Tag: Ray Blanchard
This piece is an extract from my book, Transsexual Apostate published by Spiked
What drives a man to want to become a woman? To answer this question, it’s worth looking back to the work of American-Canadian sexologist Ray Blanchard. In the 1980s, while working at the Toronto Centre for Addiction and Mental Health, he developed a somewhat controversial taxonomy of male-to-female transsexualism (1). He described one group simply as ‘homosexual transsexuals’ (HSTS). But it is his second group that interests me personally, because it encompasses my own experience as a male-to-female transsexual. A group needs a name – where would the transgender world be without labels? – and, in 1989, Blanchard coined the term ‘autogynephilia’ (2).
The ferocious transgender dispute is framed by the language of gender identity. To reach any resolution, though, we need to understand what everyone has at stake and to question our own basic assumptions. The truth about what it means to be transgender is a window into human nature, sexual desire, and the limits of language.
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My autogynephilia story
We are fuelling the fantasies of impressionable children
Autogynephilia — literally “to love oneself as a woman” — is controversial stuff. Men are not supposed to fancy themselves; at least they weren’t when I grew up in the Eighties. Back then, the idea that any of us might be “sexually aroused by the thought or image of our self as a girl” was unthinkable.
Agradeço a Daniel Reynaldo por traduzir meu artigo para o português.
Sentimentos e opiniões deslocaram fatos e evidências em muitas áreas das ciências humanas. Isso não é novidade. Um fenômeno mais recente, no entanto, é a extensão dessa tendência no campo da biologia, que foi vítima da ideia de que os homens podem se tornar mulheres – e vice-versa – apenas recitando uma declaração de crença. É um movimento insidioso que combina o desprezo pós-moderno pela verdade objetiva com superstições religiosas pré-modernas sobre a natureza da alma humana.
A subordinação da ciência ao mito foi exemplificada no recente caso britânico de Maya Forstater, que perdeu o emprego depois de apontar a pura verdade de que pessoas trans como eu não podem mudar nosso sexo biológico por proclamação. “Concluo a partir de … da totalidade das evidências, que [Forstater] é absolutista em sua visão do sexo e é um componente essencial de sua crença que ela se referirá a uma pessoa pelo sexo que considerou apropriado”, concluiu o juiz James Tayler no seu tribunal da justiça trabalhista. “A abordagem não é digna de respeito em uma sociedade democrática.”
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Why I became trans
The psychological distress was so severe, I felt I had no choice
Transsexuals like me never asked to be at the centre of one of the most toxic debates in society; we just wanted to transition and get on with our lives. But what was once a niche medical condition has become a civil rights issue so big that it now challenges our understanding of what it means to be a man or woman.
From using terms like ‘chestfeeding’ to claiming campaigning against trans electoral candidates is transphobic, trans activism has changed from an earnest campaign for rights into a mission to replace evidence with emotions.
Feelings and opinions have displaced facts and evidence in many areas of the liberal arts. This is nothing new. A more recent phenomenon, however, is the extension of this trend into the realm of biology, which has fallen victim to the idea that men can become women—and vice versa—merely by reciting a statement of belief. It is an insidious movement that combines the postmodern contempt for objective truth with pre-modern religious superstitions regarding the nature of the human soul.
The subordination of science to myth was exemplified in the recent British case of Maya Forstater, who’d lost her job after pointing out the plain truth that transgender people like me cannot change our biological sex by proclamation. “I conclude from…the totality of the evidence, that [Forstater] is absolutist in her view of sex and it is a core component of her belief that she will refer to a person by the sex she considered appropriate,” concluded Judge James Tayler at her employment tribunal. “The approach is not worthy of respect in a democratic society.”
From my earliest memories I struggled in a society delineated by sex. The rules were different for boys and girls, from what we could wear to how we related to society. Certainly, the expectations placed on me, as a three-year-old boy, were very different to those experienced by three-year-old girls.
Some of this was external – I was told that I would grow up to be big and strong – but we are all curious combinations of nurture and nature, and much was driven from within. I longed to be a girl from before I could speak in full sentences; without the capacity to explain my reasons, even to myself. But, at the same time, the taboo against wearing clothes marketed at girls was already hardwired into my mind.
Debbie Hayton 