“What Is Transgenderism?”

By BRIAN CLOWES

Conclusion

(Editor’s Note: Brian Clowes has been director of research and training at Human Life International since 1995. For all of the previous Culture of Life 101 articles on homosexuality, e-mail him at bclowes@hli.org.)

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“We psychiatrists should work to discourage those adults who seek surgical sex reassignment” — “sex-change” pioneer Dr. Paul McHugh in 2004.

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As we have seen, “trans” activists do everything in their power to shout down, censor, and intimidate people who oppose so-called “sex change” surgery, in the same manner that homosexual activists censor opponents of special rights.
As with homosexual activists, the rights of others simply do not exist for the trans activists. For example, in the dozen or so publicized cases of high school boys who felt like girls, offers by school administrators to provide a private restroom were never good enough for these self-worshipping students. They always demand to use the girl’s restrooms, even if this caused mental and psychological trauma to many of the girls.
Principles such as the right to privacy, the right to dissent, the right to choose and the right to discuss medical and psychiatric procedures with one’s own physicians are just tools to gain advantages in the hands of Culture of Death activists, and can be discarded when they are not useful.
We must refuse to comply with the ridiculous demands of a tiny minority of extremists. When we address men with female pronouns or females with male pronouns, we contribute to our culture’s confusion about sexuality and the nature of the human person, which is leaving millions of casualties in its wake.
Why should everyone else always capitulate to the demands of (in this case) the two-tenths of one percent?
This is like encouraging people with anorexia to think of themselves as fat and encouraging them to continue with their delusion. When our self-perceptions are not in accord with reality, disaster will strike. This ranges from humiliation (in the case of the young man who thinks that he is much more attractive to the ladies than he really is) to aggravated severe mental problems ending in suicide.
How Does It Hurt You? Pro-gay “marriage” activists often taunt pro-family people by demanding to know how gay “marriages” would affect them. Trans activists are doing exactly the same thing when they ask: “How does a man identifying as a woman affect you?”
This would be a difficult question to answer if the homosexual and trans activists considered the rights of others. But they are actively working to secure taxpayer funding of all “sex-change” operations (at a lifetime cost of half a million dollars apiece), are trying to force schools and other public institutions to allow men to use women’s restrooms, a sure recipe for sexual abuse, and are demanding that trans people be able to play on sports teams of the sex they identify with. This is particularly unfair to girls when a boy who identifies as female demands to be on their team.
They also demand concessions that have much more diffuse and equally serious consequences — that we not refer to infants as male or female so as not to impose upon them a gender they might not identify with in the future; that we ban conversion therapy, even if some people desperately want and need it; and that we refer to everyone with gender-neutral pronouns such as “xe,” “xyr” or “zir.”
In summary, how a man identifying as a woman or vice-versa will personally affect you or me is a typical distraction of the Culture of Death. It is irrelevant. The question is: Will we make public policy that teaches the truth about the human person and human sexuality, or will we descend further and further into confusion, destroying more and more lives, becoming more and more unhappy, and believing yet another lie promoted by the Culture of Death?
Transinsanity. I have spent half of my life in the pro-life/pro-family movements, and I have learned that one thing you never, ever say is: “Now I’ve seen it all!” But be warned: If we can alter our exterior appearance to look like a member of the opposite sex, what is to stop us from going further?
Some pro-family people believe that those who undergo self-mutilation to appear to be a member of the opposite sex are the last word in self-absorbed social anarchism. But anyone who thinks this is in for a rude surprise.
When it comes to the Culture of Death, there is always something even more mind-addling and repulsive crouching right around the next corner.
The next step in special rights after transgenderism is the “transabled” movement. Like transgenders, these people feel as if their bodies do not fit their image of what they should be. They imagine themselves as amputees or as blind or deaf people and seek out those few shady “doctors” who will surgically remove an arm or a leg or destroy their vision or hearing.
They complain that this activity is illegal, and that they are being driven into the “back alley” (sound familiar?) and are being forced to crush or mangle their limbs so that they can visit an emergency room to have the amputations or other mutilations completed, much as women used to self-induce abortions and then get them completed in ERs.
Not surprisingly, many homosexual leaders and pro-abortionists who support “transablism” have dusted off the old “my body, my choice” slogan. Dan Savage said: “Other people’s bodies — and other people’s body parts — are theirs, not yours. And if someone needs to change or even remove some part(s) of their body to be who they are and to be happy and to be healthy, they should have that right.”
This mental condition is referred to as Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID). Its advocates describe it as just another variety of “body diversity” — much like transgenderism. But many psychiatrists believe that “transablist” individuals are merely seeking the constant attention and sympathy that a severe handicap brings, a desire that should not be indulged or encouraged. It is even possible that these people might become addicted to the attention they receive.
Finally (for this week, at least), we have the “Mad Pride” movement, which celebrates mental illnesses, and whose members often look upon their problems as “super powers.” One of the “Mad Pride” groups, the Icarus Project, describes itself as “a support network and media project by and for people who experience the world in ways that are often diagnosed as mental illness. We envision a new culture that allows the space and freedom for exploring different states of being, and recognizes that breakdown can be the entrance to breakthrough.”
The motto of “Mad Pride” is “The Right to Be Free…The Right to Be Me.” As with other “trans” groups, the rights of others are irrelevant, even if people with certain severe mental illnesses who are striving to “be themselves” endanger the lives of other people.
The fundamental problem is that transgenders/“transsexuals,” transabled and “mad pride” people have lost the ability to distinguish between their self-image and reality. All of us have this problem to a certain extent, and it is the source of many of our personal difficulties. But mentally healthy people can identify such areas of concern and work to resolve them. Now we have organized groups of people who are delusional about their own identities, and who expect everyone else to share in their fantasies under pain of ridicule and retaliation.

Part Machine

Reality Inverted. The Culture of Death turns everything inside-out and upside-down. The power elite celebrates “trans” surgery as a necessary medical procedure (when it is actually not medicine at all, but merely elective cosmetic surgery). At the same time, the elite attempts to ban real medicine in the form of psychological therapy that can help to heal a disordered condition.
This Gender Identity Disorder (GID) was recognized as a mental illness in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV. In 2013, the APA published the DSM-V, which changed the term “Gender Identity Disorder” to “gender dysphoria,” and dropped it as a mental illness. Like the APA’s craven capitulation over homosexuality, this was a purely political move carried out under organized political pressure.
If perception is reality, how do we approach the problems of people who claim that they are part animal, part alien, or part machine? Members of that last group, believe it or not, have already begun to slowly encroach on the public consciousness; the frontline troops of the “transhumanist” movement are already criticizing the “fleshists” who oppose them in their journals, their websites and their conferences.
What if a person feels like a demon trapped in a mortal human’s body? Try “demon body modification” under Google images if you want an eyeful.
This madness will not end until our perceptions are taught to mold themselves to reality. Is this not the purpose of all true education? Is this not the foundation of our holy Catholic faith?