Here is my response to Mary Kochan’s August 1′st comments-

Dear Mary, You are wrong about Mariology. I rather go with Scripture instead of relying on the flawed doctrines of so-called tradition of a church which by the way continues to change its doctrines. But Mariology will not be discussed in this response.

In regards to your continued posts on sexual and gender identity, you are greatly mistaken. Renee Richards is NOT a him or a man. Renee is a woman and had no unfair advantage competing against other women who were competing in the Women’s Tennis Association and United States Tennis Association sanctioned matches. In fact, the International Olympic Committee’s scientific and medical advisories have found the same in regards to transsexuals competing as the women that they are. They realize that DNA is not what decides a so-called true sex. But more importantly, they have correctly found that a post-op transsexual woman is indeed a woman and therefore permitted to compete in the world International Olympics.

http://www.rediff.com/sports/2004/may/18oly.htm

Yes they are women. They are not men. Thus the IOC has changed their policy to reflect on the truth of the matter and not on unfounded fears and misconcetions such as yours as well as those who engage in hostility toward pos-op transsexual women with violence and who incorrectly believe that they are men. In fact, there ARE plenty of men who do realize that they are indeed married to or dating women and not men when they are with a transsexual woman after her SRS. Your closure of your posts to your forum does not take away from the fact that you have misrepresented the truth.

In regards to mutilation, SRS certainly is no more mutilating than is circumcision or gonadectomy (the latter interfering with fertility).

Dr. Thomas Szasz who wrote The Myth of mental Illness commented also about how transsexualism was like amputation of an arm. Yet Dr. Benjamin justly corrected him. The amputation of an arm makes someone less functional.

The amputation of gonads or penile tissue would only make someone less functional if vaginoplasty was not performed. But as Benjamin properly corrected Szasz, when vaginoplasty isperformed, it actually makes the person MORE functional. Since in legitimate transsexuals, this is the only treatment which is beneficial, it is understandable that Benjamin was troubled that a physician (Szasz) would take such a position and that Szasz is not worthy of a degree since he mentioned no way of relieving the legitimate transsexual’s suffering. (For Benjamin vs. Szasz, see dialgoue published in Transition which is the title of the doctoral dissertation project of Garrett Oppenheim of Confide, Inc. at Columbia Pacific University).

In regards to pscyho-emotional issues of disgust and revulsion at being amputated, you should know that unlike non-transsexuals, transsexuals do not have the phantom limb phenomenon, which suggests that the brain and nervous system indeed is not wired in accord with the genitals which are present before the SRS.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17420102?ordinalpos=5&itool=EntrezSystem2.PEntrez.Pubmed.Pubmed_ResultsPanel.Pubmed_DefaultReportPanel.Pubmed_RVDocSum

Regards,
M. Italiano, MB BS (AM)
________________________________________

My response:

The original abstract in the original publication of the study about phantom penises to which profital is referring (which currently can be found here: http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/imp/jcs/2008/00000015/00000001/art00001?crawler=true ) mentions that the incidence of phantom penis in “male to female transsexuals” is reduced from 60% to 30% when compared to men who suffered surgical penial amputation for cancer. It is therefore not non-existent and the fact that it must be self-reported by people who have a great deal of interest in being perceived as “real women” cannot be overlooked as a factor that can skew the results.

That point having been made, it is to some extent beside the point. We understand that there is a disorder. We understand that there is a very strong desire on the part of these people to live as the other sex. We understand that this disorder resides in their head. The question remains as to whether this action of bodily mutilation is moral or not, or whether once it has been accomplished, the rest of us must be in some way legally obligated to pretend that a “sex change” has really occurred. And that is not a question that can be answered by referring to what is going on in the heads of the people who are doing this.

As for the comparison with amputation and the issue of functionality, profital says: “[W]hen vaginoplasty is performed, it actually makes the person MORE functional.” Once again, that could only be the case if the purpose of the sexual organs was not procreation, since what you have here is the removal of functional organs and the construction of organs that can be said to function in only the most restricted and limited sense. They certainly do not function at all in the way they do in normal intact people. A vagina is not a mere pouch in the body of woman for the purpose of allowing penetration of the male organ, it is the birth canal. To say that someone whose generative power has been surgically removed in order to fabricate a simulacrum of one part of the organs of the other sex has become more functional demonstrates a remove from reality that I trust is evident to most readers.

As for the larger topic here, one thing that strikes me is the very different picture that is presented. On the one hand, these surgeries are so successful that no one would ever guess, hence the websites that feature “success stories” with photo after photo of lovely-looking models, each a high-powered professional in everything from acting to systems analysis to professors to running businesses. On the other hand, transgendered people are routinely being harassed, fired, passed over, bullied, refused service, and even murdered. The stories of the tortures that some of these poor people have endured are truly sad and outrageous. At the same time, some of the websites seem almost to be “recruiting” people with gender identity disorder to take the step of “transitioning” — seems like the murder statistics should be published there also.

I do want to respond to marlene who questioned why boys being cared for at a Catholic home would be so cruel and violent. My guess is that they were probably being cared for there because they were troubled or deprived in some way. Who knows how long any of them had been there, if they were even Catholic (the Church cares for all without distinction), or what disruption or violence already was part of their histories. I’m sure you know that it wasn’t the teaching of the Church that they were following when they engaged in that horrific criminal assault.

I’d like to back up to lisanne’s observation that acceptance cannot be legislated. This is true; as Dale O’Leary put it, “they would see in our eyes that we don’t believe.” This brings me to a point that I want to be very cautious about making, but that I think has to be made if this is going to be an honest exchange. It is not mere disbelief that transgendered, cross dressing and gay people see in the eyes of others. And it is not just the pity that Dale mentioned. It is something more and I think that you all probably know it. Even though people try very hard — as Dale put it, “you have no idea how truly tolerant others are, how people hold back and don’t say what they are really thinking” — what they see in the eyes of others is revulsion. It hurts my heart that this is the case, because I know how very hurtful it must be to these people. And I hope that any human being who crosses my path would see loving acceptance in my eyes. But for most people, this is simply revolting. We are talking about healthy, virile, men intentionally having their sex organs removed. That prompts a shuddering revulsion –- a gut reaction — in just about every normal human being of either sex. And I would argue that it is naturally and rightly so.

The reason this is naturally and rightly so is for a very similar reason — only deeper — that the thought of being dismembered causes revulsion and fear in human beings. Many adult people can still recall the first time that they, in childhood, encountered a person with an amputated limb and the sense of shock and horror they felt. Even as an adult we can be shocked by this. My Marine daughter was in an exercise for dealing with a terrorist attack. A number of actors were brought in to play the part of the wounded. One of the “wounded” was a man whose leg below the knee had been “blown off.” In the haze of the dust, my daughter thought she was dealing with an actor who had his leg folded under him to give the appearance of missing the bottom part of his leg. As she continued the exercise and emergency treatment of this “wounded person”, she suddenly realized that that he was an actual amputee… and shuddered. Did her revulsion mean she “disrespected” him? NO! In fact, she immediately surmised that he was an injured vet — summoning in her the greatest respect — but that did not keep her from experiencing revulsion. People have told of vomiting the very first time they saw their own stumps, or mastectomies. That is revulsion. And it is not under conscious control. But I would argue that it a right and healthy reaction.

Bodily integrity is essential to the health of an organism. Our discomfiture with dismemberment comes from deep inside, part of the “programming” if you will, for keeping us alive. Now it is true that as we get older, get more experiences in the world, meet more people, we learn to relate to a person who has lost a limb in a natural way — we learn to “look past” the disability and focus on the person. It is important to note that people who are missing limbs are almost never missing them as a deliberate choice. However, to make that choice to remove a limb or even express the desire to do so meets such an instinctual response of recoil in healthy human persons that we know that we know that we know it is insane. (We also recognize the desperation of the occasional rural poor person who has an “accidental amputation” of a foot with an ax for insurance money.) That is why we don’t have a politically correct category called “amputaphobia” to create a mental illness out of our natural healthy desire to keep intact the bodily integrity of our organism.

People who intentionally violate the integrity of their body demonstrate a mental disorder. A healthy society has to balance their freedom to do so with protection of the society. But beyond that people have to have some kind of sane conception of what the consequences are of what they do themselves. In my extended family there is man who had a wife and two children. He decided a number of years ago that his hobby would be to get himself pierced and tattooed all over, and do other body modifications like stretching out his earlobes. He spent the money his family needed to live on to do these things. He so deformed his appearance that now he is barely able to make a living to pay child support to his wife who finally left him after years of non-support. Does he have the right to do these things to himself? Apparently so. Does an employer have the right to decide that his appearance is more a detraction to the company’s image than some other employee? You bet. If we go from the arena of legal rights to moral rights, though, we have to ask a different question about this man’s responsibility to his children. He can carry on all day long about his “rights” and people’s “prejudices” against his revolting appearance, but at the end of the day, he knew he would be endangering his ability to provide for his kids by doing this and he didn’t care. He made a selfish decision.

“Transfolk” have mutilated themselves in ways that most sane people find revolting, even those who would defend their legal “right” to do so. The Church does not teach that every single moral wrong must be brought under the control of the law and as a person who believes we are better off as citizens with freedom maximized, I would not seek to penalize these operations, those who perform them, or those who obtain them. That is not to say that anyone has a moral right to do this wrong.

So what is the situation we have? We have people who have used (in our definition, abused) their freedom and having carried out these operations are attempting with varying degrees of success to live as members of the opposite sex from the one they were born as. They deserve the same protection of the law that we all should have. And they have it. An assault upon one of them is as much a crime as an assault upon anyone else. Robbery of them is as much a crime as robbery of anyone else.

Robbery gives us an analogy though. The guy who goes into a bar and flashes around a wad of bills, has a few drinks and then exits into a dark alley is a victim of a crime if he is robbed. But we also say that he was acting stupidly, without prudence, without taking sensible precautions. The same is true of the “transfolk” I read about who suffered assault and even murder at the hands of people from whom they hid their condition until after a sexual encounter. The revulsion that a normal male feels for having a sexual encounter with another male is healthy and good. It comes from an orientation of the human species toward procreation as opposed to extermination. It supports the male-female-child family unit as the building block of society. While “transfolk” should be and are protected by law from such criminal assault, this kind of deception understandably provokes rage and can be avoided — just as the guy with the wad of bills can be circumspect and avoid being a needless victim. I’m sure that in some cases the “trans” person is very blameworthy in using the disguise offered by the surgery as a way to trick others and put them in that position. If “transfolk” are not able to recognize the wrongness of that, then it is just more evidence that to put it in common parlance, their dipstick is not touching their oil.

The Church teaches that as with homosexuals, there should not be unjust discrimination. All discrimination however, is not unjust. To use the example spoken about in the forgoing discussion of the male tennis player who had “sex change” surgery only to become a champion playing in the women’s competitions, it would certainly not have been wrong for him to be disqualified. The stupid court decision notwithstanding, every woman who played opposite him and lost was cheated, playing someone with an advantage in strength that women players did not possess. It would have been just discrimination to refuse to allow him to play the woman’s circuit.

It would have been unjust discrimination not to allow him to work as a tennis pro, teacher, or coach to adults. It would have been just not to hire him to be a children’s coach IF by doing so the children were going to be exposed against the wishes of their parents to his ideas regarding “sex changes” or to an ambiguous sexual figure. For this same reason, “transgendered” persons can justly be discriminated against in number of areas where their contact with children might raise issues that parents would rather not expose their children to at a tender age. On the other hand, with the exception of situations where an employer has to count on the employee to “represent” the image of the company in some visual way — such as sales, PR, etc. there probably is a certain amount of unjust discrimination in employment. “Transfolk” would be better served by making a very narrowly focused legal effort that does not link them with transvestites, gays, etc. This brings us to another issue of deceit.

The reply of jessica elucidates the point: “As for the strawman bathroom argument posed by the author, not all transsexuals transition, and most of them, at the point where they are not living full time as their gender of identity, would rarely use a restroom inappropriate for their gender presentation.” In other words, some of them at some point may use a restroom inappropriate for their gender identity. We have to add here that there are some who have no intention of transitioning as well as some transvestites who have made it a personal mission to break down society’s “boundaries” and they freely admit, “mess with people’s heads” (or as jessica put it: “get in your face over your preconceived notions of gender”), do make it a point to use a restroom that is inappropriate for their gender presentation — and what bathroom would be “appropriate” for fully-bearded, well-muscled man in a dress and high heels, pray tell. This all shows tone deafness to the protection society owes to women and children. This tone deafness is exactly what we expect and get from “transwomen.” Despite their claim of being women “in their minds” they possess no native sense of feminine vulnerability or modesty, nor do they have a sense of solidarity with it. Instead to pursue their own agenda they would happily rob real woman of societal protections. The bathroom issue, just happens to epitomize this. Go into almost any public place and notice how the women’s rooms are almost always placed beyond the men’s when both share a hallway. Why is this? It is because the area beyond the men’s room is “off limits” to men. The staff of the business, such as a restaurant, will know immediately if they see a man venture past the men’s room, that he is where he has no business being and challenge him. This is for the protection of women. Oh, but here we go again with our “preconceived notions of gender” that serve the real legitimate interests of real women that “transwomen” would happily trash.

Like the “radical gay rights” agenda, with which it is now hand in glove, the original appeal is to “just leave us alone.” But being left alone — tolerated — is never enough; a kind of acceptance that a healthy society cannot give is always the goal. So the society must be made unhealthy. And when the adults prove less than malleable to the agenda, the target becomes the children. This is how it always goes. What is demanded ultimately is “reeducation” to a different value system and the parents be damned. We’ve been down this road before. As much as we care for their pain — and we do; as much as the Church cares for their souls — and she does; this agenda has to be opposed. God bless and keep safe all who commented.

This is what’s known as the David Reimer case.

David was born with a twin brother back in the 1960s. A doctor using a cauterizer to circumcise the boys had an accident with David and partially burned it off.

The family, being poorly educated and on the lower end of the economic scale, were worried about David when they saw a documentary on a famous doctor who was one of the early pioneers regarding gender, Dr. John Money.

As Dale has said, Dr. Money’s theory was that gender could be manipulated, so when he saw this perfect opportunity to prove his theory, he must have orgasmed in his pants.

To make an extremely long story short, Money tried to force David into living as a girl. He failed utterly. Why? Because David wasn’t born a girl between the ears!

Sex is what you have between the legs. *Gender* is what you are between the ears — the two are separate and distinct!

It’s also been exposed that Dr. Money forced David and his brother to have sex play together when they were younger in another vain attempt to impose femininity in David.

This could be one of the reasons why first his brother, then David to complete suicide. Both suffered from severe depression for years. All at the hands of a quack who though he could play god with a child’s psyche!

This case is concrete proof that gender identity exists, and is deeply seated and cannot be changed, just like sexual orientation is fixed and cannot be changed. So-called ex-gay “therapy” is an utter failure.

There is an excellent book on the Reimer case: “A Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl” by John Colapinto. There’s also a companion article in the December 11, 1997 issue of Rolling Stone, located here: http://infocirc.org/rollston.htm

No, actually, the doctors treating the male twin whose genitals were mutilated, then sculpted into a female shape, did not believe in gender. They believed that ‘Brenda’ would be fine.

They were wrong. He was a man, with a man’s mind and heart… and wound up killing himself over the agony of being misshapen in such a fundamental way. Just like a lot of those with gender and sex conflicts–I know you can’t understand, I know you feel like you’re a better Christian for refusing to–though I don’t understand why. Do you believe that Jesus rejects people, or tells them they’re not who they are? Do you think Jesus would smile on unequal rights? Keep in mind the stage of the world when he was born–don’t you think he might know what it is to be oppressed by political and religious leaders?

And Mary? I’ll be sure to tell my female friends to take their shoes off and get back in that kitchen. Whether they would be suited to motherhood and whether their bodies can even get pregnant… or else they face accusations from you about ‘not being women.’ I guess I better tell my mom, who had a hysterectomy, she’s not a woman anymore, either.

This statement of yours needs correction. it requires us to understand
Hebrews 12:9 which states-
“Furthermore we have had fathers of our flesh which corrected us, and we gave them reverence: shall we not much rather be in subjection to the Father of spirits, and live?”

Mary wrote-
“Sexual relations find their fulfillment in the ultimate union of the soul with God — that is why there is no marriage in heaven, not because our bodies lose their sexual identity.”

No, this is Catholic doctrine and is flawed. Our spirits are sexless.

Mary wrote-
“Jesus is eternally a male person.”

Again, at best masculine. Jesus BECAME a man (a male person) WHEN HE
(masculine gender perhaps) took on a human nature. Even God the Father needs
to correctly be interpreted in regards to Genesis 1:27. When God made male and female in His image, we need to understand the use of the pronoun He. He made them male and female in His image.

Mary stated-
“Mary the mother of God”

No. Mary was the mother of Jesus. You are stating a catholic beleif which is not correct and is the result of faulty exegesis.

Mary stated-
“once a man fathers a human person, he is always the father of that human person”

No. That is wrong. I think we covered that already.

I’ll be responding at greater length soon.

Take care, all.

A father is a father of a person, not merely of a body. Just as a mother is the mother of a person. Which is exactly why we can properly call Mary the Mother of God, btw, because her Son is one person with two natures, divine and human. Since all human persons, once existing, will exist eternally (regardless of where they spend that eternity), once a man fathers a human person, he is always the father of that human person.

I’m not surprised that you are accusing the Church of being wrong on doctrine since you also think it is wrong on morality. The two things usually go hand-in-hand. (I’m not bashing you for it; just noting it.)

“[F]rom” in what way?

“[P]atterned after” in what way?

And your proof for this is…?

And just not to lose track of the thread of logic here, you are bringing this point up to argue that no violence is really done to children if their father decides to abandon them in order to pursue “becoming a woman” contra my point that such a transformation is impossible given that the natural relationship of human fathers to their eternal offspring is an eternal relationship in as much as grace builds upon but does not destroy nature.