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"Sex Change" Surgery: What Bruce Jenner, Diane Sawyer, and You Should Know
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by Walt Heyer within Culture, Sexuality
April 27th, 2015
The dark and troubling history of the contemporary transgender movement, with its enthusiastic approval of gender-reassignment surgery, has left a trail of misery in its wake.
Bruce Jenner and Diane Sawyer could benefit from a history lesson. I know, because I suffered through "sex change" surgery and lived as a woman for eight years.
The surgery fixed nothing-it only masked and exacerbated deeper psychological problems.
The beginnings of the transgender movement have gotten lost today in the push for transgender rights, acceptance, and tolerance. If more people were aware of the dark and troubled history of sex-reassignment surgery, perhaps we wouldn't be so quick to push people toward it.
The setting for the first transgender surgeries (mostly male-to-female) was in university-based clinics, starting in the 1950s and progressing through the 1960s and the 1970s. When the researchers tallied the results and found no objective proof that it was successful-and, in fact, evidence that it was harmful-the universities stopped offering sex-reassignment surgery.
Since then, private surgeons have stepped in to take their place. Without any scrutiny or accountability for their results, their practices have grown, leaving shame, regret, and suicide in their wake.
The Founding Fathers of the Transgender Movement
The transgender movement began as the brainchild of three men who shared a common bond: all three were pedophilia activists.
The story starts with the infamous Dr. Alfred Kinsey, a biologist and sexologist whose legacy endures today. Kinsey believed that all sex acts were legitimate-including pedophilia, bestiality, sadomasochism, incest, adultery, prostitution, and group sex. He authorized despicable experiments on infants and toddlers to gather information to justify his view that children of any age enjoyed having sex. Kinsey advocated the normalization of pedophilia and lobbied against laws that would protect innocent children and punish sexual predators.
Transsexualism was added to Kinsey's repertoire when he was presented with the case of an effeminate boy who wanted to become a girl. Kinsey consulted an acquaintance of his, an endocrinologist by the name of Dr. Harry Benjamin. Transvestites, men who dressed as women, were well-known. Kinsey and Benjamin saw this as an opportunity to change a transvestite physically, way beyond dress and make-up. Kinsey and Benjamin became professional collaborators in the first case of what Benjamin would later call "transsexualism."
Benjamin asked several psychiatric doctors to evaluate the boy for possible surgical procedures to feminize his appearance. They couldn't come to a consensus on the appropriateness of feminizing surgery. That didn't stop Benjamin. On his own, he began offering female hormone therapy to the boy. The boy went to Germany for partial surgery, and Benjamin lost all contact with him, making any long-term follow-up impossible.
The Tragic Story of the Reimer Twins
The third co-founder of today's transgender movement was psychologist Dr. John Money, a dedicated disciple of Kinsey and a member of a transsexual research team headed by Benjamin.
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Transgenderism: A Pathogenic Meme
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| "But gird your loins if you would confront this matter. Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle." |
by Paul McHugh
within Bioethics, Culture, Science, Sexuality
June 10th, 2015
The idea that one's sex is a feeling, not a fact, has permeated our culture and is leaving casualties in its wake. Gender dysphoria should be treated with psychotherapy, not surgery.
For forty years as the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School-twenty-six of which were also spent as Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital-I've been studying people who claim to be transgender. Over that time, I've watched the phenomenon change and expand in remarkable ways.
A rare issue of a few men-both homosexual and heterosexual men, including some who sought sex-change surgery because they were erotically aroused by the thought or image of themselves as women-has spread to include women as well as men. Even young boys and girls have begun to present themselves as of the opposite sex. Over the last ten or fifteen years, this phenomenon has increased in prevalence, seemingly exponentially. Now, almost everyone has heard of or met such a person.
Publicity, especially from early examples such as "Christine" Jorgenson, "Jan" Morris, and "Renee" Richards, has promoted the idea that one's biological sex is a choice, leading to widespread cultural acceptance of the concept. And, that idea, quickly accepted in the 1980s, has since run through the American public like a revelation or "meme" affecting much of our thought about sex.
The champions of this meme, encouraged by their alliance with the broader LGBT movement, claim that whether you are a man or a woman, a boy or a girl, is more of a disposition or feeling about yourself than a fact of nature. And, much like any other feeling, it can change at any time, and for all sorts of reasons. Therefore, no one could predict who would swap this fact of their makeup, nor could one justifiably criticize such a decision.
At Johns Hopkins, after pioneering sex-change surgery, we demonstrated that the practice brought no important benefits. As a result, we stopped offering that form of treatment in the 1970s. Our efforts, though, had little influence on the emergence of this new idea about sex, or upon the expansion of the number of "transgendered" among young and old.
Olympic Athlete Turned "Pin-Up" Girl
This history may clarify some aspects of the latest high-profile transgender claimant. Bruce Jenner, the 1976 Olympic decathlon champion, is turning away from his titular identity as one of the "world's greatest male athletes." Jenner announced recently that he "identifies as a woman" and, with medical and surgical help, is busy reconstructing his physique.
I have not met or examined Jenner, but his behavior resembles that of some of the transgender males we have studied over the years. These men wanted to display themselves in sexy ways, wearing provocative female garb. More often than not, while claiming to be a woman in a man's body, they declared themselves to be "lesbians" (attracted to other women). The photograph of the posed, corseted, breast-boosted Bruce Jenner (a man in his mid-sixties, but flaunting himself as if a "pin-up" girl in her twenties or thirties) on the cover of Vanity Fair suggests that he may fit the behavioral mold that Ray Blanchard has dubbed an expression of "autogynephilia"-from gynephilia (attracted to women) and auto (in the form of oneself).
The Emperor's New Clothes
But the meme-that your sex is a feeling, not a biological fact, and can change at any time-marches on through our society. In a way, it's reminiscent of the Hans Christian Andersen tale, The Emperor's New Clothes. In that tale, the Emperor, believing that he wore an outfit of special beauty imperceptible to the rude or uncultured, paraded naked through his town to the huzzahs of courtiers and citizens anxious about their reputations. Many onlookers to the contemporary transgender parade, knowing that a disfavored opinion is worse than bad taste today, similarly fear to identify it as a misapprehension.
I am ever trying to be the boy among the bystanders who points to what's real. I do so not only because truth matters, but also because overlooked amid the hoopla-enhanced now by Bruce Jenner's celebrity and Annie Leibovitz's photography-stand many victims. Think, for example, of the parents whom no one-not doctors, schools, nor even churches-will help to rescue their children from these strange notions of being transgendered and the problematic lives these notions herald. These youngsters now far outnumber the Bruce Jenner type of transgender. Although they may be encouraged by his public reception, these children generally come to their ideas about their sex not through erotic interests but through a variety of youthful psychosocial conflicts and concerns.
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Johns Hopkins Psychiatrist: 'Transgendered Men Don't Become Women,' They Become 'Feminized Men,' 'Impersonators'
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By Michael W. Chapman | May 5, 2016 | 11:46 AM EDT
Dr. Paul R. McHugh, the Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University and former psychiatrist-in-chief for Johns Hopkins Hospital, who has studied transgendered people for 40 years, said it is a scientific fact that "transgendered men do not become women, nor do transgendered women become men."
All such people, he explained in an article for The Witherspoon Institute, "become feminized men or masculinized women, counterfeits or impersonators of the sex with which they 'identify.'"
Dr. McHugh, who was psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital for 26 years, the medical institute that had initially pioneered sex-change surgery - and later ceased the practice - stressed that the cultural meme, or idea that "one's sex is fluid and a matter of choice" is extremely damaging, especially to young people.
The idea that one's sexuality is a feeling and not a biological fact "is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges," said Dr. McHugh in his article, Transgenderism: A Pathogenic Meme.
"I am ever trying to be the boy among the bystanders who points to what's real," said Dr. McHugh, who is also professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Johns Hopkins. "I do so not only because truth matters, but also because overlooked amid the hoopla-enhanced now by Bruce Jenner's celebrity and Annie Leibovitz's photography-stand many victims."
"Think, for example, of the parents whom no one-not doctors, schools, nor even churches-will help to rescue their children from these strange notions of being transgendered and the problematic lives these notions herald," warned McHugh.
They rarely find therapists who are willing to help them "work out their conflicts and correct their assumptions," said McHugh. "Rather, they and their families find only 'gender counselors' who encourage them in their sexual misassumptions."
In addition, he said, "both the state and federal governments are actively seeking to block any treatments that can be construed as challenging the assumptions and choices of transgendered youngsters."
"As part of our dedication to protecting America's youth, this administration supports efforts to ban the use of conversion therapy for minors," said Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to President Obama, as quoted by Dr. McHugh in his article.
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McCrory's response to the feds on HB2? A lawsuit
May 9, 2016, 9:58am EDT
Governor Pat McCrory has officially filed a lawsuit against the United States Department of Justice.
The move is in response to a letter by the Department of Justice threatening litigation against McCrory and other officials.
Last week, the feds sent an official notice to McCrory's office informing the governor that by standing behind legislation that limits transgendered people's access to the restroom of his or her biological sex, both he and North Carolina stand in violation of the Civil Rights Act. Such a violation could lead to the state losing out on hundreds of millions of federal funding dollars designated for schools. The letter stated that North Carolina "is engaging in a pattern or practice of discrimination against transgender state employees," a charge flatly denied in the suit.
The feds had said in the letter that the state had until the close of business today to advise the Department of Justice if it will remedy the violations by "confirming that the state will not comply with or implement HB2."
HB2, passed in a special session earlier this year, has state law superseding local discrimination ordinances, such as a Charlotte bathroom ordinance that would have allowed transgendered individuals the right to use the restroom he or she identified with.
Criticism of the law has already been widespread, with musicians such as Bruce Springsteen canceling concerts in the state and PayPal (Nasdaq: PYPL) axing plans to bring 400 jobs to Charlotte.
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Feds sue North Carolina over transgender law
The State of North Carolina and the federal government exchanged lawsuits Monday over the state's effort to limit legal protections for transgender people, but Attorney General Loretta Lynch's withering verbal assault on the state's so-called bathroom bill may wind up resonating as loudly as any shots fired in the legal fusillade.
Explicitly invoking her heritage as a North Carolina native and implicitly drawing on her status as the first African-American woman to serve as the nation's top law enforcement official, Lynch blasted the state law known as House Bill 2, calling it the modern-day equivalent of the post-slavery Jim Crow laws that were challenged in the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
"This is not the first time that we have seen discriminatory responses to historic moments of progress for our nation. We saw it in the Jim Crow laws that followed the Emancipation Proclamation. We saw it in the fears and widespread resistance to Brown v. Board of Education," Lynch declared in a press conference at the Justice Department headquarters in Washington.
While the dispute over bathroom use by transgender individuals might not seem to some to be as weighty as the fight that led Gov. George Wallace to stand astride the schoolhouse door at the University of Alabama, Lynch made clear Monday she sees North Carolina's law as being as mistaken as anything from the Jim Crow era
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The Absurdity of Transgenderism: A Stern but Necessary Critique
by Carlos D. Flores
within Philosophy, Sexuality
February 6th, 2015
We should make public policy and encourage social norms that reflect the truth about the human person and sexuality, not obfuscate the truth about such matters and sow the seeds of sexual confusion in future generations for years to come.
By now we are all undoubtedly familiar with the tragic suicide of Joshua Alcorn, the transgender teenage boy who, in late December, walked onto a freeway with the intention of ending his life. In an apparent suicide note, Joshua cites a host of reasons for why he was led to end his life, most prominent of which were his parents' attempts to discourage his identifying as a girl and his being sent to therapists in an attempt to relieve these feelings. All of the problems that ultimately culminated in his suicide, writes Joshua, stem from the fact that, from the time he was a small child, he felt like a "girl trapped in a boy's body."
No sooner had Joshua's heart stopped beating than the story of his suicide was seized by LGBT activists and pruned to advance a familiar narrative of a sexual minority fighting cultural oppression. Joshua's parents immediately began to be chided as "repressive" and "bigoted" and even began to receive various threats from LGBT internet crusader-activists.
Transgenderism and Gender Identity
I have not referred to Joshua by using female pronouns or by using his self-invented female name of "Leelah." The reason I am not doing this is simple: Joshua was not a girl-he was a boy-and to address males with female pronouns or females with male pronouns is to contribute to our culture's confusion about sexuality and the nature of the human person, which is literally leaving casualties in its wake. No amount of surgical mutilation of body parts, effeminate behaviors, or artificial female appearances can make a man a woman.
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