What Does Gender Really Mean When It Comes to the Transgender Question?

Recently, my friend posted a meme on social media which depicted a person holding up a sign saying "My genitals do not define my gender". On the bottom half of the meme, the following statements were also made:

"My IQ does not define my intelligence."
"My physique doesn't define my fitness."
"My semen doesn't define my child."
"Go on. Make some more stupid cases."

While I thought the meme was a bit crude, I did think it got a valid point across. Another person made a comment, indicating that the view given in the meme was ignorant in his view. The discussion we had is below, with my words in blue and my interlocutor's in red. I think the discussion we had was cordial, as we both felt very differently on the subject, but it never devolved into ad hominem attacks or other insulting banter. I hope to go deeper into such a discussion in the future, but I'm thankful for the time my interlocutor took to engage me and the time they took to read my point of view. Our discussion follows the jump:

Creation of Adam- Michelangelo 

The Transgender Movement Is Not Beneficial to Our Children

God have mercy on us all. That's all I can think of when I see things like this popping up in my news feeds throughout the day. National Geographic has come out fully in support of the transgender movement that believes each people (both children and adults) have the right to define their gender/sex/identity (whatever other vogue words one wants to include to talk about one's sex) as they see fit, even if it's in contradiction to the realities literally in front of them. It's pretty clear by the editor of the magazine's statement regarding the issue in question, that this is the case and wishes to "spark thoughtful conversations about how far we have come on this topic"; and in saying we've "come so far" on the subject of transgenderism, he refers to the "progress" that many in or current culture believe can only come from when we subvert objective realities and traditional thoughts in favor of a brave new world that really doesn't look so "brave" after all.

Bernardino Luini- The Christ Child and the Infant John the Baptist with a Lamb

Telling Our Children the Truth When It Comes to Our Gender

It seems every day we hear more and more about what Pope Francis calls the "gender ideology". We see at an alarming rate that buying into transgenderism as a good thing has become highly fashionable and politically correct. It's so sad to see many confused children, teenagers and even adults affected by this form of thinking; the form of thinking that one's sex is defined on how they perceive themselves subjectively, instead of considering the objective realities before them. Pope Benedict XVI had a good point on this phenomenon back in 2012:

“These words lay the foundation for what is put forward today under the term ‘gender’ as a new philosophy of sexuality. According to this philosophy, sex is no longer a given element of nature that man has to accept and personally make sense of: it is a social role that we choose for ourselves, while in the past it was chosen for us by society. The profound falsehood of this theory and of the anthropological revolution contained within it is obvious. People dispute the idea that they have a nature, given by their bodily identity, that serves as a defining element of the human being. They deny their nature and decide that it is not something previously given to them, but that they make it for themselves.” 

There were some headlines made in the last week or so, where a single mother has decided to allow her five year old son to live as a girl, and is now fighting the state of Texas to change its bathroom laws. How someone can not see this as child abuse is beyond me. This seems more like a severe form of Munchausen Syndrome than anything that can be attributed to this young child. I shudder to think that this mother will one day give her son artificial hormones to stop puberty, damaging the young child's perfectly functional male body. I shudder even more to think that a good portion of Western society thinks that this is OK and we should "live and let live", showing once again where moral relativism has got us.

I replied to a comment over on a prominent Catholic blogger's profile regarding this story, and saw how this moral relativism regarding transgenderism has really affected the general public. My interlocutor's words will be in red, mine in blue and a few other people's in various colors to make reading easier. Unfortunately, the "dialouge" ended in Tom launching a personal attack. Apparently, having discourse on opposing viewpoints isn't something many people want to do much at all. if you don't agree, you're apparently supposed to roll over and be quiet. This is why I always say "I don't agree with that" when someone tells me we should "agree to disagree". This person does not say that explictly, but it'll be apparent that he means as much by what he says towards the end of his final comment. This man, who I honestly can't tell if he's Catholic or not, seems to believe these young people taking artificial hormones is not a negative thing, morally or physically. We will see why this is false in both cases:

Christ Blessing the Children- Lucas Cranach the Elder

A Very Confused World

So I really don't watch TV anymore. The main reason for watching anything, and for even having cable, is so I can watch professional baseball, basketball and hockey. Yes, I am also an avid sports fan. Once and a while I'll watch The Big Bang Theory, and I'm into The Flash on The CW as well... but even that show which features my favorite childhood comic-book superhero is growing tiresome with it's push for "normalcy" of biased, liberal agenda items in today's "modern" (or really, confused) world. However, that's not what has left me shaking my head in recent days.

Confused?

That wonderful channel that has brought you such erudite and classy programming as I Didn't Know I was Pregnant and Sex Sent Me to the ER has another show that is finding popularity, and is also pushing an agenda which is utterly, and totally irresponsible. I'm talking about I Am Jazz, a show chronicling the life of a (now) 15 year old boy who has changed his name to Jazz, has started living as a female, and is taking hormone injections and other drugs (during puberty) in order to inhibit his body's natural and biological changes, while taking other hormones to acquire other secondary sex characteristics proper to females, such as breasts. Yes, this is real life, and yes we should be horrified. Now, the network, as well as Jazz's parents and himself have taken the step to press all of this backwards (or really, lack of) logic onto six year-olds in a Wisconsin school district. According to Breitbart:

Every Person Is Created in God's Image

Keeping in line with the recent news from Spain regarding transsexual godparents that I posted about a few days ago, I was thinking about a conversation I had had with a transsexual on the com box of another prominent Catholic blog, Shameless Popery. The article itself is great, and I highly recommend it to anyone trying to understand more about transgenderism and how it relates to Catholic theology. Not to mention it will give you more background on our discussion. Through this, I got into a great, amicable discussion with a male who has had surgery to become, and live, as a woman.

As you'll see below, we both cite several studies and essays in our discussion. While we are both Christians, this person's Episcopalian faith leads one in a different theological direction as this person tries to rationalize transgenderism with Christianity. The main focus of our discussion stems from my question, (which I go into much greater detail as you will see) which can be summed up as:

"...why does the mental feeling of womanhood override what growth is happening, and is reflected, both outside the body and inside the body?"

Carl Heinrich Bloch- Christ and Child

As you'll see, the answer to this question has many mitigating factors, but once we reach the end of the dialogue, we will be able to see more clearly how the narrative in the media about "gender fluidity" is false and doesn't conform with God's plan for the human race. But let's keep in mind, it's good to have thoughtful dialogue with this, and it's good to know the position of those that disagree with us. That way, we can give intelligent, informed responses to their arguments. And we must always do so with gentleness and reverence, as St. Peter tells us.

My words will be in blue, and my opponent's in red:

First a disclosure…I am a male to female transsexual. I respect your beliefs but think a philosophical approach is unhelpful. It ignores the emerging science. Researchers are admittedly uncertain of the mechanism but are tending towards a biological cause of transgenderism. Some have studied brain structure and found that trans persons brains are more similar to those of the gender with which they identify than with those of their biological gender.

Others have focused on the human genome and found 53 genes that determine gender identity. They postulate that exposure to hormones in utero can cause a child to identify with a gender other than that of his birth. Bottom line is that no philosophical approach can change a genetically hard wired gender identity any more than such an approach could change the color of my eyes. So the only approach that has been found to bring some measure of comfort is to change my outward appearance. Some people accept me as a woman, others do not. All that is really important to me is that I do.

I agree that Genesis 1:26-27 has an important message. God created us male And female. Not male OR female.

He created us in His image and His image is a blend of both genders.

Transsexual Godfathers? What Does the Church Say?

Something that has been on the minds of many Westerners lately, especially in the past few months, has been the issue of transgenderism. We saw this really come to the forefront at the end of this past spring when former Olympian Bruce Jenner revealed he had decided to live the rest of his life of a woman. I can honestly say, it doesn't seem like a day goes by where there isn't something in the news regarding a transgender group or person in the secular media.

Most recently there was the story about a high school boy, who identifies as a transsexual, demanding to have access to the girls locker room during P.E. This was met by a protest of students walking out of the school, which was then met by a counter protest. There are many things I could say about this and other similar incidents. The one that always comes to mind first, is that whole narrative of "gender fluidity" we're beginning to hear... and is it ever deceptive. Once again, it's mankind turning its back on truth. And what is especially shocking in my eyes, is that parents, teachers, and even doctors want to inject our young adolescents with hormone blockers (as well as artificial hormones) to stop puberty and allow outward manifestations of the opposite sex to become apparent on these young people's bodies. The logic astounds me... probably because there's not much there in the first place, unfortunately.

Nonetheless, with these issues beginning to dominate discussion in the public forum, this has led many faithful Catholics to ask, "what does the Church think about all this?" Many have noted that the Church hasn't explicitly touched the subject, leading some to erroneously speculate that the Church is OK with some of the more extreme transgender procedures such as gender reassignment surgery... or as it has been called in all places and all times until recently, genital mutilation. But within the past year we now have two instances of the Church issuing an opinion on the subject. The first comes from Pope Francis' encyclical Laudato Si, which you will see quoted a bit later in this post, and then a reply from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith to a bishop in Spain regarding a transsexual wishing to be a godparent at baptism.

Parents and Godparents at Baptism