\doc\web\99\12\transgen.txt (not my opinion, but an interesting one, Arthur Hu) From: Chanburr@aol.com Date sent: Wed, 25 Aug 1999 11:28:37 EDT To: Chavezll@aol.com Copies to: h-bd@egroups.com Subject: [h-bd] Why is transgenderism so hard to understand? (This is an analysis of Linda's expressed disgust over transgenderism.) Linda, You are not, as you put it, "old fashioned" because "old fashioned" is in fact not (despite widespread use to the contrary) synonymous with "uninformed." Calling oneself "old fashioned" has always been a way of spitting on what one doesn't understand-- in this case, the biological trait "human gender," of which transgenderism is a sub-phenomenon-- but your incomprehension raises a very interesting question, one I've been thinking quite a bit about, and I think I have the answer. The question is: Why do people *who *should *understand *certain *things (you, Linda, as a conservative, should understand transgenderism viscerally, and I'll explain why in a second) not understand them? To reiterate: Why cannot conservatives grasp transgenderism, which is a thoroughly conservative phenomenon, underscoring conservative ideology and empirically buttressing a conservative view of human nature? The answer, I believe, is in two parts: First, almost everyone thinks from their ideology, not from empirical reality. And (immediately) second, people not only eschew empirical data in favor of their ideology, they usually bring the most *superficial interpretation of that ideology to a phenomenon. As is true in the case of you and transgenderism. Why did I say that you, as a conservative, should immediately grasp what transgenderism is and have no problem with it? Because it underscores a central conservative tenet (and a widely debated conservative social policy): Women are inherently, biologically, different from men. (The subsequent conservative policy prescription reads: "...and therefore our laws and society should reflect this reality." Think women in combat, Title VII, etc., etc.) How does transgenderism underscore this? Because-- as anyone knows who is even remotely familiar with the empirical data on transgenderism-- it is dramatic evidence that gender is absolutely real, that it is inborn, unmalleable, and that it results in distinct differences between human beings, a fact that liberals absolutely loathe, not to mention one they deny vociferously. Human beings are generally born male or female physically. The rate of somatic intersexuality is actually rather high, perhaps even 1 in 100, depending on how you want to define it, but basically we're a two-sex species. Fine. What we find clinically is that approximately 1 in 50,000 of us is born somatically (physically) of one sex (male, say) but with an absolute internal conviction that their gender is that of the other sex (female). It is assumed by researchers that this is evidence that we all have a neural center determining gender-- saying "I am male" or "I am female"-- and that though these usually match to male and female bodies, in a few cases, for reasons we don't know yet, they're reversed. Sex confirmation surgery (it used to be called sex reassignment surgery), which you deride, although you wouldn't deride an accommodation for women where you could physically *see that they were women, in fact supports the conservative view of the reality of gender: We alter our bodies to conform to our gender, not the reverse. We make our bodies female when our minds our female, because being male and female is not, as the liberals claim, "taught" us, it is not, as the Marxists argue, "socially constructed" created by "environment" and "society." Maleness and femaleness are real, biological phenomena, and conservatives (correctly) say "We're here, we're male and female, get used to it!" Ah! Except when it comes to transsexuals. Then you conservatives say <> What is astonishing is how easy it is to accept empirical reality when no one has a stake in it. Take human handedness. While Catholic schools 40 or 50 years ago tried to "make" all students right-handed, virtually no one today disputes that there is a trait called human handedness, that it's divided into a majority orientation (right-handedness) which empirically accounts for about 93% of human populations, and a minority orientation (left-handedness) at about 7% of human populations, that it's inborn, not malleable, not socially or environmentally influenced, and that neither majority nor minority orientation correlates with any mental illness or incapacity of any kind. And now take human sexual orientation, which empirically is exactly the same data (except that the majority orientation, heterosexuality, accounts for about 94% of men and women and the minority orientation, homosexuality, accounts for 6% of men and 3% of women; the remaining 3% of women, clinicians find, are bisexual, analogous to the small percentage of people who are ambidextrous.) And suddenly all hell breaks loose. The conservative are suddenly incapable of accepting virtually identical data and identical clinical methodology because now this research and methodology are applied to a trait their ideology forbids them from looking at empirically (unless, of course, the empirical results confirmed their pre-judged ideologically determined view of reality, which they don't). I wrote a cover story for "The Weekly Standard" on this-- "Why Conservatives Should Embrace the Gay Gene" (http://members.aol.com/gaygene), and the Standard's readers greeted it with hysteria. And take the fossil record, million-year-old trilobite fossils spread all over the planet, etc. Show this to the Kansas School Board. And we all know what happens. Ideology trumps empirical reality. (To give the liberal example: Liberals can't comprehend why school uniforms are good (empirically they result in high test scores, more orderly behavior, and less school violence). Why? Because liberals believe in an ideology of breaking down the status quo, removing overt class divisions, promoting the individual above the group, etc., and damn the research that indicates otherwise.) And so here we are. In the end, as far as I can tell, one's ability to accept empirical data directly correlates to one's investment in an (any) ideology. Conservatives understand that gender is real and liberals don't understand it (can't grasp it) because conservative ideology allows one to accept empirical reality here and liberal ideology does *not allow liberals to recognize reality because it contradicts liberal ideology of "tabula rasa," "we're all born exactly equal," "society creates us," and so on. Gay marriage is another excellent example: this is-- hello!-- a *conservative position, and any conservative able to view the trait human sexual orientation empirically would recognize that it makes no more sense to deny marriage (a conservative institution, please note; leftists can't stand it, as we all know) to people who are born homosexual than it does to deny access to left-handed desks in high schools to people who are born left-handed. "If homosexuals exist, and they do, well, we should use the institutions that we know work, like marriage, which will be better for society all around." But there's an intellectual short circuit. And so on we go, arguing theology and selecting bits and pieces of reality to buttress our theologies as we see fit. We are, in the end, hardly different from our ancestors. I think it's disgusting, but I'm sure that, as much as I'd deny it, I have my own ideological biases that keep me from recognizing empirical reality in certain places. I just wish I knew what those places were. Chandler Burr ------------------------------------------------------------------------ How to contribute to H-Bd: 1. To reply privately to just the sender of this message, click the "Reply" button on your email package. 2. To reply publicly to the entire H-Bd list, click the "Reply All" (or equivalent) button on your email package. 3. To start a thread, email your message to h-bd@egroups.com