Lili Elbe was a transgender woman and one of the first identifiable recipients of sex reassignment surgery.

Binary Lives

Poorly informed writing by political pundits and seeming authority figures is doing transgender people a great injustice.

In the wake of Caitlyn Jenner’s very public debut, we’re seeing a lot of folks posting what might politely be described as “unlearned” information about transgender people on social media. Forget the callous, deeply ignorant mockery of FOX News. We’re also seeing lackadaisical pundits write withering dismissals of the transgender community, often while smearing their attacks with a patina of what they consider to be sympathy. Given the amount bullying and marginalization transgender people already experience, let’s hope some of us will at least take a moment to read some of the research about transgender people instead of relying on our pre-conceived notions and conventional wisdom (kinder terms for prejudice).

We’re actually learning a lot about the science of both transgender and intersex people (yes, they’re different). We’re also learning that although, yes, most of us are clearly male or female, gender isn’t binary: It’s a spectrum and many people do fall somewhere in between the poles of such a seemingly clear classification.

What if these uninformed and frankly often sloppy writers challenged themselves to be more intellectually curious on the subject and didn’t simply set out to write something which reinforces their pre-existing beliefs? Sadly, some of these writers are considered authorities on the subject, too. Like finding a single scientist to deny climate change could be caused by human beings, it’s not difficult to find a single professor, who denies the reality of a gender spectrum. Take, for example, this article among others by anti-transgender psychiatrist Paul McHugh, which attempts to conflate the transgender condition with psychological problems — an oversimplification most of the medical and scientific community has been moving away from for a while now. (You wouldn’t know that by reading his writing.)

The people posting this piece — and other similar ones by McHugh — universally point out that he is the former Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University. This qualification and appeal to authority is clearly intended to trump further argument. Never mind that McHugh’s writing has been thoroughly dismantled elsewhere, his piece does not represent a scientific study. At best, it’s an op-ed, a series of anecdotes, coupled to his personal (and deeply biased) reflections. It’s not science. It’s not a peer-reviewed study. Not even close.

If McHugh and writers with far less exposure to science than he aren’t willing to examine the facts, we can still equip ourselves. The following studies and research-based material would be a good place for anyone to start:

And there’s a lot more good information out there where that came from.

Consider this, too. Ironically, many of these same pundits claim to care so much about the soul and the internal person, yet still direct their criticism towards someone else’s desire to change their physical appearance in order to better align it with what they believe to be their soul. If the outward appearance is less important than the inward (and I certainly grant it is), why care that someone wants to realign those externals with what they’ve long believed to be their inward appearance — likely since they were a child? Perhaps it reveals that we who resist their transitions are more fixated on outward appearances than we’d like to admit. Maybe it’s simply our discomfort with seeing something that doesn’t fit neatly into familiar categories that prompts us to be critical. And maybe our belief in gender binary is forcing some people to live binary lives.

Thankfully, there are some thoughtful Christians out there offering far more generous and, well, Christlike analysis of Caitlyn Jenner’s transition and the transgender condition in general. Consider the following pieces, for example:

All this aside, perhaps the best way for each of us personally to understand what’s best for transgender people from a therapeutic perspective is to talk to a few of our transgender friends and ask them what has worked for them. What has enabled them to feel more comfortable with a better alignment of their outward appearance and their deeply personal inner lives. Not all of these people are mythic figures like Caitlyn Jenner or Wendy Carlos: They’re human beings like you and me. They’re our relatives and neighbors, friends and coworkers. Not so easily dismissed. Except when they’re vilified for their condition and fired from their jobs for being “perverts.”

Misinformation only contributes to the further marginalization of transgender people, even (especially?) when thinly glazed with professed concern for their psychological and spiritual states. Arguably, what we’re really finding in much of this writing is backlash from people who believe that transgender people deserve to be marginalized. In the face of so much distorted information, let’s equip ourselves to replace fear and ignorance with curiosity and compassion.

@stribs