Letters to the Editor
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Personal freedom vs. Personal harm
My knee-jerk reaction when reading this story was that it was simply a case sensationalistic journalism, trolling for ratings with a rather bizarre story, and that the anchors comments only reinforced this view. However, reading the letters here, and thinking about the case more deeply, it seems to me that it goes deeper than that.
If a person chooses to alter their own body in some way, who is to say they cannot? On the one hand, it seems like an elemental case of personal freedom - the freedom to do whatever you want to your own body. Putting aside for a moment the effects of the hormones on the fetus in this particular case - if you aren't hurting anyone else, who's business is it, really?
However, taken to the ultimate extreme, wouldn't suicide then be acceptable? If it is your body, to do with as you see fit, and you aren't physically hurting anyone but yourself...I could see how this argument could be made. Of course, some suicidal people can be helped with drugs and therapy. I happen to have known a few, and I am glad that they weren't given the "freedom" to take their own lives but instead got some counseling or anti-depressants.
Maybe an extreme example, so...how about cutting? Self injury is a real psychological phenomenon. The people engaged in this behavior aren't hurting anyone but themselves. They cut themselves to make themselves "feel better." But, most doctors would discourage this behavior, rather than participating and doing the cutting in a medical setting.
Where do we draw the line between "harmless" behavior that makes a person feel better or more comfortable, and damaging behavior that should not be encouraged? Breasts are a body part, an important one, as much a part of the body as an arm or a leg. No doctor would agree to remove a person's arm for cosmetic reasons, or because the patient would feel more comfortable with themselves if they only had one arm. In fact, they would probably recommend some therapy for that individual. So there are limits imposed by society to just how much freedom we have to modify our own bodies.
If the doctor's vow is "first, do no harm," different doctors are going to draw different conclusions about what that means in a transgender case. Is more harm done by forcing a patient to remain in a body in which they feel is unnatural for them? Or is extensive surgery and hormone treatment to change a person's gender ultimately more harmful? Should someone be counseled to accept the body they were born with, or is that a hardship they shouldn't have to endure now that we have the technology to change the (at least superficial) attributes of gender?
Hey, I don't have the answers. I'm just askin' the questions.
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js2347 on doing no harm
If a person chooses to alter their own body in some way, who is to say they cannot?
However, taken to the ultimate extreme, wouldn't suicide then be acceptable?
Maybe an extreme example, so...how about cutting?
Where do we draw the line between "harmless" behavior that makes a person feel better or more comfortable, and damaging behavior that should not be encouraged?
A good rule of thumb is simply: are you altering your body in a way which, overall, is constructive or destructive? If what you desire is, on the whole, constructive (even if weird) then it seems fair to say that you have the right to expect whatever help you can solicit.
If what you desire is, on the whole, destructive, then it seems fair to say that, while you also deserve help, it should be preventative.
Honestly I think almost any reasonable person will be able to easily distinguish one from the other. Radical sex changes may fall into the "weird" category for many people, but it's hard to argue that they aren't on balance constructive. (Maybe from a theological point of view, but that must by necessity be personal.)
In fact, it's so easy to distinguish that our (legal!) understanding of sex proves reasonably fluid without needing a whole lot of prodding.
Besides which, consider: a generation ago it was considered disturbingly beyond the pale for men to have body piercings or women tattoos, and a generation before that all it took was women with short hair or men with long. (Now we barely register any of those, and in fact in certain industries they practically constitute a uniform.)
How much longer before chromosomal therapy lets us try a new sex? Or more to the point, lets our grandchildren try it — we'll probably sit there in our hoverchairs shaking our iCanes at them and bemoaning the collapse of American values.
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Brynn: it’s not so much about hatred as it is fear, as others have noted.
Also thanks to Svutlana, just another day, smallfox, Angry Midwest, d. c. eric, shaunarine, inverseproposition, Rosenkavalier, and others. This thread desperately needed those posts.
Thomas is indeed a man, in the only sense that matters: he freely and courageously chose to construct self, as it turns out in ways that (ultimately, trivially) result in our utterances of “man”.
So much puzzlement and consternation – because this story is not about Thomas Beatie, but rather about the rest of us, and the symptomatology of the dis-integerated psyche, of disowned maleness and femaleness.
Male and female together in one self, in one body? Unthinkable. Frightening. The dissonance and distress seem intolerable. Words fail us. Disapproval and rejection loom. Escape must be the only option.
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To Amity...
Thanks for the reasoned reply.
If what you desire is, on the whole, destructive, then it seems fair to say that, while you also deserve help, it should be preventative.
Honestly I think almost any reasonable person will be able to easily distinguish one from the other. Radical sex changes may fall into the "weird" category for many people, but it's hard to argue that they aren't on balance constructive. (Maybe from a theological point of view, but that must by necessity be personal.)
I see your point, but I also see how these procedures make people uncomfortable. Radical sex changes are "constructive" in that you are "constructing" the body you prefer. But, I can see how many would think the radical surgery necessary for such a procedure is, in itself, highly destructive. Ask a women who's had a mastectomy or a man who's had a orchiectomy due to cancer if they felt that those procedures were destructive - even if they did indeed save their lives.
I admit that the idea of such surgery makes my skin crawl a bit. I don't think it can so easily be chalked up to pure seething hatred. Perhaps it's my personal aversion to doctors and hospitals in general coming through, but I think many folks just have an (understandable?) aversion to the surgical removal of body parts that, for most, are a source of pleasure rather than discomfort.
I also picture the grisly countenance of Jocelyn Wildenstein when I think of the excesses that one can go to in the world of cosmetic surgery. The people undergoing plastic surgery procedures, that to outside observers appear unnecessary and "destructive," apparently believe that they are "constructing" a more pleasing body. Some doctors feel these people need preventative help, others are too glad to take their money.
I guess it comes down to whether the procedure is merely cosmetic, or is considered necessary from a mental health standpoint.