The Real Reason for the Persecution of Transgender People
It's not women's sports or assault in restrooms. It's the toxic ignorance of the Christian Fundamentalists
What makes Christians “fundamentalist” is the insistence that everything in the Bible is the literal truth - and that is demonstrably false. While it is impossible to disprove that there exists somewhere, something one might call God, it is possible to prove that the Bible was not written by a supreme being of any kind, but that it was written by people ignorant of the most basic scientific facts that the average elementary school child knows. Nothing is more wrong than the Book of Genesis - there are no “answers in Genesis.” Even as a parable or metaphor, it is factually incorrect.
The central claim that justifies patriarchy, the idea of male superiority, and therefore social supremacy, is that males are created in the “image of God” and that females are some secondary afterthought. As a child I wondered if that meant God has a penis, and why God would have one because its only unique purpose is for sexual reproduction with a female by depositing sperm where it can encounter an egg. It would make no sense for God to have a penis unless there were also a Goddess with a vagina, yet I was told there was no Goddess. But I digress… Let’s talk about the science of gender. This is basic stuff that no one needs a degree in science to understand.
That Man precedes Woman is false even as a metaphor. The scientific fact is that the first phenotype (form of body) of every human being is female for the first three months of gestation. Commonly, human females have XX chromosome pairs and males have XY chromosome pairs. Around the three month point, the Y chromosone initiates the release of androgens, hormones that masculinize both the internal and external parts of the body. This is when the penis begins to develop in males. The brain by the way, is also a part of the body that is affected by the release of androgens, and it is the part of the body that causes a person to feel male or female. This development takes another huge leap at puberty, when males begin to develop the potential for larger size, muscular bulk and facial hair, while females begin ovulation/menstruation and changes in body shape leading to fat deposits on the chest (breasts) and hips etc.
Let’s talk about horses for a moment. Since the Bible is not concerned with them, we can learn a lot about gender identity from horses without the knee-jerk defensiveness. Horses are not the same as humans of course, though we are both large mammals. It is very funny to me, as a horse person, that human males, especially those who treat women as prey, like to call themselves “studs” another word for a stallion. Stallions have enormous dicks for sure, and they also do not commit rape. The only rape in the horse world is when humans decide which mare is to mate with which stallion, and literally tie the mare down so she can’t kick the stallion in the nuts if he happens to be someone she doesn’t much like, or even worse, a donkey because the owner wants a mule.
Under natural circumstances, when the mare goes into heat, she will engage in certain behavior indicating she wants a stallion to mate with her. Only then does mating occur. “Studs” don’t pursue unwilling mares for sex or they will find themselves with a serious injury. And by the way, neither are they leaders of a wild herd, in terms of deciding when and where the herd moves. That’s done by the lead mare. Stallions fight off predators, and other stallions.
The reason horses are an interesting subject on the question of gender identity is first of all, no horse is taught “sex roles.” Because humans have domesticated horses for our own purposes, most male horses are gelded (castrated) because stallions tend to be combative (though not always) and unpredictable around mares in heat. Some horses are gelded well before their first year, when the breeder intends them to be sold as a pleasure horse for the average customer. For horses that have notable bloodlines that may become valuable in a particular aspect of equestrian sport in the future, owners will wait to see how the horse performs, for example in the showring or at the racetrack. The semen of these winning horses becomes very valuable, and even more so if their offspring also inherit the traits that make them winners too, or are otherwise in demand in the marketplace (such as coat color or good temperament).
I have three geldings. They know they are male and perhaps more importantly, mares know they are male. Mares in heat will engage in mating encouragement signals to geldings, and also respond with hostility to geldings who approach them from behind when they are not sexually receptive. I have heard that geldings will sometimes try to mount mares but I have not personally witnessed this. Most stable owners where horses live in groups will segregate males from females because sometimes a gelding will become possessive of mares, making it hard for the owner of a mare to remove her from the pasture without bad behavior by the gelding. Some geldings that have paid no particular attention to mares will, in old age, suddenly decide they are stud muffins.
Horses by the way can tell the difference between human males and females, likely by their excellent sense of smell. Adopters of rescue aninals with a history of abuse, both horses and dogs, will sometimes notice that their pets have bad reactions to one human gender or another, probably because of the gender of past human abusers.
All this so far is to make a point that gender identity is as physical a trait as the type of external sexual organs on the outside of the body. There is nothing “spiritual” about it. Any animal that reproduces sexually has some means to determine which potential mate will reproduce their DNA.
Now let’s talk about intersex and specifically Complete Androgen Insentivity Syndrome (CAIS) in particular. I dedicate this section to Nancy Mace and all the religious nuts in Congress and elsewhere who think “what is a woman?” is a gotcha question when all they’re doing is displaying their bias and lack of knowledge.
Genes, chromosomes, DNA and so on were not known about until the 20th century. From time immemorial gender was determined at birth like this: a newborn either had a penis between the legs and so was male, or an opening and was female. But also from time immemorial there were babies whose bodies didn’t quite fit this binary category. Intersex is the term used for this, and according to available literature I have found, around one in 2000 live births in America leave doctors in the delivery room unsure of what to write down on that document of documents - the birth certificate - that marks you with a gender designation made by someone else, whether you like it or not.
But there’s more. There are intersex conditions that are not apparent by the outer appearance of the body. One is CAIS. It is caused by a genetic mutation. Therefore, a person who meets the definition of male in terms of having an XY chromosome, will have a female body on the outside, develop breasts at puberty and will feel like a female - have the gender identity of a girl/woman. This is because the genetic mutation causes the receptors on cells that normally respond to the androgens released in the second trimester to ignore the androgens. CAIS people usually have testes inside the body, not visible from the outside and they can produce testosterone, but it does not change the appearance of the person to typically male. A Danish researcher published results in 2016 that concluded that “one in 15,000 males are being raised as females” meaning “males” in the sense that the person has an XY chromonsome pair.
There are a whole bunch of variations between typical female or male, but I have focused on this one because it makes a point: no Bible-thumping, Adam and Eve not Adam and Steve screaming, troglodyte pastor, nor attention seeking Congresswomen from North Carolina would have any idea despite their claim they can always tell.
Nancy, would you let these women use your restroom?
They all have CAIS. They have XY chromosomes, so could be defined as “biological males.”
Of course biologists understand that gender is far more nuanced, not a binary, and there are even species that can change their gender (whether they produce eggs or sperm) based on environmental conditions.
An interesting book on this topic written for the general public is, Evolution’s Rainbow, published in 2004 by biologist Dr. Joan Roughgarden, herself a transgender woman.
https://archive.org/details/evolutionsrainbo00roug/page/n5/mode/2up
The reason I like to use CAIS as an example is because there is no question about “choice” a word that to the Christian Fundamentalist means “defying God” and therefore “sin.”
It also puts paid to those who are not Christian Fundamentalists, (some are even atheists) who treat the question of gender dysphoria, gender identity, transgender people etc as a “woke fad” or some kind of insult to “real women.”
Why are transgender people seemingly set apart from other non-binary people? It just seems like bigotry and ignorance. There is no logical reason for such cruelty. There is so much we don’t know about the brain, but we do know that the release of androgens during gestation affects the brain as well as other organs. And the brain is responsible for the feeling of gender identity. Remember my geldings - having their balls cut off did not change their gender identity. It was formed before they were born. That is why it is perfectly reasonable for even a young child to feel gender dysphoria. They were born that way. It is cruel to force them to undergo the wrong puberty - the one that doesn’t match their gender identity that will make future transition more difficult, more expensive, prolong their distress and perhaps make the outcome of the surgery less successful in creating a convincing outward appearance to match their sense of gender in the future. By the time a child reaches the age of puberty, they are intellectually capable of understanding what the treatment is, what they’ll need in future, the consequences and the road not taken. The problem seems more to be the parents’ inability to understand because of their beliefs about gender.
The First Amendment notwithstanding, politicians who tell lies that children are undergoing gender reassignment surgery at school should face legal consequences. Equally concerning are the members of society who have no concept of the complexity of such a surgery. Do they think their underfunded public school that can’t afford posterboard and colored markers can hire a surgical team and set up an operating room? I despair of such a failure of basic common sense.
But speaking of gender reassignment surgeries, for years intersex babies with indeterminate genitalia were given surgeries - of course without their consent - to make their genitals conform to typical female or male appearance. Most commonly they’d be made female because that was easier to accomplish. Most often the child was never told, and the parents kept this a secret from everyone because not being one gender or another was socially stigmatized. Sometimes this required multiple painful surgeries during childhood. Some children were told they had cancer when they were old enough to ask questions. In some cases, the surgeries were performed without even the parents’ knowledge.
The real problem in this gender-obsessed society is NOT people undergoing voluntary gender reassignment treatments. It’s people who have been surgically altered without their consent. This is now considered a human rights violation.
I hate gender. This is not because of the issues discussed above. I was born a heterosexual female with all the typical body parts. I hate gender because I was born into a society that tried to limit my life purpose based on what was between my legs. When I was in middle school in the late 1960s, I was denied the right to learn something that really interested me - making things out of wood and metal - because I did not have a penis. Pro tip: when doing carpentry or metal work, best to keep your penis as far away from the tools as possible.
I’m 68 and still mad about it. I don’t have children because I didn’t want to. I have a bunch of power tools because I want to. I’d love if my pronouns were they/them because what’s between my legs is of no importance to anyone unless I say it is. And now I’m too old to care about that sort of thing.
Not going back.
Shame on you, Nancy Mace.