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.

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  1. Nanda Panjandrum Member
    Nanda Panjandrum
    @

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    If there is nothing inherently wrong with being transgendered, why do those who have it need “care” (that milky little euphemism Planned Parenthood is so fond of ) and, more particularly, why do they need such dramatic and risky forms of care? And…what would a cure look like?

    Hence my question above, “Is autism?”

    If there is nothing inherently wrong with being autistic, why is it so often necessary to make extreme and disruptive accommodations for autistic people? And yet the neurodiversity and autistic rights movements claim both that there’s nothing wrong with autism and that autistics deserve a lot of special care. I think the logic is that autism isn’t the disease, the disease is poor coping that stems from insufficiently supportive and accepting intervention. And I think that’s the logic trans advocates are using: the disease isn’t the trans identity itself, but all that happens when the identity can’t be supported and accepted.

    I find debates about what constitutes the real disease a little beside the point, but it’s not lost on me why the autistic might not want their autism thought of as their “disease”, while non-autistic people, distressed by autistic behavior, may find something quite repugnant about not treating autism as a disease to be cured. There are also autists who do think of their autism as a disease, and non-autists willing to treat autism as something other than a disease. But I can see why autists, overall, have more interest in thinking of themselves as simply different, rather than diseased.

    CP, a condition or state-of-being with demonstrably-limiting effects, was at one time referred to as “Little’s Disease”, actually…

    • #91
  2. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    If there is nothing inherently wrong with being transgendered, why do those who have it need “care” (that milky little euphemism Planned Parenthood is so fond of ) and, more particularly, why do they need such dramatic and risky forms of care? And…what would a cure look like?

    Hence my question above, “Is autism?”

    If there is nothing inherently wrong with being autistic, why is it so often necessary to make extreme and disruptive accommodations for autistic people? And yet the neurodiversity and autistic rights movements claim both that there’s nothing wrong with autism and that autistics deserve a lot of special care. I think the logic is that autism isn’t the disease, the disease is poor coping that stems from insufficiently supportive and accepting intervention. And I think that’s the logic trans advocates are using: the disease isn’t the trans identity itself, but all that happens when the identity can’t be supported and accepted.

    I find debates about what constitutes the real disease a little beside the point, but it’s not lost on me why the autistic might not want their autism thought of as their “disease”, while non-autistic people, distressed by autistic behavior, may find something quite repugnant about not treating autism as a disease to be cured. There are also autists who do think of their autism as a disease, and non-autists willing to treat autism as something other than a disease. But I can see why autists, overall, have more interest in thinking of themselves as simply different, rather than diseased.

    Ah!  Then the analogy is very useful—sorry; I obviously don’t have sufficient experience with autism to have grasped this right off. I usually come into contact with autistic persons when they have gotten lost in the woods. At which point, their disability adds urgency to the search; autistic children, for example, tend to make a dangerous beeline for water.

    • #92
  3. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Nanda Panjandrum (View Comment):

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    If there is nothing inherently wrong with being transgendered, why do those who have it need “care” (that milky little euphemism Planned Parenthood is so fond of ) and, more particularly, why do they need such dramatic and risky forms of care? And…what would a cure look like?

    Hence my question above, “Is autism?”

    If there is nothing inherently wrong with being autistic, why is it so often necessary to make extreme and disruptive accommodations for autistic people? And yet the neurodiversity and autistic rights movements claim both that there’s nothing wrong with autism and that autistics deserve a lot of special care. I think the logic is that autism isn’t the disease, the disease is poor coping that stems from insufficiently supportive and accepting intervention. And I think that’s the logic trans advocates are using: the disease isn’t the trans identity itself, but all that happens when the identity can’t be supported and accepted.

    I find debates about what constitutes the real disease a little beside the point, but it’s not lost on me why the autistic might not want their autism thought of as their “disease”, while non-autistic people, distressed by autistic behavior, may find something quite repugnant about not treating autism as a disease to be cured. There are also autists who do think of their autism as a disease, and non-autists willing to treat autism as something other than a disease. But I can see why autists, overall, have more interest in thinking of themselves as simply different, rather than diseased.

    CP, a condition or state-of-being with demonstrably-limiting effects, was at one time referred to as “Little’s Disease”, actually…

    Terms are tricky, aren’t they?

    But CP is something that could be magically removed—poof!—from Nanda, and Nanda would still be Nanda. Or rather, Nanda would be herself, only able to do the things that she hasn’t been able to do. Which, at least from my perspective, would be awesome, though of course there would be some adjustment. (Still…happily looking forward to the boogie in heaven, NP! If I get there first, I’ll warm up the jukebox…)

    Again, I keep coming back to: “If it’s just a difference, why does it require medical treatment?” If all anyone wanted was to dress and act as a member of the opposite sex, and be called “Diana” instead of “Dudley,” well, okay.  That would be one thing, and arguably a mere variation in the wild diversity of human expression.  But that isn’t what is being argued. Instead, it’s that:

    Dudley actually is a woman.

    This is not a mental disorder or a disorder at all, but a natural difference in inherent human biology.

    It does not matter that this cannot be demonstrated empirically, given that every cell in Dudley’s body is XY; his anatomy and physiology are male—penis, testicles, sperm-production, muscle mass, fat distribution, etc etc.

    Dudley doesn’t need treatment since Dudley isn’t actually sick…instead, Dudley has the right to have his male body medically rejiggered so that it more closely—if still superficially— resembles a woman’s body.

    This is “medical care.” It involves surgery and the application of hormones to effect an illusion. 

    Are there other disorders treated by merely providing the illusion of health?

    • #93
  4. CarolJoy Coolidge
    CarolJoy
    @CarolJoy

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    If there is nothing inherently wrong with being transgendered, why do those who have it need “care” (that milky little euphemism Planned Parenthood is so fond of ) and, more particularly, why do they need such dramatic and risky forms of care? And…what would a cure look like?

    Hence my question above, “Is autism?”

    If there is nothing inherently wrong with being autistic, why is it so often necessary to make extreme and disruptive accommodations for autistic people? And yet the neurodiversity and autistic rights movements claim both that there’s nothing wrong with autism and that autistics deserve a lot of special care. I think the logic is that autism isn’t the disease, the disease is poor coping that stems from insufficiently supportive and accepting intervention. And I think that’s the logic trans advocates are using: the disease isn’t the trans identity itself, but all that happens when the identity can’t be supported and accepted.

    I find debates about what constitutes the real disease a little beside the point, but it’s not lost on me why the autistic might not want their autism thought of as their “disease”, while non-autistic people, distressed by autistic behavior, may find something quite repugnant about not treating autism as a disease to be cured. There are also autists who do think of their autism as a disease, and non-autists willing to treat autism as something other than a disease. But I can see why autists, overall, have more interest in thinking of themselves as simply different, rather than diseased.

    If by autism, I assume  you are meaning people who have Asperger’s syndrome as far as the discussion goes. People with a more serious form of autism are often children far into adult hood and old age. One young man I knew was 26 and still couldn’t put on his own socks and shoes. He did only what he wanted to do; otherwise he could become enraged.

    He was a pleasant enough person if he did get his own way, but destructive if he couldn’t. And of course, his parents were greatly concerned about what would become of him after they were gone. The household was quite affluent, so money was no problem, but the parents still had so many concerns about his future once they were no longer around. This 26 year old had the same concept of self that a four or six year old would have.

    • #94
  5. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    CarolJoy (View Comment):
    If by autism, I assume you are meaning people who have Asperger’s syndrome as far as the discussion goes. People with a more serious form of autism are often children far into adult hood and old age. One young man I knew was 26 and still couldn’t put on his own socks and shoes. He did only what he wanted to do; otherwise he could become enraged.

    He was a pleasant enough person if he did get his own way, but destructive if he couldn’t. And of course, his parents were greatly concerned about what would become of him after they were gone. The household was quite affluent, so money was no problem, but the parents still had so many concerns about his future once they were no longer around. This 26 year old had the same concept of self that a four or six year old would have.

    This is the autism I am most familiar with, CarolJoy, when kids and adults thus afflicted get into difficulties and have to be rescued. (Otherwise…well, throughout, really….I am talking wayyyyyy beyond my pay grade!)

    Obviously (?) even  a severe gender dysphoria isn’t akin to autism. The obvious comparison is with homosexuality. And, again, a lesbian does not require a doctor’s help (medication, surgery)  in order to be a lesbian, though she could in theory seek therapy if she wanted to stop being a lesbian because her condition was painful to her or prevented her from living a full, contented life.

    The other obvious comparison is with the plastic surgery done to, say,  prevent Jane Fonda from looking like what she biologically is—an eighty year old woman. I’m quite sure Jane would say that she doesn’t feel like an eighty year old so, dammit, she isn’t one! And so she goes about in (spectacularly effective) drag as a youthful forty-five.

     

     

    • #95
  6. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    By which I’m not being flippant. The extremity of the measures the dysphoric is willing to undertake in order to relieve his discomfort indicates the strength of that discomfort (after all, it is the patient who risks impoverishment, maiming, sterility, loss of sexual function and death). So does the high risk of suicide.

    Clearly, whatever is going on with a dysphoric patient, it’s truly miserable. The transgendered persons I know best have other, diagnosed disorders as well—bipolar in one case, OCD/acute anxiety in the other. They are not the happiest of campers.

    Gender dysphoria could be one of a cluster of possible symptoms indicating that an essential function of the brain—say, the ability to align subjective and objective realities—isn’t working properly.

    Or, as I propose more positively in the OP, that a capacity for imaginative empathy is overdeveloped.  Imaginative empathy requires that we suspend, at least partially and/or temporarily, our apprehension of reality; the distinction between neighbor and self is real, after all.  So these are not mutually exclusive theories.

    The etiology of transgenderism is a really interesting and even important question, both because answering it can lead to treatments that truly help alleviate suffering but also because it is a window into the functioning of our brains/minds.  Sadly, it doesn’t seem at present that we are allowed to openly discuss it.

    The trans “community” declares, instead, that gender is a social construct, that theirs is a natural variant in a highly sexually variable species and that the misery of gender dysphoria is externally inflicted by “society” rather than inherent in the condition. Thus, if we all dutifully extend bathroom privileges, learn a few dozen new pronouns and fund the requisite “care,” transgendered people will be just fine.

     

     

     

    • #96
  7. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    I find debates about what constitutes the real disease a little beside the point, but it’s not lost on me why the autistic might not want their autism thought of as their “disease”, while non-autistic people, distressed by autistic behavior, may find something quite repugnant about not treating autism as a disease to be cured. There are also autists who do think of their autism as a disease, and non-autists willing to treat autism as something other than a disease. But I can see why autists, overall, have more interest in thinking of themselves as simply different, rather than diseased.

    Again, as with so many mental illnesses, it’s a matter of degree, right? With the distinction between “difference” and “disease” being does it hurt and does it prevent you from living a reasonably happy human life within what I think we agree should be the relatively wide  limits of “normal.”

    I like eccentrics. I like “different.” I’m glad to dwell amongst people who present interesting variations on the human theme. I love and care deeply about the transgendered persons in my life and want the best for them.  It just doesn’t seem clear what that is, and I am deeply unpersuaded that the activists know either.

     

     

     

    • #97
  8. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    This is “medical care.” It involves surgery and the application of hormones to effect an illusion. 

    Are there other disorders treated by merely providing the illusion of health?

    Call me cynical, but I think a lot of medical care is like that, at least when it comes to chronic conditions. Often, you can’t treat the disease, but you can mask symptoms, teach people with the condition special techniques to “pass” for more normal, etc.

    For a lot of people struggling with something chronic, building an illusion to present to the rest of the world is an important coping strategy, and it’s quite demoralizing when problems become too overwhelming to maintain the illusion.

    • #98
  9. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    CarolJoy (View Comment):

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    If there is nothing inherently wrong with being transgendered, why do those who have it need “care” (that milky little euphemism Planned Parenthood is so fond of ) and, more particularly, why do they need such dramatic and risky forms of care? And…what would a cure look like?

    Hence my question above, “Is autism?”

    If there is nothing inherently wrong with being autistic, why is it so often necessary to make extreme and disruptive accommodations for autistic people? And yet the neurodiversity and autistic rights movements claim both that there’s nothing wrong with autism and that autistics deserve a lot of special care. I think the logic is that autism isn’t the disease, the disease is poor coping that stems from insufficiently supportive and accepting intervention. And I think that’s the logic trans advocates are using: the disease isn’t the trans identity itself, but all that happens when the identity can’t be supported and accepted.

    I find debates about what constitutes the real disease a little beside the point, but it’s not lost on me why the autistic might not want their autism thought of as their “disease”, while non-autistic people, distressed by autistic behavior, may find something quite repugnant about not treating autism as a disease to be cured. There are also autists who do think of their autism as a disease, and non-autists willing to treat autism as something other than a disease. But I can see why autists, overall, have more interest in thinking of themselves as simply different, rather than diseased.

    If by autism, I assume you are meaning people who have Asperger’s syndrome as far as the discussion goes. People with a more serious form of autism are often children far into adult hood and old age. One young man I knew was 26 and still couldn’t put on his own socks and shoes. He did only what he wanted to do; otherwise he could become enraged.

    He was a pleasant enough person if he did get his own way, but destructive if he couldn’t. And of course, his parents were greatly concerned about what would become of him after they were gone. The household was quite affluent, so money was no problem, but the parents still had so many concerns about his future once they were no longer around. This 26 year old had the same concept of self that a four or six year old would have.

    I know. I do believe the neurodiversity and autistic rights movement means to include all autists, even the ones who aren’t high-functioning. Like you, I’m somewhat flummoxed by how they suppose this might be accomplished, since autism can be severe enough to leave people very low-functioning.

    • #99
  10. Ed G. Member
    Ed G.
    @EdG

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):

    CarolJoy (View Comment):
    If by autism, I assume you are meaning people who have Asperger’s syndrome as far as the discussion goes. People with a more serious form of autism are often children far into adult hood and old age. One young man I knew was 26 and still couldn’t put on his own socks and shoes. He did only what he wanted to do; otherwise he could become enraged.

    He was a pleasant enough person if he did get his own way, but destructive if he couldn’t. And of course, his parents were greatly concerned about what would become of him after they were gone. The household was quite affluent, so money was no problem, but the parents still had so many concerns about his future once they were no longer around. This 26 year old had the same concept of self that a four or six year old would have.

    This is the autism I am most familiar with, CarolJoy, when kids and adults thus afflicted get into difficulties and have to be rescued. (Otherwise…well, throughout, really….I am talking wayyyyyy beyond my pay grade!)

    Obviously (?) even a severe gender dysphoria isn’t akin to autism. The obvious comparison is with homosexuality. And, again, a lesbian does not require a doctor’s help (medication, surgery) in order to be a lesbian, though she could in theory seek therapy if she wanted to stop being a lesbian because her condition was painful to her or prevented her from living a full, contented life.

    The other obvious comparison is with the plastic surgery done to, say, prevent Jane Fonda from looking like what she biologically is—an eighty year old woman. I’m quite sure Jane would say that she doesn’t feel like an eighty year old so, dammit, she isn’t one! And so she goes about in (spectacularly effective) drag as a youthful forty-five.

    The plastic surgery comparison is a good one. There are times when it serves a medical purpose (burn victims) and other times when it doesn’t  (Jane Fonda). I’ve never really thought well of the cosmetic variety but I definitely support the medical kind. There can be gray areas, like if someone has lost a lot of weight the extra skin can actually be painful.

    So what’s the difference with gender reassignment surgery? Maybe I’m just rationalizing, but I think the difference is still repair vs enhancement vs changing function.

    • #100
  11. Nanda Panjandrum Member
    Nanda Panjandrum
    @

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    Like you, I’m somewhat flummoxed by how they suppose this might be accomplished, since autism can be severe enough to leave people very low-functioning.

    The rights vs. care dilemma has been/will always be with us…The “rights movement” should recognize a right to be competently, compassionately, supportively, cared-for.  Otherwise, it’s perpetrating its own form of abuse.

    • #101
  12. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    Obviously (?) even a severe gender dysphoria isn’t akin to autism.

    There are a disproportionate number of autistic people who feel trans, and they don’t think it’s obvious the conditions are not akin. The most severely autistic people cannot be reached for comment, of course, but many of those high-functioning enough to be mainstreamed claim there is a relationship between the two.

    Ed G. (View Comment):

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):

    …The other obvious comparison is with the plastic surgery done to, say, prevent Jane Fonda from looking like what she biologically is—an eighty year old woman. I’m quite sure Jane would say that she doesn’t feel like an eighty year old so, dammit, she isn’t one! And so she goes about in (spectacularly effective) drag as a youthful forty-five.

    The plastic surgery comparison is a good one. There are times when it serves a medical purpose (burn victims) and other times when it doesn’t (Jane Fonda). I’ve never really thought well of the cosmetic variety but I definitely support the medical kind. There can be gray areas, like if someone has lost a lot of weight the extra skin can actually be painful.

    Plastic surgery is interesting because there is a lot of gray area – it really can be difficult to distinguish the merely “medical” purposes from the social purposes. If the purpose of medicine is to help people function in the world in the bodies they have, helping people conform their bodies to social expectations ends up being part of that functioning.

    I know a sweet silver-haired lady with a medical condition that causes unusual skin laxity. She recently had a facelift just to look normal for her age, rather than like a shar-pei. With the facelift, she is also very beautiful (though she doesn’t look younger than her age), so what are we talking about here, “mere vanity” or conforming to social standards while having a defect which makes your biology genuinely abnormal?

    Artificial body alterations to conform to expectations can be taken to ridiculous extremes, of course. On the other hand, when your occupation is “actress”, part of performing your occupation is looking a certain way for the camera… It’s comical when an eighty year old wants to pass for forty-five, but when a fifty or sixty year old actress wants to retain the option of playing roles for forty-five year olds (makeup artists have an easier time aging you up than aging you down)… I can see how a desire to maintain versatility as a middle-aged actress results in alterations which, once one reaches eighty, look rather absurd.

     

    • #102
  13. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    All of the above makes sense to me—thank you everyone!

    When it comes to plastic surgery for actresses or human shar-peis or, for that matter, people with injuries that don’t particularly impair function but make the sufferer look really strange) one distinction might be that none of these persons believes that they are actually young, actually unafflicted with a disorder or actually uninjured, even if part of the result of the treatment is to allow a person to “pass” among strangers.  And why not? It’s tiresome to have to explain yourself, or to have children stare at you, and I’m sure it’s tiresome to be passed over for the role of an old lady because you look too much like…well, an old lady.

    Now, Jane Fonda could lie, and say she is fifty and people who don’t know her well might believe her. Transvestites do this quite successfully.   I’ve long thought that when I dress up for a party or something, I am in effect in drag: I look “female” according to a definition of female that, most of the time, I don’t resemble at all…and this actually made me feel slightly guilty when, in my youth, a boy would hit on me at a party or something. He thought I really was someone who, for example,  normally wore makeup or fashionable clothing, and how disappointed he was sure to be by the reality?

    Jane Fonda can openly say “well, yeah, I’m eighty but I need to look younger to get acting gigs” and everyone gets that.  If she insisted she actually was younger …and the surgery and whatnot merely revealed the real reality, and she had a right to claim her identity as a forty-year-old, and everyone else was obliged to agree with her..that’s different. Isn’t it?

     

     

     

     

     

    • #103
  14. Ed G. Member
    Ed G.
    @EdG

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    All of the above makes sense to me—thank you everyone!

    When it comes to plastic surgery for actresses or human shar-peis or, for that matter, people with injuries that don’t particularly impair function but make the sufferer look really strange) one distinction might be that none of these persons believes that they are actually young, actually unafflicted with a disorder or actually uninjured, even if part of the result of the treatment is to allow a person to “pass” among strangers. And why not? It’s tiresome to have to explain yourself, or to have children stare at you, and I’m sure it’s tiresome to be passed over for the role of an old lady because you look too much like…well, an old lady.

    Now, Jane Fonda could lie, and say she is fifty and people who don’t know her well might believe her. Transvestites do this quite successfully. I’ve long thought that when I dress up for a party or something, I am in effect in drag: I look “female” according to a definition of female that, most of the time, I don’t resemble at all…and this actually made me feel slightly guilty when, in my youth, a boy would hit on me at a party or something. He thought I really was someone who, for example, normally wore makeup or fashionable clothing, and how disappointed he was sure to be by the reality?

    Jane Fonda can openly say “well, yeah, I’m eighty but I need to look younger to get acting gigs” and everyone gets that. If she insisted she actually was younger …and the surgery and whatnot merely revealed the real reality, and she had a right to claim her identity as a forty-year-old, and everyone else was obliged to agree with her..that’s different. Isn’t it?

    Yes, that is different alright. I may have an opinion on the rest but I wouldn’t favor legislating it. I certainly oppose having that legislation compel me to accept a reality I know to be untrue.

    • #104
  15. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Nanda Panjandrum (View Comment):

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    Like you, I’m somewhat flummoxed by how they suppose this might be accomplished, since autism can be severe enough to leave people very low-functioning.

    The rights vs. care dilemma has been/will always be with us…The “rights movement” should recognize a right to be competently, compassionately, supportively, cared-for. Otherwise, it’s perpetrating its own form of abuse.

    And I think it’s reasonable to believe that in a civilized society, the able-bodied/well should be willing to go out of their way to make sure that a disabled or ill person has the chance to fulfill her own potential with only the considerable barriers the disease or disability itself enforces. I don’t know how one frames that as a “right,” but I certainly think it is a reasonable expectation. Ramps and elevators in public buildings, handicapped parking and stalls in restrooms are more than worth whatever minor inconvenience they may impose on the temporarily able-bodied. Who would want to live in a society that doesn’t provide help to people who need it?

    In this, I agree with those who want universal healthcare; we all do, in the sense that we all want sick people to be taken care of even if they are poor. What we differ on is the means to that end.

    And I suppose we all want people with gender dysphoria to be well and happy, if not actually euphoric. The question is of means, not ends.  Progressives seem bent on imposing means that not only cause all sorts of additional suffering, they seldom solve the original problem, and I am—sadly—pretty sure that when the dust settles from the transgenderism fad, the dysphoric will still be dysphoric, and a lot of harm will have been done.

    • #105
  16. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):
    There are a disproportionate number of autistic people who feel trans, and they don’t think it’s obvious the conditions are not akin.

    I mostly meant they are unlike in terms of the degree of disability they confer upon the person, not whether they are connected phenomena neurologically. I did not know that they are: how interesting!

     

    • #106
  17. Painter Jean Moderator
    Painter Jean
    @PainterJean

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    This is “medical care.” It involves surgery and the application of hormones to effect an illusion.

    Are there other disorders treated by merely providing the illusion of health?

    Call me cynical, but I think a lot of medical care is like that, at least when it comes to chronic conditions. Often, you can’t treat the disease, but you can mask symptoms, teach people with the condition special techniques to “pass” for more normal, etc.

    For a lot of people struggling with something chronic, building an illusion to present to the rest of the world is an important coping strategy, and it’s quite demoralizing when problems become too overwhelming to maintain the illusion.

    I’ve enjoyed these discussions – much good food for thought. But what’s missing, I believe, is recognition of an obvious element present in the trans-rights movement: it is one more effort to do away with traditional norms about gender and sexuality. It is a stick to beat the Judeo-Christian concept of what man is with. It has a political dimension.

    • #107
  18. Nanda Panjandrum Member
    Nanda Panjandrum
    @

    Kate, may I emphasize that the “right to care” was invoked above re: those whose limits are too severe to allow them to make use of accommodations effectively without support, perhaps to a greater degree, than those at other spots on a continuum – not just in relationship to the world at large? (Your 4-year-old in a young-adult body was my referent here.)  Thanks!

    • #108
  19. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Painter Jean (View Comment):

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    This is “medical care.” It involves surgery and the application of hormones to effect an illusion.

    Are there other disorders treated by merely providing the illusion of health?

    Call me cynical, but I think a lot of medical care is like that, at least when it comes to chronic conditions. Often, you can’t treat the disease, but you can mask symptoms, teach people with the condition special techniques to “pass” for more normal, etc.

    For a lot of people struggling with something chronic, building an illusion to present to the rest of the world is an important coping strategy, and it’s quite demoralizing when problems become too overwhelming to maintain the illusion.

    I’ve enjoyed these discussions – much good food for thought. But what’s missing, I believe, is recognition of an obvious element present in the trans-rights movement: it is one more effort to do away with traditional norms about gender and sexuality. It is a stick to beat the Judeo-Christian concept of what man is with. It has a political dimension.

    I was thinking about this too, PainterJean.

    There is the phenomenon itself—a disorder.

    There is gender dysphoria mixed in with discontent about gender roles more generally (my affliction).

    There is the way it is seen and interpreted by family members (“Just a phase” or “the TRUTH”)

    There is the relationship it bears, or might bear, with other variations in human sexuality (e.g. the LGB part of the acronym)

    There is the relationship it bears, or might bear, with other mental health issues (Asbergers, autism, OCD)

    And then there is the use that is being made of it by activists who are not, in many cases, the people with the most to lose.

    It matters in a wider sense how these individual human difficulties are understood in the wider world.

    There is reason for optimism, I think, insofar as it is actually fairly difficult to completely upend biological reality. When push comes to shove, the vast majority of men and the vast majority of women understand themselves to be what they are.  Women are too powerful and too selfish to yield completely to an agenda that disadvantages us far more than it does men. (How many men are going to lose a slot on an Olympic team to a male-in-name-only shotputter?)

    • #109
  20. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    All of which is to say that I think the Transgender Agenda will, in the long run, damage the progressives politically. Americans are a tolerant bunch and generally relatively socially liberal at least in the “live and let live” sense, but I think our tolerance for being pushed around is pretty limited.  And our diversity actually is strength, insofar as progressives, determined to maintain ideological purity, push out women, conservative (or just centrist) black people, hispanics, Asians, Jews, gays, lesbians, feminists, centrists, ambivalent pro-Choicers… black conservatives are already known as “skinfolk, not kinfolk” and of course, feminists who object to including persons with penises in the category of “woman” are shunned.

    In America, progressivism may eventually prove to be self-limiting. One hopes, anyway.

     

    • #110
  21. Kate Braestrup Member
    Kate Braestrup
    @GrannyDude

    Nanda Panjandrum (View Comment):
    Kate, may I emphasize that the “right to care” was invoked above re: those whose limits are too severe to allow them to make use of accommodations effectively without support, perhaps to a greater degree, than those at other spots on a continuum – not just in relationship to the world at large? (Your 4-year-old in a young-adult body was my referent here.) Thanks!

    I am bringing up was is probably an abstruse point that isn’t really germane to the discussion: do we have a right to healthcare?

    Which I gather, from other threads here at Ricochet, a different question from “should we, as a good society,  take care of people who need it?”

    To which I answer “absolutely,” with the ramps and whatnot merely being stand-ins for other, perhaps more complicated and resource-intensive offerings. Like, say, really excellent mental hospitals where the severely mentally ill can receive the sort of care and education that promotes actual recovery and offers a chance at a real life, for instance.

     

    • #111
  22. Painter Jean Moderator
    Painter Jean
    @PainterJean

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    All of which is to say that I think the Transgender Agenda will, in the long run, damage the progressives politically. Americans are a tolerant bunch and generally relatively socially liberal at least in the “live and let live” sense, but I think our tolerance for being pushed around is pretty limited. And our diversity actually is strength, insofar as progressives, determined to maintain ideological purity, push out women, conservative (or just centrist) black people, hispanics, Asians, Jews, gays, lesbians, feminists, centrists, ambivalent pro-Choicers… black conservatives are already known as “skinfolk, not kinfolk” and of course, feminists who object to including persons with penises in the category of “woman” are shunned.

    In America, progressivism may eventually prove to be self-limiting. One hopes, anyway.

    I think that the transgender agenda already has damaged progressivism. There has been substantial pushback to the bathroom issue – as you say, Americans are generally a pretty tolerant bunch, but when it comes to an issue where it can affect them and their children personally – having guys in women’s bathrooms – it is a bridge too far.

    I believe, by the way, that John Hopkins hospitals will not do “sex reassignment surgeries” (what I consider genital mutilation), because the relief that such surgeries bring has been shown to be of short duration, and the elevated suicidal rates in that group return.

    • #112
  23. Nanda Panjandrum Member
    Nanda Panjandrum
    @

    Painter Jean (View Comment):

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    All of which is to say that I think the Transgender Agenda will, in the long run, damage the progressives politically. Americans are a tolerant bunch and generally relatively socially liberal at least in the “live and let live” sense, but I think our tolerance for being pushed around is pretty limited. And our diversity actually is strength, insofar as progressives, determined to maintain ideological purity, push out women, conservative (or just centrist) black people, hispanics, Asians, Jews, gays, lesbians, feminists, centrists, ambivalent pro-Choicers… black conservatives are already known as “skinfolk, not kinfolk” and of course, feminists who object to including persons with penises in the category of “woman” are shunned.

    In America, progressivism may eventually prove to be self-limiting. One hopes, anyway.

    I think that the transgender agenda already has damaged progressivism. There has been substantial pushback to the bathroom issue – as you say, Americans are generally a pretty tolerant bunch, but when it comes to an issue where it can affect them and their children personally – having guys in women’s bathrooms – it is a bridge too far.

    I believe, by the way, that John Hopkins hospitals will not do “sex reassignment surgeries” (what I consider genital mutilation), because the relief that such surgeries bring has been shown to be of short duration, and the elevated suicidal rates in that group return.

    The psychiatrist, Dr. Paul McHugh, who was on the team that pioneered the surgery @ Johns Hopkins now advises against doing it, for the reasons @painterjean cites.

    • #113
  24. Painter Jean Moderator
    Painter Jean
    @PainterJean

    Nanda Panjandrum (View Comment):

    Painter Jean (View Comment):

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    All of which is to say that I think the Transgender Agenda will, in the long run, damage the progressives politically. Americans are a tolerant bunch and generally relatively socially liberal at least in the “live and let live” sense, but I think our tolerance for being pushed around is pretty limited. And our diversity actually is strength, insofar as progressives, determined to maintain ideological purity, push out women, conservative (or just centrist) black people, hispanics, Asians, Jews, gays, lesbians, feminists, centrists, ambivalent pro-Choicers… black conservatives are already known as “skinfolk, not kinfolk” and of course, feminists who object to including persons with penises in the category of “woman” are shunned.

    In America, progressivism may eventually prove to be self-limiting. One hopes, anyway.

    I think that the transgender agenda already has damaged progressivism. There has been substantial pushback to the bathroom issue – as you say, Americans are generally a pretty tolerant bunch, but when it comes to an issue where it can affect them and their children personally – having guys in women’s bathrooms – it is a bridge too far.

    I believe, by the way, that John Hopkins hospitals will not do “sex reassignment surgeries” (what I consider genital mutilation), because the relief that such surgeries bring has been shown to be of short duration, and the elevated suicidal rates in that group return.

    The doc who pioneered the surgery @ Johns Hopkins now advises against doing it, for the reasons @painterjean cites.

    Hah – after I posted the above, I got to wondering — isn’t it “Johns” and not “John”?

    Yes, not only do the problems return, now there are mutilated body parts. This is just jaw-droppingly crazy, and I am appalled that there are those in the medical profession that will do this sort of thing. But then, there are people who are quite happy to perform abortions, so perhaps my being appalled is a sign of my naivete.

    • #114
  25. Nanda Panjandrum Member
    Nanda Panjandrum
    @

    Painter Jean (View Comment):
    naivete.

    Hardly, it’s a reaction to be expected if one views the body as a reflection of the imago Dei; pray that it never stops happening. Dr. Paul McHugh is a psychiatrist who was part of the original program at Hopkins – and whose research led him to support a moratorium on reassignment surgery – is now pilloried in nearly every quarter.  (The hospital recently resumed offering surgery, incidentally.)

    • #115
  26. Painter Jean Moderator
    Painter Jean
    @PainterJean

    Nanda Panjandrum (View Comment):
    (The hospital recently resumed offering surgery, incidentally.)

    I didn’t know that. Clearly a decision because of societal pressures, and not sound medicine.

    From the Hippocratic Oath – “I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing. Neither will I administer a poison to anybody when asked to do so, nor will I suggest such a course.  Similarly I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion.”

    And progressives call that progress!

     

     

    • #116
  27. Joe P Member
    Joe P
    @JoeP

    Painter Jean (View Comment):
    Yes, not only do the problems return, now there are mutilated body parts. This is just jaw-droppingly crazy, and I am appalled that there are those in the medical profession that will do this sort of thing. But then, there are people who are quite happy to perform abortions, so perhaps my being appalled is a sign of my naivete.

    When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. When you are a surgeon, every problem can be fixed with surgery.

    • #117
  28. Midget Faded Rattlesnake Member
    Midget Faded Rattlesnake
    @Midge

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    When it comes to plastic surgery for actresses or human shar-peis or, for that matter, people with injuries that don’t particularly impair function but make the sufferer look really strange) one distinction might be that none of these persons believes that they are actually young, actually unafflicted with a disorder or actually uninjured, even if part of the result of the treatment is to allow a person to “pass” among strangers.

    I realize not everyone who gets sex reassignment treatments is looking to pass as convincingly-gendered (pardon the awful neologism, but it’s the best I can think of, given how these words are currently used), but some are. What’s baffling to outsiders is that they see the affliction of their brain-body mismatch as one cured by modifying body parts rather than by modifying mental state.

    Evidently, those who go through partial sex reassignment in order to present to the world as gender-bending aren’t trying to pass among strangers, but those who can pass after reassignment arguably have acted as if they were afflicted with a disorder, which was cured by the reassignment: they treated an affliction of brain-body mismatch by altering their appearance rather than their perception and cognition.

    If the goal is to try to talk people out of sex reassignment treatments, I’m not sure how helpful it is to label them delusional. Rather, they have an understandable problem – they may never feel comfortable in the body they were born with. OK. So, what’s the best way for them to get through life with the sex characteristics they were born with, knowing that they may always feel alienated from them? We can’t promise them we can make them feel “normal” about themselves (especially not through sheer force of moral reasoning alone), or that they will have happy lives if they stay in the bodies they were born with: they may always experience the bodies they were born with as a drag act they didn’t voluntarily sign up for.

    There are many ways to feel alienated from one’s body. In some sense, it’s not such an uncommon problem. I gather, though, that the transgender have it worse in two ways: the degree of the alienation seems considerably worse than most people’s, and the topic of their alienation, sex and sexuality, is too fraught to avoid being unsettling and awkward to a great many people. Sex is partly biological and partly a performance – there really is such a thing as “performing gender”, as you yourself note:

    Kate Braestrup (View Comment):
    I’ve long thought that when I dress up for a party or something, I am in effect in drag: I look “female” according to a definition of female that, most of the time, I don’t resemble at all…and this actually made me feel slightly guilty when, in my youth, a boy would hit on me at a party or something. He thought I really was someone who, for example, normally wore makeup or fashionable clothing, and how disappointed he was sure to be by the reality?

    As far as the trans-autism connection goes, speaking as someone who comes from a family of terminally socially awkward (I don’t think any of us is on the “spectrum”, but we might be mistaken for it by the well-meaning), for the socially-awkward, all social performance is a drag act, pretty much. Could that be related to why so many autistic people feel trans?

    • #118
  29. Painter Jean Moderator
    Painter Jean
    @PainterJean

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    I realize not everyone who gets sex reassignment treatments is looking to pass as convincingly-gendered (pardon the awful neologism, but it’s the best I can think of, given how these words are currently used), but some are. What’s baffling to outsiders is that they see the affliction of their brain-body mismatch as one cured by modifying body parts rather than by modifying mental state.

     

    Yes, it is baffling. It suggests that the problem really can be fixed with altering the body, as if the problem was with the body and not the mind. Studies show that the risks for suicide, etc. are not alleviated, at least not long-term. I was looking at a long-term study done in Sweden which followed 324 sex-reassigned individuals from 1973 to 2003.  The conclusion states: “Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group.”

     

    Evidently, those who go through partial sex reassignment in order to present to the world as gender-bending aren’t trying to pass among strangers, but those who can pass after reassignment arguably have acted as if they were afflicted with a disorder, which was cured by the reassignment: they treated an affliction of brain-body mismatch by altering their appearance rather than their perception and cognition.

     

    But their disorder wasn’t “cured”. How could it be?

     

    So, what’s the best way for them to get through life with the sex characteristics they were born with, knowing that they may always feel alienated from them? We can’t promise them we can make them feel “normal” about themselves (especially not through sheer force of moral reasoning alone), or that they will have happy lives if they stay in the bodies they were born with: they may always experience the bodies they were born with as a drag act they didn’t voluntarily sign up for.

     

    Agreed, but surely drastic surgery which mutilates otherwise healthy body parts should not be an answer, especially as it doesn’t “cure” the problem in question. (And, of course, any kind of surgery has inherent risks of infection, etc.) Yes, there are some surveys which show improvement in quality-of-life measures, but these were short-term. You used the phrase above, “to get through life” – this suggests the need for long-term solutions or, if solutions are simply non-existent (which is a possibility), then coping strategies that can be used throughout life.

     

     

    • #119
  30. Nanda Panjandrum Member
    Nanda Panjandrum
    @

    Painter Jean (View Comment):

    Midget Faded Rattlesnake (View Comment):

    I realize not everyone who gets sex reassignment treatments is looking to pass as convincingly-gendered (pardon the awful neologism, but it’s the best I can think of, given how these words are currently used), but some are. What’s baffling to outsiders is that they see the affliction of their brain-body mismatch as one cured by modifying body parts rather than by modifying mental state.

    Yes, it is baffling. It suggests that the problem really can be fixed with altering the body, as if the problem was with the body and not the mind. Studies show that the risks for suicide, etc. are not alleviated, at least not long-term. I was looking at a long-term study done in Sweden which followed 324 sex-reassigned individuals from 1973 to 2003. The conclusion states: “Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group.”

    Evidently, those who go through partial sex reassignment in order to present to the world as gender-bending aren’t trying to pass among strangers, but those who can pass after reassignment arguably have acted as if they were afflicted with a disorder, which was cured by the reassignment: they treated an affliction of brain-body mismatch by altering their appearance rather than their perception and cognition.

    But their disorder wasn’t “cured”. How could it be?

    So, what’s the best way for them to get through life with the sex characteristics they were born with, knowing that they may always feel alienated from them? We can’t promise them we can make them feel “normal” about themselves (especially not through sheer force of moral reasoning alone), or that they will have happy lives if they stay in the bodies they were born with: they may always experience the bodies they were born with as a drag act they didn’t voluntarily sign up for.

    Agreed, but surely drastic surgery which mutilates otherwise healthy body parts should not be an answer, especially as it doesn’t “cure” the problem in question. (And, of course, any kind of surgery has inherent risks of infection, etc.) Yes, there are some surveys which show improvement in quality-of-life measures, but these were short-term. You used the phrase above, “to get through life” – this suggests the need for long-term solutions or, if solutions are simply non-existent (which is a possibility), then coping strategies that can be used throughout life.

    The bearing of burdens/coping – willingly – doesn’t seem to be an option, these days, does it?

    • #120
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