Here is a post I started in March of 2008 and never finished. I know I’d planned on writing more. Hopefully I also would have reworked parts of it, as reading it now, some of the arguments aren’t quite coherent yet. It’s not my usual journal entry, it’s a bit of a rant, not exactly an essay. Anyway, here’s what I had sitting around as a draft for nearly a year now.
There is no right
Horror
A while back I got a message from my dear friend Trina, with the simple, out of context, plea, “Sonia? Tell me you’re happy. I need to know.” Inquiring as to what she talking about, I learned she was upset over news that a friend of hers who had had surgery and transitioned from male to female, had now returned to living as a male.
Oh, the horror at having made such a terrible mistake! Having to live now with a ruined body. That’s why the SOC is so important, right? To prevent such tragedies by screening out the people for which would fail in transition and have to forever be…broken.
We talked and I ended up getting so mad that I ended the conversation. I disagree with just about every premise in the above paragraph. I asked Trina, “so, is she really sad?” “Well…she must be!” she answered. “But have you talked to her? Did she actually say that she regrets having had her surgery?” To Trina, it was tautological that since her friend is now living as a guy, that she must regret it. I kept trying to argue things like, “But what if she lived for a year as a woman and that was the happiest year of her life and she wouldn’t trade it for anything in the world?” What if she’s ok with her body today, ok with having a little secret in her pants. What if she’s ok with that and with correcting me on my pronouns, saying “I prefer to be addressed with male pronouns these days. Yes, even by my dear TS friends who know my history. I loved my year as a woman. Now I love being a man.” Isn’t it possible that he sees no horror in this? No mistake, no tragedy? That he doesn’t consider himself ruined or broken? Here are some cases I can see where he would be ruined:
- His sole ambition is to be a male porn star. If he can’t do that, his life has no meaning and he wishes to die.
- His sole ambition is to impregnate a woman. If he can’t do that, his life has no meaning and he wishes to die.
Oh, he doesn’t fall into either of those categories? Well let me point out the true horror here: It is gender variance itself, as seen through the eyes of the gender-binary majority. This non-variant majority is progressive enough these days to support a don’t ask don’t tell policy with transsexuals, as long as they transition invisibly from one side of the gender binary to the other, as long as they are intensely discouraged from doing this, and as long as the few who persevere the gauntlet of the SOC receive the punishment of being banned forever from their birth assigned gender and banned forever from reproducing. The horror in the case of Trina’s friend is the failure of the SOC to prevent this victim of self-mutilation from walking among us.
Consider the term “Sex Reassignment Surgery.” On the surface, this term is nonsense. “Assignment” is a logical operation. It means associating something with something else in some sense that is conceptual or clerical. “Surgery” is physical operation. The two are in different realms. There is nothing abstract or theoretical about surgery; and conversely, there is no cutting or burning involved in assignment. Something is going unsaid here. What? Look at exactly what kind of assignment we are talking about here. We are talking about the ‘M’ or ‘F’ on legal documents. A doctor assigns us M or F when we are born. Under what circumstances can we be reassigned? It turns out that society allows exactly one circumstance! The conditions for this circumstance are that a doctor perform surgery on us, and then sign papers declaring that the surgery successfully achieved the effect of changing the sex in a way that is permanent and irreversible. Ah, so there is the meaning of the whole term! SRS is the surgery that the law requires for M/F reassignment.
Um, does anyone see problems?
But, you’re protesting, it is permanent and irreversible! You know what? All surgery is permanent. Bump your head, get a few stitches, and you will heal, but you’ll never be the same. There will be a little scar tissue there. Maybe you’ll be lucky and it will be undetectable to the unaided eye, but there will be some scar tissue there. You will never be the same. In fact, surgery isn’t even required. From what scientists tell us, the whole universe seems to be irreversible. Whatever happens today becomes permanently in the past, part of history, never to be changed. Let’s get specific. You can’t go back after a orchiectomy and say, “You know, I changed my mind. My sole ambition now is to impregnate a woman….” All arguments over specifics disintegrate into nonsense at this point.
Reading some blog comments about sex change requirements in other countries recently, I cringed when I saw them referred to as sterilization. Well, let’s not mince words! The law dictates that the price you must pay for your gender variance is to undergo sterilization. That is, we don’t want your type reproducing.
In the end, it’s not all about sterilization, it’s not all about the penis, it’s not all about genital mutilation, it’s not all about lying to gatekeepers and surviving a year of public humiliation to prove your sincerity. It’s about the horror.
These unfinished arguments weren’t all. Here I had notes for two more points I wanted to make, but the notes don’t ring any bells anymore and I can’t remember what I was thinking. So, sorry, that’s all for now. 
Amanda and I had another girls day out last Thursday. At the end of the day she sent me home with a couple of books of hers, Helen Boyd’s “My Husband Betty” and “She’s Not The Man I Married.” I’m part way into MHB now, and of course it’s as good as I had heard. One point Helen makes early in the book is that cross dressers are no different from other men in that they often lack communication skills. I think I’m the worst person I know in this area.