The doctor who created the robotic exosuit comforts him by saying his real identity - the entirety of his personhood - rests in his mind. So as long as his mind is intact, he is whole. It was a massive philosophical statement which can easily go over a viewer's head.
This is what I think about as I see the attention given to Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner and his transition from man to woman. It ought not have been such a big news story. A man was changing his name, wardrobe, and having cosmetic surgery. So what? Well, underneath all of this discussion are deeper questions:
"What is a human person? And what is the relationship between mind and body?"
Mind Over Matter:
When confronted with a case of someone like Jenner, we are presented with a choice. There is an unhealthy interaction between the body and the psyche*. The person reports that the two are at odds with one another.
[*I’m going to be using the words psyche, mind, gender, and personality somewhat interchangeably in this post.*]So between the mind and body, which one is wrong? Which one speaks more concretely about who and what the person is?
For someone with the Robocop Doctor’s understanding of the human person, the body is wrong by default. For him, the reality of who someone is rests entirely in the mind. The body is a container and vehicle.
So changing your body to match your personality is not unlike putting different rims on your car.
You Say You Want a Revolution…
Now, there is another group of people emerging in the news who also believe parts of their body are not true to who they are. The official name for their condition is "Body Integrity Disorder", but they are calling themselves "Transabled". These people desire to be rendered blind, deaf, crippled, or amputated …. because that is their immutable self-image.
In like fashion, there are even people who believe they are a different species for roughly the same reason. They call themselves “transpecies” or “otherkin”. They seek out surgeries to give themselves features of the animals they believe themselves to be.
Now, the “Transgender” community – it is reported – would rather not be associated with these folks because right now the wider society is willing to say the “transabled” and “transpecied” simply have a personality disorder.
But for how much longer? If a person has the infallible ability for self-identification, regardless of what his genetics or physiology says... why stop at gender?
Why is it that a man who wants to cut off his legs is sick, the man who wants gills is confused, but the man who wishes to cut off his genitals is absolutely right?
Seems to me that you want to get on that slippery slope, you have to ride it all the way to the bottom.
This Missing Lens:
The main reason for this discrepancy is that our culture has also been marinating in an ideology which seeks to flatten out all distinctions between men and women. It says:
"Masculinity and Femininity are cultural norms forced upon people and exist only in our minds. There are no innate differences between men and women. These things are not in any way connected to one's physiology."Or more simply put:
"There is a difference between gender and sex. Sex is in your body - gender is what your mind says."A perfect exemplar of this teaching can be found in a diagram called the “Genderbread Person”:
The implication is that a human person is a blank canvas and all of these things – sexual attraction, gender identity, and biological sex – exist on parallel spectrums. And there are no norms.
This is taught to people as if it is a proven fact. But it is – at best – a philosophical and metaphysical ideology. And one which is challenged greatly by modern research on the biological ties to masculinity and femininity.
The common name for this ideology is Modern Gender Theory. However, due to the ferocity which its adherents believe in it - and the fact that it is a philosophical tenet taken on faith - I prefer to call this interpretive ideology "Modern Gender Dogma".
Only when you view the aforementioned situations (transgender, transabled, and transpecies) through this lens can you understand why the man who desires to be a fish or an amputee is disturbed, but the man who desires to be a woman is just misunderstood.
Modern Gender Dogma allows you to say the fella with the fake gills is unhinged, but demands affirmation of the man with fake lady-parts.
An Unlikely Counter Witness:
Ironically, there is no greater counter-witness to this ideology than the "transgendered" themselves.
How often have you heard the testimony, "I am a woman in a man's body”? Jenner himself said it in his televised interview. Well, think about it... what does it mean to “be a woman”? What does it mean to have a "man's body"?
--The only way a person could experience that condition as an unnatural mismatch… is if he is also conscious of a natural match.--
In their intense desire to surgically change their bodies to match their psyches, they testify that femininity and masculinity ARE tied to our bodies - and that there is a norm. Or else why would they seek this change? If these qualities were loose and disconnected, as Modern Gender Dogma asserts, there would be no dysphoria to resolve.
When Gender Reassignment Surgery is undergone to relieve the tensions of “Transgenderism”, it is seen by progressives as the ultimate expression of Modern Gender Dogma. They are wrong. Because the surgical scalpel points back to the unity between mind and body which everyone knows is real…
… no matter how vociferously they deny it.
The Unitive View of the Human Person
Which leads us to what I consider to be the more intuitive view of the human person. The one which people have to be educated out of. I call it the "Unitive" view.
Namely, a person is a single nature formed by the unity of body and mind.
So, when talking to a friend, we are not addressing him as a mind floating in a fleshy container. No one thinks of the friend’s body as just his carbon-based transport unit - and you're talking to the person inside. No, you address the whole person as a unity.
We can, of course, recognize a distinction between body and mind. There is no contradiction there. What matters is that you recognize the two form one being.
The relationship with the body and mind is much like the relationship between the sides and angles in a triangle. The triangle isn’t just the angles… nor just the sides… it is the seamless and complete union of both. They are distinct, but come together to make one thing.
It is through this lens that I can say with certainty that I my dog is a dog, my niece is a girl, and I am a man. Not just because we happen feel that way, but because that’s simply what we are.
Back to the Interpretive Choice:
I mentioned before how when confronted with a case like Jenner’s we have to choose whether the mind or the body speaks more concretely about reality of a person. For someone informed by Modern Gender Dogma, the mind wins by default. Things are different for someone taking the Unitive View.
One can recognize that developmental deformations happen to the body – and happen quite frequently. But when confronted with a normal, healthy body – there is absolutely no basis for saying there is something “wrong” about with the whole thing. In fact, to assert that a person was "born into the wrong body" would just be a bizarre illogical impossibility.
So is the “Trangendered” person in otherwise in perfect bodily health? Yes? Then the source of this tension is psychiatric, psychological, or both. And that’s where the solution has to be sought.
Monopolizing Compassion:
We’re told it is good and compassionate to recognize mental illness in those we care about. I have seen public service announcements regarding the importance of recognizing the signs of clinical depression, post-traumatic stress, and so on. This, we’re told, is compassionate.
But oddly enough, a person who interprets Jenner as a man with a profound psychological/psychiatric ailment can expect to be called evil, judgmental, condescending, hateful, bigoted, closed-minded, and the unusual panoply of progressive insults.
Very curious. No one reacts that way when someone proposes that their friend might be suffering from depression. So why the severe reaction to proposing that a person has Gender Identity Disorder?
Because such a diagnosis would assert that there are norms of masculinity and femininity corresponding to our bodies… and thus and challenge the whole project of Modern Gender Dogma.
From One Tension to Another:
However, as a study in Sweden pointed out, people who undergo sexual reassignment surgery continue to have extremely elevated instances of suicide and other symptoms of psychological distress.
Why?
If you are tied down to Modern Gender Dogma, the only possible explanation is that these folks have internalized the hatred and judgement of all those mean, reactionary monsters. It couldn't possibly be that their issue went deeper than not having the right physiology.
But if you listen to testimonies from the people themselves, they will say it is because the surgery doesn’t really address the problem. All it does is move the person from one form of dysphonia to another.
Before the surgery the patient felt like a woman stuck in a man’s body. After the surgery he feels like a woman stuck in a non-functional imitation of a woman’s body – and there is no going back. This is why Johns Hopkins University quit doing the surgeries decades ago.
Non-Amputative Compassion:
What adherents to Modern Gender Dogma have to recognize – (if they are able to see past their ideological blinders) - is that some people think true compassion would point away from chopping healthy organs off people. Such people would say real help would mean finding ways to assist the unity between psyche and body.
These efforts may never result in a full “cure”, but how many psychological illnesses have such a complete cure? That’s the way it goes with mental illness.
Think of anorexic people. People who have that eating disorder may sincerely, immutably believe that they are overweight. Would it be compassionate to acquiesce and address them as if they are fat? The standard care for anorexic people involves helping the person achieve a realistic body image and resolving whatever brought upon the disorder.
We all have friends and family with major clinical depression. These people will likely struggle with the condition their whole life. But in the face of the struggles we never throw up our hands and say, “Well, I guess he was born to be sad.”
Why I am Pronoun Noncompliant:
I wanted to finish by asking the question... why is this important? We are talking about the personal decisions of an incredibly small number of people. What does it have to do with me? Can't we just live and let live?
Well, apparently not. The personal choices of those few people is accompanied by the massive popular push to force people into accepting the worldview which corresponds to it. And if you look at a person with a healthy male body and only want to use male pronouns, you are bound for public correction and shaming.
As for me, I still live in a world where there are "men" and "women" and the body and mind are meant to form a single unitive nature. And I believe the loss of these concepts in our popular imagination will cause misery and confusion. Plus, I would be lying to myself and others if I were to go along to get along.
When I look at Jenner, I see a man who is suffering. And we are to have true compassion, that's where we have to begin.
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