Thursday, June 04, 2015

Bruce Jenner and More Transgenderism Talk

So Bruce Jenner is on the cover of Vanity Fair wearing women's clothing. Most people are praising this as a huge step forward for trans rights. But I think we need to step back and analyse the situation a little more closely.

Bruce Jenner is a 65 year old grandfather. He has 6 biological children and 5 grandchildren. Rather than being the patriarch of his family as he should be, he has decided to dress in women's clothing and act like a woman. I am not here to judge Bruce, who has now decided to call himself Caitlyn. I'm here to point out some information that others are unwilling to touch.

As if there is no objective reality anymore, the minute this man decided to call himself "Caitlyn", and say he is a woman, almost every news outlet decided to follow suit. Apparently what determines if a person is a man or a woman is entirely based on what they tell you, not biological fact.

Would we apply the same logic to a white man who insisted he was black? Would news outlets immediately start calling such a person African-American once he decided that's what he is? Would objectors be called bigots. The person in question would argue that despite his outward appearance, he is in fact black. Then I suppose this person could seek out benefits which only apply to visible minorities. On what grounds could anyone object to this person calling himself this, using our current thinking?

Dr. Paul McHugh who has studied transgenderism in depth, and was psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins University, believes the modern-day approach to the issue is wrong. A year ago in a Wall Street Journal article, McHugh points out that people who undergo mutilation of their sexual organs to appear more like the other sex, also known as sex reassignment surgery, have a suicide rate 20 times higher than average. Usually pro-trans sources will say this is because society hasn't fully accepted them yet. However, no evidence shows this to be the case.

As an expert who has published 5 books and 125 peer-reviewed medical articles, Dr. McHugh believes transgenderism is similar to body dysmorphic disorder wherein a person believes false things about their body despite being clearly untrue, such as is the case with people suffering from anorexia.

There are disorders similar to this as well, such as body integrity identity disorder, wherein a person believes they should have been born missing a limb. Some of these individuals will go to great lengths to accomplish their desired bodies and will sometimes have healthy limbs amputated, often illegally.

Before you think this is just too weird and abnormal, keep in mind that this is precisely what is happening with "sex reassignment surgery". Often healthy limbs are amputated, fake limbs are added, and unnatural hormones are added to disrupt healthy and normal hormone production. The same type of process could theoretically be used to achieve any number of changes in a person's body.

The clear disregard for the obvious here is just a case of the emperor's new clothes. It goes along a well with the modern-day notion that beauty or even truth is not something to be discovered, but to be invented and is highly personal.

Dr. McHugh wrote a great article, which can be seen here, for First Things Magazine. After conversing with hundreds of pre and post-op transsexuals, he realized certain peculiarities about them. When these operations first started in the 70s, the operation candidates were all men. What he realized is that despite their insistence on being women trapped in men's bodies, they were not true women in many ways. For example, he says they seemed almost completely uninterested in babies and children, and that many of them expressed an attraction to women and preferred to be called "lesbian".

Also, although surgery can successfully lop off certain limbs and change certain body parts, many telltale signs remain, such as a larger Adam's apple, larger hands, smaller hips, and other things only seen in men. On top of this, many people who interacted with these transgender men said they did not "seem" like women. There are certain subtleties about women which these men did not possess.

Much of the desire for certain men to "become" female was not from a longstanding view of themselves as women as such, but rather an arousal they achieved from dressing as women and looking like women. What Dr. McHugh also noted was that years after the sex reassignment surgery, most of the patients displayed the same mental issues they had before the operation. The underlying problem had apparently not been properly addressed.

Other startling discoveries were made by Dr. McHugh's associate Dr. William Reiner in the area of males who were raised as girls from birth. In some cases, newborn boys' genitals were so badly malformed, some doctors suggested their genitals be removed and to have female genitalia constructed. Despite their genital mutilation present at birth, all the boys with one particular condition had received all the same hormones as a healthy boy in the womb.

The results were shocking. In 14 out of 16 cases, the boys were raised as girls. In 2 cases, the boys were raised as boys. Out of the 14, 8 had since declared themselves to be male, 5 were living as female, and 1 was of unknown gender. Also, every one of the 16 had displayed typical male characteristics during childhood, such as rougher play and traditionally male-child interests.

What all of this information tends to show is that transgenderism, far from being an indicator that there is in fact a woman born in a man's body or vice versa, what we really have is a person with a mental disorder who needs help. Such is the case with Bruce, now known as Caitlyn, Jenner. This man needs help, and his family needs a father.

1 comment:

  1. Reasons to believe Jesus is alive in a new life with God can be found in quotes from two prominent atheists and a biology textbook. There is nothing wrong with the Sartre quote, and it proves that the Nagel quote is dishonest. The Nagel quote proves that the textbook quote is ignorant, unintelligent, and irrational:

    Thus the passion of man is the reverse of that of Christ, for man loses himself as man in order that God may be born. But the idea of God is contradictory and we lose ourselves in vain. Man is a useless passion. (Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, New York: Washington Square Press, p. 784)

    Among the traditional candidates for comprehensive understanding of the relation of mind to the physical world, I believe the weight of evidence favors some from of neutral monism over the traditional alternatives of materialism, idealism, and dualism. (Thomas Nagel, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, location 69 of 1831)

    And certain properties of the human brain distinguish our species from all other animals. The human brain is, after all, the only known collection of matter that tries to understand itself. To most biologists, the brain and the mind are one and the same; understand how the brain is organized and how it works, and we’ll understand such mindful functions as abstract thought and feelings. Some philosophers are less comfortable with this mechanistic view of mind, finding Descartes’ concept of a mind-body duality more attractive. (Neil Campbell, Biology, 4th edition, p. 776 )

    David Roemer
    http://www.newevangelization.info

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