Gender Theory: Alienated from Reality

Talk given in Brescia, Italy 2013

Since 1980 I have been following the campaigns of sexual revolutionaries, and of those pushing sexual and reproductive rights and attacking marriage and the family. Like many of you, I asked why? Why were so many people engaged in such destructive activism? Therefore rather than reading those who agreed with me, I focused on those who didn’t. I didn’t concentrate on what they put out for public consumption, but what they wrote for one another. I sought to understand their theories, their backgrounds, and their objectives.  Through my blog, articles, writings, speeches and, books,  The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality,  which is available in Italian and Spanish, and  One Man, One Woman, I have tried to explain these to those who share my views. I thought this was important because we need to be able to answer their challenges and educate our children. When our opposition referenced studies that supposedly supported their agenda, I read the full text of the articles.

Although I started out working on the issue of abortion, early on I found myself involved in question of gender, in particular the redefinition of gender and the denial of the differences between men and women. In 1995, I had an opportunity to present some of my work on gender, in particular a paper entitled “Gender: The Deconstruction of Woman,” to Cardinal Ratzinger. Therefore, I was very pleased when, on Dec. 21, 2013, Pope Benedict XVI spoke about the dangers of new theories of gender. While the media focused on his condemnation of the redefinition of marriage, Pope Benedict’s critique was more comprehensive, focusing on gender theory in general. Contrasting Christian philosophical approaches with gender theory, Pope Benedict pointed out that:

“According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature, that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves.”

Additionally, those promoting gender theories:

“…dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity.”

In an era that prides itself on concern for what is natural, human nature is under attack.

I The Redefinition of Gender

The redefinition of gender began in the USA. In the past in the English language, sex referred to the totality of what it means to be a man or a woman, and gender was a grammatical term. Some words have gender – masculine, feminine, or neuter. English is an extremely un-gendered language. Only third person singular pronouns and a few nouns are gender specific. Compare this to Italian. Or Hebrew, where all nouns, adjectives, articles, and verbs in the second and third person singular and plural are either masculine or feminine.

Today in the USA, the government and commercial forms which used to ask for our sex, now ask for our gender. Seeing this many people have assumed that gender is just a synonym for sex and that gender was a more polite way of speaking, since sex has a secondary meaning, namely as a shortened form for sexual intercourse. They didn’t see a problem.

But those pushing the use of the word gender did not do so out of an over-scrupulous sense of propriety; for them gender and sex are not synonyms. Sex refers only to biology; gender to the sex a person identifies with, which can be the same, or different from their biological sex.

Most people are unaware of the inroads made by gender theory or of the dangers it presents — the social pathologies it has generated. Part of the confusion lies in the fact that there are several different theories of gender, each of which is based on a false understanding of the truth about the human person, each of which detaches language from reality. The various theories promote among other things:

 

• Mainstreaming the gender perspective
• Separating gender as socially constructed role from biological sex
• Expanding human rights to include sexual and reproductive rights
• Taking  gender identity disorder out of the list of psychological disorders
• Adding  sexual orientation and gender identity and expression to anti-discrimination laws
• Supporting the demand for ‘sex change’ surgery
• Affirming the genderqueer.

 

 Gender theories are not logically consistent and are continually changing, making it difficult for those who try to critique them. This should not surprise us. I remember one Radical Feminist when challenged retorted that logic was a patriarchal plot. While reality remains stable, the gender theory, alienated as it is from reality, is continually morphing into ever more bizarre forms. Its adherents are making ever more radical demands.

Those pushing these theories appeal to our compassion. Although we must resist their theories, as we speak of these things we must remember that their creators are men and women who have themselves been alienated from their own natures, have embraced that alienation, and have created theories to rationalize their behavior and desires. Reading their own comments, one can see the ways in which they have been traumatized, suffered rejection and long for acceptance, but on their terms. The defenders of reality cannot accept the demand that their alienated experience be treated as equal to reality. Compassion requires that we – in spite of their objections – affirm their true manhood and womanhood and the reality of sex difference. We have to pray for them. We have to be sure that therapy and early interventions are available.

It is also important to note that the promoters of the various gender theories claim to have science on their side and frequently reference published studies. Read and analyze these studies and you will find that many of them do not meet the standard for well-designed, statistically valid, and projectable research. The authors often employ small, unrepresentative samples and controls, fail to ask the right questions, and sometimes ignore their own findings. Unfortunately, the media and certain professional organizations continue to promote this material and to ignore large, well-designed studies which refute the claims of gender theory. Consider two articles published in Social Science Research, one by Mark Regnerus, entitled “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships?”[1] and the other by Loren Marks “Same-sex parenting and children’s outcomes: A closer examination of the American Psychological Association’s brief on lesbian and gay parenting.”[2] The APA brief references poorly designed studies and made unsupportable statements. Regnerus and Mark’s articles refute the claim that having a parent with same-sex attraction does not negatively affect children. I have learned never to take a footnote as proof of a claim, but always read the full text of the referenced material.

 

II John Money

The redefinition of gender  was engineered in the 1950’s by John Money, who was on the staff of the prestigious Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, Maryland. Money was not an objective scientist, but an ‘agent provocateur of the sexual revolution”, who delighted in shocking people by his use of vulgarity and obscene photographs. He offered support to the movement to normalize sexual relationships between adult men and boys. He despised religion.[3] He promoted the idea that sexual identity could be broken down into its constituent parts — DNA, hormones, internal and external sexual organs, secondary sexual characteristics, and gender identity – the sex with which a person identifies.

There is nothing wrong with noticing those parts which make up the whole of our sexual identity, but Money was interested in those persons for whom the parts appeared to be in conflict, those who were biologically one sex, but identified with the other. While it is true that some people want to be the other sex, and may even believe that they should have been born the other sex, these beliefs should not be credited as equal to the reality of their biological  sex, but recognized as symptoms of an underlying psychological disorder.

Money focused his attention on babies born with disorders of sexual development, sometimes referred to as hermaphrodites or intersex. Rarely a baby is born with a congenital or hereditary condition, which makes it difficult to identify the baby’s true sex or with deformed sexual organs. This is an area which poses real problems for doctors. Money forwarded the theory that a child’s gender identity was formed not by biology, but by socialization, and that genetic boys with deformed penises could be surgically altered to resemble girls and raised as female. He insisted that the boy would accept that he was a girl and as an adult be able to engage in sexual relations as a female (a high priority for Money). This protocol was widely accepted.

In 1967 the perfect case to prove Money’s theory that gender identity was created by socialization presented itself to him. A baby boy’s penis was accidentally destroyed during a botched circumcision. His parents saw Money interviewed on television, talking about children with disorders of sexual development, and appealed to him for help. He was optimistic. He proposed that the boy be castrated and raised as a girl. Money assured the parents that the boy would fully accept this transition if the parents were consistent in their treatment of him as a girl. Since the boy had an identical twin brother, who would serve as a control, the case would be conclusive proof of Money’s theory that gender identity was socially constructed. Money spoke about and published reports of the case and assured everyone that the experiment was a total success.

Radical Marxist-influenced Feminists took up Money’s theory. It is important to remember that Radical Marxist-influenced Feminists are very different from women who simply want to defend women against unjust discrimination. Ideologically driven Radical Marxist-influenced Feminists want a sex-class revolution.

Radical Marxist-influenced Feminists promoted Money’s theory as proof that the differences between men and women were not natural, but socially constructed by an oppressive, patriarchal culture. It seemed very convincing. I myself remember reading about Money’s twin case and puzzling over it. As the mother of three boys and one girl, I was skeptical, I had seen how without any encouragement sex differences emerge. But Money’s case appeared to offer incontrovertible evidence that socialization could override biology.

As the years went by those who were interested in the case wondered how things had turned out. Had this boy raised as a girl matured normally? Money was evasive and said that, although the child had totally adjusted to being a girl, he had lost touch with the family. Dr. Milton Diamond, who had studied the effect of prenatal hormones on the brain in animals, was not satisfied. After a number of years he tracked down the family and found that Money had totally distorted the results of his experiment. The boy had never accepted that he was a girl. He just didn’t know what was wrong with him. He and his brother were forced to make yearly visits to Dr. Money, during which they were subjected to what must be viewed as psychological child abuse. Money insisted that the boy undergo surgery to create a vagina, but the boy refused and threatened suicide if taken back to see Money. Finally, a local therapist, working with the now 14-year-old, encouraged the family to tell the boy the truth. The minute he heard he was born a boy, he wanted to live according to his real identity. Money had not lost contact with the family; he knew his experiment had failed, but did not admit it.

In 2006 a book by John Colapinto, As Nature Made Him, exposed Money as a fraud.

In addition, many of the children with disorders of sexual development, who were surgically altered according to Money’s protocols now grown to adults, have protested against what was done to them. A number reverted to their birth sex. They have demanded that such operations be stopped and children with such problems be allowed to discover their own sexual identity.

Money also encouraged Johns Hopkins to provide so-called ‘sex change’ operations, in which men who believed they had the brain of a woman were surgically altered to resemble women. When Dr. Paul McHugh took over the psychiatric department at Johns Hopkins, he commissioned a study into the outcome of these supposed ‘sex changes’ and, finding that this radical treatment did not address the underlying psychopathology of the clients, discontinued the practice. He labeled it “collaborating  with madness”

Unfortunately, other hospitals continued to perform this mutilating surgery.

 III Mainstreaming the Gender Perspective

Before Money’s theories had been publicly discredited, Radical Marxist-influenced Feminists combined his concept of gender identity as socially constructed with the Marxist idea that all history is the history of class struggle. According to their gender theory, the first class struggle was between men and women and women were the first oppressed class and all social differences between men and women were not natural, but made up by men to oppress women. According to this gender theory, the way to eliminate the oppression of women was to eliminate all social differences between men and women. This would be achieved by mainstreaming a gender perspective under which every societal recognition of the differences between men and women would be labeled a stereotype and eradicated. Quotas would be imposed so that men and women would participate in every activity in society in statistically equal numbers and receive statistically equal power and rewards. Any deviation from absolute statistical equality would be regarded as evidence of sexist discrimination.

The problem with this is that it failed to distinguish between stereotypes, which do limit women’s ability to participate as equals in society, and real differences between men and women which should be acknowledged. Equality of rights, equal treatment under the law, equal opportunity, and equal access to education are important goals; however, in some very important areas men and women are different and if allowed to freely choose which activities to participate in, they will not arrive at absolute equality. Given freedom, a percentage of women will choose to make motherhood their primary vocation, either leaving the workforce to devote themselves to their children or choosing jobs which allow them more time with their families. Thus, fewer women will participate in paid work and a percentage of those who do will work shorter hours in less demanding fields and in the aggregate receive lower wages. The Radical Marxist-influenced Feminists were well aware of this and pressured governments to institute policies which would force women out of the home and into the workforce. Behind the gender perspective are anti-motherhood policies that are fundamentally anti-woman, anti-child, and anti-family. For example, at the Beijing UN Conference on Women in the over 300 paragraphs there was not one positive reference to motherhood, marriage, or husbands, but gender as in mainstreaming the gender perspective appeared over 300 times.

At the UN Conference in Cairo in 1994, a paper was circulated outlining a strategy for forwarding the demands for sexual and reproductive rights by twisting the meaning of universally accepted human rights. If the goal is the total elimination of sex difference, then the most obvious difference between men and women is undeniable fact that if a man and a woman engage in sexual relations only the woman gets pregnant. To make women the same as men in this regard, women had to be able to have sexual relations and not be pregnant. Contraception and abortion became the sine qua non of the Feminist revolution. To achieve this, they demanded they recognition of what they termed sexual and reproductive rights – namely unfettered access to contraception and abortion, absolute sexual freedom for children and adults and comprehensive sex education, which besides pushing contraception, abortion, and absolute sexual freedom at every level, also taught students that any non-positive comments about homosexuality were evidence of  homophobia and bigotry.

IV      The Redefinition of Marriage

The Radical Feminist movement has been strongly influenced by women involved in same-sex relationships. For them, sexual and reproductive rights also included the right of persons with same-sex attraction to be free from discrimination, to marry a person of the same-sex, and to acquire children.

However, those pushing for the redefinition of marriage did not use gender theory, instead they argued that same-sex attraction was natural for them, that they were born that way and couldn’t change, therefore they had a human right to equal treatment, namely a right to marry and acquire children.

This past March, the marriage issue came before the US Supreme Court. A lower court had ruled that:

 

“The gender of a child’s parent is not a factor in the child’s adjustment… Children do not need to be raised by a male parent and a female parent to be well-adjusted.”[4]

 

The judge referenced studies supposedly supporting this claim; however, analysis of these studies finds them to be poorly designed with small unrepresentative samples and non-matching controls. On the other hand, there is massive evidence that children do best when raised by their married, biological father and mother. Every child acquired by a same-sex couple has been separated from one or both biological parents. Separating a child from one or both biological parents is perceived by the child as a loss. In particular, adults who were conceived by artificial insemination donor, a method frequently employed by same-sex female couples, are now speaking up. They want to know who their fathers are.

Those promoting the redefinition of marriage demand that the same-sex partner be considered the legal parent of any child born to the other partner. Recently, a judge in Vermont awarded the lesbian ex-partner custody of the daughter of a woman with whom she had been in a same-sex relationship, even though the lesbian had no biological ties to the child. The mother had left the relationship when the child was 17 months old, renounced lesbianism, and become a Christian. When the mother refused to allow court-ordered visitation because the atmosphere in the home of the lesbian was upsetting to the child, the court transferred custody to the lesbian. Having exhausted legal remedies and unwilling to turn her child over to her lesbian ex-partner, the mother and daughter fled to Latin America and are in hiding. The minister who helped them was sentenced to 22 months in prison.

But men and women are different.  Motherhood is fundamentally different from fatherhood. Blood ties matter. Children want to know and be known by their biological  mother and  father. There are a multitude of reasons for governments to privilege marriage between a man and a woman.

In my book One Man, One Woman, I analyze the effect of changing the definition of marriage on society, on freedom of religion and speech, on children, and on same-sex couples themselves.

 

V Gender Identity Disorder

In the past, persons who wanted to be, or thought they actually were the other sex, or who suffered severe anxiety when forced to dress in clothing considered appropriate for their sex and self-comforted by dressing in clothing stereotypically associated with the other sex, were considered to be suffering from Gender Identity Disorder (GID). Recently, this designation has been dropped in favor of Gender Dysphoria, reflecting the idea that there is nothing wrong with wanting to be the other sex so long as it doesn’t make you unhappy. If society’s refusal to pretend you are the other sex makes you unhappy, then society has to change. Those pushing for the change argued that same-sex attraction (SSA) is normal for some people, and since same-sex attraction is often, but not always, preceded by GID then GID must be normal too. They ignore the numerous large well-designed studies which show that persons with SSA are far more likely to suffer from psychological disorders, substance abuse, suicidal ideation, and sexual compulsions They ignored the evidence that SSA is not biologically predetermined, but associated with negative experiences in early childhood and that children with GID are far more likely to suffer from anxiety and attachment disorders and come from dysfunctional families. The book Sex, Cells and Same-sex Desire, from a pro-gay publisher, reviewed claims for a biological cause for SSA and concluded that:

“Current research into possible biological bases of sexual preference has failed to produce any conclusive evidence.”[5]

If SSA were a genetic condition one would expect that identical twins would virtually always have the same pattern of sexual attraction, but a well-designed study of male identical twins found that in only 11% of the pairs, where one had SSA, the other did also.

Susan Bradley who has worked extensively with children with GID, regards GID as one of a number of attachment disorders. She conceptualizes the symptoms of GID:

 

“…as a child’s solution to; intolerable affects… The GID symptoms, particularly the assumption of the role and behaviors of the opposite sex, act to quench the child’s anxiety and to make him or her; feel more valued, stronger, or safer.”

 

She argues that early intervention can be successful in resolving GID.

While those promoting gender theory insist that gender identity is different from sexual orientation, the two are linked. Sexual orientation describes persons based on to whom they are sexually attracted – their own sex (same sex attraction SSA), the other sex, or both (bisexual). Persons with SSA are among the most outspoken spokesmen for the various theories of gender. Many feel that they have been discriminated against because they do not conform to gender norms. They also oppose ‘heteronormality’ – the belief that heterosexuality is the norm and any other orientation is abnormal.

There is no reason to suppose that there is a single cause for all SSA. Therapists such as Joseph Nicolosi, author of  Shame and Attachment Loss: The Practical Work of Reparative Therapy,  and Janelle Hallman, author of The Heart of Female Same-Sex Attraction, have helped clients understand the psychological genesis of their SSA. No one should, however, think that change is easy or results guaranteed or that a person, who striving to live chastely, will never have another temptation.

Real change is possible. It can happen spontaneously or through therapy or religious counseling. It appears to be more common among women, perhaps because among men with SSA, the condition is often complicated by sexual addiction and substance abuse. Lisa Diamond, author of Sexual Fluidity, followed  89 women for 10 years and found that a number spontaneously moved from same-sex relationships to heterosexual.[6]

Many but not all persons, who have symptoms of GID as children, develop same-sex attraction (SSA) as adults. Early intervention can change that trajectory. However, there is now a major initiative to make providing treatment for children GID or adults with SSA illegal.

Those pushing for restrictions on the freedom of parents of children with GID and persons with SSA argue that persons with SSA are born that way, cannot change, and any therapy that doesn’t affirm their same-sex attraction is harmful.  None of this is true.

Gender theories begin with false premises. They distort the evidence. They are harmful to those who embrace them and to society.

When I began this work, I really expected that the other side would have some facts on their side, but what I found was that when I looked for their evidence, it just wasn’t there. The studies which they referenced didn’t stand up to scrutiny. This is why the other side wants to shut down the debate by screaming sexist, homophobe, bigot, or accusing us of discrimination and hate speech. They play the victim card or appeal for compassion, because the facts are against them.

We never have to be afraid of the facts, for we are the defenders of reality.

I The Gender Agenda

My book The Gender Agenda was written in 1996. Activists continue to push gender mainstreaming at every level in the United States, at the UN and around the world and they have expanded their demands to include transgender rights.  On the other hand, groups have been organized around the world to alert people about the dangers of these theories.

The clearest example of what those pushing gender theories have in mind can be found in the Yogyakarta Principles on the Application of International Human Rights Law in relation to Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity.

According to Wikipedia, the Principles are intended to apply international human rights law standards to address the supposed abuse of the human rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people, and issues of intersexuality. The 29 Principles along with recommendations to governments, regional intergovernmental institutions, civil society, and the UN itself were developed at a meeting of the International Commission of Jurists, the International Service for Human Rights and human rights experts from around the world in November of 2006, Yogyakarta, Java. These principles have not been adopted by States in a treaty, and are thus not by themselves a legally binding part of international human rights law, however, the signatories intended that the Yogyakarta Principles should be adopted as a universal standard, affirming binding international legal standard with which all States must comply.^, Some states have expressed reservations.

The principles define ‘sexual orientation’ as referring to each person’s capacity for profound emotional, affectional and sexual attraction to, and intimate and sexual relations with, individuals of a different gender or the same gender or more than one gender;

‘Gender identity’ refers to each person’s deeply felt internal and individual experience of gender, which may or may not correspond with the sex assigned at birth, including the personal sense of the body (which may involve, if freely chosen, modification of bodily appearance or function by medical, surgical or other means) and other expressions of gender, including dress, speech and mannerisms.

Besides calling for changes in laws on marriage, they call for acceptance into the military and police of transgendered persons and awareness training at every level – training to designed to force everyone to pretend that a man is a woman, or a woman a man or respect a person who doesn’t want to be identified as either.

The Yogyakarta Principles call on governments to:

“…ensure that any medical or psychological treatment or counseling does not, explicitly or implicitly, treat sexual orientation and gender identity as medical conditions to be treated, cured or suppressed.”

This in spite of massive evidence that gender identity disorder and same-sex attraction are associated with a number of other psychological disorders, with substance abuse problems, suicidal, ideation, and depression and that they can be treated. This so called right would take away the right of people who want to change to get help and criminalize therapy. Why? Because if one person changes, it exposes the lie that change is impossible.

One paragraph calls on governments to:

 

“ensure that the exercise of freedom of opinion and expression does not violate the rights and freedoms of persons of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities.”

 

How one may ask would one person’s freedom of opinion and expression violate another person’s rights and freedoms?

It seems that “persons with diverse sexual orientations and gender identities” claim the right to never have their feelings hurt and a right to never be told that SSA and GID are objectively disordered and therefore any negative comments about SSA or GID would be violations of their rights and freedoms.

While the Yogyakarta Principles have not yet been added to a formal treaty, individual nations have accepted parts of it.

Under President Barack Obama the US government has put the full force of American power behind sexual and reproductive rights, threatening to cut off foreign aid to countries that do not change their definition of marriage or legalize abortion. To forward this agenda, on the Jan. 20, 2013 President Barack Obama signed a Presidential memorandum entitled: “Coordination of Policies and Programs to Promote Gender Equality and Empower Women and Girls Globally.” This is designed to put the full weight of the US government behind the gender agenda.

At home, the Obama administration’s Department of Health and Human Services, has created regulations for the new health insurance mandate which require that every health insurance policy cover contraceptives including the morning after pill without a co-pay from the patient. Catholics, both clergy and laity, explained that this would violate their consciences and they could not comply. They will not pay for contraception. The administration countered saying that Catholic institutions – like hospitals and schools – did not have to pay for the contraceptives directly, rather the insurance company could cover them for free. Catholics point out that this was not acceptable since, the insurance companies would simply hide the cost and in addition many Catholic institutions are self-insured – they are their own insurance company. Those from other religious recognized the threat to religious freedom and have stood with the Catholics on this issue.

The Obama administration’s intransigence on this matter seems incomprehensible since contraceptives are relatively inexpensive and free from certain clinics, that is unless you understand the influence of Radical Feminists within the current administration. For them, free contraception is the without-this-nothing of their ideologically driven agenda. They are refusing to budge and the matter is now in the courts.

Those pushing the redefinition of marriage have become more aggressive. In 1987, two gay men Marshall Kirk and Hunter Madsen wrote After the Ball: How America will conquer its fear and Hatred of Gays in the 1900’s. The strategy involved portraying persons with SSA as victims of homophobic, bigoted, hateful extremists who were just like racists. In the US the worst thing you can be is a racist. Although it took longer than Kirk and Madsen projected, their strategy is now being implemented with a vengeance. Those in the media have forwarded this strategy. According to reporter for the Washington Post, “gay rights is the civil rights issue of our time.” And therefore the voices of those who oppose the redefinition of marriage have no more right to have their arguments heard in the public square than violent racists.

VII Defenders of Reality

On the other hand, the internet has allowed those defending the truth about the human person to organize and keep in touch world-wide. Here are a few of the many organizations working on these issues I would like to acknowledge:

Austin Ruse and CFAM

Austin has done a masterful job of organizing lobbying at the UN. I spent several sessions lobbying – actually mainly writing – at UN sessions in New York and I can tell you it is extremely difficult work. The entire bureaucracy of the UN, the combined weight of the EU and US are arrayed against the pro-family, pro-life forces, but Austin and his allies have miraculously kept the most dangerous proposals from being approved. Poor countries in Latin American and Africa are threatened by the nations that provide foreign aid if they don’t eliminate pro-life, pro-family, pro-man/woman marriage laws or if the stand up for these values at the UN, their funds will be cut off. Only the Muslim nations have consistently refused to cave to pressure.

 

LifeSiteNews.Com out of Canada is your one source for everything that is going on around the world on these issues. They are accurate without being unnecessarily inflammatory. I read it every day. This information should be available in all languages and cover every nation.

 

In the US, our Constitution and Bill of Rights gives us the ability to fight a government that wants to impose the gender agenda at every level of society through government fiat. Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF – formerly the Alliance Defense Fund) and the America Center for Law and Justice and the Thomas More Society are three of a number of legal defense funds which take on cases of those who are being sued or penalized for opposing aspects of the gender agenda. Such litigation can be extremely expensive and these groups cover much of the expense. Because they build their cases on fundamental constitutional principles, these groups have had a number of successes.

Because many professional associations have been taken over by those pushing abortion and gay rights, new organizations have been formed to challenge the false and misleading statements and policies by the co-opted associations. When the AmericanAcademy of Pediatrics supported the redefinition of marriage while admitting that there was evidence of harm to child, writing:

 

“…that even if the empirical support for [harm to children] was strong, the argument is morally insufficient for denying state recognition to other types of relationships.”

 

The newly formed American College of Pediatricians called them out:

 

“It is shameful that this prominent pediatric group would deliberately trade the needs and well-being of children for the desires of adults…The AAP ignores solid evidence of health risks to children in advocating for the legality and legitimacy of same-sex marriage.”

Members of professional associations need to fight the take over of these organizations by activists who issue false and misleading statements and if they lose form new organizations dedicated to true professionalism.

VIII Transgender

The major change that has occurred since my books The Gender Agenda: Redefining Equality and One Man, One Woman were published is the increased activism of the transgendered and the push to have gender identity and expression added to anti-discrimination laws and regulations. Initially the Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual activists tried to keep the transgendered in the closet, but now LGB has become LGBT and for some LGBTQ – Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgendered and Queer.

Several years ago, I was asked to co-author an article for the National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly’s on so-called ‘sex reassignment surgery for an issue on moral issues in major surgery.

Protection against discrimination based on gender identity and expression sounds harmless. Some may think such regulations are designed to prevent discrimination against women, but nothing could be further from the truth as I learned when I plunged into the sad world of the transgendered

A small percentage of men and women with GID as children, often after engaging in same-sex relationships, decide that they want to present themselves as the other sex. These persons are classified as transgendered. Some of these choose to merely dress as the other sex, while others go further and seek out hormone treatments and/or plastic surgery above the waist — men having breast implants, women undergoing breast removal. And some males opt for what is called ‘sex reassignment surgery,’ electing to have their genitals amputated and a false vagina constructed. Such men are labeled as homosexual transsexuals. Very few transgendered females choose to have a false penis and testicles surgically created, since the pseudo organs are small and non-functional. Thus, the much publicized “man,” who became pregnant by artificial insemination donor, was a woman who had her breasts removed and had taken male hormones to change her musculature and grow a beard, but was fully female below the waist.

George Burou, Casablancan physician, who performs transsexual surgery admits,  “I don’t change men into women. I transform male genitals into genitals that have a female aspect. All the rest is in the patient’s mind.”

Jon Meyer, who studied post-surgery transsexuals observed,  “In a thousand subtle ways, the reassignee has the bitter experience that he is not– and never  will be– a real girl but is, at best, a convincing simulated female.”

Janice Raymond, author of Transsexual Empire,  and a feminist critic of transsexual surgery, commented, “What I do accept is that men and some women, who undergo transsexual surgery, are terribly alienated from their bodies, so alienated that they think little of mutilating them”

Even John Money admitted that, “The male transsexuals’ female personality is, in part, his conception of those traits and behavior patterns which typically constitute femininity… It simply excludes traits such as an urge to fondle the new-born and erotic arousal not by visual and narrative stimuli, but by touch, because they are normally outside male experiences and comprehension.”

While the transsexuals and transgendered want the public to believe that they were born with this condition and can’t change, in fact reading their autobiographies it is obvious that they are continually changing and making up new categories to describe their current self-presentation. Here is a partial list.

 

Drag kings

Drag queens

Cross-dressers,

Stone butches

Transvestites

Radical fairies

Leather queens

Transsexual lesbians

Diesel dykes

Trannie festers

Gender illusionists

Gender dissolutionists[7]

 

One category that is much disputed is autogynephiles. These are men who did not show obvious symptoms of GID as children, but as adolescents self-comforted by engaging in masturbation while dressed in women’s clothing and looking at themselves in the mirror – hence autogynephile, men who are in love with the image of themselves as a woman. These men often had male-typical occupation, may have married and had children while continuing to cross-dress in secret. At some point, however, their transvestite fetish was not enough to satisfy them and they decided to pursue surgical alteration. Unlike the homosexual transsexuals who can create a fairly attractive, sometimes super sexy, version of female appearance, many of these men do not make particularly convincing women. After surgery some autogynphiles are still sexually attracted to women and claim to be lesbians. When Michael Bailey described autogynephilia in his book The Man who would be Queen,[8] a number of transsexuals mounted a vicious campaign against him, giving credence to the observation that transsexuals are prone to narcissistic rage.[9]

Walt Heyer, a man who underwent surgical alteration and lived for a number of years as a woman, and then returned to living as a man, is convinced that he and many others were misdiagnosed when they approved for surgery. He believes that he and others had serious psychological disorders as the result of sexual child abuse which manifested as cross dressing. The doctor who approved the surgery never explored this possibility.

IX      Gender Identity and Expression

Having convinced many jurisdictions to add sexual orientation to anti-discrimination laws, activists are now demanding that the categories gender identity and gender expression also be added. The transgendered whether they merely dress as the other sex, or have had partial or complete surgical alterations demand that their legal documents reflect the sex they want to be, not the sex they are.

Those promoting the protection of gender identity and expression argue that sex is ‘assigned’ to a baby at birth, as though the identification of a child’s sex was an arbitrary act and that the child should have the freedom to choose his or her gender, starting as young as 5-years-old.

While the Radical Feminists fought to eliminate everything they considered a ‘stereotype,’ the transgendered frequently adopt clothing and behavior which reflects narrow stereotypical concepts, almost caricatures, of what it means to be a man or a woman. Some of those who go through so-called sex changes try to wipe out their pasts and pretend they have always been the sex they want to be. However, many find this continual deception difficult to sustain.  Rejection of the reality of one’s sexual identity and the pursuit of mutilating surgery suggests a severe psychological disorder. It is neither charitable nor required for others to go along with the pretence of sex change.

Adding gender identity and expression to anti-discrimination laws can lead to serious violation of women’s privacy. For example, a student at Evergreen State College in the United States, who calls himself Colleen Francis has been presenting himself as a woman since 2009, without having undergone any surgical change. After swimming in the college pool, he chose to use the women’s locker room, revealing to a female high school swim team using the same facility that he most definitely was male. The shocked students and their parents complained. Francis accused them of discrimination and the school, which had added gender identity and expression to their anti-discrimination policy, said that Francis had a right to be there and one would suppose the right to expose himself. The high school students were moved to a secondary locker room. Those complaining were made to feel uncomfortable when using the correct – namely male pronouns – in referring to Francis.

Including gender identity and expression in anti-discrimination laws forces others to pretend that people can change their sex.  In the state of Massachusetts, schools have been ordered to allow young children who think they are the other sex to decide for themselves whether they are male or female. To accommodate these children, the schools have been ordered to eliminate all gender specific designations. The children know the difference but under the guise of eliminating bullying they are forbidden to speak the truth.

X GenderQueer

Homosexual transsexuals and autogynephiles represent only the tip of the transgendered iceberg. There is a growing community of men and women who in their own words ‘transgress’ the normal boundaries of identity. They call themselves by many names, but many identify as GenderQueer. The GenderQueer are in rebellion against all restrictions on identity, behavior, and sexual activity. They want to be able to pretend they are the other sex, or neither sex or both, and to change their identity as the mood strikes them and they want society to pretend with them, and to be sexually intimate with persons of either sex.

Kate Bornestein, a male presenting himself as female, embraces gender fluidity:

 

“Gender fluidity is the ability to freely and knowingly become one or many of a limitless number of genders, for any length of time or rate of change.”

Before our political leaders surrender to the demand for legal protection of ‘gender expression and identity,’ they need to understand its proponents’ ultimate goal. According to the International Bill of Gender Rights, they want “the right to define and redefine as their lives unfold, their own gender identities.” And to have “access to gendered space and participate in gendered activity.” In other words, men who identity as women could play women’s sports and use women’s locker rooms. But that is only the beginning. According to a compendium on Transgender Rights, the transgender culture’s central preoccupation is: “the political and social fantasy of nongendered transhuman existence.” According to the authors, the transgendered:

“are forging a rich cultural “transimaginary” and a vibrant transmaterial culture. This cultural work represents nothing short of an ontological insurgency.”[10]

According to Riki Wilchins, writing in  GenderQueer: Voices from beyond the sexual binary,

“Gender is the new frontier: the place to rebel, to create new individuality and uniqueness, to defy old, tired, outdated social norms, and, yes, to occasionally drive their parents and sundry other authority figures crazy.”

Society is under no obligation to encourage such fantasy or such rebellion.

I found the following quote from Theodore Dalrymple appropriate:

 

“When people are forced to remain silent when they are being told the most obvious lies, or even worse when they are forced to repeat the lies themselves, they lose once and for all their sense of probity.”

 

Conclusions

Those who try to warn others about the dangers inherent in gender theory have to deal with the numerous contradictions.

While the Radical Feminists oppose all stereotypes, the transgendered males presenting as females embrace narrow sexist stereotypes to the point of becoming caricatures of women.

While proponents of gender ideologies present a unified front in public, there are divisions among them. Some Radical Feminists lesbians reject men who want to be lesbian women as interlopers. Some regard the women who want to be men as going over to the enemy. As a result some feminist gatherings are restricted to women born as women and living as women.

While those with SSA try to convince people they are born that way and can’t change, the GenderQueer insist that nothing is stable and everything can constantly change.

The transsexuals want everyone to pretend that they are really the other sex, but their ultimate goal of the GenderQueer is a world without gender.

While the public face of the gay agenda is ‘marriage equality’, giving the impression that all they want is to be just like a traditional family, in fact same-sex relationships are notoriously unstable. Male couples are virtually never faithful. The gay male community glorifies promiscuity, sado-masochism, and drug use and is in the midst of a syndemic of sexually transmitted diseases.

In Canada, the education ministry for the Yukon told publically- funded Catholic schools that they could not present the Catholic teaching that homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered, since it was a violation of their concept of human rights law.

In New YorkState, students who make “repeated, deliberate use of pronouns and names that are inconsistent with a student’s gender identity” will be judged guilty of harassment.

A transgendered man testified falsely before a state legislature that he had been tortured at a Christian camp, when no such camp ever existed.

In Massachusetts, a lower court ordered the state to provide a sex change operation to a man who claims he is a woman and who is in prison for killing his wife.

The gender activists are pushing their agenda on every front. Just this year a school in Massachusetts forced public schools to eliminate any discrimination based on sexual orientation, gender identity or expression. These regulations were used to justify the production of a school play that openly and obscenely ridiculed religion.

Therapists who help those who want to change their pattern of sexual attraction or help children with GID are being sued.

What is most frightening is that not only are children with gender identity disorder being denied any form of positive intervention, parents are encouraged to go along with cross-gender behavior, schools told to accept boys who want to be girls, girls who want to be boys even if the child is only five years old, and doctors are encouraged to give puberty suppressing treatments to these children to prevent the development of sexual characteristics and prepare them for a sex change. A case history published in Pediatric Annals discussed whether a 13-year-old boy who wanted to be a girl should receive hormone treatment to prevent puberty, when it was apparent from their comments that the boy was suffering from serious psychological problems and had been the victim of physical and sexual child abuse and at high risk for contracting AIDS or other STDs.

Gender theory in whatever form it takes is a denial of the reality of sex difference. Those who have adopted the theory into their lives are alienated from their own natures. Rather than recognize that their theories are fatally flawed, they lash out at those who defend the reality and scream – ‘homophobe,’ ‘heterosexist,’ ‘bigot’. They accuse those who defend marriage, family, motherhood, and the needs of children of hate speech and demand legal sanctions against them.

No matter how softly we speak, no matter how careful our language, we are accused of hate speech. Recently I was reading Nicolosi’s book again and came across a passage where he notes that men with SSA have trouble recognizing the difference between ordinary male behavior and threats of violence. If as the Church teaches the inclination to same-sex attraction is objectively disordered, then embracing that disorder rather than seeking its roots and struggling for personal interior peace may affect other aspects of their personality. A person defending disorder may need to silence any one who challenges them.

The full weight of persecution has not yet fallen on the defenders of reality, but the promoters of gender theories are reading their weapons. Playing on the public’s desire to be compassionate they are changing laws and putting policies in place which will deny freedom of speech and religion.

Pope Benedict directed our attention to the gender theory because it is one of the forces behind the attacks on marriage, the family, the truth about the human person, and faith. The differences between men and women are real; they are confirmed by our experience, our science, and our faith. We cannot surrender this truth. We cannot pretend it is not important. The advocates for gender theory understand what is at stake. They know it isn’t about compassion for those who are different, or polite ways of referring to those who are confused about their identity, or protecting certain groups from discrimination. They know that religion and particularly the Catholic religion stands in the way of their plans to create a world where their alienated view of reality is never challenged.

But we must challenge it everywhere it appears. We must heed Pope Benedict’s warning and refuse to surrender to gender theory no matter in whatever form it presents itself. We can begin by never saying gender when we mean sex.  But now comes the hard part. We have to defend our right to speak, to accurately describe reality, to proclaim that marriage is the union of one man and one woman and children do best when they are raised by their married biological father and mother, to call a man a man and a woman a woman even if they wish to be other. When we do, we can expect persecution. It may seem like a small thing, a pronoun here, a name there, but persecution always begins with small things. But surrendering to lies is not a small thing and we must stand firm

Gender theories are the product of souls alienated from the reality of their own natures, souls that want to make others participate in their alienation. We are not promoting a narrow, outdated worldview. We are the defenders of reality.

 

 

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[1]  Mark Regnerus  “How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study,” Social Science Research, 41 (2012) ://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0049089X

[2] Loren Marks Same-sex parenting and children’s outcomes: A closer examination of the American psychological association’s brief on lesbian and gay parenting,”[2]41 (2012) pp. 735-751http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/journal/0049089X

[3] John Colapinto,  As Nature Made Him

[4] Sections 70, 71 of the decision

[5]  John De Cecco , David Parker, Sex Cells and Same-sex Desire , (Harrington Park Press: NY, 1995) P.427

[6] Lisa Diamond, Sexual Fluidity (Harvard UP: CambridgeMA, 2008)

[7] Transgender Rights, p.322

[8] Michael Bailey  The Man who Would be Queen

[9] Alice Dwyer

[10]  Transgener Rights, p..322