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Test Acts for Kids

Scott W. (who seems to be getting a lot of hat tips lately--you can pay me later, Scott) has repeatedly hinted (though as he says, half joking) that the leftist overlords are working towards a modern revival of the Test Acts. The Test Acts, if you recall, were English anti-Catholic laws that required people fulfilling civil or military office to take various oaths, including an oath rejecting belief in the doctrine of Transubstantiation.

But I bet you never would have guessed that one of the most explicit examples of a test act in the United States would be for school children.

The Massachusetts Department of Education has issued guidelines for public schools to help them in dealing with "transgender" students. Here is an exact quotation from a sample letter from a principal to teachers concerning a male-to-female "transgender" student (emphasis added):

The student John Smith wishes to be referred to by the name Jane Smith, a name that is consistent with the student’s female gender identity. Please be certain to use the student’s preferred name in all contexts, as well as the corresponding pronouns. It is my expectation that students will similarly refer to the student by her chosen name and preferred pronouns. Your role modeling will help make a smooth transition for all concerned. If students do not act accordingly, you may speak to them privately after class to request that they do. Continued, repeated, and intentional misuse of names and pronouns may erode the educational environment for Jane. It should not be tolerated and can be grounds for student discipline. If you need any assistance to make sure that Jane Smith experiences a safe, nondiscriminatory classroom atmosphere, please contact me or Ms. O’Neill.

So let's get this straight: John Smith is a boy. He possesses male organs. He was born a boy. He's decided that in his heart or his Cartesian soul or something like that he's "really" a girl. Now he demands to be referred to as Jane. If other children refuse to call John by the pronoun "she," they will be punished. The other children must play along with John's gender confusion by referring to him as a girl, by calling him "Jane" and "she," or they will receive school discipline.

What about bathrooms and locker rooms? Here are some charming thoughts on that topic:

In all cases, the principal should be clear with the student (and parent) that the student may access the restroom, locker room, and changing facility that corresponds to the student’s gender identity.

[snip]

Some students may feel uncomfortable with a transgender student using the same sex-segregated restroom, locker room or changing facility. This discomfort is not a reason to deny access to the transgender student. School administrators and counseling staff should work with students to address the discomfort and to foster understanding of gender identity, to create a school culture that respects and values all students.

Got that? So if your daughter doesn't want to use the locker room and be on swim team (see the section on sports participation) with John, who thinks he's a girl, that's tough luck. We want a school culture that respects and values all students. Except the normal ones, that is. They have to play insane pretend games, not object to using the bathroom with members of the opposite sex, or be punished. So much for a safe and comfortable school environment.

Make no mistake: This is not just going to be a Massachusetts thing. Nor should you assume that your local public school is going to be immune long term. It will happen at some point that some boy wants to pretend to be a girl, or vice versa, and that your principal will believe that it is legally required for everyone to play along. I'm sorry to say that this will probably affect charter schools as well. My own opinions on sending children to public schools are not exactly a secret. This is just reason #503, 694, 845 against doing so.

By the way, I got this story originally from an article on Fox. And guess what? It checks out. Please note that all my quotes have been from the actual Massachusetts DOE document. Just chalk that one up next time some lefty sneers and acts like Todd Starnes at Fox is a sort of perfect philosophical knave, useful for probability exercises, who always tells lies.

Comments (70)


Lydia:

What role do men, particularly fathers, have in response to such long trains of abuse, other than removing their kids from public schools?

I'm not quite sure what the question is aiming for. At this point I definitely don't think that any individual father is going to be able to change things. For that matter, I don't think even a _group_ of fathers is going to be able to change things.

If all the unconfused boys get together and decide they're all really girls, I'll bet things would change in a hurry.

A kind of "social reductio"? I doubt it, even if it were right to try to get boys to participate in playing the system in that way. Our society is past being able to learn from reductios.

When I first heard about these new rules, I had an idea for my own reductio. In schools where there are boys' and girls' teams for the same sport (say, basketball), the boys who can't make it onto the boys' team should just try out for the girls' team (while identifying as girls, of course). If they're better than the girls and are kept from filling the team with boys, then their families should sue on the basis of discrimination. But even if they only get a few boys on the team, they will make other parents angry whose daughters are on teams with no boys at all, because they will have ruined the competition.

TM, Here are some ideas:

1) Get the word out. A lot of people won't know about this sort of thing unless a friend or colleague tells them. "Hey, did you hear about--?"

2) Look for homeschool co-opts in the area, and if there aren't any, discuss with others the possibility of starting one.

3) Support other alternatives, e.g., help start a charter school (if local laws allow such schools to be sufficiently independent) or get on the board of an existing one and work to keep it from becoming just like other government schools.

One issue with charter schools is that if there is a state or local ordinance forbidding "discrimination on the basis of gender identity," then they will doubtless consider themselves required to go along with the transgender agenda, as per the story. Even if there is an exemption (which there sometimes isn't) for religious organizations, a charter school can't use that.

In all honesty, and if we're being serious, I don't endorse attempts to do the reductio thing. This whole idea of boys identifying as girls is a real abomination, and no boy should be encouraged to play along with it even in order to make trouble for the bad guys. The whole thing is just horrible and to be rejected, not to be played with.

(Regarding my previous post, I meant "co-op," not "co-opt." Whoops.)

You're right about charter schools. They could be useful in cases where the new rules are specific to the local school corporation, and not the result of legislation. There is, however, the danger that new legislation could be passed, in which case even the charter schools are lost.

I think that, by high school, many boys can recognize that "identifying" as girls can be a way to make a mockery of the whole notion of transgenderism (or whatever it's called). They wouldn't really be identifying as girls, but making fun of the idea that they could. But I take your point. Plus, now that I think about it, they would probably be required to use the same locker room as the girls on the team.

Plus, now that I think about it, they would probably be required to use the same locker room as the girls on the team.

Not at all implausible, though they might be able to get away with telling the school that it has to construct some kind of "unisex" more private facilities for them. Certainly the other girls and all the other students would have to call them "she," per the explicit school policies discussed in the main post. Overall, the whole business is as good a case as any of a time to follow St. Paul's advice: "Have nothing to do with the unfruitful works of darkness but rather reprove them."

The schools themselves take _very_ seriously the idea of "identifying as a girl." It wouldn't be allowed to be a way of mocking the whole thing. The boy would really have to be telling people that he believes himself to be a girl. Not fair either to the boy or to the other students, forcing them to refer to him as "she" or face punishment, further degrading the atmosphere of the school, etc.

Lydia, you are right. I did not read the document carefully enough and was under the impression that a school might have to accept so-called "gender fluidity" throughout the school day. (If this were the case, a boy could identify as a girl for playing basketball only and thereby avoid being called "she" off the court.) But looking at the document again, I've found that this isn't the case. From page 4 of the PDF:

Consistent with the statutory standard, a school should accept a student’s assertion of his or her gender identity when there is “consistent and uniform assertion of the gender-related identity, or any other evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held as part of a person’s core identity.” If a student’s gender-related identity, appearance, or behavior meets this standard, the only circumstance in which a school may question a student’s asserted gender identity is where school personnel have a credible basis for believing that the student’s gender-related identity is being asserted for some improper purpose. [...] The statute does not require consistent and uniform assertion of gender identity as long as there is “other evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held as part of [the] person’s core identity.”
As an aside, I was a little surprised by this section, because I keep hearing from the "transgender" crowd that "gender" (by which they mean "sex") is not binary, but "fluid," and is not to be locked into male and female only. (I've heard that this is partly why there's an "intersex" category added to the usual alphabet-soup list.) But the document denies this.

But the document denies this.

Ah, well, they're makin' it up as they go along. In a few years they'll probably find some way to square the circle and fit in the total fluidity of "gender identity."

This is also true of the transgender movement as a whole. It can't make up its mind whether gender is to be immutable or fluid. In many ways the political demands of the movement require an assertion of immutability: "I just _am_ a girl. I can't help it. I was born a girl trapped in a man's body. How can you be so cruel as to try to force me to live as a man?" But at the same time, the ultimate postmodern goal is the _destruction_ of, as you say, the "binary notion of gender."

In the end, I believe that the postmodern goal will be at least partially accomplished in many people's minds in society. And as befits a postmodern goal, it will be accomplished partly by the strategic assertion that gender identity is immutable. Go figure.

"Cartesian soul." Lydia you hinted at something that I wonder about a lot when it comes to these transgender folks, which is why they should possess the notion of an identity apart from--even inconsistent with--their physical natures. Doesn't that indicate a belief in dualism? I tend to consider this gender-is-independent-of-the-body mindset as a distortion of the Christian view of human nature. I wonder if such notions as "gender identity" could have arisen in a world that hadn't already been accustomed to the Christian concept of a human being as the union of a body and soul, the soul being generally emphasized as the more essential, true, and eternal aspect of that being. On naturalism, you don't have any explanation for a gender identity existing apart from the physical one...unless you make the case that this sort of sexual confusion is a neurological malfunction in the "transgender" individual. And that sort of explanation certainly wouldn't justify the affirmations of switched gender identities, which the Massachusetts Dept of Ed. and others are foisting upon rational people. Christianity appears to be the only coherent worldview, which could possibly allow the idea of a "man being trapped in a woman's body" or vice versa and yet biblical teachings explicitly condemn this confusion. It just seems like a lose-lose situation when it comes to rational justification for transgender identity and homosexuality. It doesn't make sense in any worldview.

You're completely right that it doesn't make sense no matter how you slice it. I suspect that a die-hard naturalist would go very much the route you suggest and would then combine that with some kind of utilitarianism: The allegation would be that it contributes to the person's happiness to be affirmed in his sense of gender identity, so why not?

However, one could reply that it causes much less disruption in society to _refuse_ to affirm the subjective "gender identity" of a few atypical individuals and that therefore even on a utilitarian calculus one should _not_ affirm the "gender identity" because it is making more people more uncomfortable and unhappy overall.

So what do we have? Well, perhaps just some kind of bizarre victim narrative with a crazy, mixed-up version of deontological ethics. The prime imperative is "Thou shalt affirm the victim group," and transgenders are the victim group du jour.

In one situation where a transgender girl was entering high school, she and her parent asked the principal to inform her teachers that even though her school records indicate that her name is John, she goes by the name Jane and uses female pronouns

Stupid, stupid, stupid. Even on THEIR OWN standards, this is truly stupid. A child's name is a legal reality, and should not be fluffed off by school (that is, state) officials on a mere whim in direct defiance of prior state determination. If the parent goes through the effort to get John's legal name legally changed to Jane, THEN, and ONLY THEN, should the teachers and other school personnel "recognize" the use of Jane. Pure and simple. School officials are not the entirety of the state, and they cannot rule on name changes, that's not their assigned function.

and uses female pronouns

Doubly stupid - THESE are the people we have in charge of educations? Good grief!!! The first person pronouns in English are "I" and "we", or "my" and "our", and these pronouns do not denote sex or gender even in the "stereotypical" sense. They are used equally and validly by those of male or female sex, or by entities that have no sex (like an organization).

If John (or Jane) "uses female pronouns" in referring to OTHER people, including to OTHER MALES who wish to be referred to as male, then she is using pronouns in defiance of those other people's own stated preference - and SHE should be punished according to these new rules. If she uses them the same way everyone else uses them, then why are we being told that she "uses female pronouns"?

Consistent with the statutory standard, a school should accept a student’s assertion of his or her gender identity when there is “consistent and uniform assertion of the gender-related identity, or any other evidence that the gender-related identity is sincerely held as part of a person’s core identity.”
I was a little surprised by this section, because I keep hearing from the "transgender" crowd that "gender" (by which they mean "sex") is not binary, but "fluid," and is not to be locked into male and female only. (I've heard that this is partly why there's an "intersex" category added to the usual alphabet-soup list.) But the document denies this.

I would be willing (if I absolutely HAD to leave my kid in such a school, God forbid) to attempt a reductio on the school in spite of Lydia's comment that reductio's don't work here. Just to give it a run for the money, and FORCE them to back up this crazy dictum in court. I would have my kid declare that h/s/w/jee (that's a new pronoun) is primarily male on Tuesday's, presenting as female on Wednesdays, intraflux basal freen on Thursdays, and "straight bi-sexual" on Fridays between the hours of 8 and 1. H/s/w/jee requires the use of an "intraflux basal freen" bathroom and locker on Thursdays, thank you for supplying one. On Friday's h/s/w/jee will be happy to use both the male and female locker rooms in equal measure. Oh, and by the way, on Mondays h/s/w/jeer gender identity is "nudist male-displaying lesbian". H/s/w/jee won't be dressed Mondays. If h/s/w/jee starts to hit on girls, just remember that h/s/w/jee is doing it as a lesbian, not as a boy, certain physical indicators to the contrary. (Because, after all, those physical indicators are irrelevant to sexual identity.)

In the final analysis, if a person's "gender" is whatever they say it is, there is no principle to say that it has to be "consistent and uniform", that's an obviously biased, prejudiced stereotype standard, and violates the rights of people whose gender expression and identity doesn't fit into the old "fixed" and binary system. And I am sure I could locate an expert or 7 to say so in court.

Even if the school really thought the above rule was proper, THE SCHOOL should not be in the business of deciding whether a child's "expression" of gender identity is "consistent and uniform", that's a job for experts and specialists. The school shouldn't take it on themselves to make a determination like that, it's not their job. They aren't trained for it, and they shouldn't be, either. They should only act if a qualified authority determines that the child's "gender identity" is X, Y, Z, LPXTS, or whatever. I mean, what if a teacher says "yes, I know that so-called "Jane" wants to be considered a boy, but she still pees sitting down, so I don't consider her to "consistently and uniformly" express her identity as a boy"?

Oh, I'm sure they can find an "expert" to take on the challenge, Tony, if that's what one wants. There's no shortage of "experts" out there happy to provide a note to the school that John will be psychologically damaged if not referred to as "Jane" and "she." But that shouldn't be enough to make the school jump and start punishing other children for not referring to John as "she."

And I really don't think you'd actually use your son as a means to an end in the way you describe. I mean, it makes a humorous sort of dystopian dark joke to imagine doing so, but you wouldn't _literally_ do it. Not tell your son to go to school in the nude, pretend to be bisexual, pretend to be female, and the like. It wouldn't be fair to several innocents involved--neither to your son nor to the other kids, most of whom probably hate the policy as much as we do, whose school atmosphere would be rendered that much the more debased and surreal by the attempted reductio.

Aww, Mom, do you have to take all the fun out of life?

Of course I wouldn't have my son actually start to act that way. But what if I sent a letter to the principal to the above effect? Or threaten to that effect, anyway?

Oh, I'm sure they can find an "expert" to take on the challenge, Tony, if that's what one wants. There's no shortage of "experts" out there happy to provide a note to the school that John will be psychologically damaged if not referred to as "Jane" and "she."

Sure, sure, I know. The main point with that, really, is to take a poke at the god-like powers of the educrats by taking this new power out of their hands. Just to rile them: "you know-it-alls aren't smart enough to decide whether John is really "Jane" or "Johnette" or Jean, or Bill or George or Tarzan..." A secondary effect would be to start the process of dumbing down the standard of "expert" by pushing the notion that every Tom, Dick and Mary that claims to have studied "sex identity" at Podunk U has a right to speak, and the get the educrats themselves in a hopeless tangle of deciding whether X or Y self-proclaimed expert is "right" on whether John is really a guy who is homosexual, or a girl who likes boys, or ..." Just let Mom hire expert X, and Dad hire expert Y, and get the educrats spending millions of dollars defending themselves on whether they should follow X or Y or Z.

It's occurred to me that much of this "gender confusion" may be stemming from sheer same-sex attraction. If a boy is attracted to other boys, he may decide he must really be a girl, since after all, girls are attracted to boys.

Yes, ME, that's one of the points I was getting at. More generically: If you take away the "stereotypes" of "what a boy does" and "what a girl does", then there is no longer any basis for saying that John's "consistent and uniform" behavior doing things "like girls" makes him to BE a girl rather than to BE a boy doing unstereotypical things. Maybe he is just a breaker of stereotypes. Maybe he is a boy who is comfortable doing things that boys don't (on the average, mind you) prefer, which makes him "emotionally independent" rather than "a girl". Since the "average" of what boys do is made up of a range, with outliers, and since there is nothing inherent to the set of "behaviors that boys do" that makes the set natural to boys (according to their theory), John's desire to wear a dress and pony tails is just a few more sample behaviors that "boys do". Outliers, to be sure, but that's what an average does, it includes outliers. Their very rhetoric undermines any rational basis for treating John differently from any other person who sports male biology.

Regarding the name that John "prefers": I have heard but never checked this, that while the written form of a person's name is a legal, officially binding reality, the pronunciation of it is a matter of personal preference, as long as no fraud is intended. If a person named "John" wants it pronounced "Jane" that's legal. Same way if he wants it pronounced "Darth Vader". Enterprising parents in MA can start to ridicule the new rules by requesting that the teachers refer to their kids by all sorts of outlandish pronunciations: Queen Elizabeth, Pope Francis, Disestablishmentarianism, Pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis, etc.

I'm not quite sure what the question is aiming for. At this point I definitely don't think that any individual father is going to be able to change things. For that matter, I don't think even a _group_ of fathers is going to be able to change things.

I would submit that one should ask why this would never happen in the Islamic world. It's precisely because the fathers would storm the school and raise hell as men should do in a case like this. One can fault the Muslims for their readiness to violence when something more moderate should be the starting point, but we are equally at fault for having such an enervated culture that we'd look aghast at the image of hundreds of fathers nearly rioting at the school until the police tell the principle to back down in the name of public order.

But really, that's putting the cart before the horse. A society in which most fathers give their consent to zero tolerance policies which severely punish their kids for self-defense is one which almost no man has enough concern for the well-being of his children to even think about giving a principle a stern talking-to over something like this, let alone pull a 1960sesque sit-in that threatens to turn into a riot.

I would submit that one should ask why this would never happen in the Islamic world. It's precisely because the fathers would storm the school and raise hell as men should do in a case like this.

It would never come to that, because the principal would be a Muslim as well. So are the legislators. So are the bureaucrats. Nobody would ever bother to write a policy such as the one cited in the main text. It's doubtful that any Muslim state would ever pass a law forbidding "discrimination on the basis of gender identity" which is the reason for the policy, either. But if they did it would be the deadest dead letter that ever existed. I doubt anybody would ever even think about rioting. The whole thing would be a non-issue.

I think that by the time a culture gets to the point that the above policy can be written, that schools believe they must live by it, and that students will be treated accordingly, including punishing those that won't go along with the craziness, it's really too late. Sit-ins or what-not would simply get the police called in. The principal would tell you that he's responsible to the DOE and has no choice in the matter. The system is broken and cannot be fixed.

Sit-ins or what-not would simply get the police called in. The principal would tell you that he's responsible to the DOE and has no choice in the matter. The system is broken and cannot be fixed.

It cannot be fixed, but it's a cultural issue now. We need fewer Joel Osteens and even Billy Grahams and more Charles Martels among Christian men in particular. Just as gun rights groups are responding to politicians and police with "molon labe" we should be doing that on matters involving our kids as well.

I certainly agree with you that the likes of Joel Osteen are no help at all. :-) For the rest, our best bet is to home school our children legally and support groups like the HSLDA that fight within the system to maintain our parental rights.

Isn't this article conflating two different arguments?

1. There's a limit to how far the majority must go to accommodate a minority.

2. The view of gender behind these regulations is incorrect, especially regarding transgender students (your references to "gender confusion," "Cartesian soul," etc.).

Seems to me that argument (1) stands on its own. Suppose the authorities were absolutely correct about your argument (2) and you were absolutely wrong. I still don't see how these regulations would follow.

If I'm right, then it means that rhetorically (as opposed to philosophically) you should concentrate on argument (1). You're not getting into needless arguments over ontology, and you could counter the points about poor Johnny/Jane with points of your own about the effect of girls having to share locker rooms with anatomically male classmates.

For what it's worth, I'm more sympathetic with the establishment on point (2). I think that gender is less biologically determined than you say, and I also think that "gender confusion" itself may be to a large degree biologically determined. I think it might be similar to those people who believe that their arm or leg is not really part of their body, and who want to amputate it; there's evidence suggesting a neurological cause. But no matter how much I sympathize with transgender students, I think argument (1) far outweighs these demands.

Well, Aaron, even if there were some neurological cause for the confusion, the solution isn't to play along. If there were some neurological cause that caused Johnny to think that he's Napoleon Bonaparte, it wouldn't follow that the best treatment is for everyone to refer to him as such.

I would like to think that you are a sensible enough person _not_ to be "with the establishment" on the view behind these regulations, because the view being perpetuated here, as far a I can tell, is that Johnny really is a girl. At least for the period of time that he subjectively senses being a girl as part of his "core identity." Therefore, we are simply telling the truth by playing along with him. This is to ask that society go crazy along with Johnny. It is, in fact, to treat Johnny's disorder as not a disorder but rather as a normal part of societal life. Oh, Johnny is really a girl. Got it.

I think your two points are more linked than you realize. If Johnny really is a girl, then in asking others to refer to Johnny as "she" we're just acknowledging that reality.

Now, what I see in your comment is the utilitarian position I sketched above--namely, that Johnny's greater comfort isn't a high enough good to justify making everyone else feel radically confused, uncomfortable, and coerced.

But I tend to think that in the present policy you are up against a kind of perverse deontologism: Johnny really is a girl. As a "trans girl," he belongs to an oppressed class. Everyone else _ought_ to recognize the reality that Johnny is a girl, and doing so is an ethical imperative so as not to continue to oppress Johnny and people like...er...her. You're going to have to find some point at which to reject that argument.

Since it was my post, and since I think it's nuts to say that Johnny really is a girl, I reserve the right to say that, especially since my goal is not to convince some kind of moderate utilitarian such as you seem to be presenting yourself to be but rather to inform my fellow sane conservatives who presumably agree with me that it's nuts to say that Johnny really is a girl. Therefore, I can trust them to be duly horrified at the thought of their kids being forced to play along with the charade on pain of punishment. Therefore, if any of them still think sending their kids to public school is a good idea, maybe this prospect will be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

BTW, I'm surprised that you haven't commented on the Kaitlyn Hunt case.

See my personal blog, Mike, where full moderation is enabled. The story is over there instead of here for a reason. He that hath ears, let him hear.

Your Napoleon example would be analogous to Johnny saying "I have a vagina." That's different than saying "I'm a girl," which is the whole point. Obviously Johnny does not mean that he's anatomically female. The objection that "he can't be a girl because he doesn't have a vagina," whether it happens to be true or not, is just begging the question.

I agree with the Bad Guys on some things but not on others. I agree that gender is not determined by biology, but I don't agree that one's identity is whatever one says it is. For instance, I can't say "I'm black" and thereby become black; but Barack Obama, a mulatto, can say that and thereby become black. I think this is a much better analogy to gender identity than Napoleon is. Johnny could become a girl, maybe, but not just by deciding that he is one.

The Establishment view is that if Johnny says, "I'm a girl," then the category of "girl" now includes Johnny. Your view, I think, is that if Johnny says, "I'm a girl," then he's making a false statement, because "girls" is a subset of "anatomical females." My view is that he's saying that he considers himself a girl and that he's appealing to society to recognize him as such, to define its category of "girl" accordingly, which if it happened would make him a girl. So I see Johnny as making a political statement, whether he knows it or not.

My answer above is pretty nominalist, so I want to correct it. What Johnny's saying is that sex organs are not essential to the categories of "boy" and "girl." That's a metaphysical claim, not just a social one.

So in other words, you think "being a girl" is a political matter. Surely you can see that whether "I'm a girl" is similar to "I'm Napoleon" or perhaps similar to "I'm a tiger" (I know, I didn't give that example before) or not depends on whether one thinks "I'm a girl" has its truth value in some subjective or socially constructed fashion. Evidently you do think so. Ergo, in my view, you're pretty much nuts.

But your particular brand of nuts still sits rather uneasily with the views behind the policy. Or perhaps I should say the views being foisted on the public as justification of the policy. Those views hold that Johnny really is a girl if and only if being a girl is part of his sincerely held self-understanding or "core identity." It is on this basis that they demand societal recognition of Johnny's femininity. Since, I gather, you are going to say that society shouldn't be required to agree that Johnny is a girl, you are presumably going to have to deny their claim about what makes Johnny a girl.

I agree with the Bad Guys on some things but not on others. I agree that gender is not determined by biology, but I don't agree that one's identity is whatever one says it is.

If gender is not determined by biology, then someone can indeed determine that portion of their identity to be whatever they want. They can even go so far as to assert genders that provably don't exist in nature on planet Earth, but who are you to say they cannot identify with that since the gender aspect of their identity is not moored in any biological fact? I think the whole movement to claim that gender is not rooted primarily in biology is just an attempt to let misfits from both genders feel normal.

Switch sex to race in this argument and see how much traction it gets. It's positively ludicrous, but goes to show how far the Left is hung up on matters relating to genitalia. Everything revolves around sex for these moral and intellectual cripples.

What Johnny's saying is that sex organs are not essential to the categories of "boy" and "girl." That's a metaphysical claim, not just a social one.

Aaron, you are right to point out that there is a metaphysical claim going on, and to be clear both sides are making a metaphysical claim. The traditional view is making a claim about what criteria are to be used to declare a person is "woman" and the post-modern view is making a claim that other criteria are to be used.

If we wanted to "settle" the debate on an intellectual basis, we would have to engage discussions at the metaphysical level and find enough common ground to come to a mutual understanding of the core questions, and hash those out. That will never happen, as the metaphysical dispute is just too deep and broad: among many, many problems, one of the impediments to successful debate is that the era defined by modernism made "debate" into a strategic political activity instead of a way of learning the truth.

Even if one were to grant that outward macro-level physiological organs do not ALONE define the entirety of what we mean by "woman" in contrast to "man", that alone would not be sufficient to say that part of what does determine is *subjective*. It is entirely possible, just as one example, to say that sexual identity is wrapped up in a multitude of physiological realities: DNA, hormone levels, sexual organ development (just for starters), and then brain structure development that arises due to DNA and hormones, as well as non-sexual organ differentiation (more rounded pelvic bones, for example).

Another aspect of the metaphysical dispute centers around those individuals who experience troubled sexual identity. Take, for example, the rare people who have XXY chromosomes. Under one set of metaphysical pre-suppositions, this is evidence that "sex" is not binary, but multi-valent. In the traditional view, however, there is a well-understood reality that some people are just plain born with mis-made bodies: people with chromosomal abnormalities of various sorts that show up in macro ways have always been recognized as "sports" (in an older meaning). This is not simply a "third way" of being normal, it is rather an abnormality (illness) as such. One of the classic ways to evaluate this is based on whether the condition interferes with the child's coming to maturity - trisomy 13 does - and whether the mature individual is able to reproduce naturally and have healthy children - klinefelter's syndrome interferes with having children. It takes a very, very twisted sense of metaphysics to declare that being unable to have children is just "another way of being normal". If it is, then the rest of the country should be telling blind and deaf people that "being blind or deaf is just another way of being normal, and since you are normal there is no reason we need to have 'accommodations' for you - having a tough time driving or hearing on the phone is just another "normal" part of your "normal" condition." Either it is a DISability, or it isn't. Either the Americans with Disabilities Act is totally wrong in every possible sense, or we know how to identify some disabilities, i.e. abnormalities.

If I take a boy to a lab and have them study his chromosomes, his hormones, his bone structure and organ development, his basic brain function, and they all say "these are 100% consistent with what we find in boys and inconsistent with what we find in girls", then I am going to find it very difficult to listen intently to a post-modernist claiming that regardless of all that, what he feels like is a girl and that trumps every single component of the physiology. Not when there is a clear, coherent metaphysical explanation in finding that some people are mis-made and are thus "disabled", i.e. abnormal in a sense that means that their condition warrants correction if possible.

Descending into consequences: even if one were to allow (for a set of social reasons rather than principle) that a boy who felt like a girl might be treated in some respects with kid gloves and not have his faced shoved directly into "you're a boy" all day long, that still wouldn't require us to either SAY OR THINK that he "really is" a girl or to make it as if he were for legal / social purposes. For instance: if a boy is physiologically 100% boy but feels like a girl, having him compete on a girls' team against other girls' teams would constitute an inherent injustice to the girls. His PHYSIOLOGY is that of a male, regardless of how he feels, girls should not have to compete against him as on an "equal" footing. He isn't equal to them. If his hormones and bones are those of a boy, he isn't in their class.

Same goes true for a whole range of other consequences: he shouldn't use a girl's bathroom or locker room REGARDLESS of his feeling like a girl: physiologically he is different from them so the locker room - where the issue is at least as much physiological as anything else - he isn't "like them". Telling schools to have him in the girls' locker room isn't just saying that his subjective feelings matter *too*, it is saying that only the subjective feelings matter to the exclusion of all other criteria, which is just plain insanity.

Random idea/heresy of the day: The gender identity rules are a type of liberation theology applied to biology.

From Wiki on liberation theology:

Gutierrez also popularized the phrase "preferential option for the poor", which became a slogan of liberation theology and later appeared in addresses of the Pope. Drawing from the biblical motif on the poor, Gutierrez asserts that God is revealed as having a preference for those people who are “insignificant,” “marginalized,” “unimportant,” “needy,” "despised” and “defenseless." Moreover, he makes clear that terminology of "the poor" in scripture has social and economic connotations that etymologically go back to the Greek word, ptōchos. To be sure, as to not misinterpret Gutierrez’s definition of the term "preferential option," he stresses, “Preference implies the universality of God’s love, which excludes no one. It is only within the framework of this universality that we can understand the preference, that is, 'what comes first.'"

I don't understand Mike T's logic here: "If gender is not determined by biology, then someone can indeed determine that portion of their identity to be whatever they want."

How does that follow? As an analogy, Jewishness is not always determined by your biology, by who your biological mother is - you can convert. But it doesn't follow that that "portion" (!!!) of your Jewish identity is whatever you want. You can't convert to Judaism just by self-identifying as a Jew.

And speaking of Jews, I do agree with you about the psychological motivation of gender studies, etc., as an attempt by misfits and outsiders to feel more normal. By weakening and subverting the hegemonic categories, they're attacking the whole concept of "normal." Some are quite explicit about this being their motivation.

Nice Marmot's comment was funny: "the Left is hung up on matters relating to genitalia." This in a controversy where the left insists that gender is constructed from many facts other than just genitalia, and the right insists that genitalia alone determine gender. If anyone's "hung up" on genitalia, it's you guys.

I agree with a lot of Tony's latest comment, and I've made some of the same points myself here.

Lydia, you're right that I believe this policy is philosophically wrong, for exactly the reason you said. Society is not compelled to accept people's self-identification, on gender or anything else. So I deny that establishment criterion of what makes someone a boy or girl, just as I deny yours.

Re Napoleon again, or "I'm a tiger," of course I can see the similarity between "I'm a girl" and "I'm Napoleon/a tiger." Surely you can see the similarity between a boy saying "I'm a tiger" and a boy with three white grandparents and one black one saying "I'm black." I think that's a far better comparison. Both claims are equally insane if you identify these social categories ("girl," "black") with corresponding biological categories.

I still insist that race is an excellent analogy for this kind of gender question, and that Napoleon and tigers are not. That's another thing that the gender-race studies people got right.

On the question of whether I'm crazy, I'm not qualified to judge. But by the principle of charity in translation/interpretation, if someone affirms something that strikes you as obviously false to everyone, shouldn't you look for an interpretation that would make his statement true, by your own standards of truth? Thus, if Johnny is apparently sane but says "I'm a girl," then in order to understand what Johnny means, shouldn't you interpret "girl" other than "anatomically female"? Similarly, if you reply, "You're not a girl, you were born a boy and you'll always be a boy," shouldn't Johnny interpret your reference to "girl" and "boy" as referring to biology? This wouldn't imply that the other person is correct, but it would suggest that he's not crazy.

How does that follow? As an analogy, Jewishness is not always determined by your biology, by who your biological mother is - you can convert. But it doesn't follow that that "portion" (!!!) of your Jewish identity is whatever you want. You can't convert to Judaism just by self-identifying as a Jew.

Aaron, Jewishness is not comparable to a gender. Jewishness by blood is at best a combination of Mitochondreal DNA similarity and certain large scale quasi-racial similarities shared between members of the major factions of "biological Jews." It is therefore akin to your mulatto argument about Barack Obama, not a matter of whether Johnny needs an inny or an outty to be a boy or girl.

And yes, one can convert to Judaism and be recognized as a real Jew even by the Orthodox. There is in fact a whole process for it. Indeed, adopted children are recognized as part of the Jewish community so long as they maintain the faith and are properly inducted.

Nice Marmot's comment was funny: "the Left is hung up on matters relating to genitalia." This in a controversy where the left insists that gender is constructed from many facts other than just genitalia, and the right insists that genitalia alone determine gender. If anyone's "hung up" on genitalia, it's you guys.

It's not possible for a human being with a fully female reproductive system to be anything other than a woman unless she goes through with a sex change operation. Whatever her mind cooks up about her identity is immaterial when put up against the biological fact that she is a human female. She can think she is a male or even a space alien from a race that has three genders (some sci fi stories have actually explored this). It doesn't matter. Her mental distortions don't change the fact that her body is female.

What seems to annoy you and the left on this is that we'll no sooner deny this reality than we will affirm the non-existent masculinity of bronies.

Mike T, I'm not annoyed by any of the positions on this matter. I'm annoyed by some of the people expressing this or that position, but those people would annoy me no matter what positions they took.

Aaron, it's odd that you said some comments back that gender confusion may have a neurological basis. But now you say that it is uncharitable to say that Johnny is crazy!

In my opinion it is uncharitable, horribly uncharitable, to Johnny _not_ to recognize that he has a very serious psychological problem. I'm quite willing to say that this psychological problem has been in large measure caused by those around him and to blame them. I also have hopes that it would be curable if he were not told that he is "transgender" and taught to continue thinking of himself as a girl. But that he has a serious psychological disorder is undeniable. Please recall that the transgender agenda includes a program in which Johnny will start taking hormones to change his body and delay puberty and that, as soon as he is barely an adult and can consent, he will be able to have, and may well have, utterly radical, horrific, unthinkable surgery to alter his body permanently. Meanwhile, Johnny will go around referring to himself as "she" all the time and wearing female clothes. Girls with gender identity disorder are horrified when they begin their menstrual cycle. I know of interviews with them to this effect in which they say, "It's so awful. Can you imagine being a boy and having this happen?" Because they really think of themselves as boys. Such people are in a very real sense at war with their own bodies. Yes *of course* it is legitimate, and indeed charitable (in the sense of wanting to know the truth about a person and wanting what is best for the person) to say that such people have a severe mental disorder--more popularly known as "being crazy."

Your opposition to what is being done to Johnny and also what is being done to all the people around Johnny (e.g., punishing them for not referring to Johnny as "she") is half-hearted at best.

I mean, not that I really care all that much, because you are just some semi-liberal blog commentator. But wow, yeah, I think going along with Johnny's severe problem is *really wrong* and I'm the uncharitable one?

Summoning my inner Inigo Montoya, the basic disconnect here is about words. Aaron uses the word gender in that specially contemporary, post-modern way to refer to people's ideas about sexuality, making it tautological that biology isn't really the controlling factor in it. The problem for liberals who take this tack is in explaining why, if biology is not primary in the "social construction" of gender, human beings begin that "constructive" process immediately upon a child's birth through a routine inspection of his body. Inasmuch as a person's psyche is at war with the results of that inspection, he is at war with basic reality. Inasmuch as public policy is at war with it, public policy is oppressive and insane. Social convention and ideas about gender are rooted immutably, always and everywhere, in biological difference. The total absence of single exception to this rule in any society we know about is fairly strong evidence for that claim.

There is a slippery tactic by which some nominalist types will say that, for example, marriage conventions have varied dramatically across all societies, so while it's true that gay marriage has never existed, marriage has nonetheless taken "many different forms," and this is then used as some kind of pretext that marriage isn't really about sexual complementarity and children at all. Something similar is going on here, on a more deranged level, in the claim that the wide variety of conventions concerning (or even just opinions about) human sexuality stands as some kind of rebuke to the notion that boys have boy parts and girls have girl parts, full stop. It begs the question by assuming for the sake of argument that human sexuality just is things like "pink for girls and blue for boys," and then proceeds to the claim that because such conventions are ephemeral and variable over time and space, therefore so is human sexuality.

The argument is nonsensical. Convention is rooted in sexual difference in the only sense that really matters, which is that male and female are firm and extant categories of human being that can be identified biologically in a thousand different ways, both crude and sophisticated. It is this difference in biology that is at the heart of social convention, and of self-identification. It makes no sense to try staking out a position that the majority has a right to be completely wrong about whether Johnny is a girl, and to impose on him strictures that are at variance with the essential facts of the matter, for no reason other than that they constitute a majority. Separate bathrooms for boys and girls are not rooted in a misapprehension about gender, but rather in a basic recognition of sexual difference. The "rights of the majority" have practically nothing to do with it and are an extremely weak hook on which to hang the commonsense view of the subject.

~~Nice Marmot's comment was funny: "the Left is hung up on matters relating to genitalia." This in a controversy where the left insists that gender is constructed from many facts other than just genitalia, and the right insists that genitalia alone determine gender. If anyone's "hung up" on genitalia, it's you guys.~~

Allow me to clarify: the Left is hung up on matters of genital activity. This boils down not to sexual identity per se, but to sexual identity viewed as a reflection of certain desired outcomes related to sexual behavior. What matters isn't so much that Johnny is free to be Jill, but that Johnny is free to have sex like Jill. Sexual "freedom" is all.


Lydia, by "charity" I meant something very narrow and specific: the principle of charity as formulated by the philosopher Neil Wilson. Interpreting "I'm a girl" as "I am anatomically female" would be uncharitable in this case. A more charitable interpretation would be, "I'm a girl (even though I'm not anatomically female), because I identify deeply and unchangeably as a girl." How you'd act on your interpretation is beyond the scope of my very narrow meaning of "charitable." I definitely wasn't judging anything or anyone by the Christian concept of charity.

Regarding the neurological condition I was speculating about, it does not affect people's perception of their actual anatomy. People who strongly feel that one of their arms is not part of them know quite well intellectually that their arm is, physically, part of their body. So the speaker who says "I am a girl" or "my left arm is not part of me" would charitably be interpreted as speaking of something other than anatomy.

Sage, it's undeniable that biology is primary in the construction of gender in one of the senses you said, of identifying people from birth based on their anatomy. So, two points about that.

First, because of that near perfect correlation between gender self-identification and biological sex, it seems hard to say anything about which of the two is causal. If by some bizarre mutation or virus this correlation were broken, if the majority of people identified with the opposite biological sex, then would social gender identification still be so tied to anatomy? It's not clear to me that it would be. (It's been decades since I read Ursula K. LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness, maybe that book's relevant, I don't remember.)

Second, even assuming that anatomy, chromosomes, hormones, etc. are together the primary determinant of gender, they're not the only determinant. Socially defined race ("Barack Obama is black") is primarily determined by biology as well, but that's not the only determinant.

I probably agree with you about the "radical constructionists" who say that biology is mostly irrelevant to the social construction of gender - that society could just as well have associated "feminine" with biological males and "masculine" with biological females. So I agree with you on what follows from the negation of that radical constructionist belief.

Aaron, the fact is that you are so busy being a moderate that you have no room left in your categories for outrage. For example, you speak as if no harm is being done to Johnny even though he's being encouraged in continued and further alienation from his own body and in planning to engage in radical, damaging alteration of his body. Frankly, I don't think poor Johnny knows very well _what_ the heck he means when he says, "I am a girl." I think the closest one can get is some sort of belief in an essentially female mind or soul being trapped in a male body--that is how transgenders do in fact usually talk. That is obviously a harmful delusion, and encouraging it along with planning for Johnny to have surgery and hormone therapy is both insane and evil. And that's _aside_ from all the harm done to all the other people by forcing them to call Johnny "she."

Are we seriously going to pretend here that "transgender" is not only a valid term but a reality??

Can't we just call a spade a spade and label these kids what they essentially are--profoundly disturbed?

Frankly, I feel better just typing that.

Can't we just call a spade a spade and label these kids what they essentially are--profoundly disturbed?

That is, essentially, my point. And it's an important point.

Are we seriously going to pretend here that "transgender" is not only a valid term but a reality??

Of course it's a reality. Whether you call it a disorder or not, some people just don't fit into the categories so well.

They may be disturbed, but in fairness I think most people would be if they were in such a situation.

Matt, you're right, most people would be disturbed if their body were telling them one thing and their psyche were telling them another. One of the ways we refer to this disturbance is "psychotic".

Picking up on Lydia, comment: according to some understandings of the soul, it is literally (metaphysically) impossible that human beings have "female" and "male" souls in such a way that a "true" female soul might be born into a male body. This is again a kind of cartesian dualism. Aristotelian hylemorphic dualism precludes it. According to Aristotle, the soul is species-uniform except by being individuated differently in different bodies. A human soul cannot BE "male" except by being the soul of what is from the beginning a male body.

Can't we just call a spade a spade and label these kids what they essentially are--profoundly disturbed?

Not if we insist on equivocating endlessly about what we mean by "boy" and "girl" and "gender." If we do that, then we suddenly will have grave problems deciding whether it is possible to segregate our bathrooms. In which case we will have gone utterly insane as a society.

That's where we are, as a direct consequence of some people's insistence on treating Johnny's sexual identity as an open question, in spite of the fact that it is verifiably, conclusively known that he is a boy.

...it is literally (metaphysically) impossible that human beings have "female" and "male" souls in such a way that a "true" female soul might be born into a male body.

Yet there are critical difference in brain structures and sex hormone function that blur the lines.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_transsexualism#Biological-based_theories

The really funny thing is that I actually am a Cartesian dualist, of a moderate and interactive variety. But I find again and again that the things that self-avowed naturalists say end up sounding like the most bizarre caricatures of Cartesian dualism. It's not an historical result I could ever have predicted.

Yet there are critical difference in brain structures and sex hormone function that blur the lines.

OK, there are differences in brain and sex hormoe function - but they DON'T blur the line. What the studies show is that we have quite well developed indicators for what male brain structures look like, and what female brain structures look like, and that there are some people whose brains are defective and don't fully satisfy either one. The fact that abnormal people are deformed physically doesn't "blur the line" about what constitutes normal.

So, what you are pointing out is that there are some people whose bodies are abnormal - sports - whose bodies have failed them because they fail to be entirely working-model male or entirely female. Just on a purely biological basis, if "being male" is consistent with having 6 characteristics in the body typical for males, and an individual has 4 of them showing male and 2 of them showing female, then their body is defective. This does not mean that they get to *choose* to "be female" if that's what they feel like, it means that they are deformed physically. What they get to choose is whether to deal with the fact that their body is ill-made. So is mine, I know what that is like, I am missing an organ. I don't get to make society pretend that I _have_ the organ, what I have is a DISABILITY. A person born without a leg doesn't get to make people pretend he has 2 legs so he can play on the football team. A person with male genitalia doesn't get to make people pretend he doesn't have those organs, either. And even though the AVERAGE number of legs in a large population is only 1.9998 it doesn't mean that the NORMAL number of legs is some blurry line somewhere between 1 and 2.

Lydia, I didn't read anything in the post about surgery. I would be outraged if a boy or girl were given a sex-change operation. I'm not outraged by (voluntarily) calling a boy "Jane" and referring to her as "she." Maybe I'd support it and maybe I wouldn't, but I can't say without knowing the person in question. I'd be very suspicious that the parents could be projecting their own ideology onto their child, but maybe they're not; maybe it's genuine. So, I'm not outraged, because I don't know the people involved and don't know what action is appropriate.

I have no problem describing some transgender people as disturbed, but I don't see what action that implies. Is there empirical evidence that explaining to someone that he's pathologically gender-deluded helps? This has the whiff of vulgar Freudianism: the therapist brings the patient to consciously recognize his subconscious distortions, and he's cured! Maybe the person would be happier and better adjusted if people just played along?

In the documentary I watched there was a guy who'd felt since childhood that his left leg (actually a specific part of his leg, from one location on down) was not part of him. As an adult, he asked doctors to amputate his leg, but they all refused on ethical grounds. Finally, after years of mental suffering, he tried to amputate it himself. (I couldn't listen to the details; it involved dry ice.) He was rushed to the hospital and his leg was actually amputated there. Afterwards, he felt that he'd been cured. He's felt normal ever since.

I'm not recommending that treatment. I'm only pointing out that "playing along with the delusion" apparently "cured" a serious psychological, and perhaps neurological, disturbance.

Aaron, you don't seem to understand that these children are being told that they definitely are the opposite sex and that *yes* this will in many (and increasing numbers of) cases mean that a) they will be given hormones to prevent puberty and b) they will be given surgery as soon as they are eighteen and can legally consent to it. This is part of a whole-life plan.

Then again, maybe you do understand that. You seem to have a talent for chopping everything up into little bits with no pattern. "Calling some boy 'she' occasionally? What's the big deal?" "Surgery for an adult? Well, he agreed. You never know. Maybe it will help." Etc.

Yeah, I know about BIID. Cutting off a healthy leg because of a psychological disorder? Bad news. But I gather your rather...restrained negative comments there mean that you figure, hey, maybe if someone does have his genitalia cut off he will feel cured. And then what's the problem? As long as he was an adult.

Lydia, no, I didn't understand that they'd be given hormone treatments. I do think that's outrageous - as you say, only because they're children.

Sex change operations seem similar, ethically, to amputation for BIID sufferers, from what little I know about either. That's assuming similar success as a "cure," which I don't know anything about. Of course I'm not the first to note the similarity; I think I read the comparison in an article somewhere, which is where I first heard of BIID. I really don't understand why surgery is considered ethical for transgendered people but not for BIID sufferers.

I don't know what I think about the ethics of sex-change surgery or amputations for adults, except that they're both horrifying to me. I'm not a libertarian; I don't believe that consent makes everything OK. Here I just don't know enough to have an opinion. Unlike you and unlike the people behind this policy, I don't believe in a norm that automatically makes it moral or makes it immoral.

I haven't really thought much about this whole topic, I guess that's obvious. I'm more interested in hearing your thinking on this, since you're not a Thomist. On what grounds do you say that sex-change operations and hormone treatments for adults are immoral?

Maybe this will clarify things:

You do surgery (or medicine) treatments in order to cure the underlying problem. Or, when an actual cure is impossible, you use them to alleviate the suffering - as long as you don't do further damage to the body some other way.

Nobody thinks that cutting off genitalia will make a person into a whole, cured, fully functioning girl. Cures are out. (That's certainly true now, and arguably would remain true regardless of advances in technology - its certainly debatable).

Cutting off a fully functioning leg in order to alleviate the symptom of "wrongness" is the wrong kind of treatment. And that is EXACTLY why decent doctors wouldn't to it. The PROBLEM isn't "I have one leg too many", nor is it "I have someone else's leg", the illness is rather "I feel wrong about my own leg, and I shouldn't feel that way." The cure for THAT illness cannot be to cut off the leg, the true cure would be to find the cause for the erroneous feeling, and resolve that.

If you can't achieve that cure (yet), alleviating symptoms is OK when you are not doing something else that makes the body worse off. You don't pound on someone's toe with a hammer to take his mind off his headache - even if it would work. Hey, I've got it: I feel bad that Johnny got a better grade than I did, let's take a baseball bat to Johnny, it will alleviate my feelings, even though it won't improve my grades.

The principle is simple: you don't remove or mutilate a normal, functioning organ of the body.

I would entertain the possibility that if a person had 9 out of 10 biological characteristics of a female, but in addition to having female organs also had male testes, and if it were shown that the testes would never function properly but if they were removed the female organs would function properly as a fully operational female, that would justify removing the testes.

I really don't understand why surgery is considered ethical for transgendered people but not for BIID sufferers.

I don't understand that either. It's unethical for both!


On what grounds do you say that sex-change operations and hormone treatments for adults are immoral?

I assume you mean the hormone treatments associated with sex changes, not just any hormone treatment for any purpose (e.g., estrogen replacement in post-menopausal women for the prevention of osteoporosis). Why is it immoral? That's fairly simple. The physical parts in question are physically healthy. E.g. There is no cancer of the organs. They are a healthy part of the person's body. Therefore, they should not be harmed. I believe that medical ethics is normative insofar as it depends on ideas like "good health," and one is harming the good health of the body by cutting off organs that have nothing wrong with them. Similarly, taking massive doses of hormones to turn oneself into the opposite sex is damaging the body. In both cases, what is being done is trying to make the person into something he erroneously believes himself to be--or to make him physically as "much like" that something as possible. As far as I'm concerned it would be _exactly_ like doing surgery on a person's posterior to try to make a "tail" because he believes himself to be a tiger, or doing some sort of major scarification on his face and skin to imitate stripes, or giving him drugs (if that were possible) to stimulate his body to grow hair all over to make him feel like he has a fur coat, etc. Or "treating" a girl who believes herself to be a mermaid by stripping off the skin and fusing her legs together and outfitting her to live all the time in the water. It doesn't, or shouldn't, require any high-scale philosophical subtleties to see that such actions are entirely contrary to the proper aims and ends of the medical profession.

OK, there are differences in brain and sex hormone function - but they DON'T blur the line.

Of course they do, you can't mix up gender traits without also mixing up gender categories for that individual. Furthermore, I don't understand what your point about normalcy is supposed to be. We are talking about a condition that affects 0.3% of the population, it will never be normal.

Just on a purely biological basis, if "being male" is consistent with having 6 characteristics in the body typical for males, and an individual has 4 of them showing male and 2 of them showing female, then their body is defective.

Only if you think variation is defective. Nature apparently doesn't give a fig leaf about ideal gender types and metaphysics because she keeps trying out mutations and variations. Moreover, when the characteristics affected are important to brain development and functioning those are going to have priority over other biological characteristics. The brain is clearly the origin of a person's world-view and identity, which I suppose is how Lydia is accusing me of hyper-Cartesian dualism.

It is also incorrect to suggest that society shouldn't make allowances for disabilities. We are not redefining normal because wheelchair access is required for public buildings and the blind are allowed to use service animals.

Yeah, and forcing everybody to say that a biological male is really female, letting him be on girls' sports teams, and letting him use the girls' bathroom and locker room is _just_ like having wheelchair access to buildings. Honestly, Step2, sometimes I don't know what to make of you. You will go a long time writing sensible comments and then you'll say something like this, which is a reductio of the position all by itself.

Nature apparently doesn't give a fig leaf about ideal gender types and metaphysics because she keeps trying out mutations and variations.

Why would she keep trying different things if she didn't care? Is she a mad scientess? (I say 'she' because I'm so open-minded about this gender thing.)

I think these surgeries (sex change operations, limb amputations) are like regular cosmetic surgery, only more extreme. In each case you've got a surgeon mutilating a healthy part of the body. Seems that if one type is unethical, they all are. Agreed?

I don't understand what your point about normalcy is supposed to be.
Only if you think variation is defective. Nature apparently doesn't give a fig leaf about ideal gender types and metaphysics because she keeps trying out mutations and variations.

Step2, even on the supposition that macro evolution were true, some mutations are clearly a bad road for nature: those that prevent the individual from reproducing, for example, because the organs don't work. But apart from that little problem, what's to separate nature trying those mutations from ones in which nature tries out blind humans? Well, in the latter case we know that being blind is a deformity, not just a variation on normal, not just a variant nature uses to achieve the next great ___ -o-sapiens. My point on normalcy is that by it we can tell what it means to be properly functioning as a human being, and BLIND isn't within the range, even if being slightly nearsighted is. So also being male by primary physiological reality and imperfectly female by other physical characteristics is a deformity. Being male by physiology and female by mental characteristics is a variety of being ill.

I think these surgeries (sex change operations, limb amputations) are like regular cosmetic surgery, only more extreme. In each case you've got a surgeon mutilating a healthy part of the body.

Aaron, Christians have long held that major renovation of the body for convenience or looks is morally questionable. Particularly if they remove a significant, healthy organ, but even if they don't. Minor modifications that do nothing to the correct functioning of the body at all, would appear to miss that condemnation. Minor or major repair of damaged or diseased parts of the body clearly are in a different category. If you are talking about cosmetic surgery to repair the face of someone who was in a car accident - fixing what is broken is fine. If you are talking about cosmetic surgery to make your normal face look like Gregory Peck's, that's vanity and is morally wrong.

Obviously there are degrees. A nose job, for example, does not (if done right) remove the function of the organ. So the degree of mutilation must be taken into account. Moreover, cosmetic surgery could be unequivocally legitimate in the case of mitigating the effects of some prior injury--severe burns, for example. Also, some surgeries are only partially cosmetic. For example, jaw alignment for people with odd jaw shape can improve functionality of the chewing bite. So, no, I don't allow the analogy completely, but I suppose some more bizarre or extreme forms of cosmetic surgery might bear a greater similarity.

The thing is, Aaron, parents consent to kids' medical treatments all the time without having the children's adult consent--many treatments, from braces to chemotherapy. If you're going to say, rightly, that giving a child either hormones to delay puberty (to make it easier for him later to "transition" to appearing more like a woman) or even full sex-change surgery is outrageous, you're going to have to start talking my way--talking about functions, bodily health, and so forth. In other words, you're going to have to say that radically changing healthy body parts and functions, even to make someone (allegedly) feel happier or more like his psyche is in tune with his body or something, is _very different_ from normal medical treatment which attempts to improve or restore natural function, to remove diseased tissue, and the like.

Let me also add that I do not for a single moment believe that every child who is going around parroting that he is "really" a member of the opposite sex was born a genetic sport with some undeniable, identifiable genetic or bodily trait that inevitably causes him to have this particular psychosis. If nothing else, the uptick in kids "identifying" as the opposite sex since the transgender movement has gotten going should clue us in to the fact that this isn't just some sort of biologically inevitable issue. I think there are many cases where ideologically confused parents are jumping up and saying, "Oh, maybe my little boy is transgender" when he acts in certain ways that could easily be guided in a different direction or brushed off as not having any heavy meaning--be it wearing Mommy's shoes, pretending temporarily to be a girl, or whatever. Also playing into this are all sorts of other social pathologies such as encouraging children to think about same-sex attraction during what should be their latency period and a general social acceptance of the corrosive notion that gender is a fluid matter. Fatherlessness is another issue. All of these things are to my mind _obviously_ contributing to the larger number of gender-confused children, young people, and adults in ways that are psychological and social rather than fundamentally physiological.

Lydia, I'm already "talking your way" about that. I already think these surgeries are very different from normal medical treatment. Doesn't everybody, including the most radical - well, almost radical - proponents? I mean, the procedures do require a prior psychological evaluation; scoff if you like, but it's an acknowledgement that there's something fundamentally different between removing healthy breasts and performing a mastectomy for breast cancer.

I also agree with you about not taking children's self-descriptions at face value. This is what I wrote earlier: "I'd be very suspicious that the parents could be projecting their own ideology onto their child." I don't think we should take anyone's self-identification at face value, and obviously that goes extra for children.

Aaron, the things that outrage you (rightly), the things that you are ambivalent about, and the things that you don't think are wrong, though you personally feel uncomfortable with them, all are being done for the same reason and spring from the same source--namely, the idea that Johnny _really is a girl_ and that his "being transgender" is just a different way for him to be normal. Forcing all other people to call him a girl and let him use the girls' facilities, be on girls' teams, etc., (which you seem to reject, but only because it inconveniences other people), giving him hormones to delay puberty (which you rightly regard as outrageous), his teachers' and other authorities' encouragement that he really is a girl (which you seem to think is fine, because it might be the right "treatment"), and plans for him to have radical surgery as soon as he passes that crucial 18th birthday are all of a piece (which you don't think is that bad as long as he's had that birthday). It's all part and parcel of the worldview that Johnny "is a transgender girl" and, moreover, that his "transition" to "living as a woman" will be smoother if undertaken as young as possible. Physiologically, I gather it is easier to make a boy look like a girl if you do everything when he is as young as possible. The idea is that he will be better able to "pass" as a woman when he is an adult. And so forth. Basically, all the adults around him are joining in a chorus to tell him that he really is a girl and that they will grease the skids for him to "become a woman" as smoothly as possible. That this has enormous effects on Johnny is undeniable, and outrageous. I don't think you can pick it into little pieces and endorse some pieces but not others. The transgender movement is a movement. These aren't just people who are calling Johnny "she" as you would call a psychotic "Your Majesty," knowing they can't convince him otherwise, so that he won't become overly agitated! And, frankly, given your idea that gender is to some large degree socially constructed, it's a little difficult to see how much opposition you can really muster to this movement as a whole.

Gender is socially constructed. That's the whole idea of gender roles and gender norms. Conservatives seem to take "socially constructed" to mean something like "made up out of thin air", but it rightly doesn't mean that. Social constructs are build on a material base, in this case the biological differences between men and women.

To deny the socially constructed nature of gender is to say that gender roles don't change ever--because biological reality doesn't change--which is obviously not true. Because they are based on biological reality there are limits on how much they can change in a given direction. But change they do.

For a transgendered person, the normal way that they would deal with their identity not necessarily lining up with their biology is to just pick one gender, hopefully the one they are most comfortable with, and attempting to live it out as best they can. This actually reinforces gender roles, as it is an acknowledgement that there is no "middle ground" or genderless existence. Gender will create, via social expectations, a role to play.

It is true that "Johnny" will be influenced by adults who think that Johnny is really a girl or whatever, but Johnny will be influenced either way. Either his environment will treat him like a girl or like a boy. There is no middle ground. IMO, the school system should default to whatever biology says. As Aaron said much earlier, society is not obliged to rearrange itself for a tiny percentage of the population. His family should be free to act in any way they deem appropriate to his situation.

One thing is for sure; it will suck for Johnny either way. Transgendered people deserve pity.

Well, Matt, I suppose I should be happy that you think the school is wrong to go around beating kids on the head (figuratively speaking) for not referring to Johnny as "she." That manifests a dose of common sense.

OTOH, I think that both your and Aaron's half-heartedness here is going to trip you up in the end. For example, you seem to think it's fine, no prob., for Johnny to be encouraged by his parents (who will, in your recipe, be at odds with his teachers) to think of himself as a girl and for him to "live out as best he can" a life as a woman.

But if society isn't forced to go along, neither in the school nor elsewhere, this is constantly going to run into serious social problems. Johnny will have even more trouble getting a job than if he himself had been encouraged to "default to biology." Johnny's employer won't be so thrilled at an obvious biological male showing up in a dress. If Johnny turns up in women's public bathrooms in drag, it's going to cause all sorts of consternation and discomfort for other customers, and some outraged boyfriend may even threaten violence upon Johnny's person. The army won't take Johnny as a woman (even yet). And so forth.

Now, what the transgender agenda says is that we must mitigate these effects by forcing the world at large to treat Johnny as belonging to the "gender he is most comfortable with." I have to say that I wonder how long your common sense opposition to such a requirement would hold out over Johnny's lifetime. If Johnny has surgery as an adult, should society _then_ have to rearrange itself for him? Even if it is quite possible to tell that he isn't really a woman, should employers, store owners, and others be required by law to treat him as a woman once he's had surgery? Because I have to tell you that that is still going to be requiring society to rearrange itself in ways that do not contribute to the "greatest happiness for the greatest number."

I have plenty of pity for Johnny. I think things are being made far, far worse for him by the adults who are encouraging his gender confusion. And I think that there have been a lot of "possible" Johnnys over the history of mankind who lived out fairly happy, normal lives with just the ordinary griefs and joys of other human lives because nobody jumped on a bandwagon based on childish comments and said, "Oh, then you must be a transgender girl," because their biological gender identity was affirmed, and because they were helped to grow up like other boys and girls.

And honestly, I think this is completely wrong:

This actually reinforces gender roles, as it is an acknowledgement that there is no "middle ground" or genderless existence.

Other people have said it to me, and I have to think that they just don't really see what is happening. If you look at the way that the "trans" agenda is playing out, it is not reaffirming gender normalcy at all. Nor is this all that surprising, for of course it is based precisely on affirming the insane and the abnormal and forcing the rest of the world to comply. In fact, while is might at some times sound like the "trans" agenda is affirming the immutability of gender, it is actually affirming the idea that you _choose_ your gender, that it is what you subjectively identify with, and that gender is fluid and mutable. This, for one thing, is why men and women who do _not_ have surgery but merely "present" as the opposite sex are included in the trans agenda.

The ideology isn't, actually, consistent. Different things are said at different times for political purposes. I mentioned this in a comment above.

By the way, you might find this eyewitness account of a teen sexuality conference interesting:

About 10 teen facilitators lined up across the front of the room and introduced themselves. They gave their names and the pronoun they prefer (“I prefer ‘she,’” “I don’t have a preference but I identify as male,” etc.). This was in keeping with a theory emphasized over and over at the conference—that gender is fluid and is determined only by the person in question and how that person feels at that particular time about his or her gender. In others words, biology has nothing to do with gender.

That was evidenced by a teen boy who attended lunch the first day dressed as a woman, complete with wig, pearls and dress. He soon put aside the outfit, and was once again looking like a teen boy the next time I saw him. Another young man was decorated with glitter on his face and a lilting voice, both of which he shed later in the day.

http://www.lifesitenews.com/news/teens-teach-porn-class-and-other-madness-inside-a-planned-parenthood-sponso

Btw, one manifestation of my pity for Johnny is that I think it shd. be illegal to give him hormones to delay puberty and make him seem more feminine while he is still a minor.

Gender is socially constructed. That's the whole idea of gender roles and gender norms. Conservatives seem to take "socially constructed" to mean something like "made up out of thin air", but it rightly doesn't mean that. Social constructs are build on a material base, in this case the biological differences between men and women.

Matt, you have a point, but you obscure it hopelessly in what you say here. It would be much more valid to say, rather, that societies vary within certain ranges in how they express the significance of the differences between the genders. No previous society has ever failed to HAVE expressions that distinguish socially between men and women in a number of ways. Not all societies have used the exact same modalities to differentiate, nor assigned exactly the same social groupings of roles. But that's a range in the *social expression* with respect to the gender differences, not the genders themselves.

To analogize: different species of birds perform mating rituals in different ways. In some species the male displays for the female, in other species the reverse. This doesn't imply that blue jays are differently male and female from the way cardinals or penguins are male and female. It means the way they *express* themselves in the difference between the sexes varies.

Similarly, in humans, in some cultures (some American Indians) the women farmed while the men hunted and were warriors. In others, the men farmed. That variation doesn't imply any variation in who is male and who is female, only in the manner in which gender is expressed socially.

For a transgendered person, the normal way that they would deal with their identity not necessarily lining up with their biology is to just pick one gender, hopefully the one they are most comfortable with, and attempting to live it out as best they can.

For a person whose actual gender doesn't match their feelings, they have at least 2 choices that would indeed be "normal" in the sense of "according to due norms of behavior". One would be to take advantage of existing social room to express socially in ambiguity, such as could be for a tomboy, and limit their "acting out" of gender role to such ambiguous limits. Fortunately, there is today a great deal of allowable room for either sex to find plenty of room to work with in that: women can be soldiers with little comment, men can be male nurses (especially in the armed forces) or teachers with little comment. Men can wear a pony tail, (especially those who are 55 and have gray hair - they just look like they never escaped the 60's), they can engage in non-physically aggressive behaviors *all year long* with nary a notice. They can live under the radar in the ambiguous range of expression.

The second choice is to actively work to correct the defect they are experiencing by seeking treatment to align their feelings with their actual gender, or (if such treatment is lacking or useless), to actively offer up their suffering for the good of world around them, just as do many other ill people whose illness cannot be treated.

In response to this, from Matt,

To deny the socially constructed nature of gender is to say that gender roles don't change ever--because biological reality doesn't change--which is obviously not true. Because they are based on biological reality there are limits on how much they can change in a given direction. But change they do.

I intended earlier to quote this, from Sage, which is very much to the point:

It begs the question by assuming for the sake of argument that human sexuality just is things like "pink for girls and blue for boys," and then proceeds to the claim that because such conventions are ephemeral and variable over time and space, therefore so is human sexuality.

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