Transgenderism: Perception and Reality are Two Different Things
A while ago I read that singer Demi Lovato came out as non-binary and would be using pronouns they/them to describe herself … wait … to describe themselves, or them, or they … or … you get the drift! I’m guessing non-binary means that she is not two people, a definition I can get behind; but, why then does she call herself them? I’m thinking my definition of non-binary may be contrary to what it actually means. My sexagenarian mind finds it difficult to wrap around these concepts because, when I was young, we only had two genders – male and female. Today, according to Dude Asks, apparently the definitive authority on gender, there are upwards of 112 different genders ranging from “Neutrois” to “Verangender.”
Not only are there now 112 genders, everyone gets to choose pronouns to identify themselves. One business encouraged its employees to add their chosen pronouns to their official email signature. After all, nothing screams corporate responsibility more than the injection of sex and gender dysphoria into the customer service experience. One employee toyed with the idea of adding “she/dinosaur/carbuncle” as her preferred pronouns before realizing a paycheck was still needed and thought better of the idea.
Perhaps the biggest problem we face living in a gender-rich society is simply interacting with our fellow human beings. Since it is literally impossible to identify gender by sight today (right?), we all risk “triggering” someone by using the wrong pronoun. It’s now an incredible faux pas to address someone who looks like a woman as “her” when “ze” or “hir” is hir preferred pronoun. So when a Gyragender, Demiflux, Intersex, tells you “We are going to the store on Saturday,” perhaps it’s best not to wait three hours for they to show up and, when them never do, just go to the store yourself on Sunday. Can you see how misunderstandings are possible when there are so many pronouns flying around?
The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5), lists gender dysphoria as a mental disorder; however, society has been programmed to believe that individuals may choose whichever sex they prefer rather than accept the fact that gender is determined at fertilization. No Virginia, X chromosomes cannot be transformed into Y chromosomes, and vice versa. As Princeton University political philosopher Robert P. George put it, “Changing sexes is a metaphysical impossibility because it is a biological impossibility.”
While I don’t care who or what you try to mate with, which sex(es)/species you identify with, or what you call yourself, I do get annoyed when I am expected to accept and embrace your delusion. Publically shaming or “canceling” people for failing to call a middle-aged, woman sporting a crewcut, and testosterone-induced beard “he” is counter-reality. Likewise, not calling a self-professed non-binary they (like I’m supposed to deduce this?), will also get you shunned by the enlightened “woke” crowd.
While the “woke” advocate for allowing men to compete with women as women or allowing women to compete against women while taking male hormones, there are several biologic inequities that make this premise impractical. A number of transgender women have competed in and dominated women’s athletics. While many argue transsexual women have no physical advantage over actual women, the results they have achieved suggests otherwise. Transgender women have set several women’s records in cycling, track, wrestling, and weight lifting.
As a sort of compromise, courts have ruled that boys may play on girl’s teams provided they have not undergone endogenous puberty. In the case of Becky Pepper-Jackson, an 11-year old boy who believes himself to be a girl, a federal judge ruled he must be allowed to try out for the girl’s cross-country and track team at his school despite a West Virginia law prohibiting males from playing on female sports teams. Pepper-Jackson has lived as a girl for years and been on puberty-delaying drugs for more than a year because, apparently, his parents believed him mature enough to make such a life-altering decision at an age when children still aren’t sure if they prefer chocolate or vanilla ice cream.
In his ruling, Judge Joseph Goodwin of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of West Virginia, stated, “… the courts are most juberous of any law—state or federal—that treats groups of people differently” and indicated Pepper-Jackson “… was excluded ‘on the basis of sex,’ and would be the only girl in her school forced to play on the boy’s team.” No. He would be forced to play on the boy’s team because he is a boy. Once again we have a government official overruling biological science to conclude gender is a matter of choice—a choice apparently protected by federal law.
All of this does not negate the fact that transgenderism is a mental illness that takes a heavy toll on those who suffer from it. Dr. Paul McHugh, the university distinguished service professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine wrote, “Transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men. All become feminized men or masculinized women, counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they ‘identify.’ In that lies their problematic future.”
Transgendering is a psychological rather than biological matter. Dr. McHugh indicates young boys and girls seeking sex reassignment come with psychosocial issues such as “… conflicts over the prospects, expectations, and roles that they sense are attached to their given sex—and presume that sex-reassignment will ease or resolve them.” People suffering from gender dysphoria need therapists willing to assess and guide them in ways that permit them to work out their conflicts and correct their assumptions. Dr. McHugh believes that “treatment should strive to correct the false, problematic nature of the assumption and to resolve the psychosocial conflicts provoking it.”
Lying to people who suffer from transgenderism to show others how enviably “woke” you are is “virtue signaling” of the highest order that only exacerbates the internal struggle of the girl who thinks she is a guy. This uncompromising acceptance of transgenderism by the virtuous is a renunciation of reality especially when studies show that 80% to 95% of gender-dysphoric children eventually grow out of their dysphoria and become comfortable with their bodies after puberty if there is no hormonal or surgical intervention. Those who undergo sex-reassignment surgery commit suicide at 19 times the rate of the general population and almost double the rate of transgender-identifying adults overall.
Therapy could be helping many more people with gender dysphoria if governments would stop endorsing the fairy tale of gender fluidity and “learned” professionals like Dr. Deanna Adkins stop testifying that gender identity is not only the preferred basis for determining sex, but “the only medically supported determinant of sex.” Every other method is bad science, she claims: “It is counter to medical science to use chromosomes, hormones, internal reproductive organs, external genitalia, or secondary sex characteristics to override gender identity for purposes of classifying someone as male or female.” What nonsense!
Me? I think I’m cisgender; but, today, who knows?
Author: Michael J. Mueller
yogaesoteric
January 23, 2022
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