Transgender

The classic text, Hermaprodites and the Medical Invention of Sex by Alice Domurat Dreger (1998) states that there is indeed a biological position for male, female and other.  Gender, by Ivan Illich, (1983)another classic, that looked clearly at the historical sociological approach to male and female role. This was before the advent of Marxist religious binary reductionism. The appeal of Marxism is that it takes associative dichotomies and reduces everything often arbitrarily to binary ‘oppression,” Despite Marxist reductionist feminist theology Queen Victoria was not and did not feel oppressed.  

As Ivan Illich pointed out the ‘comparison’s’ made in the Modern age are not at all consistent with the comparison perceived by Medieval times or earlier.  Retrospective falsification is the tendency of inexperienced academics to geocentrically seen the past based on their day.  In the past men and women were equally admired dependent on relationship, financial position and culture and local laws . Today investigators look more closely at multi factorial analysis and the weighting of contributions rather than the moralistic approaches of law, politics or Marxist reductionism. Scientific research has no room for feminist self pity and gender studies projections of hate. Identity politics is pseudoscience, 

Psychologically transgender is a truly valid consideration from a bio psychosocial and even spiritual  perspective.  

The idea that someone is ‘born into the wrong body’ is philosophical and theologically quaint. It has little objective basis. Subjectively,  it  is a common perception which unfortunately became part of the criteria for SRS considerations. That whole idea challenges notions of fate and determinism and free will. It also creates a hierarchy between the self perceived ugly person who seeks beautifying cosmetic surgery and the transgender who wishes some of the same procedures.  The issues of legal liability is involved in each but also is the question of public funding. The argument that the transgender was a ‘choice’ while the person needing heart replacement was ‘determined.’is no longer so relevant.   Even this separation preceded our knowledge of psychosomatic medicine which showed that heart disease was primarily a ‘lifestyle choice’.  Certainly liver transplants are too.  There is a false belief too about choice and determinism which somehow creates victim and needs and rights which give way for the rhetoric. 

This is all challenged by the belief that I am different species born in a human body. Everyone  considers that a delusion.  The novel Birdy by William Wheaton (1979) however was immediately appealing. Certainly I at times , I feel I am a dog trapped in a human’s body. This is , is how I began a controversial talk on transgender and Tran species and public funding. I was physically assaulted then and my life was threatened   for months thereafter. Similarly a Scottish surgeon was severely punished when he removed the arm of a person who insisted that the arm wasn’t his and wanted it removed. Before insurance and rapacious legal ambulance chasers these would be simple non sensational cases.  However  today it’s mostly politics and if one wants to have publicly funding SRS (Sex Reassignment Surgery) it is best to ‘remember’ wanting to be a girl or boy when others were likely indifferent or ambivalent. The ‘memories’ are themselves flawed given that memories are dictated to a large extent by emotion.  After WWII many people who were not in the resistance insisted they were, not just the psychopaths, but those too who could not accept themselves as banal beasts so to survive replaced the truth with the psychologically useful liveable false. Post divorce we too often hear ‘I never loved him/her’. 

Different affectations such as learning Oxford English over Cockney or learning to dress and act like a Lawyer rather than an agricultural worker, or behaving like a lady versus a ‘slut’ have all been done through the ages to ‘better’ oneself without the thought being that ‘I was ‘born’ in the ‘wrong body/station/class,etc”.  People move to America for freedom and advantage without saying they were ‘born in the wrong continent’. These ‘justifications’ are where the awkwardness gets strange.

In the classic book , Transgender Warrior, Making History from Joan of Arc to Dennis Roman, by Leslie Feinberg (1996)it is clear that her gender transition is for advantage.  The process begins much as a boy would go to the weightlifting gym or to ‘university’ to ‘better himself’.  There are clear advantages for Feinberg as a male in her location and with her attributes.  Her book despite her lack of education and the appeal of the low brow Marxist interpretations is an excellent sociological reference that looks at the history of cross dressing as well.

Sex is binary. There are X and Y genes and XX is female and XY is male.  There are variations like XXY but they are rare and only serve to confirm that there are but 2 sexes with a third swing vote. The middle is a bit gender fluid. This is like 1 and 2 and 1-2 in math. Gender by contrast has been labelled as ‘sexual expression’ which has been seen as a spectrum from ultra masculine to ultra feminine.  Dr. Dorothea Bea of Berkeley did classic research and published a delightful paper Macho Men and Fluffy Women.  In the research there are those who would rather die than  act other than their sex and those in the middle who will ‘switch’ for profit.  At one level this is considered ‘bisexual’ but it equally applies to work as Dr. Dorothea Bea points out. Dr. Jordan Peterson found similarly that women might choose less high paying work that would allow them be enjoy more feminine roles and  pregnancy.  

Hormone studies of Testosterone and Estrogen and associated behaviours show that physiology is a primary consideration.  Sociologically rewards have gone to those who ‘delay gratification’ or ‘take significant risks’ and hormones and intelligence have more to do with this than society.

Always there is the play of the individual and the society.  As Feinberg points out there are through history those who appear not to be restricted by society despite the claims of some sociologists , especially constructionists,  and Marxists that insist society dictates behaviour.  The long existence of gay behaviour especially in Muslim countries where they are still throwing homosexuals off tall buildings shows the limits of society’s influence on behaviour. Behaviour is much more complex than our media or the academics that the modern media quotes. Behaviour is the outcome of a multiplicity fo often competing factors.

Imitations is the sincerest form of flattery is the basis of much transsexualism.  Boys raised by women just like cats raised with dogs with imitate the dominant behaviours around them.  Women have been transvestite and cross dressing for over a hundred years. Chanel , the great fashion leader, spoke of the introduction of the ‘pant suit’ which Hilary Clinton with her ambiguous sexuality promoted in her political aspirations.  The female lawyer today wears a ‘power suit’, identical to the male lawyer, except for the addition of a pair of heals and a skirt instead of slacks. 

 Men were greatly admired after WWII when collectively the military had saved the world from Hitler’s National Socialism, Nazi Germany.  Women had worked in the war effort.  Women’s liberation and Egalitarianism ruled.  Individualism were at a high point before the devolution to identity politics.  Meritocracy had followed the war effort with none of the corruption and waste note worthy in peace.  The best individual sharpshooter was chosen in the resistance not by gender, race or whatever, but rather simply based on who could get the job done.  Increasingly tasks were seen as unisex and everyone was encouraged to work where they were best suited and performed most favourably.  Ironically despite all manner of support financial and otherwise for the necessary, dirty and dangerous jobs, women rather intelligently preferred indoor clean work and increasingly even men outsourced this work to immigrants, male and female. 

Identification with the Aggressor.  Men who wish to present as women and women who wish to present as men are often doing so as a product of trauma and to be safer in the chosen gender identity.  

The unisex barbers and clothing movements which persists today and is evidenced best by the relatively short hair, jeans and t shirt generation is evidence of the ubiquity of cross dressing and movement of both men and women from the extremes of gender expression celebrated in the 30’s to the middle position of today. 

Mirroring is the psychological technique used by sales to engage customers. The sales of the Beatles was greatest to the female fan support initially with the Fab 4 having ‘long hair’, followed by the play, Hair, and the song ‘Are you a boy or are you a girl, with your hair so long you look like a girl.”  Later hyper masculine 90’s Metal bands took long hair back to the tribal times sporting beards and hair and tattoos and rage.  A far cry from the 60’s ambivalence best expressed by Bowie.

Today cross dressing is as common as make up and cosmetic surgery.  Male fashion increasingly lifts the best from the female line up with even Levi Jeans producing a stretch denim and male underwear being sold for softness and stretch.  

Now men are taking anti testosterone medicine and testosterone or other male hormone enhancers just as women take birth control and estrogen .  

The problem is with children, parents and the courts and society at large. That’s a whole separate issue of government encroachment and propaganda and the rights of children over their lawyers. By contrast in the adult world the issue is passé.  

When Transexuals initiated the gay rights movement with the famous Stonewall riots, the gays and lesbians have today become incorporated into greater society with Metro Sexual Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada  dancing in the gay parade. It’s not a ‘closet’ matter in the west with naturally some push back by heterosexuals whose domains have been increasingly infringed on by homosexuals in the new vying for relative power. 

But both groups have politically turned their backs to some extent on the very ‘fairies’ who raised the issue to the degree that legislation was necessary. The book Pink Swastica about Nazis, Auscwhitz and the millions of Jews murdered points out that the ‘macho homosexuals’ were indeed welcomed into the Gestapo. As a macho Mexican police chief was famous for saying “I’m not bisexual, I’m so much more of a man women can’t satisfy me and I need boys sometimes.’  As Scott Lively pointed out in Pink Swastika, while all Jews were being exterminated in the Final Solution, only the effeminate gays were exterminated.  

Indeed historically no one cares what the rich and powerful did for recreation as long as they produced heirs.  In contrast today where children are considered a luxury historically children were a necessity and the principle source of wealth and power.  Much of the nonsense one reads in Gender Studies follows from the ignorance of the role of numbers to survival in the world before modern times.  The error is further seen in seeing the past in terms of individuals where as the alienated individual is mostly a concept of modern times. Even Thomas Merton, the famed Catholic monk noted that the Christian hermits were part of a community as were the Buddhist monks.  Individualism is a very recent phenomena.

So today we have a spectrum. Cross dressers which include all modern women and most men if only to a lesser degree. 90% are heterosexual.

Drag Queen’s imitate and mock women and are mostly gay.

Transvestites are those who wish to be the opposite sex but may only be at the stage of hormones in their transition.

The term ‘she male’ is sometimes reserved for those transvestites who wish to be women but wish to maintain their male genitalia and male organisms.  They may well be Transexuals or drag queens. The whole Transvestite crowd is a mixed bag.

To complicate matters ‘sexual addiction’ may influence choices as much as childhood trauma.

Transexuals by contrast are those who are considered’pre op’ or ‘post op’ and are actively ‘redesigning’ their bodies surgical ly with the ultimate aim SRS. Sexual Reassignment Surgery.

Obviously a post op Transexual is not a Genetic female but they have the characteristics and appearances to the extent that I as a physician have not known a Post Op Transexual from a Genetic Female on initial examination. I’ve deliver a hundred babies and yet wasn’t aware a female patient in interview told me she was Transexual. Increasingly males and females ‘pass’. The successes of cosmetic surgery and hormones etc are such that just as we can’t know a person had a ‘nose job’ without history so it’s not readily apparent that what is male or female without sometimes a ‘bucal smear’.  

That is how advanced the process is with tens of thousands of transgender ‘living among us’.  This is not a conspiracy but a fact just like the recognition that countless women are on birth control pills and the majority of people don’t know that.  Even families and intimates may not know. Certainly a doctor on examination might but not necessarily.  

When most people think of Transexuals they think of their ‘idea’ of masculinity and femininity dictated by media. Feinberg makes a strong case for the number of people who don’t ‘fit’ these stereotypes and while being genetic males or females are increasingly thought to be Transexuals.  

There are many ethical and moral issues associated with this. Not the least of which is public versus private funding and the legal implications.  20 year old women insisted on hysterectomies only to sue their surgeons when they became 30 and had ‘changed their minds’. The John Hopkins Transexual Program stopped at one point because of the poor outcomes and high incidence of suicide.  Michael Jackson tried to be ‘white’ and ultimately died perhaps because of his ‘struggles’ with ‘acceptance’.  The real play here is indeed about ‘acceptance’ and ‘choice’.  

I am seriously concerned about the bullying of therapists and psychologists who object to individuals having counselling when ‘confused’ and insist that the only acceptable counselling is ‘affirmative’.  I was trained in an era where therapists explored options. The book Ethical Slut: Polyamoury, Open Relationships, Non-Monogamy by therapists and sex educators Janet Hardy and Dossie Easton (2017) is clearly non biased and a bit of a free for all Laissez fair discussion of the permutations and combinations of the modern fringe communities.  

At the end of the day one wishes that there was some sort of actuarial investment counsellor simply telling people what is ‘healthiest’ and ‘least healthy’ in the traditional medical sense. Even a ‘face lift’ is a dangerous procedure but no longer is consider a ‘moral outrage’ as once women wearing pants were. As late a 1968 Canadian boys were called gay for supporting girls wearing pants, not by men but rather by other girls and by women who wanted to maintain the traditional clothing and saw women wearing pants as likely to lead to rampant lesbianism and debauchery.  

Frankly older I’ve been know to wear male clothing that is not so age appropriate such as ‘skinny jeans’. I’ve long been won over by stretch jeans from urban fare versus the scratchy Levis I used to wear or the itchy Stanfields compared to the Italian designer briefs which are so much more like ‘women’s underwear’ . Traditional male clothing was made for war. The underwear of men was meant to last unchanged for whole campaigns and seasons and withstand the roughest use.  

The Halloween full moon. Halloween was long considered the cross dresser’s holiday but what is maradi gras then. Dr Carl Jung posited a host of persons or archetypes and Joseph Campbell , anthropologist, saw life as the ‘hero’s journey’. Today he’d probably call it the ‘heroine journey’ but what then of Mother Mary and the Transexual journey.