Category Archives: Gender Anomalies.
Dresses and Pants, Marriage and Love, Lesbians and Gays
In pictures Jesus wore dresses. It was the style of his time. Until the sixties most women only wore pants for exercise or outdoor fun or work. A woman wearing pants to church was shocking and considered downright scandalous. I’m almost 86 and I haven’t worn a dress in about ten years. But I visited a church once where the preacher said that women having short hair and wearing pants were trying to attract other women. I looked around and realized I was the only woman with short hair and wearing slacks. My husband (Male) and I (female) were married for almost sixty years.
I remember my very conventional husband having a fit over our oldest son letting his hair grow long. I remember having to put a Kleenex on my head to go to the Catholic Church because the bible says women must cover their heads in worship services.
There are many normally kind people who are very threatened by change and can respond surprisingly unkindly to people who are different.
Sex variations are of course more difficult for very conventional people to handle.
I remember a great-aunt on my mother’s side, a librarian, who wore tailored suits and short hair and frankly, looked like very mannish. She lived alone all her life and seemed sad and lonely. I suspect she would have been a lesbian today. And there are pictures of a great-great aunt on my dad’s side who was extremely beautiful and feminine looking in a long-ruffled dress of that time. She somehow managed to get her MD as a pediatrician in the early 1900s and opened a pediatric clinic for the poor. When I asked the cousin showing me the family photos why I had never heard of this amazing woman, she pointed to another woman in the background of the photo and said, “Because she and that other woman lived together all their lives.” What gender that woman loved mattered more than her exceptional mind, courage, and kindness to poor children. I doubt any man’s ego in that era could have handled being married to her anyway! It seems a strange value system to me.
Making laws preventing same sex couples from marriage, which to me is the best school for learning to love another imperfect person, seems cruel and counterproductive for Jesus’ wish for people to grow loving when it’s hard.
There are people who have genitalia of both sexes. There are boys who are born obviously more feminine than male. There are girls that would never attract a male even if they wanted to! Learning to love is the challenge for us all, not just some of us. Who we marry is pretty much the most personal thing any of us does. I know a lot of gay marriages that have outlasted many of the heterosexual marriages I know.
Our culture is rampant with heterosexual couples having sex outside marriage relationships, many of which result in unplanned pregnancies with heartbreaking choices and/or disastrous marriages or one parent and child living in poverty. Gay and lesbian sex does not have that potentially tragic outcome. And two people without children who work will seldom be on welfare.
Jesus challenged those about to throw stones in judgement of a woman. He didn’t tell the Samaritan woman with many marriages that she couldn’t enter the kingdom of heaven by beginning to follow him.
Poor Paul advised Christians not to marry unless they just couldn’t resist having sex. I don’t think Christianity would still exist if celibacy was a prerequisite for Christians. I presume Paul thought Jesus would come back quickly. Obviously, Paul was mistaken.
There are many legal evils in our world right now with horrendous consequences. Same sex marriage is not one of them.
Gender
In four years of medical school, three years of residency training, and nearly 30 years in practice as a family physician I have never been asked “what is the definition of a woman?”
Seems obvious that one could just look at the genitalia. You’re either a boy or a girl, right? Well, not always. Although it is rare, many people are born with ambiguous genitalia. The OB/GYN and the pediatrician are simply unable to determine the sex. Historically, in consultation with the family, a sex would be assigned. Turns out that often as not the child would ultimately identify with the sex they were not assigned.
So it must be the chromosomes. The 23rd pair in humans is designated XX in females and XY in males. The Y chromosome determines male characteristics, so you are either a boy or a girl, right? Well, not always.
In embryology the default setting is female. The Y chromosome normally triggers male development. Ever heard of testicular feminization syndrome, now more properly referred to as androgen insensitivity syndrome? A normal XY baby is born with essentially normal female external genitalia. The body simply does not respond to androgens associated with the Y chromosome. As the child grows and enters puberty there will be normal female breast development and other feminine characteristics. Unless genetic testing has been done at some point, the abnormality is not discovered until the teenage daughter presents to the doctor with concerns that menstruation has not started. Examination will reveal that the vagina ends in a blind pouch, no uterus, and undescended testes. They are often very feminine – cheerleaders, beauty pageant contestants, etc.
Nearly everybody is a normal XX or XY, has anatomy to match, and is perfectly at peace with themselves. But not everybody. Several studies have identified how the sexual diversity between men and women does not exclusively involve the genitals, but also the development of different brain areas. And just as genitals can be ambiguous, or not match what XY would predict, so can the brain in some instances develop in a different direction than the genitals. Animal studies suggest this is likely due to atypical levels of sex hormones in the womb.
Studies in the human brain have involved an area of the limbic system known as the nucleus of the terminal stria. The volume of this area appears to be influenced by the stimulation of sex hormones during brain development, and in men the volume of this area is greater than in women. Scans of this area in transgender women (genetic/anatomic men who identify as females) resemble that of non-transgender females. In this matter gender identity develops from the complex interactions between sex hormones and brain during its development; moreover, this appears to be genetically predetermined and is not influenced by hormonal stimuli during the adult phase.
Gender dysphoria often begins in childhood and can lead to severe distress, depression, and suicide. Treatment includes thorough psychological and medical evaluation and psychotherapy. Hormonal treatments in children are designed to delay puberty until decisions about appropriate gender characteristics can be made. The treatments are not permanent and are REVERSIBLE. Sex change (gender reassignment) operations are not done on children. (Rare exception might be in the case of ambiguous genitalia where surgery may be done to make genital appearance more consistent with the genetic sex).
Unfortunately, there are many people who cannot or will not understand that someone different from themselves might really be different for a real reason. I recently watched a video of a Fox News personality guffawing, in an arrogant and grotesque display of not knowing what one does not know, about how “woke liberals” were looking into the science of what makes someone a man or a woman. I hope the information provided here explains why that question is not quite as simple as it sounds.
It is also unfortunate in Texas that people with political power seem to think that trans people just want to get on the girls’ track team
to win a lot of medals or get in the girls’ rest room to watch them pee. Governor Abbott, Lt Gov Patrick, and AG Paxton have shown profound ignorance and cruelty in decreeing treatment for these kids to be child abuse. Even right-wing columnist Mona Charen called Abbott’s behavior “malice masquerading as policy making”. It is no different than lunchroom bullies knocking the food tray out of the little autistic kid’s hand and having a big laugh over it. And the American Academy of Pediatrics, American Academy of Family Physicians, AMA, American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, and the Endocrine Society have expressed outrage.
I would hope that someone will share this with a conservative friend. For most of us it seems ridiculous that a guy would think he is a woman, or a woman to think she is a man. The human brain and human body are complex and wondrous and get it right almost every time, but sometimes they get it different. And different should not be wrong, and different people and their families should not be attacked by their own government.
– Joe McCreight, MD
Laughter: Carbonated Grace 