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A Question of Birth
This is an honest question.
For many years, before we even heard about the LGBT movement (with increasing letters added), we heard from the gay community that being gay was a matter of birth. The reason a person is gay is because they were “born that way.” There was an assumption there is a genetic disposition to gay orientation, so it is wrong to even suggest that a gay person could change. California legislators came to believe it was necessary to pass laws against “conversion therapy” because it would be wrong to try to change how someone is “born.”
But now we hear that if a person is born physiologically male or female, and comes to feel that they were “born in the wrong body,” it is necessary to perform surgery to change their body to correspond to the way they feel. Even for adolescents (a time in life when feelings are extreme and transitory) should have access to procedures to change gender, if they feel uncomfortable in their bodies.
So the question: Why it is morally wrong to even suggest an adolescent (or an adult) should pursue therapy to “change the way they were born” but morally imperative for an adolescent (or adult) be provided with surgery to change the way they were born?
Published in Healthcare
My guess is that he has had some treatment at some point to make enduring his condition better. My loved one, for example, takes medication and various kinds of therapeutic intervention so that the disorder no longer prevents her (quite as much, anyway) from leading a normal life.
Side note—acute mental illnesses are actually considered to be far more disabling than a lot of conditions that would appear to be far more catastrophic. Knowing what I know now, if I had to choose, I’d rather lose both arms than endure “Bipolar One With Psychotic Features.” And I’d far rather be a lesbian than be a woman who earnestly and painfully believes that she is supposed to have a male body but somehow got gypped out of the “right” suit of flesh.
Medical marijuana is a decent remedy for someone who is bi polar. It is working well for people with that diagnosis who are aware of their ability to use a mild type of cannabis for the ailment.
There are hundreds of various strains of medical cannabis. Some make a person energized and happy; others are more sedating. A close friend uses a strain that is energizing during the day and he uses a different strain if ingesting it at night.
The good thing about it is that it doesn’t have any of the serious side effects the TV commercials list for the prescription meds. Only minor amounts are needed, so it is not costly.
If someone has sobriety issues, they could turn to CBD oil, which has no ability to get a person high. The problem with CBD oil used to be that it carried massive penalties, but now those penalties have been eliminated for anyone with a doctor’s prescription.
I don’t think that, in humans (or in certain other species, Bonobos being the obvious) sex has only one biological purpose. It certainly has a primary biological purpose, but because human beings are complex creatures, it has developed all sorts of other purposes that do actually serve the cause of procreation, albeit by indirect means.
“Procreation” in human beings is not a simple process; it’s not just a matter of getting the female pregnant, getting the baby born and then looking after it for a few weeks while it gets its spindly legs under it. Instead, we’re talking about prolonged, almost-total helplessness requiring very long and intensive investment. This doesn’t just mean that human babies need both parents, they need as many relatives as can be roped into the project of getting them through at least a decade and a half of protected growth. At times, they need step-parents, and step-grandparents, and Mom’s former mother-in-law.
Marriage and thus human society depends upon our ability to inaugurate an extended family (with its manifold responsibilities, duties and prerogatives) in a sexual pair-bond. So maybe that’s why we have the blessing/curse of experiencing sexuality as a creative rather than only procreative way?
So in the long sense you are agreeing that sex has one purpose, procreation. Anything secondary to that is about procreation, not about some individual ideal or relationship. It’s about getting that DNA into the next generation.
Unfortunately procreation is that simple, and that happens (the number of single mothers is growing, not declining). If the female becomes impregnated and decides to have the child then the male will have successfully passed on his genetic code. Mission accomplished.
As evidenced by the plight of single mothers in low income areas the extended family, and a father, is not necessary for raising a child to adulthood. It helps, a ton no doubt, but that does not mean it is required. Just because it produces on average better offspring does not mean it is necessary to produce offspring, don’t confuse the necessary with the sufficient.
A complicated human society may require such for stability but human society in the broad sense does not, as history can testify. Even today modern society still carries on with a growing number of single mothers. Perhaps complicated societies can take it, to a certain limit.
As it turns out, however, genes we might count as “ours” pass not only to our own children but to our siblings’ children as well. And to our grandchildren. One explanation for why women go through menopause —but don’t simply die—is that kids with grandmas out digging up magongo nuts to share with the grandchildren do better than kids whose grandmas are either dead or busy with their own next litters.
And one theory for why homosexuality persists in the species is that the children of a sister might be more likely to survive and thrive if her brother, their gay uncle, makes avuncular investments in her children rather than making his own. After all, his nieces and nephews also carry his genes.
The post-menopausal granny or gay uncle don’t have to invest as much as a parent would; small differences in resources (calories, protein, protection from enemies) can have a surprisingly big effect on individual survival rates and thus in the direction of the group over time.
Then there’s the interesting question WesternC brought up: is sodomy (variously defined) the thing that’s wrong, or only gay or lesbian sodomy? Because there’s very little that gay men or lesbians do to and with their partners that heterosexuals don’t.
The only element of sex that is actually procreative is intercourse. Remember Bill Clinton’s attempt to claim he didn’t “have sex” with Monica Lewinsky? Nobody bought it because it wasn’t true. All the extra this-and-that (read the Song of Solomon in the Bible for ideas) is also sex, not just because it can make orgasms happen —orgasms are a means to an end not an end in themselves, evolutionarily speaking—but because these behaviors increase not just the pleasure but also, and crucially, the bonding quality that sex in the more expanded sense (kissing, embracing, fondling, blah blah) can have.
You and I would agree that children do better when raised in families led by a bonded pair. That human beings are capable of and inclined to do sexually-pleasurable things that don’t actually bring sperm into contact with egg isn’t a mistake or a perversion per se. It is, at least potentially, good for the relationship and therefore good for the kids and therefore, in this very broad sense, “procreative.”
BTW, the fact that a human behavior is natural or procreative doesn’t mean it’s good. For purposes of impregnating females, rape works fine. Adultery and promiscuity can be viable reproductive strategies under certain situations.
But if the definition of “disordered” we’re after is not scientific but is rather theological— “out of alignment with God/love” —-then rape, adultery and promiscuity (enabled by welfare, abortion and birth control/antibiotics) are obviously disordered in a way that, IMHO, homosexuality in itself is not.
Obviously kin share similar genes, that is why they are kin, but the objective is the continuation of the DNA—which is what sex is aimed at. So the point stands.
As I mentioned that increases quality of offspring and even helps keep offspring alive in some cases, but it is not necessary, just sufficient. It is additional, not at the core.
The bonding, which is not that much, is additional. If it was necessary then there would be no children raised by single mothers. Evolution is sexual and natural selection. Natural selection eliminates those with traits unsuitable for an environment, the always loud mice gets eaten by the owl, but sexual selection, which for roughly the past 10,000 years as been done by women, selects what traits are considered best and are feasible—the tallest, most taper body, darkest hair, deepest voice.
As evidenced by the population of single mothers there is something successful in the strategy of impregnating and leaving females, otherwise it the number of single mothers would remain stagnant.
On average yes, not every pair is a good fit—hence divorce. Also pairs where some offspring are from the mother and other mate, infidelity or child from a previous marriage, have higher rates of disatisfaction and other negative side effects because of perceived capacity for infidelity and misallocated resources.
It would be using the functions for a purpose they were not designed for. And again evolution accounts for this. For the male it is advantageous to acquire as many mates as possible. It increases the chance of getting his DNA into the next generation. So the male most capable of experiencing pleasure from sex, and deemed a worthy mate by females, would be the most likely to engage in it and spread his DNA. Overtime his DNA would become dominant so that all males would feel considerable pleasure from sex. The pleasure is not related to bonding, it’s related to sex. So it’s procreative, not bonding.
For comparison there are species where actual (both sexual and social) monogamy is regularly observed, gibbons and prairie voles. In those species both mates actually bond because massive boosts of bonding hormone (in humans it is oxytocin for women and vasopressin for men) is triggered during mating that makes them bond to that other mate for the duration of their lives and have sex with no one else. Humans, and most species, do not have that same phenomena. Humans experience some, but it fades and usually lasts for around 5-7 years (which is long enough for the child to become relatively scrappy and self-sufficient).
I don’t think I have made that argument.
Promiscuity is quite in America and some reports have found around 25% to 33% of men cheat, so it seems quite successful. The median number of sexual partners is around 5 for men and women—adjusting for men reporting higher and women reporting lower. Only 5% of women, and practically no men, are virgins on their wedding night according to some rather recent research.
Depends on how you view God. If one of God’s definingly good traits is his creative power (be fruitful and multiply) then using that which is creative for non-creative purposes would be disordered. That of course presupposes God but what God would command monogamy from such a deeply polygynous species, especially when he created the species?
It does depend, very much, on how I view God.
My view is that God is love. In other words, love is the point and purpose of human life at the very least and possibly the point of all life and, indeed, all existence. I can make a pitch for the latter, and do in fact believe it, but sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof, and so I make a humbler claim: whatever the rocks, marmosets and ferns are doing, human beings are here to love. I don’t mean romantic love (this isn’t an argument for an emotional orgy) but big love, agape and caritas, to be brought to bear on all the ordinary-animal things human beings do (procreate being a biggie) as well as on the astonishing, peculiarly-human things we do. Love God, love your neighbor is God’s relentless, implacable and impossible demand that we manage (?) to fulfill just often enough to keep enough of us in the game.
I like what @iWe says: that God’s creation is unfinished and we are participants in its completion.
Could Be Anyone: It would be using the functions for a purpose they were not designed for. And again evolution accounts for this. For the male it is advantageous to acquire as many mates as possible. It increases the chance of getting his DNA into the next generation. So the male most capable of experiencing pleasure from sex, and deemed a worthy mate by females, would be the most likely to engage in it and spread his DNA. Overtime his DNA would become dominant so that all males would feel considerable pleasure from sex. The pleasure is not related to bonding, it’s related to sex. So it’s procreative, not bonding.
For comparison there are species where actual (both sexual and social) monogamy is regularly observed, gibbons and prairie voles. In those species both mates actually bond because massive boosts of bonding hormone (in humans it is oxytocin for women and vasopressin for men) is triggered during mating that makes them bond to that other mate for the duration of their lives and have sex with no one else. Humans, and most species, do not have that same phenomena. Humans experience some, but it fades and usually lasts for around 5-7 years (which is long enough for the child to become relatively scrappy and self-sufficient).
I think you and I more or less agree about the evolutionary puzzle, though my reading on the subject has taught me (more than once) that the process is far more complicated and thus more interesting than it would seem. Nature can and has achieved apparently similar results using wildly different pathways—the gray wolf and the Tasmanian “wolf” being beautiful examples of this.
For instance, it is possible that the oxytocin/vasopressin boost that creates the bond in prairie voles is replaced in human beings with the combination of cognitive decision-making and social pressure, both of which are perfectly natural, neurologically mediated phenomena.
Prairie voles and gibbons presumably can’t be counted upon to do even the rudimentary cost-benefit analysis required to determine whether cheating on your missus is really a good idea, given that it would really hurt your wife’s feelings, everyone in the village would condemn you, your children would hate you and you’d have to look at an adulterer every morning while you shave. What is it men will say to each other? “Think with the big head not the little one?”
Gibbons and prairie voles don’t have to think and can’t. For them, it’s oxytocin or bust, and since pair-bonding is important to their infants survival, oxytocin it is. For us…? Now, it is quite likely that oxytocin/vasopression works better—more consistently and effectively—than the cobbled-together monogamy strategy of humans. But cobbled-together strategies are flexible and adaptive in ways that simpler binary (oxy or no oxy?) processes are not. And human beings are nothing if not flexible and adaptive. It is our blessing and our curse.
While it is true that impregnating women and abandoning them ought to present itself as a viable strategy for a male presented with the opportunity (hence the willingness to do, or at least risk this, e.g. prostitution, hook-ups, affairs, rape etc) the offspring who result from this are far less likely to survive at all, let alone to survive to adulthood and procreate themselves, and the genes aren’t just trying (sorry about the anthropomorphizing) to get themselves into a baby, but to perpetuate themselves through the baby’s baby, so to speak.
One recognizable strategy is to have one mother/baby combo that the father makes a big investment in while taking the opportunity to do as many hail-mary impregnation attempts (that is, sex acts with other people) on the side as he can get away with. But of course, this means that all the other males are going to be trying to do the hail-mary thing with his woman, and since his genes don’t want him wasting his paternal investment nurturing some other dude’s gene-survival-pods, he’ll have to spend at least some time and energy defending his woman.
Hence, maniacal jealousy. (Still a big motivator for male violence against women and against other men the world over! Even a big motivator for domestic violence between gay male couples as well, since homosexuality doesn’t change everything, just tweaks the basic pattern.)
And hence the beginning of increasingly formalized male-male agreements about who gets to do what to whom…
And hence the desire men feel to be loved and needed by a trustworthy mate, and the pride and pleasure men take in having a family.
Single motherhood is bound to increase when male paternal investment has been replaced with government funds. What has not been replaced, however, is the salutogenic effect of husband/fatherhood/family both for children and for the men and women involved. Obviously, children survive being reared by single mothers. My own children had to do it after their father died; the extended family created by our marriage (that is, the socially-recognized and supported sexual pair-bond) was a huge factor in this. But statistics show that even when material well-being is accounted for, whether by life insurance benefits or welfare, children thus reared are statistically at higher risk for all sorts of negative outcomes. Negative, that is, not just for them but for their chances of producing more gene-survival-pods. Hard to have babies when you’ve been imprisoned, committed suicide, died of a drug overdose or been murdered.
Anyway, we could happily go on exploring this for thousands of comments without reaching the end of it, which is sort of the point I’d want to make about what is and isn’t “natural.” Lots of very weird stuff is natural, in the sense that it is potentially if not immediately explicable by reference to biological theories. It’s worth reminding oneself of the risk of creating both a God of the gaps and a sort of “science of the gaps,” e.g. we don’t know why homosexuality might somehow work in a Darwinian sense, and so it must be an “unnatural” or diseased state.
The same would be true of transgenderism, of course, except—as I’ve noted—while homosexuality might offend me (it doesn’t, BTW) transgenderism hurts the person who has it. Whatever nature is willing to put up with in the way of pain (hint: Lots) love demands that we alleviate suffering wherever we can.
One of the big problems with identity politics, and Kate touched on this a few times in this thread, is that it attempts to take a complex, multifaceted human being with all their individual hopes and aspirations, unique histories, talents and abilities, and define them down to just one narrow aspect as if that is somehow the very quintessence of who they are as a person.
This understanding of the self — that skin color or gender or sexuality is just one of many wide and varied aspects of a person, not the absolute core of a person’s identity — would seem to be the key to defeating identity politics, but I’ve found in personal interactions that it’s very hard to break through that sort of group-identity programming. We are tribal. I’ve actually encountered anger at the suggestion that there’s more to a person than their group-identifier, as if by making that suggestion I’m somehow taking away something they hold dear. It’s like this thing they carry around that they won’t let go of, and it prevents one from becoming a whole person.
We all have those things we carry around, of course, but I think identity politics is a bit like a religion devoted to the carrying around of those things.
I’m reminded of the character of Frank Smith from Lewis’s The Great Divorce, toting around a puppet of himself on a chain and presenting that to the world rather than allowing his genuine self to emerge and be loved.
Not really relevant, but a chance to quote one of my favorite movie lines, from Roxanne:
Roxanne Kowalski: We just ran out of gas. I guess I mistook sex for love.
Sandy: Oh, I did that once. It was great.