by Danny Pluta
The modern movement of “transgenderism” brings questions about the human person forward, and calls for action and thought on the part of individuals. The ideology of transgenderism attempts to abolish the two sexes and dilute them into indeterminate “genders”, which do not rely on biology at all. The many genders are perceived as only personal habits of identity, which have the subjectivist ego and its desires as their authority. For example, in transgenderism, a man would think that his biological reality is inconsequential; he may then decide that he is actually female, or he may decide that he encompasses all of the many new “genders”. He may then follow to the logical end of his ideology and attempt to have reconstructive surgery. In stark distinction to such transgenderism, reason speaks clearly that a man exists as a person of the male sex, and not of the female gender, or some third or fourth gender. Correspondingly, reason knows that a woman exists as a person of the female sex, and not of the male gender, or some other invented gender. Transgenderism directly opposes such natural reality, which is accessible to reason. I believe, then, that in dealing with this situation, we should integrate reason with true compassion. We should surely have true, active service for the person and his suffering. People are obviously hurting as they move in the direction of this modern confusion: real individuals need help. True compassion should serve the real person, however. It should not serve the half-truths manufactured by an ideology—half-truths that are mistaken as the real person.
Before looking more wholly at transgenderism, it is helpful to acknowledge that certain good things come indirectly out of the movement. For example, I do not believe that real masculinity is the macho, misogynist, insensitive persona that certain modern cultural trends show it to be. Transgenderism would also challenge elements of that persona, though for different reasons from my own. I believe that transgenderism generally works in wrong ideas, but the movement, at discrete places, highlights particular truths about human nature, even if it does so out of context. Transgenderism seriously errs by obsessing over deconstruction, however: the movement then goes on to oppose objective structures. The ideology necessarily ignores firm and clear lines of natural law, and attacks existing truths accessible to common reason. There are two sexes: male and female. We know this; it is not rocket science. While biology alone does not hold the whole answer about sexual identity, its foundational order still stands firmly, and should not be ignored. What the head and its thoughts say, however, often conflicts with the heart and its affections.
In the experience of life, some people perhaps see another person struggling in transgender problems; the people react, and would like to offer ‘compassion’ to ease the neighbor’s pain. For example, we see that a woman is convinced that, deep down, she is actually more of a man than a woman. She would therefore like to change her “gender”. A friend, seeing her predicament, supports the woman in her gender re-decision, and encourages her to undergo “sex-reassignment” surgery, so that she can find happiness. That “encouragement” is not real compassion, however, because it ignores the reality of one’s sex, and moves toward something unreal and wholly subjective. People can hope for a future that is, beneath its appearances, false and dangerous. For example, if a man ardently hopes that his eye is a leg, this desire does not actually make his eye into a leg, or his leg into an eye. Both body parts remain objectively the same. To try to change one into the other would be grievous mutilation. Just so, if a woman hopes that she is a man, this does not actually make her a man. To try to surgically make a woman into a man would also be mutilation. The “compassion” that actively supports such a radical “transformation” is, in fact, split from reason, and so divided from true compassion. The empathetic heart needs reason, or else it becomes only sentimentalism, which moves in haywire directions without a clear endpoint in mind. Indeed, sentimentalism often moves, cloaked in persuasive emotion, toward dangerous places.
In response to the argument about the need for reason, some people may introduce a certain kind of reasoning as a solution. They may point to extremely marginal cases, where the person is truly born with an indeterminate physical sex; they may try to make an argument for general transgenderism out of such a scenario. Those cases, however, are called extremely marginal, because they are, of course, rare, and therefore almost never happen. As a whole, biology is very clear about the sexual reality of individual persons. A very slim proportion of men or women may tragically not know their physical sex while on this earth. The extremely slight existence of such tragedy does not, in any way, form a whole new basis for sexual identity, however. A dog born with three legs does not make it any less true that dogs are four-legged creatures. Exceptions are not rules. Real compassion for the suffering does not try to make the entire populace into an aberration – a physical disorder. Such reason loses sight of the whole truth, and settles for half-truths in rationalization.
Our compassion, then, must be integrated with right reason. Those who are within the confusion of transgenderism need real, personal help.
Our compassion, then, must be integrated with right reason. Those who are within the confusion of transgenderism need real, personal help. Those who are heavily debating their sexual identity should always be met as persons of immense dignity, who deserve great respect. Within that respect, our compassion should seek to humbly and truly help our neighbors. It may be that our neighbors have been trying the best that they can up to this point. Perhaps they have gone through serious, destabilizing difficulties. Indeed, those deep in transgenderism may need psychiatric assistance—psychiatry, however, that does not accept the warped arguments of the transgender ideology. To move away from such false ideology, right reason should move, to a just degree, into the place of public policy. The federal and state government should not support the rupture of lines of natural law. We should not endorse the unstable actions of transgenderism, especially as they become physical mutilation. Therefore, “sex-reassignment” surgeries should be illegal. Or at the very least, such actions should not be supported by taxes or healthcare. Neither should transgender education be taught in schools or universities, as such ideas necessarily try to dissolve basic biology, and ignore the objective differences and compatibility between men and women. In regard to more positive action, it would be a good idea, I think, if certain people offered actual support groups and centers for people in transgenderism, who may want to leave the confusion. They are our neighbors, and we should be ready to humbly serve them. That service, however, only makes sense if it does not contradict natural reality that common sense sees. I believe that transgenderism violently opposes the foundational structures of man and woman. We should not try to dissolve the bones—the structure—of man, which carry and hold his body, and which ensure that man does not crumble into random ego alone.
Danny Pluta is an English major, rising fourth year at the University of Virginia. He teaches character-building classes to home-schooled boys, does a lot of acting at UVA, likes drawing, writing poetry, soccer, and running. His third favorite thing is catching up with friends or his Dad over a cigar on a warm summer night. His second favorite thing is performing or reading Shakespeare. But his most favorite thing is talking about Shakespeare over a cigar on a warm summer night.
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