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A Rant on Transitioning
I have been watching “New Amsterdam” on Netflix. I guess it originally appeared on NBC. It is a really good series with some very relevant insights into how big city hospitals function. Last night’s episode was not bad, but it was a predictable dive into the issue of transitioning kids. In this one, a kid in her late teens has been transitioning for several years, hormone therapy, etc. However, at this point, she/he wants what nowadays is called “top surgery.” The building psych says no since it is felt that her growth is not complete enough to allow the surgery without causing possible other harms. The recommendation is to wait a year.
The kid, as portrayed, is pretty obviously ambivalent about her/his sexuality. In 40-plus years of teaching adolescents, particularly ones with “issues,” I only had one in my class who I would say was legitimately likely to want to transition. This was a young man with very distinct feminine characteristics, both physical and psychological. He (he definitely thought of himself as a boy) preferred the company of girls, not in the way most boys do, but as companions. The girls sort of naturally accepted his company, and he seemed quite comfortable in that mode. That was long enough ago that no one talked about accommodating any change via drugs or surgery. However, it was pretty obvious that this kid was never going to be “normal.” There were no signs of homosexuality. He just had very feminine characteristics.
Back when I started teaching in Seattle, my first position was in a junior high school. The same day I met the principal for the first time, a new counselor also came on board. I was immediately struck by the distinctly feminine characteristics of this man. They were blatantly obvious. However, he was married and was to have a couple of kids of his own over the years I knew him. We worked together for 17 years. He was terrific, an absolutely competent and well-adjusted person. Despite his mannerisms, he was very direct and firm with kids, never wavered, and eventually went on to get his administrative credentials, and became an elementary school principal, at which job he was superb.
Now, whether he would have chosen to transition had the current fashion been in place in the 1960s and ’70s is something no one can answer. I don’t think he ever thought of himself as being “born in the wrong body.” He was who and what he was, and from what I saw of him over nearly two decades of a pretty close working relationship, he was extremely well-adjusted.
Humans exist in a spectrum, a range of what we called in biology phenotypes. We all possess the genetic materials contributed by both of our parents, male and female. Ultimately, hormones present in our bodies make the determination of how those genes are expressed. Both female and male hormones are present in everyone. I suspect that those kids now calling themselves trans or whatever, are more the product of social pressures than actual genetic predispositions. The idea that everyone has to behave in a certain way, fit into a particular pigeonhole, and display only the characteristic behaviors assigned to that location is absurd.
People display a wide variety of behavioral patterns, some learned, some, shall we say, inborn. It is only when inborn behaviors are discouraged or negatively reinforced by, say, bullying that these people who don’t exactly fit the mold might actually begin to feel uncomfortable in their own skin. I don’t believe that allowing or encouraging such kids to undergo medical procedures to change their physical characteristics toward something they are not is any more likely to resolve the issues than trying to force them to conform to “ideal” characteristics of the gender into which they were born. In both cases, they are neither fish nor fowl, and are just as likely to be uncomfortable, which explains the high number of suicides in those who have transitioned.
In my opinion, it would be far more productive to counsel them into being comfortable with who and what they are. Our society has come a long way in terms of how it sees homosexual individuals. I believe that an acceptance of this other position on the spectrum can be accommodated without allowing radical elements to push them into physical transitions that do not ultimately resolve the issue. This does not even touch the issue of young girls in droves wanting to transition to males. This latest fashion, being reinforced by radicals and other misguided people, has reached nearly epidemic proportions.
This entire issue has really gone beyond the absurd, fueled by people who have their own political and social agendas. Left to their own devices, they will create mayhem in our schools, if they already haven’t. It is infuriating that at a time when publicly funded schools are failing on so many levels that this issue is being pushed by unions and radically populated school boards. Rather than creating turmoil, schools should emphasize treating each child as an individual, respecting the individual characteristics of each child, and preparing them as best we can for their lives ahead by educating them in the basics and leaving other issues to parents and communities from which they arise. This can be achieved largely by teachers themselves modeling appropriate respect for each child. I did that in my classroom for more than 40 years, and no child was ever made to feel inadequate or as though he/she was born in the wrong body.
Published in General
Josh Hawley is on it.
I had a colleague when I was in the Air Force JAG Corps that later died of AIDS and was “transitioning” when I last saw him. I knew of this only after his death. But let me start at the beginning:
John joined my base office after a tour in Germany. He had a fiancé who was a civilian teacher at the German air force base. John and I got along great. He kept himself and his apartment very well. Some of his mannerisms could have been effeminate but it certainly was not pronounced. He just was a bright, put together guy who pulled his weight in the office and was well-regarded. When his fiancé returned stateside they got married and moved to a house. We were still assigned to the same base at the time. I liked his wife.
At one point I think she complained about the marriage a little bit. The nature of her complaints stayed away from the bedroom. It was more that notwithstanding what a great personal housekeeper he had been, once they got married he expected her to do all that stuff. It perplexed her. I told her that (reflecting on my own failed marriage) oftentimes people just emulate their parents’ division of responsibilities without giving it a thought; that she (and he) needed to confront that reality and discuss whether that was how they wanted their marriage to work. (Oh if I had only been able to take my own advice ~8 years earlier.)
Later they were transferred to the DC area where John took a master in environmental law followed by a tour at the Pentagon. During this time they had their first child. In fact, at the very moment I first saw Mrs Rodin (another story) I was on the phone with John and his wife was in labor.
As things happen I lost touch with them and then I found out he had left the service and went to work in southern California for a large defense contractor. But his marriage had broken up. As I was in California by now and had business in SoCal I arranged to meet up with him one day. As I sat waiting for him to arrive (having not seen him in years) I saw this figure with long hair and a suit. It was John. My thought is that he had adopted a full surfer persona but wore a suit for work. We chatted for a bit. Mostly pleasantries and filling in a bit of details of what had transpired since we last saw each other. But the connection was lost.
It was some years later that I learned from another colleague that he was transitioned and died of AIDS. I have no details about his life other than this. I don’t know whether he sought surgery. I have no idea.
That is a fascinating story. It does make you wonder why “John” felt the need to transition. He had, obviously, found marriage to a woman not to his liking. That is easily understood since he died of AIDS, and we can assume that he decided that he was gay. If he was involved in a gay relationship in which he played the submissive role, traditionally the female role in western families, it is possible, I suppose, that he might want to go “full female”. I have known a number of gay and lesbian couples in which there was a dominant member and a submissive member, so that might be the logical progression. Caitlyn Jenner is, apparently, still a fully intact male, not willing to make a fully committed change in his physiology. That kind of thing makes me far more sure that what we are dealing with is a psychological disorder as opposed to some actual genetic predisposition.
I have long been convinced that homosexuality is not a choice, but, rather a genetic predisposition. I am not certain that those with real dysphoria are not genetically predisposed to believing that they are “born in the wrong body.” However, I am also quite certain that they represent a very tiny minority of those claiming to be so. I suspect that the vast majority are simply attention seekers or others who are in need of psychiatric counseling. I am particularly leery of those who seek to transition relatively late in life. The youngest ones we are seeing crop up in schools now seem for the most part to be attention seeking and are having their aberrant behaviors reinforced by adults who have inappropriate agendas of their own. There may well be children who are showing early signs of homosexual tendencies. What is best for them is to allow them to express their natures while remaining physically unchanged. In other words, let them be themselves. I am sure it is not an easy thing to do, but a really good example of how to do it right is Andrew Kavan and his son.
I still maintain that nobody of either sex/gender can actually feel like they should be the other, because they really have no idea what that other sex/gender feels like. All they can really know is that they don’t feel “right” how they currently are, which certainly requires psychological help not surgery etc, at least for a long time, perhaps forever.
I would say that we are in total agreement.