This was not at all on my agenda for today. But then I saw this Guardian article:
". . . Kids like Seph bring into sharp focus what it means to be male, female or something else. There is still widespread belief that minors with gender dysphoria – the clinical term for the distress caused by a mismatch between a person’s sense of their gender and their birth-assigned sex – should not be encouraged to transition. At least eight states have proposed bills that would criminalize doctors who prescribe puberty blockers or hormones to trans adolescents.
On one side of the debate are people who think Seph’s gender dysphoria will fade by adulthood. On the other are the vast majority of mental health professionals who study gender dysphoria insisting that affirming a child in whatever way they express their gender is beneficial to their mental health. . . ."
Here's my proposal on this topic, a different way to think about those opposing transgender rights. Well, it's not really that different from what lots of people have already said.
On the one side we have transgender human beings. People whose physical signs of gender are either ambiguous or are in conflict with their mental sense of themselves. (And probably a number of other variations of a theme.) Their desire to dress, walk, adorn themselves, and the activities they want to participate in, with the people they want to be with, all that and more, doesn't match society's norms of how they should do those things.
On the other side we have 'normal' people who find transgender human beings wanting to be themselves, a horrible, terrible thing. Why? The constitution says nothing about how people should dress and act. It does say people have the right to pursue happiness. Why interfere with another's pursuit of happiness?
We do have limits on pursuit of happiness - mainly when those pursuits do harm to other people. But what harm do transgender folks living their lives honestly do to others?
I'd offer two interrelated reasons:
1. It violates their world view. People may like to change their cars or their clothing, but they don't want to change their fundamental views of the world. Changing cars still confirms driving. Changing clothes still confirms wearing clothes. But changing genders violates people's fundamental binary belief system - male/female, good/bad, black/white, true/false. A bright student of mine who was also raised Fundamentalist, told the class that he opposed homosexuality because it was wrong in the eyes of his church. When challenged by other classmates, he finally said: "The word of God is infallible. It's a whole package. If it's wrong about homosexuals, then the whole package falls apart."
If transgender people are allowed to be themselves openly and society is more accepting of them, then their own world view is challenged. Worse, their children get to see challenges to that world view.
2. It violates their personal view.
Let me tell you about another student. He looked good, dressed well, spoke well. But his papers didn't work. I don't remember exactly what was wrong, just that I marked them up a lot, pointing our lack of supporting details and that what he was saying didn't sound authentic. Things like that.
He made an appointment to see me. He told me he'd had a difficult childhood - again, I don't remember the details. But he said he carefully watched the 'successful' people and remade himself in their likeness - the way he dressed, the way he walked, the way he talked. Everything. Until he passed for 'normal' and 'successful.' My comments on his paper were, he said, pulling all that apart, exposing the boy he was running away from. And after talking to his therapist, he was dropping the class. He wasn't ready to face that or to have someone else (me) see that. I told him I was sorry, but that I trusted his and his therapist's judgment.
I think there are a lot of people living like that in the world. They are disguised as 'successful' people - that is people who look and act like society's norms would have us look and act. We have so many people hidden behind facades.
For some of them, maybe many, people who defy society's norms because they are too oppressive are threatening. They threaten their world view and they challenge their personal view. That was true of gay people. It was true of women who wanted to be more than a housewife. Of African-Americans who wanted to be treated the same way white people are treated.
Some closeted gays have been outed for being more anti-guy than the norm. People have said they did this to hide their own internal struggles with their sexuality.
But people can be hiding from lots of sources poor self-images - abusive childhoods where they were never good enough for their parents. Or they grew up in poverty whose tendrils still pull down their self image. Or they weren't thin enough, tall enough, pretty enough, smart enough, articulate enough, or 'enough' in any of the countless ways our society tells us we have to be.
"According to the latest annual statistics from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, nearly $16.7 billion was spent on cosmetic procedures in the U.S. in 2020. (From Baylor College of Medicine)"
A July 2019 Business Insider article reports
"The beauty industry is growing faster than ever before. Today it's valued at an estimated $532 billion and counting,"
Another 2019 Business Insider article says:
"The U.S. weight loss market is now worth a record $72 billion, but the number of dieters has fallen, due to the growth of the size acceptance and body positivity movement."
We could add the money spent at gyms and in therapy and any other kinds of businesses that make money off of people's poor self-image, businesses aimed at making people 'normal.'
That's not to say there aren't legitimate reasons any of these activities. But a certain percentage of people who pursue these things would just be better off in a society more tolerant of differences.
And for those who can't make themselves look successful, there's alcohol and drugs to dull or even to escape reality for a while.
REMI reports that people in the US spent $253.8 Billion on alcohol in 2018. But it's important to remember that about one-third of adults don't drink at all, and many drink relatively little.. Others very moderately. I'm having trouble finding numbers that divide total expenditures on alcohol among different types of drinkers. But there is:
"In 2019, 25.8 percent of people ages 18 and older (29.7 percent of men in this age group and 22.2 percent of women in this age group4) reported that they engaged in binge drinking in the past month,4 and 6.3 percent (8.3 percent of men in this age group and 4.5 percent of women in this age group5) reported that they engaged in heavy alcohol use in the past month.5"
And then there's the amount paid for illegal drugs - about $146 billion in 2016.
Basically, there are lots of signs that Americans are not happy. I would suggest that many, if not most, are living lives, in Thoreau's words, of quiet desperation*. Seeking to survive not just the physical world, but the social and political world.
I'd suggest that those most desperate to 'fit' are those who are most inclined to attack those who are true to themselves. Honest, open people threaten them. They also make them conscious of the fake lives they are living. I can't prove this, but I throw it out as something to consider and study.
We should all be striving for a society where all people have not only 'the right' to pursue happiness, but the actual opportunity to do so.
And, of course, there are the scavengers of the GOP who are always looking for fears to exploit in the next election.
After I did the first draft, we went to the Bainbridge Art Museum and I saw these two words juxtaposed in one of the exhibits and it seemed meant for this post.
*Iddo Landau takes exception to the broadness of Thoreau's comment, but does acknowledge, too, a number of points I make in this post.
