Not knowing more of the medical/psychiatric details of this case, I cannot - and therefore will not - speak to that aspect of it. Looking at what details were published, however, I note that one indication of Tim/Kim's transexual orientation is that s/he played with Barbies.... now, I didn't like Barbies, and was much more interested in playing with Legos, Lincoln logs, and toy cars - that did not, however, indicate that I was male instead of female, nor have I ever doubted that. Nor did William, in "
William Wants a Doll", a song by Marlo Thomas, want a doll because of gender identity problems - he wanted to learn to be a daddy.
If going through puberty is such an ordeal because of Tim/Kim's transexual nature, well, darn... how much more traumatizing will major surgery be? Because I have no doubt that, if s/he ever experiences a change of heart, s/he isn't going to have the nerve to back out. I have no problem with the long hair or feminine clothes, nor the use of the name "Kim" - but I do have a problem with the hormone treatments, especially as even the doctors admit that they do not know what risks might be entailed in starting hormone therapy of this type on a child that young. There are other ways to avoid hair growth than hormone treatments - women use them all the time. And quite frankly, given the use of the penis to build a vagina (they are analogous structures in anatomically normal people, which is why it is possible to perform the surgery in the fashion described by MA-Caver), it would be in this child's best interest to allow his current equipment to grow larger in size. In addition, should the teen ever change his/her mind, the surgery could be cancelled, but not the bodily changes caused by the hormone treatments.
That this is considered an "illness" - and thus covered by insurance, when so many other ailments are not - is simply a mind-boggling addendum to the rest of the story.
