This Full-Grown Woman Had To Fight Her Parents In Court For The Right To Have Gender Surgery

One of the most difficult parts of being a parent for a person to wrap his or her brain around is that to a certain degree our goal is to make ourselves unnecessary. We take tiny, cuddly, needy little babies and take care of them and support them and educate them with the goal of helping them grow to be intelligent, happy, self-aware adults capable of taking care of themselves and making their own decisions. We take care of our children as babies, but when they are adults we have to let them be adults. Some parents have trouble with that, like Klaus and Ingrid Kitzler, who actually went to court to stop their daughter Christine from getting genital reconstruction surgery, even though Christine is a 48-year-old woman and more than capable of making her own medical decisions.

According to Yahoo Parenting, Christine is a 48-year-old transgender woman living in Ohio. She had made arrangements to have her genital reconstruction surgery on Tuesday of this week, but her parents got an emergency injunction to stop her from doing so. Klaus and Ingrid Kitzler insisted that their daughter was not competent to decide for herself to have the surgery, even though she is a full-grown woman.

”I would love to have a son back who goes to church with us on Sunday mornings,” said Klaus Kitzler, who appears sadly willing to throw away any relationship with the daughter he has over a pretend relationship with an imaginary son. Klaus Kitzler reportedly insisted on using the wrong pronouns for Christine throughout the trial, and when the judge ordered him to call Christine “she,” Klaus started calling her “that person,” which is just cruel and dehumanizing, but about what one would expect from a person who tried to get the courts to intervene and prevent his 48-year-old daughter from making her own medical decisions.

Yesterday a judge heard the case and said Christine Kitzler demonstrated a more than adequate understanding of the surgery and its risks. Kitzler testified that she had a history of depression and substance abuse, but said that she has been sober for three years and knew what she was doing. She said she had always identified as female and was choosing to have surgery to make her body match the way she felt.

Christine sounds like she knows what she’s doing and has given it a lot of thought. Her parents, however, insisted she was just going along with what the surgeons wanted, and they even refused to call her by her name. When Christine testified on the stand that she hoped her parents would call her “Christine” someday, Klaus reportedly was heard to snicker in the courtroom and say, “Never!”

Klaus sounds like a real asshole. Everyone deserves supportive, loving parents, and my heart breaks for Christine that she got stuck with someone like Klaus.

“They have a daughter. They don’t have a son,” she said. They also have a daughter who is a full-grown, adult woman capable of making her own health decisions. She’s not a child anymore, and they need to accept that and accept her as she is.