good thread....
one that I notice a lot is when people use the word "love" to describe what is actually lust or attraction. It's no longer about giving to someone... it's something selfish, and nothing more than a feeling...
Of course it's descriptive. All euphemisms are descriptive. But they happen to be false descriptions. "Boyfriend" is similarly a false description, for the person in question is neither a boy, nor (merely) a friend.
"This kind of issue" is a feeling, which can become obsession, that one "should have been" born the other sex. This is distinguishable from genuine hermaphroditism, which is a genuine physical abnormality, like being born with no eyes, so I'm not talking about hermaphrodites.
A feeling, even a persistent one, is not justified merely because one has it. If I have a persistent feeling and desire to have been born at the end of the eighteenth century, should we )if we could) then bend our technological capabilities to grant me that wish and fulfill that desire?
Such a feeling is unfortunate - but so is the desire for other good things misapplied, like alcoholism or same-sex attraction - which this feeling is obviously connected to. They grow from the same limb of falsehood. There is not one person here who, had they been born fifty or a hundred years earlier, would have taken seriously a claim of "gender dysphoria". Have you read Chesterton's essay at the beginning of the thread?
Chesterton is pretty clear about the penchant for taking Greek - or any foreign language - terms to make something wrong sound acceptable. And this is done all the time. It was done with "homosexual" - and now people accept open sodomy in our society. It is being done with "polyamory", and in less than a decade we will see open approval of polygamy. Finally we will find medical terms for pedophilia (itself a euphemism, as it merely means "the love of children"), and inappropriate behavior with animals (likewise) being a nameless monstrosity, something the apostle Paul affirmed the existence of, and they will gradually receive approval (I said GRADUALLY - in the case of 'pedophilia' it will start with lowering the age of consent, at first to 17, then sixteen, eventually down to puberty).
The assumption encouraged in the modern media is that whatever a person wants to be, that's what they are. A truth is taken - that we can affirm or deny our passions and align ourselves with or against them (the latter may be called "theosis"), and twisted so that it is the affirmation that is the good that people see and the denial that is bad. In the film "The Iron Giant" we see an illustration of "You are who you choose to be" as a choice against the passion, in "The X-Men" we see it as for the passion. (If that seems esoteric and out of the blue, wait for my upcoming post on "the X-Men!"). And so we see a girl get a bizarre operation by twisted doctors, who learned nothing from Dr Frankenstein and then the media cheerfully refer to her as a "he", merely because she was given hormonal treatments and had an appendage added, as if sex was a merely physical reality. Or vice-versa (a boy calling himself a girl and having himself mutilated and hormonalized).
If I take "gender dysphoria" and translate it I get "grammatical gender - bad feeling". Now setting aside the problem of everybody forgetting that even their parents said "sex" rather than "gender" - a fad of the last twenty-five years - I'm still left with saying that a person has a bad feeling about their sex. How in the heck does that work out to a boy being a girl, merely because he thinks, wishes, feels and desires to be? Since when can we change absolute physical reality merely by desiring to do so? We are not merely material - where is the operation on the soul that is so desperately needed, for it is clearly not the physical reality that is wrong, when a person genes are definitely xx or xy, but a sickness of the soul. And for that we need the Church, not a medical (physical) doctor, and for the person who suffers from such a desire an effort, a struggle, that may or may not be lifelong, is called for. Our feelings cannot be cured by medical doctors - the ones that purport to do so have stepped outside of their field of competency. The real cure and comfort is in Jesus Christ.
GK Chesterton
I think you've missed the point. When someone walks into the psychiatrists office saying "I feel like I don't belong in my body and my sex is the reason", what is the appropriate thing for him to write down in his notes? "The patient has a bad feeling which has no reality"? Not that helpful, and especially not very helpful for looking at the literature to discover what might cause such a feeling and what might help it.
You also have a real dualist tendency with regard to mind/body. Feelings are often caused by the body, and can be treated as such, or sometimes the body and the spirit have to be approached together.
Such feelings are not new - they have been documented in a variety of times and places and even given other names in the past.
If creating a label for a real experience is a euphemism, than language is in big trouble.
Well, you may think I have missed the point; I think that I have thought rather carefully about it and have not missed it at all. I even think/ have thought
about the points you bring up.
I never suggested that such feelings were new; I freely admit that such desires are ad old as mankind.
Labels can reflect truth or falsehood; justify or condemn; cast an experience as a physical, mental or spiritual problem both when it is and is not the case. The ones I put here reflect falsehood; in this case treating the spiritual problem as a physical one; one that says that it is the body, not the mind or soul which is disordered.
As to what a psychiatrist should make note of, they should record the observations. If a patient says something, by all means record it and consider it. But do not leap to taking the patient's self- diagnosis as the correct understanding of the situation. How to help such people? The same way we propose to help people suffering from same-sex attraction or any other abnormal desire. But certainly not by affirming and approving the abnormal desire.
Here I agree with you - on both points. I certainly do not dispute that there can be bad feelings with physical causes. However, I DO dispute that one's sex is such a case to be identified as a "dysphoria".Who is affirming? There are other types of body dysphoria, and calling them such doesn't mean people think they are good things - in general, they are considered bad. Some anorexics, for example suffer from this, as do some of those folks who have repeated bizarre plastic surgeries.
And the mind and body and soul are not separate things - they are pretty intimately related, a whole. Especially when you are talking about people's emotions and feelings, separating body and mind doesn't make any sense - emotions and feeling are chemical reactions in the body, and they happen for a reason. In the case of well documented feelings that are seen across different cultures there is reason to think there may well be something similar going on inside the bodies of all these people.
Here I agree with you - on both points. I certainly do not dispute that there can be bad feelings with physical causes. However, I DO dispute that one's sex is such a case to be identified as a "dysphoria".
I also agree that the body and soul are not unrelated things; they are indeed connected. What I dispute specifically is the idea that one's sex is actually a mistake. I insist that they ARE connected - only that the feeling is caused by ailment of the soul, not the body. It is the people doing these surgeries and treatments who treat the body as a disconnected thing, not me. They think that by physical mutilation of a completely normal physical structure they can make the bad feelings go away - and certainly they are right - just as the alcoholic's craving is relieved when he has another drink, or the person suffering from same- sex attraction feelsvrelieved in enacting his passion, and so on. It IS affirmation of the feeling; that the feeling, the passion, is the right thing to be acted on. When you say "there is reason to think there may be something going on inside the bodies of these people" you likewise affirm it. Yet I am speaking, not about hermaphrodites or genuine physical mutations. I am speaking of the complete physical normality of the bodies of boys and girls. Being born a girl is not abnormal. It is not a deformity. The deformity is in the soul, which, though connected to the body, has characteristics distinct from the body, and the feelings under question are precisely not physical sensations. It is not a deformity to have a perfectly normal and healthy female body, as Chaz Bono thinks, and the body is not the cause of that sort of feeling. The soul is. Mutilating the healthy body and pumping it full of hormones in contradiction to its divine design is not treatment of the feelings or their cause at all. It is approval of the symptom. It is exactly like saying "my arms feel like they ought to be legs" and having surgery to become a four-legged creature - and indeed it is a move away from the divine and towards the animal. It is the desire to be one's own god and reshape oneself - and the world to conform to one's own vision of it. The kingdom of Man, not of God.
(Edit) I don't mean ANY of that to seem like a personal attack! What you express is what is being said everywhere, so I'm NOT picking on you!
It's just that I feel like the boy in "The Emperor's New Clothes" who's saying the obvious to a nation of people to whom it's no longer obvious. All people of all generations would agree with me, and would call it simply "common sense" and most wouldn't even see why it would need to be expounded on. It is specifically our generation that has gone off its head on this issue of the affirmation of perverted (in the literal sense of 'turned the wrong way') desire. CS Lewis called it "bent" desire.
It is not strictly true to say that the Pilgrim Fathers discovered America. But it is quite as true as saying that they were champions of religious liberty. If we said that they were martyrs who would have died heroically in torments rather than tolerate any religious liberty, we should be talking something like sense about them, and telling the real truth that is their due. The whole Puritan movement, from the Solemn League and Covenant to the last stand of the last Stuarts, was a struggle against religious toleration, or what they would have called religious indifference.
It can be found here: What I Saw in America by G. K. Chesterton - Project GutenbergTolerance
Especially as applied to religion.
I'm re-reading GKC's "What I Saw in America" - yet another outstanding book, of special interest to us Americans, he totally zapped me with his insight on Andrew Jackson - makes me feel like school taught us nothing. But on tolerance:
There's a lot more, but I know most people are allergic to seeing big blocks of text - until we know WHY we want to read it, we tend
to not want to. It's free online, but I'm sick in bed with my iPad so posting links is a problem. (and my response to MJK is on my PC, and my wife has me quarantined from the family so I can't go near it).
Anyhow, when you think about it, for practical purposes that is what the call to tolerance generally means in most cases. It does NOT mean the genuine tolerance practiced in Jerusalem, where three religions are forced to share one Holy place, but for us to agree that it does not matter, to be indifferent - and indifference is the true opposite of love.
No no, I don't take it as a personal attack - though I really don't think my position has much to do with the popular position.
My main point is that the term gender dysphoria is really just descriptive - it says that the person feels alienated from his body, specifically with reference to his gender. It doesn't say that this means he is really in the wrong body, or should have surgery to correct it, or anything like that; any more than a person convinced her body is deformed and ugly should have plastic surgery to correct it.
AFAIK, the best way to actually help such people is debated among the medical community, and really none of the solutions offered are very good - the people still feel pretty awful and out of place, or they end up putting their bodies through the wringer and of course are still not fitting in to society well. But if medicine is going to figure out what causes such things and if and how it is possible to help such people, it is going to need a name for the problem. Gender dysphoria is pretty neutral and fits in with other terms used for similar problems.
Of course their are philosophical issues - what makes us a man or woman? Our body, or mind/brain, or our DNA? Presumably our soul is a man or woman's soul, but it is not, alas, visible to us. The others - well, it seems the answer can depend. This kind of issue is the sort of thing that really requires people to have a good grasp of both medical science and also theology to talk about in a helpful way, and I think that is something that may be missing in the Church to some extent - though the Catholics have been good at trying to do this in an organized way.
I've sometimes thought that part of the problem for people suffering from this may be that our ideas about gender roles are actually quite fixed and sometimes extreme. If we expect people to be very manly or womanly in their presentation of themselves, I am sure it makes it much more difficult for those who can't really identify with those things. Especially when they are then suspected of some sort of sexual immorality. OUr century has asked a lot of questions around issues with regard to sexuality, and the response of some Christians has been to become very hard-line. Which is appropriate about some things. But as far as demanding adherence to popular sex roles, it can cause problems, because our bodies are not always perfect. (And of course sometimes we think that sex roles include things that are really just conventions.)
Hi MK,
As to your number one, that just leaves everything I said standing. If they don't have their philosophy right, then they don't understand what they are dealing with at all. Period.
On #2, I do not accept that only a small handful of "experts" who completely contradict everything humanity has always known are in the least likely to be correct. I believe humanity has made some pretty correct perceptions about the nature of men and women since Creation, and being told that only this small number of experts can be right for reasons beyond the ordinary mortal's comprehension is nonsense; it is a complete lack of common sense.
3) Maybe, but you have completely failed to define what exactly "fitting in" means. As a completely undefined term, it means nothing at all objectively, so we couldn't even agree on what it means without clear definition. I am a combination of curves and angles, and I "fit" into society - whatever that means. Whether demands are just or not depends entirely on what you mean. It sounds that you have begun the discussion assuming from the get-go that these confused people are right. I, on the other hand, begin from the assumption that they are wrong. We are already speaking past each other. I don't care to debate on this thread. You can start a discussion in St Justin's on this topic, and maybe I'll join in, but if you don't accept what I believe Orthodox Christians (which you are not at this point) must accept, then I won't debate it here.
It is a fundamental and Orthodox truth that God created men male and female. You may find people who feel God made a mistake - and such people, where they exist, are to be pitied (just as hermaphrodites and genuine physical deformities are) - but NOT told that they are an alternative "normal", for they are NOT normal - and I am not going to argue that with you. There is something wrong with them, and it is NOT the sex that they find themselves to be, but their perceptions that are warped, that are the problem. This is so obvious that to not see it is to be like a blind person who cannot perceive color. No amount of science, conducted by certain (and not all) scientists with drastically wrong worldviews to begin with, can challenge Orthodox truth. The fashionable (for that is what "modern" means) science will be found to be wrong every time - though it take a century - and we will be left with the eternal truth.
Now I do not propose telling people merely to "feel different" but to admit that the problem is decidedly in their perception - at which point it can be dealt with by priests and psych experts. But the expert who supports self-mutilation and treating the warped perception as normal is the malpractitioner.
Again, we ask the alcoholic (or whoever) to restrain his desire. He may, in a huff, march off elsewhere when he realizes that Orthodoxy does indeed call him to restrain himself, possibly to the point of abstinence. He may go underground. But that choice is his. But the response of the Church cannot be that he need not restrain himself at all because it pleases him to do as he wills. So it is here. People may walk away from God on any pretext, and we cannot pretend that they need make no change in themselves, or feel that the Church cease to call us to that change for fear that people will flee the Church.
Now a person may walk into church confused, and we are not to judge or attack him (or her). But they must lovingly, like all of us, be made aware of the need to change themselves, and become, not what they feel they'd like to be, but what God has called them to be.
Respectfully, MKJ--
I can't quite see how Rus so willfully and insistently ignores what you say, and it seems apparent to me that he's making a good-faith effort to address your points, even if he might miss a couple. Perhaps part of the difficulty lies with a lack of clarity on your part?
My understanding of how Rus may have misunderstood you:
1) I can see how Rus may not have rightfully addressed the first point of your last post, that is: while you may grant him that a wrong philosophic view would guarantee a failure to properly understand the issue, a right philosophic view, while necessary, is insufficient solitarily to understand what may also be a physical/medical issue.
FYI, for the sake of discussion in TAW, I believe the philisophical (ie, Orthodox) question of what defines gender is pretty much settled. A person with two X chromosomes (and no Y chromosome) is a female. A person with an X chromosome and a Y chromosome is a male. This chromosomal arrangement precludes certain behaviors, such as sexual intercourse with someone with a similar chromosomal pairing.
2) Rus refutes the opinions of certain "experts", when you made no allusion to experts, but rather merely asserted that there is much we (including the "casually educated") don't understand and can't conclude about DNA's role in the issue.
3) I can see how Rus might have misrepresented your opinion on the "correctness" of "dysphoric" behavior, but it may be because he extensively addressed the issue in post #169. It's confusing, then, when you reiterate a point on which you apparently agree as if it was a point of disagreement. He could, if uncharitable, reciprocally accuse you of willfully ignoring what he said.
It might be helpful to delineate what you feel are "non-negotiable" and "neutral" aberrations in behavior. Your ambiguity on this point makes it difficult to infer what should be acceptable for the sake of not alienating a "dysphoric" person. Knitting is one thing, dressing up as the opposite sex is another.
The question of permissible "masculine" and "feminine" behaviors almost approaches irrelevance, though, as the dysphoric person does not really question whether it's okay for dudes to knit or bake, but whether he is a dude at all. He rejects "male" behaviors only incidentally; what he truly rejects is the idea of his fundamental maleness.
4) This seems almost an extension of point #3. Again, it would be helpful to know which behaviors you consider "non-negotiables". If Rus is talking about disallowing full transgendered behavior in church, while you're thinking about a slightly fabulous swishiness in speaking style, everyone will just end up talking past each other.
MKJ,
I think we might be sailing past each others ships a bit when it comes to the concept of sex/gender (terms which I, unlike post-structuralist feminists, consider synonymous). I would say that gender is fundamentally, objectively and precisely defined by, rather than merely determined by, the XX or XY chromosomal pairing. That is, a person with an XY chromosome is, by definition, male. The difference may seem subtle, but I think it's very important. There may indeed be genetic factors which affect one's perception of, or comfort with, one's gender. I do agree that a person struggling with gender dysphoria has not necessarily chosen to reject his or her gender.
A broader discussion of gender identity, and the proper response of the Church to the issues and people involved, may be a bit too tangential to the thread topic, but it might be worth discussing in another thread.
For my part, I don't find gender dysphoria to be an inappropriate term for its respective pathology. To my mind, the term, rather than normalizing the disorder, implies pathology and abnormality. A term is necessary to refer to the disorder, and I don't know what a less propagandistic one would look like. I'm quite possibly wrong on this. I think the term transgender works much harder to neutralize/normalize the condition and make it determinant of fundamental identity.
Overall, I do agree with Rus regarding the Orwellian semantic shell games which so degrade language and and obfuscate ideas that two people using the same terms can be speaking virtually different languages.
I think I could, with some justification, say the same thing.I don't know how often I've seen someone work so hard to ignore actually acknowledging what someone has said, so I think I'll leave this conversation here.
Respectfully, MKJ--
I can't quite see how Rus so willfully and insistently ignores what you say, and it seems apparent to me that he's making a good-faith effort to address your points, even if he might miss a couple. Perhaps part of the difficulty lies with a lack of clarity on your part?
My understanding of how Rus may have misunderstood you:
1) I can see how Rus may not have rightfully addressed the first point of your last post, that is: while you may grant him that a wrong philosophic view would guarantee a failure to properly understand the issue, a right philosophic view, while necessary, is insufficient solitarily to understand what may also be a physical/medical issue.
FYI, for the sake of discussion in TAW, I believe the philisophical (ie, Orthodox) question of what defines gender is pretty much settled. A person with two X chromosomes (and no Y chromosome) is a female. A person with an X chromosome and a Y chromosome is a male. This chromosomal arrangement precludes certain behaviors, such as sexual intercourse with someone with a similar chromosomal pairing.
2) Rus refutes the opinions of certain "experts", when you made no allusion to experts, but rather merely asserted that there is much we (including the "casually educated") don't understand and can't conclude about DNA's role in the issue.
3) I can see how Rus might have misrepresented your opinion on the "correctness" of "dysphoric" behavior, but it may be because he extensively addressed the issue in post #169. It's confusing, then, when you reiterate a point on which you apparently agree as if it was a point of disagreement. He could, if uncharitable, reciprocally accuse you of willfully ignoring what he said.
It might be helpful to delineate what you feel are "non-negotiable" and "neutral" aberrations in behavior. Your ambiguity on this point makes it difficult to infer what should be acceptable for the sake of not alienating a "dysphoric" person. Knitting is one thing, dressing up as the opposite sex is another.
The question of permissible "masculine" and "feminine" behaviors almost approaches irrelevance, though, as the dysphoric person does not really question whether it's okay for dudes to knit or bake, but whether he is a dude at all. He rejects "male" behaviors only incidentally; what he truly rejects is the idea of his fundamental maleness.
4) This seems almost an extension of point #3. Again, it would be helpful to know which behaviors you consider "non-negotiables". If Rus is talking about disallowing full transgendered behavior in church, while you're thinking about a slightly fabulous swishiness in speaking style, everyone will just end up talking past each other.
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?
We use cookies and similar technologies for the following purposes:
Do you accept cookies and these technologies?