By BRIAN CLOWES
(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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While those fortunate few who still possess a lingering sense of reality cringed at the bizarre photo of Bruce Jenner and the subtitle “Call Me Caitlyn” on the cover of Vanity Fair earlier this year, the press swooned over him and President Barack Obama phoned him personally to offer his congratulations for being so “courageous.”
Apparently undergoing body modification surgery qualifies one as a “hero” these days.
Definitions. Just as homophiles have deliberately attempted to confuse the terms “sex” and “gender” and use them interchangeably, they have done the same with the terms “transgender” and “transsexual.”
Merriam-Webster’s describes a “transgendered” person as a person who “identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to the person’s sex at birth.”
It identifies a “transsexual” person as “a person who tries to look, dress, and act like a member of the opposite sex; especially: someone who medically changes himself or herself into a member of the opposite sex.”
However, this definition from a supposedly authoritative source is inaccurate and unscientific; no matter how much surgery a person undergoes, and regardless of how much he or she appears to be a member of the opposite sex, the person will always remain genetically a member of his or her original sex. DNA testing is the absolute last word on identifying various species and their characteristics, including their sex — and nobody can change their DNA. Men will always be XY and women will always be XX.
It is thus scientifically accurate to assert that there has never in history been a successful sex-change operation. Therefore, the category “transsexual” simply does not exist. Only the outward appearance of the person can be altered; the core — the personality, the mind, the soul — remains the same.
“But wait!” the “trans” activist may say. “Someone who transitions from male to female may still technically be male. But his gender was female all along because he was emotionally and mentally a female.”
The trans activists are asserting that people have a female or male sex, which is innate and unchangeable, and a “gender,” the sex that one “identifies” as.
Adding to the confusion is the rare category of “intersex,” those people who are born with both male and female genitalia. Just as pro-abortionists and euthanasia pushers use the extreme “hard cases” to justify the wide availability of abortion and assisted suicide, trans activists sometimes attempt to use extremely rare “intersex” cases to promote transgenderism.
A person is intersex when born neither XX (female) nor XY (male). Examples are Klinefelter (XXY) syndrome, androgen insensitivity syndrome, and all of the other sex variations, which account for about 1 in 600 births. Even in most of these cases, symptoms are manageable, with the person being able to live a relatively normal life.
Some trans activists claim that the existence of intersex individuals somehow legitimizes their movement. However, at least 99.8 percent of persons born are clearly either male or female. The huge majority of those who identify themselves as transgender have perfectly normal reproductive systems. This means that the category of “intersex” is entirely irrelevant to the debate over transgenderism.
In order to understand and address this confusing issue, we should first review some background information.
The Beginning. The story of transgenderism has been developing for more than half a century. The very concept of “sex-change” operations could only be dreamed up by a deranged group of sex-mad doctors — in this case, John Money, Harry Benjamin, and the infamous Alfred Kinsey.
The first alleged “sex-change” surgeries were performed in the late 1950s and increased in frequency over the next 25 years. These operations were done almost exclusively in university-based specialty clinics for some people with serious psychiatric issues who had received counseling. Those who had undergone the procedure were very carefully monitored to see if their surgeries were beneficial to them. The surgeon-researchers finally concluded that the procedures were both physically and psychologically harmful and ceased performing them.
Soon after, for-profit private clinics began performing sex-change operations, not out of necessity but as a kind of elective body modification. These doctors rarely did an extensive psychological work-up. Nor did they follow up on their patients, and cases of documented serious mental complications — many ending in suicide — began to pile up. Like both abortion and fetal organ cell harvesting, this dark corner of medicine is unregulated and highly profitable, and has thus become what one transgender person calls the “sex change industry.”
Catastrophe — One Willing Victim at a Time. The attempted suicide rate among transgendered people is an incredible 41 percent, nine times the national average of 4.6 percent. Transline, a suicide hotline for transgender and transsexual people, was swamped with more than 20,000 calls during its first nine months of operation. Greta Martela, a lesbian who founded the hotline, said: “With 41 percent attempting suicide, you have to assume something’s just not working for transgender folks.”
Transgender activists, of course, attribute this to “transphobia” and rejection by society, and work actively to suppress any public expressions of post-surgery regret in the same manner as pro-abortionists suppress evidence regarding the existence of post-abortion syndrome.
Alan Finch, who regretted his surgery and founded a group called “Gender Menders,” became one of the victims of the censors. He campaigned against the sex-change industry, and immediately became the target of leading trans activists, who will not tolerate anyone being anything less than vocally ecstatic with their “transition.” The activists claimed that there are no known cases of regret, and some even said that Finch “should be shot.”
As with homophiles, and questioning of the transgendered “wisdom” is met with reflexive outrage and attempts to smear opponents and censor their message.
Nobody is more qualified to speak on the topic of transgenderism than Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Medical Center. McHugh wrote a 2014 editorial in The Wall Street Journal asserting that gender confusion is a mental illness like bulimia and should not be treated with surgery.
The left reacted with its usual hysteria. Media Matters for America accused him “ignoring medical consensus and arguing that transgender patients should be denied medically necessary treatment” (gender reassignment). Another writer called McHugh’s views “transphobic,” “transgender denialism,” and “a form of science denialism. Just as climate change deniers reject overwhelming consensus about the damage we have done to the environment.”
McHugh was one of the original participants in the first “sex-change” operations in the USA, and has decades of experience in this area, while his critics’ only qualification to comment on the subject is their outraged feelings.
The most extensive study of the psychiatric impacts of “sex reassignment” surgery, performed in Sweden, found:
“Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behavior, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. . . . [Ten] years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable non-transgender population.”
The article goes on to suggest that there should be better psychiatric care for people after they “transition,” but this makes little sense; why not simply discourage the procedure that causes the problem in the first place?
Lavish Promises
We would do very well to heed the bleak warning delivered by former tennis champion Renée Richards, one of the first transsexuals in the United States:
“If there was a drug that I could have taken that would have reduced the pressure, I would have been better off staying the way I was — a totally intact person. I know deep down that I’m a second-class woman. I get a lot of inquiries from would-be transsexuals, but I don’t want anyone to hold me out as an example to follow.
“Today there are better choices, including medication, for dealing with the compulsion to cross-dress and the depression that comes from gender confusion. As far as being fulfilled as a woman, I’m not as fulfilled as I dreamed of being. I get a lot of letters from people who are considering having this operation . . . and I discourage them all.”
Many transgender patients have said they realized, too late, that “sex-change” operations did not live up to their lavish promises, and that the negative side effects were deliberately withheld from them.
Australian transsexual Alan Finch explained that “you fundamentally can’t change sex. . . . The surgery doesn’t alter you genetically. It’s genital mutilation. I’ve never been a woman, just Alan. It’s all been a terrible misadventure. . . . The analogy I use about giving surgery to someone desperate to change sex is it’s a bit like offering liposuction to an anorexic.”
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