So, guys, I had a “eureka” moment, compliments of Marc Barnes from the oh-so-helpful Catholic channel on Patheos.
Up to this point, I thought that we should just straightforwardly accept the gender individuals identified as. I thought that if you loved your child, you would respect who they actually were, as opposed to who you wanted them to be. I though that respecting your kid would help them grow up and respect other people. Assuming that you or some doctor has the final say about who your child is for the rest of their life based on the kid’s genitalia (especially when there are children who don’t have a penis till 12, people who live with vaginas and y chromosomes their entire lives since birth, and because several studies indicate that gender in the mind does not correlate with assigned gender to the genitalia. Take this one, for example. Also, there’s this one. Another relevant study is here. In addition, you might want to consider this one, conducted by a half-dozen researchers. Then there’s also this one, conducted by a baker’s dozen. And this one, as well. Another recent study also indicates this is the case. And in addition, there’s this one. And then there’s…well, I could go on, but The Wall Street Journal gives a good overview of the issue if you need a summary. And then in addition there’s the statements that say this is an actual phenomenon by several organizations that would know, including the American Psychological Association in a thoroughly-cited, strongly worded statement. Likewise, the American Medical Association has also taken these studies into account in a strongly worded statement. As does the National Association of Social Workers, in a 9-page, well-cited, similarly strongly worded statement. The American Public Health Association has taken these observations into account in their policies since 1999. Finally, the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, an authoritative body of 55,000 physicians, has a committee opinion supporting these observations that is also fairly clearly written. But I digress, and this parentheses has gone on long enough) is disrespectful to your child and to people in general, really. A bit arrogant, as if you have authority over the most intimate parts of another person’s body and psyche.
But Marc Barnes set me straight in a brilliant, two-part article that contained no citations (outside of a theoretical sentence from Slavoj Zizek that contains no actual, like…facts) directly backing up his position, presumably because he’s such a genius.
Apparently one of the horrible things that will happen if your transgender child indicates they were incorrectly assigned at birth and you decide to believe them is that (horror of horrors!) you will have to believe them and respect them (and, like, science and stuff) over and above how much you respect the label you gave them at birth!!!!!!!!!
No, really. This is something to be thoroughly paranoid about. As he put it:
If I have a daughter (and have up to this point considered her as daughter, not because I know her mental self-affirmation of gender-identity, but because she was given to me as “my daughter,” named by her mother, held as female by a tradition I trust, given over to a menstrual cycle, and so forth) I must now consider her as “my daughter” based entirely on a principle of which I can have no certainty — her private self-experience. I must become uncertain as to whether she is my daughter — only repeated verbal affirmations of her hidden mental state could affirm this as a fact. I must consider her communal body (the way she looks and speaks) her history (how she was raised, how she was given the language and lessons of identity) and the network of relations she is embedded in (as sister, granddaughter, and so forth) as extrinsic and ultimately unimportant. She has the good luck to have a mind that, by the age of 6 or 7, coheres with the rest of her being. If her mind changes, my daughter will become a son. To accept this means holding the current identity of “daughter” in flux. It is no longer a permanent relation. Plainly speaking, no person can ever have a son or a daughter, only a daughter-for-now or a son-for-now. Even if, at 8, she reveals that she “identifies as a man,” requests the pronoun “he,” and begins the process of transitioning, there is no good reason to assume that my now “son” will not self-identify as my “daughter” once more. My point is not that such “coming outs” should not be met with respect — they may be the correct response to the true nature of gender. My point is that it is foolish to pretend that the gaze which sees a daughter and the gaze which sees a daughter-for-now are the same. They are not.
And I know he says that the coming out should be treated with “respect” — but he makes it such a tragedy later in the article:
In fact, if I am to remain consistent, I must consider no gendered relationship as permanent or fundamental or intrinsic — only contingent and changeable. I must consider no body — neither my own, nor my wife’s nor my child’s nor my father’s — as an expression of the truth about the person. It is always possible that the body of my loved one will turn out to be the “wrong” body. I must hold it in suspense. I must detach myself from it. I must love a body without communal interpretation, a neutral, uninterpreted, material X that exists prior to any thought of being-man, being-woman, being-neither, being-both. The body gives no truth. Every body — from the perspective of the supremacy of self-concept over all other gender-data — is a possibly-wrong body.
Holy fucking shit. This kid you say is your daughter may actually be your son because, like, you respect them and shit.
And here am I, thinking that the world would keep turning. But no. Marc Barnes set me straight. It’s THE END.
Dun, dun, daaaahhhh….
If the doctor peeks at your kid’s genitalia and sees a pussy, then that means that, regardless of what your kid feels and regardless of whether they are actually transgender (or even has a Y chromosome or another arbitrary marker of identity), their identification as transgender will mean the fundamental end to your world, and that’s a tragedy that should put fear into every parents’ heart. That the kid would have any control over their identity in any decently normal world and that there is, like, actual science that indicates Marc is full of shit doesn’t matter. It’s just so. The identity of the kid is under the parents’ authority forever and ever amen, or the world ends.
Sorry. This. Is. Ridiculous. This is laughable. This is ignorant. This is stupid. This is so blind to reason that I’m open-mouthed in awe. Seriously? How does that work? Why is it so horrible? You may have thought your child would identify as a daughter. But he identifies as a son. Just–why the fuck is this a big deal? Get over yourself. Seriously. It’s just….uggggghhhhhh…..
Why does the arbitrary gender you assign based on genitalia have to be “a permanent relation”? Why the fuck is it such a tragedy that it’s not?
These questions are rhetorical because….seriously? You think there would be a rational answer to that? Private self-experience is the way we experience gender. How the hell does Marc Barnes think that this is so bad? And regarding the son he discusses in the above quote, the “communal body…history…and network of relations [the son] is embedded in” is not, at all, zip, zero, zilch “extrinsic and ultimately unimportant” if Marc realizes he has a transgender son. It’s just a, “congratulations, now you know your son a bit better.” What? You want to spend your whole life insisting your son is your daughter and falling in love with your own private fiction?
What the hell is wrong with you?
Seriously. We all change our view of each other all the time as we get to know each other more intimately. This is just another part of that.
And no, you don’t have to watch your kid’s body “in suspense”; that’s really goddamn creepy. You just gotta love your fucking kid. Why are people making this so goddamn complicated? Why does the body as YOU see it have to be “the truth” about someone else who is not you? We can change our bodies, or choose not to change our bodies, to reflect the way we want to see ourselves — other people aren’t really in a place to be offended or even held “in suspense” over it, as if they own your flesh. It’s yours.
*sigh*
Then he says:
If “gender is on a spectrum” then everyone’s gender is on a spectrum. If being a man or being a woman is not determined by biological facts, then no man and no woman is justified by their reliance on biology for their gender identity. Cisgendered, polygendered, lesbian or gay — if any believe that they are a woman on the basis of their body, they are unjustified, mistaken, or deluded. If it is wrong to ascribe the term “boy” to anatomically male baby, it wrong for everyone, always. If there is no such thing as “woman,” then a trans woman is wrong to so identify. A feminist is wrong to so identify.
Fuck you.
If someone wants their body to express who they are as a woman, then they can do that. If someone wants it to express who they are as a man, they can do that. It’s their body. Theirs. Not mine. Not yours. Theirs. And yours is yours.
Is this preschool? No, I’ve met preschoolers who get this. How basic do I have to get? I just…what planet are we even on here?
And if you think you want to express yourself through your body differently, then do that — especially when we have so thoroughly backed it up through, like, actual science and not the whims of a nosy parent that this is what happens. And there is such a thing as a woman, because people identify as women. And there is such a thing as a boy, because people identify as boys. It’s not like these concepts are no longer available to us. They’re right fucking there. Like right there. I feel like I’m being fucking gaslighted when the concepts are ALL AROUND US.
*sigh*
This article is some of the worst drivel I’ve read in a long time. It’s hand-wringing authoritarian bullshit trying to control bodies that aren’t yours based on the most intimate parts of their genitalia in the state it was at the most vulnerable moment in their lives, when they couldn’t define themselves and who they were. It’s like baptizing a baby at birth and then insisting it’s a Christian when it gets older and leaves God. It’s profoundly disrespectful, and the fact that it’s couched in the pretense of polite, smarmy, greasy language all the way up to its ugly end makes it even worse.
Ugh. God, that feels sick and slimy. Sorry I put you through that, reader. I’ll stop now.
In any case, thanks for reading.