more cynically, considering that any publicity is good publicity, and perhaps hoping for a protest that would be covered by the local news.  I suppose it's possible that someone in management took a principled stand on morphological freedom, but personally, I would not bet on that.)  Junior was bouncing between nervous and excited, and bouncing literally (as young dragons with more energy than patience are wont to do), with his plastic piggy bank either guarded by his parents, or held by its curly tail in his jaws, and though his parents had helped him change his stock of change into a cash card, it had been decided that Junior's having made the decision himself, and done the legwork, deserved to own not just the outcome, but also the process, and indeed the afternoon.  He was so proud that he hadn't stopped to consider that they might pay for his snipping, but unknown to the little dragon, they intended to make it up to him - in the form of a collar matching his father's favorite, and (though his father hadn't mentioned it to either of the others, and had no plans to mention it until the stitches were in and the bandage on), a Reindeer Project hormone implant, purchased from someone who knew someone who had access to a quarter-box of the nearly-expired devices.  He figured he owed it to his son, since it was probably part of what had persuaded the dragonet, and it was as close to the authentic experience as the little one would be able to get.  A few tens of minutes later, Junior had tapped his card, and, nibbling on a tranquilizer jelly, followed the nurse back to be cleaned up and numbed up, and the retired reindeer had quietly flagged down an attendant to pass the sterile-packed syringe to the surgeon.  (As an aside, he had two more in the dresser under a stack of sweaters - he planned on injecting the second into himself later tonight, and offering the last to his wife with a knowing grin.)  And only a few minutes after that, they were watching the small surgery through an air-conditioner-fogged window, both silently and anxiously wondering what they had just done.  (Both decided that since the other wasn't acting nervous, they'd not mention it for the time being.  While they both remained silent, they leaned against one another without fully understanding the emotional subtext.)  

A few minutes later, they collared their drowsy dragonet, who probably would have been thrilled by that had he been entirely awake, a tech taped on an Elizabethan collar and updated the medical record linked to the little dragon's microchip implant, and sent them on their way.  As promised, they detoured through the Bodyshoppe - junior wanted the side trip as much to show off, as to pick over collars and an end-of-season sale, where his parents hoped to find him a windbreaker or rain jacket before he started school.  (Though dragons didn't mind the rain, computers did, and secondhand rain was just as good at wrecking keyboards.  Far better to be able to take the wet off and leave it in a corner.)



A week later, most of the initial worries had passed, perhaps thanks in part to the father's presumably purloined syringes, and thanks in larger part to the absence of catastrophe.  So, when they found themselves sprawled in a pile on top of the living room futon and passing the popcorn back and forth in front of a movie, it was fairly typical for the trio.



Years later, shortly after graduating college, Junior (the nickname never having fully left him) is raising three (adopted) children with his fiancee, and owns a food truck.

----------

Junior will start kindergarten at two; this occurs about eight months after the last picture.  The relevant educators got to know him in the pre-K program in which he is currently enrolled.

http://www.ted.com/talks/norman_spack_how_i_help_trans...

http://news.sciencemag.org/biology/2014/08/why-do-huma...

It’s real science, folks.  In dragons, prenatal brain development doesn’t have to be delayed in order to squeeze the resulting brain through a biped’s pelvis.  Net result?  Natural born dragons do a lot of early development in the eggshell.  They're toddlers the day they hatch, and develop quickly from there.  Furthermore, the "best practices" described in 2059 are in fact the cutting edge of current medicine.

----------

This was the first drawing and first conception of the littlest lapdragon; my first idea was that he found a child advocate who found him a pro bono lawyer; his parents had no strong opinion, but the providers refused to cooperate.  That started the idea bouncing around - how do you handle someone who desperately wants to be something they're not allowed to be?  Not "can't be", for that's somewhat self-correcting, but someone who willingly faces social condemnation for making some kind of profound change.  To quote NPR today, "There are some places it's life-threatening to be trans."  I certainly hope we can come up with a better way to disagree than physical violence in the next thirty years, for it's likely to actually become an issue as transhuman technologies become more prevalent and affordable.  Another look at this question that's been rattling around in my head since at least last year is the book "Amped."  I'd continue to opine on the intersection of transgender and transhumanism, but Valkyrie Ice has written on it at much greater length already, and I want lunch now.", "writing": "", "writing_bbcode_parsed": "", "pools_count": 1, "title": "Junior at the Snipping Drive", "deleted": "f", "public": "t", "mimetype": "image/jpeg", "pagecount": "1", "rating_id": "1", "rating_name": "Mature", "ratings": [ { "content_tag_id": "2", "name": "Nudity", "description": "Nonsexual nudity exposing breasts or genitals (must not show arousal)", "rating_id": "1" }, { "content_tag_id": "3", "name": "Violence", "description": "Mild violence", "rating_id": "1" } ], "submission_type_id": "2", "type_name": "Sketch", "guest_block": "t", "friends_only": "f", "comments_count": "0", "views": "398" }