Unrelated and related, three stories have lately crossed my table, and they all serve as quite descriptive examples of what’s wrong with the way non-trans people are speaking about transgender life.
Second, the North Dakota Republican Party asked its users to cast ballots on 15 proposals at its agreement, with the exception of a proposed pro-prison bill that would apply to women who have abortions. The various 14 addressed a wide range of issues, starting with the demand that the United States renounce its membership in the UN to the fight against prominent domain being used to reduce carbon emissions.
The solution that caught my attention was not one of those, but rather one that opposed making gender identity and sexual orientation a protected school within the Peace Garden State. The group’s language, which was specifically written for transgender and nonbinary persons, was of particular note.
The solution read,” The North Dakota Republican Party supports the repair of sex dysphoric individuals, so that they may accept and become comfortable with their normal biological state.” It supports an affirming approach to natural identity.
Let’s stay with that for a moment, and target a half away, from North Dakota to Vatican City in Rome.
The Roman Catholic Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith released” Dignitas Infinita” ( Infinite Dignity ), following a few years of somewhat positive news, including a statement that transgender people could be baptized” under certain circumstances.” The Catholic Church’s position on “gender idea,” which is stated in the 20-page report, was explicitly stated in the statement that being transgender is to try to “make oneself God.” ”
As you might expect, the church prefers to keep who is and isn’t a deity in control.
” It follows that any sex-change treatment, as a rule, challenges threatening the special respect the person has received from the moment of notion,” the charter stated.
An overview was commissioned with the aim of improving gender identity service provided by the National Health Service, and then a trip to jolly old England. The document is commonly known as the Cass statement, from the name of its creator, Dr. Hilary Cass.
Instead of focusing on improving trans attention in the U.S. K. The document instead calls for even more restrictions on gender-affirming treatment for trans people under the age of 25, stops short of a total ban on such services and in spite of widespread criticisms about difficult wait times and poor cure.
Additionally, it suggests that transgender people may benefit from change treatment, and even anticipates seeing a doctor before even beginning a social transition. Conversion remedy, which attempts to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identification, has been extensively debunked by various professional health organizations.
In the report, Cass claims that people are apparently “influenced” into being transgender, and that being transgender itself may produce anxiety and depression. It also dismissed 98 % of the existing studies on transgender health care as invalid, simply because they weren’t “double-blinded. Never mind that doing so would be incomprehensible in terms of ethics. ( A double-blind research requires that neither the participants nor the scholar are aware of the treatment options the participants are receiving until the clinical trial is over. )
Each of the examples above is obviously about transgender people, but I want to point out the clear disconnect between them all: it is clear that none of them have a trans voice.
The Cass record is clear. Cass did not even bother to contain trans voices in the report, which was contrary to any research that examined how transgender care has positively affected true transgender people. The tones of transgender children, allegedly the ones she was trying to help, were dismissed because they were apparently “biased” in discussing their own issues.
If Cass had listened, the explanation of “influence” may fall apart, let alone the belief that being trans itself leads to depression and anxiety: it’s not being transgender that does that, it is how we, as trans people, are treated by society.
In the same vein,” Dignitas Infinita” talks a lot about dignity — it is right there in the title, but it denies transgender people their own dignity in the eyes of their God. We’re not seeking to be their God; We simply want to be human.
They couch us as some sort of” theory,” when we are flesh and blood. Once again, we’re humans, we walk among you. You can speak with us. However, they treat us as undignified at best and something that is close to heresy at worst, rather than seeing our dignity and, yes, the spark of the divine that they might otherwise claim to possess.
The GOP in North Dakota is also present.
We don’t need to know the Republican Party’s position on transgender people much. The party has been making it clear, in words and action, that it would rather see transgender people eradicated, even as it, too, tries to hide behind phrases like “gender ideology,” or “pronouns,” or whatnot.
In order to address this, I want to bring up the one aspect of the statement from the North Dakota GOP that bothers me the most. It appears to want to “embrace and be comfortable with their natural biological state” along with other transgender people. ”
This is my “natural biological state,” in my opinion. ”
I am completely aware of my biological makeup, despite the fact that my biology is markedly different from what North Dakota Republicans might anticipate from the perspective of three decades of various medical interventions. I am indeed accepting of who I am, and I feel at ease with who I am. If any of them had even considered engaging in conversation with a transgender person, they might even have a glimpse of that.
No amount of conversion therapy, no amount of repression, and no number of ridiculous reports, dirtiness, or resolutions can change who a transgender person is — and we expect that to be honored.
That’s our dignity speaking, and Republicans, the Vatican, and a British physician aren’t allowed to write it off.
Gwen Smith never became transgender, she just is. She can be found at www.gwensmith.com
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