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Transgender Man’s Pregnancy Roils Family Members
The title above was not a headline in the National Enquirer; it was the title of an Ask Amy column, from March 9. In reading the column I shifted between shock and confusion; the letter writer was in distress because her son’s decision to become pregnant as a transgender male had created a rupture in her family that she didn’t know to heal.
I couldn’t believe what I was reading. I know that gender and sexual identities have been tampered with and distorted for many years, but I wondered: how in the world does a transgender man become pregnant, and more importantly, how does this kind of insanity take place in today’s society?
Let me explain briefly how transgender pregnancy usually happens: either a woman who has decided to change her identity to a man becomes pregnant because she still has all the biological tools to do so, or a he/she has a female surrogate carry the baby. If you want to know more about these situations you can go here or here. For this post, I would rather spend my time exploring how this bizarre and depraved situation has developed.
Secularists have spent centuries trying to distort and eliminate gender distinctions. In the last 50 years in particular, their focus has been on gender equality and equal rights. Their efforts were rewarded by society and in some cases by the government’s insisting that women should not be deprived of the rights extended to men. Unfortunately, to meet their agenda, the secularists insisted that men and women were the same. To many this declaration was preposterous, since common sense and innumerable studies counter this premise. But the argument persisted. Without recounting all the distortions and lies the secularists used to perpetuate their ideas, we have arrived at a point where women can now die on battlefields, and men can wear make-up, earrings and even women’s clothes. (In Thailand these men are called lady-boys; our Thai friends admired the courage of these men in owning up to their preferred sexuality.) If the arguments for the exchangability of genders were so ridiculous, how did they come to be accepted? The destruction of the credibility and sacredness of the Judeo-Christian traditions has been victorious.
I was studying the Torah this Shabbat and reflected on what a profound treatise it is. Although secularists try to argue that it is a book of myths and violence, G-d created a way of life that not only provided rules and laws to follow: He also designed a framework and foundation that identifies, through the creation of Adam and Eve, the genders of male and female. He made it clear that there are only two genders, which meant that we didn’t have to spend our lives figuring out what we are. Instead, He gave us free will to fully explore who we are, how we can be loving and compassionate human beings, and how to serve our friends, family, society, and of course, G-d. We have not been forced into gender roles; rather, we have been blessed to discover what it means to be a man or a woman.
The devastation that the secularists have wrought, in trying to distort and confuse what it means to be a man or woman, has destroyed what it means to pursue the sacred, too. Instead they have stated that gender identification doesn’t guide us in deciding our roles to be fully realized human beings; it has become a field of experiment, mendacity and the mundane. Instead of pursuing ways to elevate ourselves and realize that we are created in the image of G-d, we can re-create who we are. Instead of our focusing on how to serve others, we become obsessed with how we can best satisfy ourselves. And if that means degrading ourselves in the eyes of heaven, trampling social mores and desecrating our bodies, then why not do it? In fact, the acronym for LGBT has been expanded upon to accommodate this exploration. “At full throttle, the letters wind up something like LGBTQQIP2SAA.” (You can go to the article to get the latest definitions.)
As a last effort, I thought I would check on how medical ethics approaches the questions of transgender male pregnancy. The National Health Service in Great Britain has stepped right up to support transgender and sex change requests. To fund a patient through their sex change and fertility treatment, the NHS spends up to £34,000. On average, it costs women £29,975 for a sex change and men £13,867.
The abstract from a report generated by the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists states the following:
Transgender individuals face harassment, discrimination, and rejection within our society. Lack of awareness, knowledge, and sensitivity in health care communities eventually leads to inadequate access to, underutilization of, and disparities within the health care system for this population. Although the care for these patients is often managed by a specialty team, obstetrician–gynecologists should be prepared to assist or refer transgender individuals with routine treatment and screening as well as hormonal and surgical therapies. The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists opposes discrimination on the basis of gender identity and urges public and private health insurance plans to cover the treatment of gender identity disorder.
Although it doesn’t explicitly support transgender male pregnancy, wouldn’t refusing to assist this type of patient be discriminatory?
In a June issue of Scientific American, the main concern was not about the appropriateness of pregnancy for transgender men, but the risks involved. In fact, there was a discussion of uterine transplants for their patients.
So here we are. Transgender men can bear children, regardless of the impact on the children or society. The distinctions between men and women are meaningless.
Secularism has won.
Published in Culture
I agree. I think where-ever people fall on this, people have tried to have real dialogues about a difficult topic. I certainly appreciate @jamesofengland answering some of my questions, and I am always impressed by the community at large.
It works for penalizing someone reported for using the wrong facility. Transgenders that are passingly convincing without close study get away with it. The issue was the allowance for anyone who identifies as a specific gender. There was no need for being convincing, you just needed to say you identified as a girl. This had a couple issues that no one on the left was willing to engage:
What an intellectually dishonestly argument. “I can’t know what it mean to be a murder therefor I can’t judge them.” “I don’t know what it means to be and walk as a Rapist therefore I can’t judge them.” “I can’t know what it means to be someone who cuts themselves so I can’t judge let and let live”
We can judge whether a persons actions are harmful or destructive by looking at the evidence but your right we need the full picture and not a limited picture. However I don’t have to be someone with destructive behavior to not be able to judge and see what is destructive behavior and what is not destructive behavior but good behavior that has a long-term lasting effect. You know its also called science. Otherwise Physiologist and Councilors would only be able to treat and deal with with limited or in some-cases none of the issues people need to deal with.
The idea that I can only judge someone I have personal experience in basically pisses all over the idea of mentorship and teaching the younger generation and learning from history and that is what I can think of off the top of my head.
No, perfect would be people with peni or lack there of using the the bathroom of their equipment, or using a unisex bathroom, or waiting till they got home. But no, for a tiny fraction of a percentage of the population, and to make a political statement, we need to chuck thousands of years of common sense.
The book “Compassion without Compromise”, written by Ron Citlau and Adam T. Barr, addresses maintaining relationships with a gay friend from a Christian perspective.
Even for non-Christians most of the principles should still prove applicable.
Just want to underline a good point being made here — do not medicate or hormonally-treat children unless life-threatening. Developmental psychology is something we are still spitting in the wind about. A study was just released (too early for me to go looking in JSTOR for abstracts) that tracked the development of children with gender dysphoria and most who were not harshly disciplined by parents grew to self-define as their biological gender. Many who receive hormonal therapy before pubescence have anxiety and depression problems later in life.
Really, support and love from family is always the best bet. There are new results about IQ, high-reactiveness, shyness, introversion and extroversion that are on the cusp of revolutionizing child development. Mostly same ol’ love and attentiveness — but also words. Children who have less than 500 words spoken to them daily develop all kinds of aberrant behavior problems.
This sounds very interesting. I’ve got gay friends and we get along fine (that sounds like the, “some of my best friends are”) but I’d like to better understand how to help the relationship. Thanks, Chuckles.
Thanks so much for this info, J. It’s interesting how your comments about the importance of speech, i.e., social interaction is similar to Marci’s comments about schizophrenia. Just sayin’ . . .
Yes. Poor woman.
Mental illness has always been so mysterious, painful and strange, and so intractable. I find lobotomy much less inexplicable than, say, bleeding sick people, or giving them emetics or purgatives. Surely they noticed that bleeding and puking tend to fatally weaken the already-weak? Whereas lobotomy at least would produce an apparent peace in an already damaged mind?
Agree about the loving-kindness, and refrain from messing with the chemistry!
Interesting about the words, though. Do you have a citation for that? I think, of course, of “in the beginning was the Logos, the word/story/idea…” and how fundamental language is for human beings, but I hadn’t thought about it as being so necessary that an insufficiency of words could warp a child’s development. Fascinating!
Fascinating, and not at all surprising.
Good advice, Mr. JLock. :)
When I win the megabucks, I’m going to write a book about the importance and power of simple human contact. “Hi, how are you today?” matters enormously.
Really? My kids are screwed…
I’m an introvert. Verbal parenting was easy with one, much harder with 2, and now I just relish cuddling the youngest and being quiet.
Is talking really the most important thing?
So, I’m on self-imposed Rico exile to finish a couple personal art projects before I start Law School (gonna be one old student) but when I get back next weekend I was going to write something for the feed about all this as it pertains to overall wellness and shattering our old ideas about IQ (as we were discussing in another thread). I’ll be sure to tag you in the comments Kate so you won’t miss it. Along with many citations and abstracts.
Excellent question. One there is all kinds of speculation about. Is IQ seen largely as an extroversion quality? I’d say yes, absolutely. Of course love+words is the essential ingredient. Abusive words would do horrible damage. And just loving attentiveness possibly creates introversion, although well-adjusted introversion. I wouldn’t worry if the love and attentiveness is there. But couldn’t hurt to read em a book?
Or how bout sing? Thats what my mom did me. Just don’t combine it with another 10,000 words of Romanian or your kid will be crazy and obnoxious like me.
Which is why I questioned the teaching of very young kids who have no real understanding of their own sexuality, and then questioned the purpose behind the movement doing this. I.e., the power of suggestion… (See comment #35.)
CM, you may also be underestimating how much you talk with your child. He’s not saying you need to speak a book’s worth at one time. I think @jlock is also talking about kids who are ignored or who have no one around to love them. I just don’t think you need to worry, although I’m not a mom.
A lesbian activist group admitted on the record in the 90s that their goal is “Get them while they’re young.” Not get them to be gay, but get their minds open to it and normalize it. I read this when they were going into first-grade classrooms and reading aloud from the books “Heather Has Two Mommies” and “Daddy Has a Roommate” (complete with illustrations). My problem with it was always that it’s not age-appropriate to expose 7-year-olds to ANY sex, gay or straight. It frightens them and creeps them out. The first thing they do is picture their own parents naked in bed, and it is just awful. In addition, 7-year-old boys still think girls are “icky.” So how many of them think, “OMG I’m gay!” It’s just plain wrong.
Your journey with your child is unique and yours alone. Communication comes in all forms — as long as your kid has that connection with you, that you alone have developed, I wouldn’t worry.
All types of communication, verbal and non-verbal (which is significant), are what they will extrapolate upon to use in society. If they have a strong connection to you, even during adolescence when development calls for rebellion, you will be ingrained into their psyche. If you push them away, they will seek developmental tools elsewhere.
Verbal communication in the form of a word count is purely a research tool as a baseline. If that amount is worrying you as a parent, you are most likely the type of parent who is doing all that they can for their children. While increasing verbal communication can never hurt (unless its abusive), I wouldn’t stress about it CM.
God Bless, see y’all in a week.