Charlie’s parents’ appeal to senators before studying the proposed law on gender transitions among minors

Before the debates which promise to be tense in the Senate, franceinfo gave the floor to a family: Charlie, 17, and his parents, who live in the Paris region.

This is a controversial bill. The Senate examines on Tuesday May 28 a text aimed at regulating gender transitions before the age of 18, a Republican initiative fiercely condemned by the left and associations.

The debates promise to be very heated on a bill that has been particularly targeted for several weeks by associations defending the rights of transgender people. At the Luxembourg Palace, where the majority leans to the right, this initiative also provoked strong reactions, both in substance and in method. This text, tabled in March and very quickly included on the agenda, emanates from the conclusions of a senatorial report drawn up internally within the Les Républicains group and which many on the left have described as “transphobic“.

Concretely, this text from Senator LR Jacqueline Eustache-Brinio provides in particular for the ban on hormonal treatments for minors, and the strict control of prescriptions for “puberty blockers”, these molecules which make it possible to suspend the development of secondary sexual characteristics ( chest, voice, hair) belonging to the gender with which the child does not identify.

Franceinfo chose to give the floor to the main people concerned: Charlie, 17, who has started his transition, and his parents, Marina and Emmanuel. They live in the Paris region. “HAS When I was 11, I talked about questioning my sexuality to my parents, and I talked about my gender when I was 13“, he says, before confiding that at that time, he was not doing well: “There was harassment from other students, but also from adults”describes Charlie.

“Today I am doing very well, he smiles, after starting his medical journey at 16 and a half and accompanied by a psychologist since he was 11. “I practically no longer have gender dysphoria. When I had it, I could no longer shower, I no longer wanted to see my body.”

“The difference poses a problem, especially at that age.”

The parents admit it: at first glance, they were “frightened” of their child’s gait. “I suddenly had lots of prejudices, such as ‘I’m going to suffer’, ‘I’m going to have to mourn my child’, ‘they’re going to mutilate my child…’ But with one certainty: my child will not didn’t choose, it was born like that And then, I started to document myself and to deconstruct all these. a priori have fallen“, says Marina. “The problem for Charlie is not transidentity, but transphobia“, she denounces, before discussing the medical journey and its “waiting period of 18 months”then appointments with different health specialists.

Emmanuel and Marina appeal to deputies before studying this proposed text in the Senate: “Why make a law, like a kind of guardianship? In fact, it means ‘You don’t know what’s good for you. You, parents, you don’t know. Vou, doctors, do you not have the knowledge? But we, in the Hemicycle, we know!” denounces the mother on the microphone of Franceinfo.

“Before you vote, listen to us and try, at least, to educate yourself. (…) It is a long journey, which requires a lot of endurance and determination and which can be destructive. Sometimes we feel like we’re not being listened to. (…) I would like people to just treat me like a regular boy, and forget about all that. It is the transidentity that is part of me and not me who is part of the transidentity. That, I would like us to understand.”, asks Charlie for his part. And his dad said: “I’m proud of him, proud of who he is and of having found him“.