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TechnoratiFocus on gender politics: Is changing gender as simple as changing clothes?
Newsweek recently painted a sympathetic portrait of women imprisoned in men's bodies. Such people need a psychiatrist, not a surgeon.
Political correctness is not only contrary to the spirit of the First Amendment of the American Constitution but also makes for soporific discourse. Newsweek’s recent cover story on transgenders certainly proves that the priests of tolerance and diversity have successfully exorcised the ghost of satirist H.L. Menken from the mainstream media. Newsweek’s coverage was so saccharine that I needed wet wipes after each page.
An issue involving sex and castration should generate a lot of hotly disputed questions. Unhappily, Newsweek relegated any dispute to the usual evangelical bogeyman, with mild scepticism replacing controversy. After all, it averred, we can’t really know the difference between men and women, or male and female. Even the experts at the International Olympic Committee plead ignorance, it was claimed, when it comes to "scientifically" differentiating between a man and a woman. (If East Germany still existed I guess that its athletes could get their medals back!)
At conception, men and women are bestowed an unchanging role in the procreation of offspring. As male and female, we can either participate or not participate in that relationship; but we can’t switch roles. We can't be reassigned.
Newsweek also avoided the other key debate about this difficult issue: whether or not transgenders have a mental illness or merely an inconsequential desire. The word "transgender" is a neologism coined by activists to denote people who at least sometimes identify themselves with the opposite sex. Typically, these folks are transsexuals and/or transvestites. Both transsexuals and transvestites have been in the psychiatric "Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders" (DSM). Transvestitism is intense sexual arousal to women’s clothing. Transsexuals identify themselves as the opposite sex. In 1980, transsexualism was added to the third edition of DSM. In 1994, the term "gender identity disorder" replaced transsexualism.
Doctors get involved because transsexuals often demand hormones and surgery to fulfill their desires. But are physicians enabling a mental illness or merely complying with a cosmetic request?
Many transgender activists object to the "crazy" label. The brother/sister of actors, Rosanna, David and Patricia Arquette was featured in Newsweek. Alexis Arquette is on a crusade against current standards of care. He/she complains that sceptics are "questioning the sanity of people like myself". Most sexual reassignment centers require two years of counselling before the procedure. Alexis objects to the counselling and seems to propose that physicians ought to treat castration and penile amputations as casually as nose jobs.
A few years ago I attended a program at the American Psychiatric Association’s Annual Conference. An editor of the DSM was under attack for describing gender identity disorder as a mental illness. But in the course of the debate, in a remarkable display of having your cake and eating it too, the transsexual woman who argued against its inclusion was forced to admit that a DSM diagnosis was necessary after all. Why? Because otherwise people suffering from the disorder could not get their health insurance company to cover the cost of the procedures.
Which leads to the $64,000 question. If transsexualism is a disease, then is sexual reassignment the cure?
Let's look more carefully at this notion. Sexual reassignment, with hormone treatment and surgery, is a woolly term which is used far too casually. Take the word "reassignment". What are defenders of transsexualism implying when they use it? In my view, they are relying upon both hoary old Freudian ideas and a silly recent movement called constructivism. The upshot of these two schools of thought is that nature is unimportant compared to nurture. Society and technology always trump biology. So using the word "reassignment" implies that sex is an arbitrary category imposed by the dominant culture through the family. From this perspective, sex is merely a societal convention. In the same way that we expect men to be soldiers and women to be nurses, we expect boys to be boys and girls to be girls. But things can change: women can become soldiers and men can become nurses. So, hey, why can't boys become girls and girls become boys?
Our unquestioning acceptance of the phrase reflects the modern separation between sex and reproduction. Sex has lost its primary meaning as a relationship of two beings vis-à-vis the procreation of life. At conception, men and women are bestowed an unchanging role in the procreation of offspring. As male and female, we can either participate or not participate in that relationship; but we can’t switch roles. We can't be reassigned.
What happens in sexual reassignment? Doctors employ a range of pharmaceutical, surgical and cosmetic procedures to produce either more feminine or more masculine features. Some trans-women may only take up electrolysis and breast augmentation. Others spend tens of thousands for amputation, castration and vaginal construction. Obviously, these procedures destroy the procreative relationship.
The most famous transsexual, Renee Richards, has publicly expressed regret about her decision. Born as Richard Raskind in 1934, she went to Yale and became an eye surgeon and an international tennis star. She even married and fathered a child. But in 1977 she had sex reassignment surgery. She even competed in the US Open in various women's and mixed doubles. But in February 2007, she told the New York Times, "Better to be an intact man functioning with 100 per cent capacity for everything than to be a transsexual woman who is an imperfect woman."
Newsweek presents transsexuals’ pursuit of sex change as inevitable. However, sex researcher J. Michael Bailey in his book, The Man Who Would Be Queen, notes the decision for sex reassignment has a "rational component" and that the "large majority of boys who start out looking transsexual ultimately do not pursue sex reassignment."
The most outspoken critic of sexual reassignment has been Paul McHugh, MD, a member of the President's Council on Bioethics. After becoming chairman of the Department of Psychiatry at the elite Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, McHugh began studying gender disorders and the sexual reassignment program at his university. After discovering that many transsexuals had strongly masculine interests, McHugh became sceptical of the standard story about "women trapped in men’s bodies." He became convinced that reassignment should be discouraged. Eventually Johns Hopkins stopped doing the procedures.
McHugh’s scepticism was eventually supported by research indicating that bisexual and heterosexual transvestites and transsexuals are sexually aroused by the idea of being a woman. They fantasise about being the female during sex. A sexologist from the Canadian Clarke Institute, Ray Blanchard named this desire autogynephilia. Transsexual physician Anne Lawrence has described autogynephiles as "men trapped in men’s bodies."
In a 2004 article in the journal First Things, McHugh pulls no punches. In a long account of how he managed to persuade his colleagues that sex reassignment was bunk, he asserts that: "We psychiatrists, I thought, would do better to concentrate on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia."
I have witnessed a great deal of damage from sex-reassignment. The children transformed from their male constitution into female roles suffered prolonged distress and misery as they sensed their natural attitudes. Their parents usually lived with guilt over their decisions — second-guessing themselves and somewhat ashamed of the fabrication, both surgical and social, they had imposed on their sons. As for the adults who came to us claiming to have discovered their "true" sexual identity and to have heard about sex-change operations, we psychiatrists have been distracted from studying the causes and natures of their mental misdirections by preparing them for surgery and for a life in the other sex. We have wasted scientific and technical resources and damaged our professional credibility by collaborating with madness rather than trying to study, cure, and ultimately prevent it.
Many cities have had much less qualms about cooperating with this madness. Last November, New York City’s Public Health Board recommended that people be allowed to change the sex on birth certificates if they provided evidence from a physician that the change would be permanent. Transgender advocates praise the health board for eliminating anatomy -- and any other physiological, genetic or medical requirements -- as proof of sex. A spokesman for the New York Transgender Rights Coalition, offering some armchair Freudian insights, praised the change as "a move away from American culture’s misguided fixation on genitals as the basis for one’s gender identity".
In moving away from anatomical considerations, health commissioner Dr Frieden announced a new standard for redefining one's own sex. Frieden emphasized that it’s the "permanence that matters". Permanence? For Frieden this meant two years of living as the opposite sex. But how would a doctor prove that this two-year requirement? With hidden cameras? A physician would become merely a rubber stamp for anyone who appears in his office and claims to have lived as a woman for two years. Still, transgender advocates pushed for the elimination of any medical requirements.
The swift public response surprised the health board. Hospitals complained that women would be forced to share rooms with men. Prison officials complained that they would be forced to transfer men to female facilities. Dr McHugh warned the board that such changes would make sexual identification impossible. "I’ve already heard of a ‘transgendered’ man who claimed at work to be ‘a woman in a man’s body but a lesbian’ and who had to be expelled from the ladies’ restroom because he was propositioning women there," he said. "He saw this as a great injustice in that his behavior was justified in his mind by the idea that the categories he claimed for himself were all ‘official’ and had legal rights attached to them."
The Board of Health withdrew the proposal. "This is something we hadn’t fully thought through, frankly." Health Commissioner Friedan admitted. "What a birth certificate shows does have implications beyond just what a birth certificate shows."
The madness is beyond transsexualism.
Theron Bowers MD is a Texas psychiatrist.
Mr. Bowers,
Thank you for the work you do and for speaking the truth in love!
I was saddened but not surprised to see so many negative reactions to this and the other articles on the Marital Healing site. Of course most people who would be interested in this issue would have very personal reasons. I was not, but one who was moved by curiosity, compassion, and a need to see how people affected by this can be healed. I had read about people who had stopped practicing a homosexual lifestyle and knew that these people can be healed, too.
I don’t blame you and Dr. McHugh and others for citing your religion, which should be the basis for the decisions we make in our lives.
I know I am not outside of this sad world. Though not personally affected by gender identity issues I know that we all have been wounded by the contraceptive mentality, moral relativism, culture of death, etc. (Our beloved JP2 called some of these things “branches of the same tree”.)
I visited the APA site later and was appalled, but again, not surprised, to see they don’t consider GID a mental illness because it doesn’t seem to cause everyone who experiences it emotional distress, etc. I know this is irresponsible and biased, as I’m sure you do. I saw that they estimated 1 in 10,000 males and 1 in 30,000 females in the western world have this condition, but most don’t end up having surgery (praise God!) for one reason or another. I wonder how many of these “surgeries” and “treatments” (genital mutilations in the “free” world) have been done. Where can I find this info?
My main reason for writing is to thank you for continuing to speak the truth and help people to know what we are created for. Thought it might be nice to know someone was reading that agrees with you! Keep it up and I and my family will keep praying for our culture and working for life and truth!
God Bless!
B
The theoretical anchor to me is the endocrine reproductive organs of such a baby, who has a biologically troubled sexual identity. Penis or vagina can be “produced” to some extent by surgery, but testicles, prostates, ovaries and wombs cannot. So what really matters is whether a baby has female or male organs, this is what primarily counts, even more than genes or sexual organs on the outside, like penis or labia. This is what should be taken, to my mind, as the basis of sexual identity, and then this sexual identity should be taken as the basis of gender identity.
If a child has some gender identity problems, like GID but also similar, less serious states that can have different causes and consequences. It might come from some reproductive organ problems (like these mentioned), from individual character (which might be influenced by hormonal problems), from problems with the relationship with or between the parents, from being victim of sexual abuse and other psycho-social factors. And it might lead to diffent negative outcomes - failure in finding a proper mate and through this, or indepedantly to homo-, bi- or transsexuality.
Scientists know very little about GID-they don’t know if it’s inborn, biological, etc. Dr. Nicolosi does not treat GID-other psychologists @ NARTH do.
They also haven’t found a cure for autism, but we do what we can to treat autism based on available science. We don’t affirm autistic behavior. With GID, they must be treated the same way as you treat some1 who has apotemnophilia-treat the mind based on availabe science-DO NOT maim the patient. It’s easy to become arrogant on a topic that scientists understand so little about. Many sadly are believing the blind faith that Drs. are telling them. Sex change surgeries don’t change the gender. I’ve written about the harms of sex change maimings incl. the hormones which only get minor coverage & which you don’t need to be an expert to understand. If they discovered the 100% cure for GID, scientists will talk about how science was wasted all these years on harmful sex change surgeries.
I don’t think you know what you are talking about. Persons with intersexed conditions, such as you mentioned, sometimes do need surgery, as I mentioned. You need to get a passage for menstrual flow, or remove the uterus-your decision, but either way, you are removing something, or “maiming” as you said. In many cases it is the physician who decided on the sex which did not match the person’s gender identity. Such cases are not GID, but are GIDNOS.
In regards to curing GID, Nicolosi doesn’t have a good track record. There is no cure for GID, and while you insist on a cure, you don’t discuss that such a cure may harm the individual and have more complications than genitoplasty. For instance, if an area of the brain is opposite to that of the genitals, to so-called, cure a person, may require doing a procedure on the brain-which is far more risky than doing such on the external genitals. So, while you may assert a cure all you wish, until the precise cause can be found, we don’t know what your cure would entail.
Prof. I do know what I’m talking about & I don’t need to listen to blind faith by professors who think that they know all the answers.
It used to be that if some1 had Gender Identity Disorder (GID) or transexuality, psychologists would do what they could to help people overcome it. Yet ever since sex change maimings, psycholosists have recommended this rather than curing the problem.
Pyschologists have started to advise parents that minors with GID can’t be cured & they advise the parents to surgically maim the child. There are also those who want to remove GID from the DSM. Dr. Nicolosi has called for the abolition of sex change maimings as well. The focus must be on curing GID & abolish maimings.
you don’t know what you are talking about.
Several types of hermaphroditism, as you call it, require feminizing surgery, for the purpose of permitting menstrual flow and thus preventing retrograde menstruation-which is a potentially serious situation. Of course, this can be circumvented, by simply removing the uterus (or uterine tissue), but then again, you are still removing the uterus or using hormones for supression. Thus, in your abolition mission, you can’t have it both ways. Oh, you sound just like Thomas Szasz about the amputee disorder treatment. Szasz wrote the same thing...but Benjamin rightly corrected him, pointing to the illogic of the example, stating that removal of an arm for instance, makes
a person LESS functional. However in m to f SRS, it is not just the removal of tissue, but when constructing a vagina, the person actually becomes MORE function. Benjamin went on futher to say, that it saddens him that a physician would make such a statement, as nowhere does Szasz even talking about helping the person, relegating to them, the position of a physician not worthy of their degree. Also reminds me of John Money and Charles Socarides debates about who has castration anxiety.... I find that persons who use amputee disorder as a comparison, to be fetishistic themselves, at best!
I want to add something that I didn’t cover & that’s hermaphrodites. In addition to abolishing sex change surgeries, let me say that I’m even against surgeries for hermaphrodite babies, though those aren’t sex change surgeries, because the hermaphrodite babies have deformed genitals.
The reason I’m against even these surgeries is because in too many cases, hermaphrodites have been traumatized & even in some cases committed suicides because their parents surgically removed 1 of their genitals when they were babies. My belief in this case is to keep all the parts intact & explain to the hermaphrodite that this is their condition & that their sex is hermaphrodite. It’s not comparable to conjoined twins, because if conjoined twins aren’t separated, they can die.
My main focus is to abolish sex change surgeries, which are the worst thing to come about since lobotomies.
Let me also say that if you like animals, then you must support abolishing sex change surgeries. These abominations were initially done on animals who were killed in cruel vivisections. People who suffer from G.I.D. believe that they were born in the wrong sex. As I’ve noted, the problem is in the mind not the genitals & the harms of the hormone shots will take their toll later in life.
They must forbid Drs. to collaborate in such abominations as sex change surgeries, just as we forbid Drs. to amputate the healthy arms & legs of people who have Amputee Identity Disorder-the problem is in the mind not the limbs.
Love, love, love, ...love is what we need,
Not as though we know more…
Not as though someone else is “a little bit crazy or unwell...”
Please, not only through a microscope or some office or politics,
But more through our daily loving examples of compassion and care.
When all things have been said and done, only two views apply;
The starting point? Hum it… Love is all we need…
Love God above all things and Love thy neighbor as thyself.
By the way, name one, just one insurance company that covers SRS. Let us all know so we can get that insurance. There isn’t an insurance company on this planet that covers hormones or any other transgender related medical claim. So the DSM thing is really useless for us, but it gives people like you more reason to name call.
As one of the people featured in the article that you speak of, I am disturbed by the fact that you are treating people. Transgenderism is not just about clothes, genitals, and is absolutly seperate from sexuality. You of all people should know that. It scares to me to think of what treatment you might be giving to a young transgender person that steps foot in your office. We are not mental patients and the reason we are in the DSM-IV is because no one in the medical field was open minded enough to understand our situation. We just want our physical body to reflect our mind and spirit. We are not confused. If anything, we know exactly who we are. It’s unfortunate that small minded individuals like yourself, don’t know who we are and don’t care to know. ~Jay
Dr Bowers, it’s called diversity.
You seem like a pretty simple kind of guy so I will try to be simple.
You see, we live in a society that expects either-or, and if you don’t fulfill those expectations people can make your life a living hell. Apart from overt harassment and ostracism, you find yourself constantly being misunderstood and misinterpreted because you are speaking and acting from one side of the fence, but people are interpreting your words and deeds as coming from the other.
Why would that be? It turns out that our brains and bodies are quite variable and some males are at the opposite end of the XY spectrum to Sylvester Stallone - bodily, mentally and emotionally. Some females are opposite to Dolly Parton.
Eventually we humans worked out that making changes to such persons’ bodies and roles them feel a lot happier, more focused and productive because everything is more in synch.
If we were born on desert islands, I don’t think we’d care about changing over. However, we live in big cities with lots and lots of people, and we all measure ourselves against each other and have all sorts of social expectations, norms and requirements. Transgressors are invariably punished.
Fancy having to explain such basic stuff to a psychologist! To see such an obvious lack of objectivity and native intelligence in a professional is enough.
You can’t refute that sex change surgeries are harmful & sadly waste science. The problem is GID & cure the mind. Transexuals have problems in addition to GID. Transexuality is worse than h&l. Even if reversal surgery happens, the damage has already happened. More must stand up to apologists of sex change surgeries & take steps to abolish these useless surgeries which don’t cure. Also abolish vasectomies. Abortions are harmful, but if a baby will be born w/o arms & legs, it’s better to abort, but if pro-lifers want to take steps to make abortion illegal, that’s fine. H&L activities carry harms. H&L have higher incidence of certain cancers caused by their sexual activites. Lesbians have higher incidence of BV, cervical cancer. They have higher incidence of breast cancer because women who don’t have kids have higher incidence of it & they have higher incidence of ovarian cancer. H&L have high incidence of other emotional problems. They smoke & use drugs more. Some say it’s because of society, but even in nations favorable to H&L, the rates are the same. Even if orientation or proclivity doesn’t change, it’s best to change their sexual activities to either straight missionary sex or celibacy, regardless of whether attraction changes & whether it’s inborn is moot. This will anger some, but rapists could also be born that way. We do what we can to prevent them from becoming rapists even if there’s a rapist gene.
If they find the 100% cures for GID & homosexuality, the world will be better. Fewer diseases. It’s noteworthy that the people who favor harmful sex change surgeries are against programs to change H&L to straight. All sexual activities carry medical harms but some sexual activities like H&L, sodomy & oral sex are more harmful than others with promiscuity incr. the risks. Oral sex in 2005 was shown to incr. risk of oral cancer. The world will be a better place without transexuality, without homosexuality & without sodomy & oral sex.
What a bunch of ideologic hogwash. Paul McHugh is NOT a gender specialist, he is in fact a transphobe of the highest order.
“Doctors get involved because transsexuals often demand hormones and surgery to fulfill their desires. But are physicians enabling a mental illness or merely complying with a cosmetic request?”
Neither. Compassionate and educated professionals are helping us overcome our birth conditions. I defer to Zoe Brain for her listing the appropriate research annotations.
Organized religion has a long history of resisting change. The Pope put Galileo under house arrest for teaching that the Earth rotated around the sun and not vice versa. They didn’t lift that condemnation until just recently! Religions have fought FOR slavery, against womens right to vote, interracial marriage, civil rights and more. I have one question for you folks:
What are you afraid of?
Instead of persecuting us, why don’t you take a closer look at your own biases.
In reply abolishsexchangesurgeries and in reference to Zoe Brain ‘s posting of Saturday, 16 June 2007 at 1:06 pm:
Let us suppose we have the type of transsexual ASCS’s has in mind. The classic, primary , homosexual transsexual. One who was feminine as a boy, gay as a very young man and transitioned to become a young woman. What would a “straightness pill” do to someone like that?
Such transsexuals typically were into feminine things before they would even have known what sex was. They identified with the girls in stories, played with girls....basically liked women for everything but sex and relationships. All of these are things that are true of some gay men. But in the case of someone who would grow to be a homosexual transsexual everything is more pronounced and the impulse toward femininity nearly impossible to overcome.
Little boys who like to wear dresses probably aren’t thinking about having sex.
If a pill could change one’s sexual orientation I doubt it would change one’s gendered behavior. In particular behavior that predated sexual orientation.
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