BRIGITTE: Love life becomes more colorful and colorfulness more normal – that's my impression when I listen to my teenage daughter. In casting shows, transgender models become stars, in the cinema the gay protagonists. A real change?
DR. VIKTORIA MÄRKER: It is true that in western societies young people are allowed much more to try out today. If you no longer have to fear discrimination, you can also find your way more impartially. And something else has changed: Desires, fantasies, and also lived sexuality are much more flexible today. Not just during puberty, but throughout life. This applies even more to women and girls than to men and boys.
Sexual orientation is a process, not a state.
As the?
It may have to do with the fact that female pleasure is perceived by society as less threatening, or simply not as important – even since homosexuality was still a punishment, it only affected men. So girls and women have more freedom to listen to themselves: what happens in my life, how does that fit my fantasies and my development – whether you fall in love with a classmate at 13, leave your husband for a woman at 40, or vice versa. Sexual orientation, sexual desire is a process and not a condition that I can label. But it is quite possible that men will follow suit. Their role is also changing, they allow themselves weakness, have more contact to their soft sides …
Researchers also use the term "sexual fluidity" for this – but isn't that more true for certain big city and social bubbles?
Clearly there are differences – very religious families have a harder time than their secular children, the rural population mostly more difficult than parents in liberal metropolises such as Hamburg or Berlin. In Russia, where I come from, there is a widespread notion that men become gay because they were abused by older people as adolescents. For fear of discrimination, many young people keep their true feelings there, marry, and start families to keep up appearances.
Which certainly causes a lot of suffering. Can it be the other way round that young people in more open milieus want to be part of the rainbow community because it is "in" right now? Although it's just a temporary phase of identity search?
No, I rather think that the sensitivity for it has simply grown. Even if there are still many parents who find it difficult to accept if their child is not mainstream. Especially when it comes to transsexuality. That is another dimension: If my child feels that he belongs to the opposite sex, then I have to live with the fact that a very basic assumption about this person was wrong. Yes, in practical work it is very different how well mothers and fathers deal with it – some are very supportive, others find it difficult. Also, because there may be their own opposite-sex or homosexual parts, which they repress more and which frighten them when they are confronted with it in this way.
When children struggle with their biological gender: what should parents do best?
Stay curious. Don't drill too hard, but ask questions, for example, if the daughter prefers to look for clothes in the boys' department: what do you like about it, how do you feel when you wear it, what does this mean for you? As long as the child is doing well, as long as it is socially well integrated, there is no reason to go to the doctor or seek psychological advice. Even transsexuality is no longer a stigma, since 2019 it has officially no longer been classified as a disorder in diagnostics, but as a variant of sexual development.
But at some point there will be pressure of suffering, at the latest when puberty starts correctly. How do you go about when such a child sits in front of you and says: I'm in the wrong body?
First, the colleagues in child and adolescent psychiatry make an extensive diagnosis, which we then review again at our institute. We accompany the adolescents with psychotherapeutic conversations, help them out with parents, grandparents, friends. It takes a lot of time. Only when we are absolutely certain that it is transsexuality, do we call in further specialists and advise medical measures – especially the question of whether there are drugs to stop puberty. Because that makes further steps easier, such as gender reassignment operations, which are then undertaken at the earliest at the age of majority.
Is the standard everywhere in Germany?
No, there are different approaches. The diagnosis is the same, but experts disagree on whether to delay hormonal onset of puberty or let sexual development take its course. The research situation on this is inconsistent, and many study results are controversial.
Since the beginning of 2019 there is officially a third gender in Germany. Did that help people in this process?
Yes, and it also makes our work easier. We and our clients are no longer forced to think in these drawers – male or female – it opens up the possibility of an identity beyond these categories. This makes it easier to find out together what people are comfortable with. It is enough for some to simply have a new identity card with the gender "divers", others just take hormone treatment and notice: I am fine the way I am, I do not need the full program including surgery. From then on, things usually go up again in other areas of life, for example, young people have new energy for school or training because they no longer have to deal with the question: Who am I and where do I classify myself?
For gay and transgender young people there are more role models today, in films, books, fashion, show business. What role does the network play, especially social media?
A big, above all positive. I keep seeing how important digital peer groups are: people who understand exactly what the adolescent is going through and who are sometimes a few steps further along the way. However, some parents fear that this could have a bad impact on their children, as if such dispositions were contagious.
Children are receptive, but also resilient.
In the right-wing populist spectrum, groups such as the so-called "concerned parents" express themselves against the alleged "early sexualization" of children. What do you say to them?
I'm more concerned when adults infect their children with their prejudices and fantasies! Children are receptive, but most are also resilient. The best we can do as parents is to convey: You are good the way you are, and we accompany you as best we can.
Dr. Viktoria Märker is a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapy and works at the Institute for Sexual Research, Sexual Medicine and Forensic Psychiatry at Hamburg's UKE, one of the leading sexual science institutions in Europe and the oldest of its kind in Germany. Märker's daily work also includes advising young people from the LGBTIQ spectrum and their families.
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