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Thoughts from a Former Dysphoric
When I was a little girl, I wanted badly to be a boy. Boys got to play the games I wanted to play and had an exclusive claim on the adjectives I hoped to apply to my adult self, such as courageous, honorable and adventurous. I was in the wrong body to be what I wanted to be.
I shudder now to think what would have happened to me had my parents been encouraged, by childrearing experts and the general culture, to take me seriously when I vociferously and persistently declared my desire to be a boy.
My discovery of feminism cured my gender dysphoria. The problem, as the ’70s-era feminists defined it, wasn’t that my female body and individual personality were mismatched, but that the definitions of female and male were unnecessarily and irrationally narrow and pinched.
Feminism declared that I could play baseball and cops ‘n’ robbers, dream of any number of interesting and noble futures, be completely myself, and yet be a completely normal female too. This was liberating.
Naturally, feminist theory didn’t solve all the problems of embodied female life. Biology is what it is: I still had to endure menstruation; rape was a seemingly omnipresent threat (the statistics are a whole lot better now, FYI), and, when the time came, the physical and emotional demands of pregnancy, childbirth, breastfeeding, and childrearing definitely got in the way of my becoming a rodeo rider, relief pitcher for the Orioles, or an FBI agent.
Well, that’s life.
Which is to say; that’s biology. And it is biology that the transgendered are struggling so desperately against, which essentially means they are mad at life itself. Or, specifically, that part of life that is most relentlessly gendered because genitals=genesis=genes=generation=regeneration … the original and still the best explanation for why little boys have lingams and little girls have yonis.
Yes, we humans are astonishingly plastic but remain, nonetheless, sexually dimorphic mammalian creatures. Just like chimpanzees, chipmunks, and Chihuahuas, we reproduce by means of sexual intercourse as it is enacted by persons defined as male and female by anatomy and chromosomes.
Clearly, human beings can decide not to reproduce — traditionally, by refraining from heterosexual intercourse but also by using our minds to invent workarounds. We can be involuntarily sterile, for that matter, but the essential anatomy and physiology that distinguishes — absolutely — male from female, and the purpose for that distinction remains. Celibate nuns and lesbians still menstruate and ovulate; gay men and men who believe themselves to be women nonetheless produce sperm.
As a little girl, I wanted to be what I imagined a boy was. Having never been a boy, I didn’t really know. And, I would posit — with all due respect and much, much sympathy — that a man cannot be or become a woman, or genuinely experience life as a woman. He can only experience life as he imagines a woman experiences it.
Why, though, can he do this? Why can the impression that a man — Caitlyn Jenner, say — actually is a woman be so incredibly powerful?
As a working hypothesis, the disorders of our minds arise out of our mental capabilities. There has to be an ability that precedes the disability. I nominate empathetic imagination as the ability gone awry in the transgendered mind.
During the Olympics, I watched a figure skater fly around the ice and leap into the air, spinning then landing lightly on one blade and swirling away: I didn’t just apprehend it with my eyes and mind, I felt it in my body. For long seconds, it was as if all I’d have to do is leap up from my comfy chair, throw on a pair of skates and my limbs would know how to do that magical thing.
Indeed, this may be why we are capable of finding joy in watching sports (or, for that matter, porn) because we can imagine ourselves into other bodies. Heck, we can imagine ourselves into the bodies of animals: the best equestriennes, dog trainers, and lion whisperers are surely those who teeter on the edge of identifying “as” rather than merely “with” their animals.
As an adult, I am a happily female mother of six adult children who looks forward with stereotypical eagerness to being a grandmother. And yet, I work primarily and gladly with men — specifically the courageous, honorable, adventurous men who work as game wardens in the Maine woods. I am frequently, and very comfortably, the only woman in a roomful of people and often the only woman for miles of snowy, woodland “around.”
The imaginative empathy that allows me to be with them might be on the continuum with that which once demanded I be them, no?
Activists who scornfully declare that a white, straight, middle-class man cannot possibly understand what it is like to be black, gay, poor, or female … are wrong.
That’s what the transgenderism “movement” demonstrates — not that we can or should determine our own gender (or race or whatever) “identity,” but that human beings are indeed capable of profound empathetic imagination. Because we can imagine ourselves into our neighbor’s lives, God’s command to “love your neighbor as yourself” is difficult … but it’s not actually impossible.
The transgendered provide perhaps extreme demonstrations of what is our common and sacred gift. Tyrants of various stripes urge us to suppress that talent — don’t feel sympathy for the deported Jews! Don’t imagine yourself an occupant of that basket of deplorables! Christ, however, asked us to nurture and encourage our capacity to truly see, truly understand and in some sense, at least for a long second, be and therefore truly love: it is the gift of which he was both giver and exemplar.
Published in Religion & Philosophy
Tolkien was a fervent Catholic, and no doubt would be appalled at the suggestion that Sam and Frodo were gay. I think he would see the suggestion as a sign of the hyper-sexualizing tendencies in our culture. I believe the models for his depiction of Sam were the batmen of his WWI experience.
So much of moving through childhood to adulthood is learning to manage the desire for that which you cannot have.
So much of our dysfunctional culture is wrought by adults who can’t, or don’t, communicate realistic limits to children.
And a lot of moving through childhood is imagining things that you think you want and discovering they’re not you. Children imagine themselves a lot of things throughout the process of growing up. We shouldn’t stunt them by freezing their transient feelings at any particular point in that process.
This has baffled me too. I have never cared for sports. As a child I liked to cook. But I never had any doubt that I was a boy. Mrs. Tabby played with trucks as a child (though only because her nearest-in-age sibling was a boy who insisted). Mrs. Tabby thinks more like a guy than a stereotypical woman. Our son played with a large doll and was very tender with small animals. He is now in the Air Force and participates in very demanding physical competitions.
A particularly interesting observation is that our daughter has become somewhat more stereotypically feminine since she gave birth to her son several months ago.
Yes, it’s a special kind of cynicism that insists that any amount of caring one man feels for another specific individual man must be evidence that they or the author who wrote them are actually gay.
Part of it comes from a deliberate attempt to normalize homosexuality. Some people just totally make things up to insist that characters were intended to be gay and that the popular author they like was totally in favor of today’s social movements that didn’t exist when they were alive. Kirk and Spock for Star Trek are an example; despite the fact that Gene Roddenberry had said many times that they’re not gay, people keep saying that he secretly planned for them to be gay in 1966.
But I think most of it comes from a kind of stunted development as a human being. The kind of thought that goes well, I’d only care this much about someone if I wanted to bang them, so…
It’s hard when the author herself says such a thing. I still don’t believe Dumbledore was gay, even though Rowling herself said he was. I personally believe she was jumping on the progressive bandwagon with the assertion . . .
There are going to a lot permanently damaged individuals because of this madness. The progressive parents are going to do their kids serious harm.
And will they recognize it as such? I am thinking of a conversation I had with my very prickly, super progressive stepson. He was complaining about the chaos at the public school his daughter attended, chaos caused by the shoddy implementation of some federal dictate or other (sorry, can’t remember the specifics). When I suggested he move his daughter to a private school, he snapped, “Some of us care about the world!!” Apparently he cared so much about “the world” that he felt it was OK to sacrifice his daughter’s education to the God of Government Schools. Maybe these parents will likewise think that they were self-sacrificing pioneers, bravely going where less enlightened parents would not go before. Eggs have to be broken for omelets, and all that.
And, the opposite.
Google can’t admit what Damore posited: That just because someone is xx, she must be as interested in “google mechanics” as someone who is xy. There is little in PC more foolish the the GOVCO mandated concept of “disparate impact.” Girls must be as interested in “coding” as boys. They just must.
Mein Gott, Sam and Frodo weren’t gay!!
Friendship, loyalty, respect, familial love – what C.S. Lewis called the “Philia” is a thing. A powerful, important thing.
Sexual attraction, the “Eros”, is a thing, A powerful, important thing. But a different thing! Utterly different. They are not just different degrees of the same thing, the first inevitably leading to the second.
Maybe TV has taught us that a successful conclusion to every man/woman interaction is that they wind up romantically involved at the end, or at least in bed. This is balderdash, and such a destructive and cynical idea to foist on a culture.
Harry Potter and Hermoine were huge on Philia – strong friends. But Eros was never part of their relationship. American audiences may have wanted it to go that way, but mostly because we’re conditioned to. The way it worked out for them was so much better, so much more interesting.
Sam and Frodo are actually employer/employee. In the book Sam is around 19, Frodo is 33, and his boss. Through all their adventures they became much more to each other; it was a great tale of the blossoming of Philia. When appreciated like this, it is so incredibly moving. The idea that sex between them would be even contemplated in the midst of this is so contemptible that it makes me mad just typing it.
Thanks a lot, Peter Jackson, for that last reunion scene, when Sam peers around the doorway in that stupid looking shirt, and they do the longing gazes for 5 minutes. Good grief.
Or…it’s a way of masking that he doesn’t think he can afford private school? Like people who don’t actually want children claiming to be childless because they care about the planet. People who take progressivism for their moral compass will twist all sorts of perfectly ordinary, selfish activities into Signs of Virtue. An environmentalist relative assured me that he goes to Dunkin’ Donuts instead of Starbucks because the latter offers little sticks of wood to stir the cream into your coffee, instead of adding the cream for you (and presumably stirring with a spoon? Or what?) Save a tree…boycott Starbucks. Never mind that Dunkin’ Donuts gives me my coffee in a styrofoam cup that won’t biodegrade for thirteen bazillion years, give or take…
Or maybe your stepson is taking the opportunity to insult you? He cares about the world…you don’t.
Is it okay to just do what’s best for your kid? Or to drink the coffee you like? (Personally, I like Dunkin’ better…)
Philliallly speaking, I’m madly in love with all 120 +/- Maine game wardens. What do I do with that?
Not in his case. He is swimming in money. But he despises Christianity, and so any Christian private school is out. And I think his progressive ideals keep him from considering any other options.
Thank you so much — can’t agree more. As I mentioned above, I believe Sam was modeled on the batmen Tolkien encountered in WWI. The idea of there being some sexual component is one more contemptible example of the degradation of the culture. And on the subject of Peter Jackson’s sins, yes – Frodo is a middle-aged hobbit. He’s actually quite serious and has quite a lot of strength. But Jackson’s portrayal is of an adolescent who is weak and constantly in anguish, with angst ever-present in those big eyes. Aaargh….
Yes, I’m afraid it is definitely that. My husband and I will have been married for 32 years this spring, and his stepson has made it clear from day one that he despises me. It’s not that I broke up my husband’s former marriage — he had been divorced for seven years when I met him — but he despises conservatism and Christianity, so in addition to the two of us holding views that he can’t tolerate – we are despoilers of the environment, racists, homophobes, xenophobes, sexists, transphobes — my going back to my faith (Catholicism) and bringing my husband with me was not appreciated.
He is? Better keep his sex the way it is. There are plenty of non-funny comediennes out there . . .
Sam was bisexual. Don’t forget the little hobbit chick . . .
Good heavens. 32 years means he’s older than 32, right? Yeesh…a thirteen year old, even a twenty year old could be forgiven for being rude to his stepmother, but he’s a grown man.
“[Fill in the blank] Country Day School” @painterjean?
Yeah. You would think wood grows on trees or something…
It applies the other way too. Men also like having spaces for men only. It’s a different kind of interaction than even ostensibly platonic intersex* environments offer. Women can still get away voicing a desire for unisex environments for now by using the safety exemption. I think that’s unfortunate though. Free association isn’t just about safety and it isn’t just a legal concept; people should be able to associate with (or without) whomever they choose. And this is driven at least partially by biology just as much as biology drives the sexes together in other contexts and circumstances.
*To the extent that completely platonic intersex relationships are even possible. I think I lean toward Harry’s camp (from When Harry Met Sally) on this one – guys are always** interested.
**Obviously “always” is an exaggeration. There are category exceptions and personal preference exceptions. But I think this is more substantial than a simple rule of thumb.
Maybe, but it’s not balderdash that even platonic opposite sex interactions have a sexual element not present with platonic same sex interactions. I would bet a substantial amount that Harry has thought of Hermione sexually while he probably never though of Ron that way. I don’t know if that works in reverse (Hermione occasionally thinking of Harry sexually).
Take it from me – Harry and Hermione notwithstanding: Yes.
Those who say gender is socially constructed are partially right:
What feminized me was months and months of hospicing older relatives. It was quite distracting, since I was also trying to earn a master’s in mathematics. Doing that much caregiving really did make me stupider, because it meant no longer having the more stereotypically masculine single-minded focus.
Caregiving didn’t totally feminize me. Rather, since then, I simply feel torn in two, but I see it as my social role as a woman to endure it, and n-tuply so now that I’m a mother.
Daughter, mother, wife, caregiver… it’s not like we have these roles figured out simply because we were born with ovaries. Instead, we look to elders’ and peers’ expectations of what these roles should look like in order to not totally screw them up. Being born with ovaries doesn’t guarantee that one’s femininity isn’t a charade put on to satisfy others’ expectations.
I don’t get “wrong body” from this, but rather “wrong social role”. Fortunately, you found that it’s possible to combine being courageous, honorable, and adventurous with other, more typically feminine social roles, like wivery and motherhood.
I don’t think they’re entirely wrong. The scorn is wrong. The point is taken entirely too far. Some characteristics change over one’s life and just because you have one trait or set of experiences now doesn’t mean you might not have had different traits and experiences prior. Other than that I do think there is a difference between being able to understand conceptually versus having had particular experiences that others couldn’t have had because of contextually relevant characteristics.
Does that make these differences in experience paramount? No. We’re all still human with 98% shared experiences of humanity – hunger, thirst, anger, joy, sadness, loneliness, craving, etc. That two percent can pack a wallop, though, depending on the context. I understand that women feel differently about walking to their car in a parking lot than I feel doing the same thing – yet I don’t actually know what it feels like even if I can analogize with experiences of my own that are similar. Sometimes these substitutes get me virtually all the way, sometimes they can only ever be approximations barely close enough for horseshoes or hand grenades. But that’s ok; we’re still humans and should still treat each other with dignity and respect even if there are some experience gaps that can’t be bridged.
I put a little cream in the bottom of the cup before pouring the coffee, thus saving a stirrer – plastic or otherwise – from entering the waste stream. That makes me a wonderful human being.
Such a thoughtful bit of writing. It reminds me that we can shudder over the current gender obsession that the Left is promoting, or instead realize how far we have come through the notable gains that feminism has made.
My heart was first broken at the age of thirteen when my mom insisted I could no longer be a tailback on the local “street” football team that met in my neighborhood. She was convinced that the guys had me on the team for my developing boobs. (She never thought about how once I had my football gear on, my boobs were not something a person would ever notice.) My dad, who usually helped me feel equal and sometimes superior to anyone else on the planet, admitted that my belief of waiting until I was 18 and could then be selected by a pro football team was also something that would not be happening.
But these days burgeoning female athletes have a lot of choices, and if there is no female football team in their area, I doubt it would be a controversy if they started one.
When a person sits and sifts through group portraits done in the later 1800’s or early 1900’s, it is usually surprising for any of us modern people to see burly lumberjacks or husky miners with one arm slung over another guy’s shoulders.
But the “he men” of days past had no shame in showing affection for their buddies. Trades like those were extremely hazardous. A person made it thorough those occupations not only because they were “pulling themselves up by their bootstraps” but also because they were part of a team effort where deeply connected friendships sometimes included the activity of one person sacrificing himself for another.
But don’t you see??? I’m a racist sexist fascist anti-science (because all religious people are) transphobe, homophobe, despoiler of all that is good and true and beautiful – because I’m a conservative. What’s not to hate?