Transphobia in Seventeen… Wait Not So Much

Seventeen has gone downhill fast the past few months. I already decided I’m going to stop reading it when my subscription runs out. This month’s issue features an article “My Boyfriend Turned Out to be a Girl.” My first reaction was that this was going to be very transphobic and that I should read it to write this blog. Boy, was I surprised.
The story is that Sheri received a text message from a number she didn’t recognize. She responded asking who it was. He said his name was Derek and he attended a high school an hour away from her. They started chatting through text and then on the phone. Finally they met in person and went on their first date. “I had dated other guys, but for the first time, I knew I was in love.” Derek and Sheri then dated throughout the rest of the school year and that summer. He told her he wore chest bandages due to a baseball injury and didn’t want her to touch him below the belt because he wanted to take things slow. He went to college and they talked on the phone and saw each other once a month. But during Christmas break he broke up with her because he heard that she cheated on him.
She later found out he was the one that cheated and the girl persuaded him to break up with her. Derek and his new girlfriend came to Sheri’s house to pick up his things. She threatened the new girlfriend to get out of her house and Derek threw her on the couch. Sheri went to the neighbors to call the police and they came to the house. They asked her to identify him and they said “No, that person is Dana Smith. You may know her as Derek, but her driver’s license and social security number belong to Dana, female.”

Five months later Sheri received several text messages from Derek apologizing. She called him to ask for the truth. He told her that he felt like a guy his whole life and was waiting to have the surgery to officially become one. He said he lied because he thought she would leave him. “The thing is, I would have stayed with him if he’d been honest. I loved him that much.
I was expecting a story where she broke up with him because he was transsexual. However, they broke up before she knew that. She even says “But it was Derek’s lies that really broke my heart.” However, the title of the article is problematic. They refer to him as a girl. If the title has be “My Boyfriend Turned Out to be a Transsexual” that’s fine but they identify him as his psychically sex, not his true gender identity.