Transgenderism Gerry OShea
There has
been a dramatic change in public attitudes to the gay lifestyle in the last
seventy years. For example, in the 1950’s President Eisenhower declared that homosexuals
were a danger to national security and so should not be employed by the
Government.
By
comparison, in the Biden administration, Pete Buttigieg, a married gay man, was
confirmed by the Senate for the important cabinet position of Transportation
Secretary, and, indeed, he had been a serious contender for the Democratic
nomination for the presidency.
Transgender people do not enjoy similar
acceptance in the American community. They are viewed by many as eccentric freaks
who upset the whole male-female binary sexual system by changing their
functioning identity from male to female or vice versa.
In July,
2017, President Trump tweeted “the United States will not accept or allow
Transgender individuals to serve in the U.S. Military.” It was a bombshell
announcement and General Dunford, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the
Defense Secretary, Jim Mattis, had to intervene and guarantee trans people
already serving that they wouldn’t be fired or denied any medical procedures.
The Trump
mandate was reversed in the early days of the Biden Administration. The
military was instructed to cancel all hiring restrictions based on sexual
proclivity, and the new president stressed the entitlement of service members to
comprehensive medical treatment for gender transitioning.
Transgender
people have always existed and many found ways to live full lives. Consider
James Allen who died after being hit by a falling piece of timber in London in
1829. He had been married to his wife, Abigail, for over twenty years. The
autopsy declared that James’ body was anatomically female.
The coroner
was perplexed by the situation, but he continued to describe Allen as male
because he argued that he had a wife. The rest of the community where he lived
agreed. James wore a pair of trousers, worked as a manual laborer and was
married. Some people mentioned that they noticed he lacked facial hair and that
his voice at times seemed strangely high-pitched. Still, the consensus was that
he died a man leaving a grieving widow.
Researchers
confirm many such stories in past centuries. Some historians claim that Joan of
Arc, the great military leader and saint in the 1400’s, had traits that
strongly suggest that her biological sex was misaligned with the way she wanted
to express herself. Apart from leading armies into battle, she persisted,
against the requests of the religious leaders of the time, in wearing male
clothes even when attending mass.
Transgender
is an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity as revealed in their
feelings and behavior is not congruent with their biological make-up. It refers
to a person’s internal sense of being male or female and how that is
communicated in clothing, hairstyle, voice or body characteristics. The
abbreviated version of trans is frequently used and not considered derogatory.
About 0.3%
of people worldwide identify as transgender. This amounts to about one million residents
in America who define themselves in this way. The number may well be double
that figure because many people stay in the closet to avoid the opprobrium and
social isolation that comes with revealing their abnormal situation.
A baby’s anatomy announces whether it is male
or female, but assessing a person’s gender can be much more complicated. When a
person’s biology clashes with a strong sense of a different gender identity the
resulting crisis presents a major challenge.
What is the
source of this painful anomaly? Experts suggest that while community and
cultural influences are important in understanding the trans community, their
identity is also impacted in important ways by inherited genes and pre-natal
hormone levels. Researchers in Europe and the United States are actively
involved in further research.
One key discovery regarding transgenderism stresses
that it is not synonymous with sexual orientation. So, a woman who has a sex
change and becomes a man may well not be interested in a romantic relationship
with females.
Research reveals that those who identify as
transgender come to see this part of their personality slowly and unwillingly
because they don’t want to subject themselves to the stigma and shabby
treatment that inevitably follows coming out. Many people, including family and
friends, find it difficult to even imagine what is involved in changing one’s
sex.
Harrowing
statistics from a recent study reveal alarming levels of attempted suicide
among transgender youth – with the highest rate among boys trying to come to
terms with their sexual feelings. More than half male teens in this category
reported attempting suicide while close to one third of trans females also made
some effort to kill themselves.
The most
insidious rumors about transexuals falsely allege that their condition
corelates significantly with pedophilia. There are also unproven suggestions that
trans students are more likely to fit in the autism spectrum than the general
population.
Important
research reported by Scientific America indicates that the brain formation of
transgender people actually resembles not people of their own physical gender
but the brain structure of the gender that the person identifies with.
Salient
issues about this group have been in the news in the last year with right-wing
leaders seeing it as a wedge issue for use in the culture wars. They paint
their opponents as favoring confusion about which bathroom the trans community
should use. Actually, there is no bother here because people enter the toilet
of their adopted gender with other users completely unaware of their situation.
There is a
genuine problem with male athletes who transition to females giving her an
unfair advantage. The authorities in the various sports have to deal with this
situation. Fairness demands that punishing the athletes involved makes no
sense. Ideal fodder for those conservatives prodding their version of the
culture wars.
According to
the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), state legislators – all Republicans – have
introduced more than 80 anti-transgender bills since January 1st.
Proposed legislation includes laws prohibiting trans women from participating
in college sports and even criminalizing the provision of gender-affirming care
for some transgender people.
The reprehensible
thinking behind these moves involves using legal prohibitions to stamp out
behavior that they don’t understand and which is outside their tolerance level.
HRC
commenting on all these proposals says, “These bills are not addressing any
real problems. Rather this effort is being driven by national far-right
organizations sowing fear and hate.”
When there
is a controversial issue involving sex, some Catholic bishops are bound to step
in with outmoded ideas. True to form, Bishops Michael Barber of Oakland and David
Konderia of Tulsa, both senior committee spokesmen for the United States
Conference of Catholic Bishops, wrote a letter to congress expressing their
support for proposed discriminatory legislation that targeted trans women in
school and collegiate sports.
In January
of this year, several bishops issued a disgraceful letter condemning the Biden
administration’s plans to extend nondiscrimination protections for LGBTQ people.
The letter also identified their opposition to civil rights protecting individuals
on the basis of their gender identity. No doubt who they had in their sights on
the identity issue.
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