On Transgenderism

He was a large bulky male in a skirt. He had unkempt hair and was screaming at the young clerk behind the counter: “Call me ma’am, call me ma’am!” The clerk had inadvertently and understandably said ”Thank you sir.” The video was taken by a bystander and went viral. In spite of the undeniable external signs, the man in the skirt insisted he was a woman. What is happening here that a person can be so impervious to the truth about himself? How can someone become so confused?

The disconnect between the external real and the inner fantasy is so obvious to objective observation that the question seems academic. Is he a male? Is he female? The answer is obvious.

It would appear a no-brainer. Yet some unfortunate people truly suffer, struggling for an answer which is immediately available to a six year old. What sex am I? One of my graduate students said you can always tell…… Always may be an understandable stretch, the appropriate scientific phrase is generally.

Should the clerk enter his delusional world and pretend the guy is a gal? Should we respond like children playing make believe? The transperson would feel better even if we compromised in our own integrity. Would that be charitable and respectable? Would that be honest? Is that the new normal?

Ben Shapiro was on a TV panel discussing transgenderism and was seated next to a similarly conflicted person as described above. Ben was stating the obvious empirical reasons why the big muscular person in the dress was a male. His observations were so powerful, the irritated cross-dressed male stood, towered over Ben, and threatened physical violence. “How would you like to go home in an ambulance?” Tough talk for a lady! How is it that people can get so confused? Is this pathological? A gigantic leg pull? Demonic? Behavioral conditioning? Whatever it is, it isn't a good situation. These people evidently suffer enormously. With the sophisticated, it is called gender dysphoria.

Interestingly, there is a physical/psychological condition known as anorexic nervosa, which is somewhat akin and somewhat different, hence an analogue. I once counseled a highly educated and deeply spiritual man who starved himself ruthlessly. He was convinced he was massively obese and unattractive. In fact he was frighteningly underweight. Nothing could persuade him of the reality of himself. He was hospitalized several times with little improvement. He was terribly disconnected from reality. The empirical and measurable conflicted with an imbedded psychological fantasy: The effort to make the external or soma congenial with the inner fantasy or psyche, hence the muddled phrase “I am a woman trapped in a man’s body.”

The data are growing. For example Dr. Paul McHugh, the former chief of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Hospital concluded after a time, surgical intervention wasn’t working and that transitioning didn’t help patients become any healthier or more functional. After the mutilative surgery the dysphoria remained. He stated: We should have spent more time on the psyche and less on the soma.

If one studies the marvelous interaction of human body systems with each other, the notion of purpose or technology becomes clear. Eyes are for seeing; lungs for breathing and so on. Following such structural emanations, one logically concludes that human beings who have ovaries; fallopian tubes; a uterus; birth canal plus secondary physical characteristics and the capacity to menstruate are female. Males have testicles, a penis, prostate and an ability to ejaculate plus secondary characteristics. Are there scientific reasons why this is so?

Do men generally go bald more often than women? Are men generally taller than women, have stronger longer muscles than women? Do men cross their legs differently than women? Are there skeletal structural differences between males and females? Can we dismiss these differences as meaningless? Note how the transwoman struggles to imitate the innate microbehaviors inbred in females.

However both of these groups belong to the larger group called Genus or the category for human beings in general. Genus in turn is subdivided into male and female species which are capable of several variations or calibrations. Charted on the frequency distribution curve, human beings can be seen as dominantly male or female with deviation to masculine female and feminine male on the outer limits of the curve. Basically it is a binary system, complementary and functional for the creation of life and unity. Recall the French phrase:

Vive la difference.

Adam and Eve in Paradise by Francesco Bartolozzi, 1790

Catholic tradition speaks of the person as a functioning unit, body and soul. The disconnect described above in no way fits into Catholic intellectual symmetry. There is no way the current fad thinking could be compatible with the faith. Foundational thinking, heeding the plan of the Creator would necessarily reject mutilation of the human body without serious cause. So far there is nothing to suggest that the Catholic Church was in error for 2000 years.

One is reminded of HC Anderson’s The Emperors New Clothes. It seems the populace at large has been cowed into submission, afraid to state the immutable fact: He created them male and female (Gen 5:2). Unfortunately, to the au courant, truth is malleable, facts don’t matter, and words can create reality.

Where’s that little child from the fable when we need him?