Thinking to Believe

When we respond to the transgender issue by pointing out that biology makes it clear that there are only two sexes, we are attacking a straw man.

Gender ideologues do not typically deny that sex is binary. What they deny is that our identity is limited to or determined by. In addition to our sex, we also have a gender and gender-identity. Gender is a social construct related to the different behavior and roles men and women play in society. Gender-identity is one’s perception and deeply felt experience of their gender. Most people’s gender and gender-identity matches their biological sex, but some people experience a mismatch. They may have a male gender-identity but a female body. In such cases, they should be considered a male because gender, not sex, gives us our identity. Some transgender people may desire to alter their body to match their gender, but others may be comfortable with their body. That’s why it’s perfectly legitimate to speak of men with uteruses and women with penises.

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2/15/18 – Richmond, VA – Virginia House of Delegates 2018.
Photo credit: Amanda Maglione

Why should you care about the trans issue? Why not just let people do what they want? Here’s a good reason: The State is taking kids away from parents.

It’s already happening. Parents are being stripped of their parental rights because they will not use their child’s preferred name/pronouns or consent to “gender affirmation care.” Think about it. If the only way to help trans people is to affirm their identities, then those who do not affirm them are responsible for harming them. In the same way the State will not allow you to physically harm your child, they will not allow you to emotionally and medically harm your child by denying them “life-saving” gender care.

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Trans people commit suicide at very high rates compared to the general population, both before and after “gender affirmation” surgery. While this is a sad and regrettable reality, unfortunately, Christians are being blamed for this phenomenon.

People who say that those who disagree with transgender ideology are responsible for trans suicides are engaging in emotional blackmail. It is ridiculous to suggest that we must support and celebrate people’s delusions to prevent them from harming themselves. After all, who would suggest that we agree with anorexic people’s self-perception that they are fat and need liposuction to prevent them from killing themselves?

Besides, it’s not just Christians who oppose transgender ideology. Many sane people recognize that gender dysphoria is a mental disorder that is best addressed by fixing the mind, not the body.

Are we to believe that mere disagreement leads people to kill themselves? If so, then trans ideologues must be responsible for Christian suicides since they often disagree with and condemn Christians. Of course, Christians don’t kill themselves simply because non-Christians think we are wrong or hate us. In fact, no emotionally stable person kills themselves simply because others don’t approve of or accept them. The fact that many trans people do indicates that there are deeper emotional and psychological issues at hand. They are not committing suicide simply because people don’t accept the legitimacy of their professed identity, but because of the deeper psychological issues that are causing them to be confused about their gender to begin with. Even after they undergo a “sex change,” they still experience a super high suicide rate. The problem is within.

There are differences of opinion regarding whether it is moral or beneficial for transgender people to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Regardless of where you land in that debate, everyone should be able to agree that it is unfair to allow “transgender women” (biological men who identify as women) to compete in women’s sports.

This is not about equality, but fairness. Biological males have clear physical advantages over biological females, guaranteeing that transgender women will beat all or most biological women in sports. That is why we have always separated sports by sex. Allowing transgender women to compete in women’s sports is not fair to biological women. They practice and train for years to be the best among women, only to be beaten by a biological male.

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A 69 year old Dutch man, Emile Ratelband, is petitioning a court to legally change his age to 49. For him, it is an exercise of personal autonomy: “With this free(dom) of choice, choice of name, freeness of gender, I want to have my own age. I want to control myself.”  He told The Washington Post that “we can make our own decisions if we want to change our name, or if we want to change our gender. So I want to change my age. My feeling about my body and about my mind is that I’m about 40 or 45.”

Absurd, right?  Yes, but not given the logic of the transgender movement. If we have absolute autonomy over ourselves, such that we can deny biological reality due to our feelings, it’s not a stretch to think we have the autonomy to deny historical reality because of our feelings too. If feelings rather than biology determine one’s gender, then why can’t feelings rather than history determine one’s age?

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Great op-ed piece in the LA Times about the futility of gender-neutral parenting.  Liberals think it’s a great idea, but kids have a way of exposing a stupid idea for what it is.

First it was the approval of homosexuality. Now it is the approval of transgenderism. The Boy Scouts have jumped ship, and now it’s time for Christians to jump ship as well.  An organization that was based on teaching boys to be “morally straight” has lost its way, capitulating to political correctness.  Sad.

A biologically normal person who experiences transgender feelings is not the opposite gender trapped in the wrong body, but a person who is experiencing mental and emotional confusion (I’ve written some on gender issues here and here).  They need therapy, not gender reassignment surgery.  But what about a person who was born genetically male (Y chromosome), but with malformed or ambiguous genitalia?

There have been many cases where doctors and parents made the decision to surgically alter their genitals to appear female and then raise the child as a girl.  But the child is a male, biologically, and the male hormones make them feel and act like a boy despite being told they are a girl and raised as a girl.  Later in life, they discover their past.  Now, as an adult, though they look like a girl, they want to be what they feel like and truly are: a man.  They want to dress as a man and act like a man, and even undergo surgery to physically alter their genitals to look like a man again.

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The fight over bathrooms continues.  While in the recent past this has resulted in the addition of a third bathroom option (gender-neutral) or requiring people to allow anyone to use the bathroom of their choice, Cooper Union in New York has removed signs from bathrooms that designate them as male or female.  Now, everyone can use the bathroom of their choice.  Co-ed bathrooms.  Ironically, the dorms are still gender segregated.

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I’m sure you’ve all heard of Rachel Dolezal, the NAACP president of Spokane Washington. She has recently been outed as a white woman. Her bloodline is Czech, German, and Swedish, not African. Yet, she has been posing as a black woman for several years now. According to her interview on the Today show, she has identified as a black woman since she was five years old.

What I would like to know is why those who side with the transgender are up in arms over Rachel Dolezal. She is simply transracial. Her true self is a black woman, but she is trapped in a white woman’s body. It is not her fault that she was born in the wrong body. Remember, the mind trumps the body. It doesn’t matter that her body is as white as they come. What matters is how she perceives herself. Since she perceives herself as black, she is black, and she ought to be able to undergo skin darkening treatments to align her body with her true identity.

Those who think transgenderism is normal, and the proper treatment is gender reassignment surgery, please tell me why you think that Rachel Dolezal is not black.  After all, race is not as fixed as sex.  There are only two sexes, but there are many races, and race is not as clearly defined as sex.  New races can be created by consistently mixing two people of different races.  The same cannot be said of sex.  Indeed, what is the racial identity of mixed race children?  If a Mexican woman has a child with an African man, is the child Mexican or African?  Something else?  Race and racial identity is rather fluid.  So if anything, we ought to be more supportive of the transracial than the transgender.

Oddly enough, I don’t have much to say about Bruce Jenner.  Others have provided excellent commentary and I don’t feel the need to add to the mix.  What I will say is that my heart goes out to the man.  I cannot imagine what it is like to feel like you are a woman trapped in a man’s body.  While I think his decision to alter his body to make it look like a female’s body is a tragic one, I understand why he would do so.  He is trying to look like what he thinks he truly is, and he thinks that these alterations will make him happy.  Unfortunately, I think he’ll find out too late that it won’t bring him the happiness he thought it would, and he may even come to regret the decision.  While we should be firm in our convictions and position that his actions are wrong, we should never do so at the expense of his humanity.  He is a person.  A confused person.  A lost person.  A person who needs love, and not just words of moral condemnation.  This is a time that we need to proclaim the truth, but proclaim it with compassion and love.

What I would like to focus my attention on is why our culture is divided on the issue of transgenderism and gender-reassignment, and then show how the logic of the liberal view is applied inconsistently. (more…)