Who gets to decide when a 14-year-old wants to change gender? The child, the hospital, the battling parents?

In many ways, Max is a typical 14-year-old. He eschews soft music in favor of rock and heavy metal, likes to wear hoodies, giggles when he’s nervous and has a flair for drawing animals. He can be opinionated and sarcastic one moment, shy and withdrawn the next.

His insecurities, however, run deeper than run-of-the-mill teenaged angst.

“I have a male brain that doesn’t match up with the body I’m in,” says the Grade 9, Surrey, B.C., student, who was the female gender at birth.

“It’s like being trapped in a cage.”

Max is now at the centre of a complicated legal fight over who gets to decide the course of treatment for his gender dysphoria. Max and his mom, Sarah, with the support of the gender clinic at B.C. Children’s Hospital, want to proceed with a treatment plan that would involve injecting Max with testosterone — a key step, they say, in Max’s desire to transition from a female to a male body. Continue reading here