Lifesite Gets It Wrong ... Again

If there's one thing that gets my dander up, it's got to be moronic arguments that are founded entirely upon someone's mythology without a single droplet of fact in the argument.

Such is the case with Lifesite's recent commentary on Ontario providing funding of GRS for transsexuals under the provincial health plan.

For the most part, Lifesite's commentary is the standard religious right wingnut screed, and I would have shrugged it off. Then I read this statement:

Smitherman, appointed Health Minister in 2003 by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty, is an openly active homosexual, infamous for advancing sexually permissive social policies.

Talk about being dead wrong about the subject. First of all, in spite of the unfortunate use of the term "transsexual", transition (of which GRS is but one step) has very, very little to do with sex at all.

Yes, changes are made to an individual's sexual characteristics, but ironically, those have relatively little to do with the overall process. The actual process of transition is more about changing someone's "social gender" than anything else. In other words, the physical changes involved are intended to provide either gender-appropriate visual cues to the world at large (e.g. a feminine silhouette as a result of hormones), or to improve the patient's sense of themselves.

However, the biggest changes take place between the ears. As the transsexual progresses, they assimilate into the social world of their chosen gender. By far, this process of learning to socialize as their chosen gender is the biggest part of the journey, and one that not all make successfully.

Of course, Lifesite goes on to quote Dr. Paul McHugh's tirades against transsexualism and the treatment of it.

“Women psychiatrists whom I sent to talk with them would intuitively see through the disguise and the exaggerated postures. ‘Gals know gals,’ one said to me, ‘and that's a guy.’”

Following his extensive research into the “sex-change” phenomena, McHugh ended “sex-change” operations at John Hopkins and has encouraged other facilities to do the same.

“I concluded that Hopkins was fundamentally cooperating with a mental illness. We psychiatrists, I thought, would do better to concentrate on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia.”

A quick note: Lynne Conway has a wonderful analysis of McHugh's hostility on her website.

Yes, McHugh has a very prestigious post, and no doubt an enormous amount of political influence. However, that doesn't make him automatically an expert on transsexualism as a subject. In fact, the only thing it makes him is a political force in the realm of psychiatry.

If he had paid attention to the stories of transsexuals that are told time and again, he might have realized that they are not only amazingly diverse, but also surprisingly in consistent in key respects. However, McHugh subscribes to the Michael Bailey school of reasoning which discards anything he doesn't want to accept as the patient "lying".

The real hang-up for these people is the fact that gender transition can involve surgery that alters the form of the genitalia. From this, they derive the conclusion that transsexualism is all about sexual activity.

When you consider that an average married couple has sex once a week, for at most about 30 minutes, it seems a trifle odd that someone would go through the entire transition process for that brief period of time. There is 10080 minutes in a week, and 30 minutes is just barely 0.3% of that sum.

Think about that - nobody is going to turn their entire existence upside down for 0.3% of the time involved - and that's assuming they find a partner. One has to imagine that there is a lot more at play here than sexual behaviour, and unsurprisingly, that is born out by the transgender narrative which repeats the themes of a much deeper sense of well-being post-transition than mere physical sexuality brings.

I swear these people spend more time thinking about sex than your average hormone-addled teenager does. Disappointingly, they seem to be more worried about the sex lives of everybody except themselves.