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I wasn’t born until the late 1960’s so I have no personal connection to the social and cultural upheaval happening then. However, I do know some aging hippies and, well, we all seem to hear about how cool the 60’s were. The era when “America came of age.” Oh sure, there was lots of sex, drugs, peace, drugs, tie-dye, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll. And drugs. But we struggled as a nation with race relations and civil rights, the Vietnam War, the assassinations of President Kennedy, his brother and Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, and Martin Luther King, Jr., just to name a few of the major events.
It seems fair to say that America “grew” in the way we all do when we face adversity and come out the other end. We become stronger and gain new perspectives. Usually that’s a good thing.
Usually.
I response to the sexual taboos of the 1950’s, the sexual revolution was beginning to hit its stride as well and, as an outgrowth, the so-called gay rights movement. A lot was happening behind the scenes with sex and gender research courtesy of studies and publications by Masters and Johnson and others. Among the others was Dr. John Money.
Dr. Money “pioneered” new definitions of “gender roles” based on his belief that gender was not innate but could be assigned to a child before age 3. In other words, your DNA, sexual organs and hormones (to name a few things) don’t have to determine your sex. If Dr. Money got to you early enough in your childhood, he could help you choose your sex. Not surprisingly, Dr. Money also was a strong advocate of sex change operations while working at Johns Hopkins University.
To prove his theory, Dr. Money experimented in 1967 on a set of young twin boys, one of whom had had a botched circumcision that destroyed his penis. With the parents’ consent, Dr. Money removed the boy’s sex organs and put him on an aggressive hormone regimen so he could be raised as a girl. The result? An epic tragedy that ultimately led to the boy unsuccessfully reversing Dr. Mengele—sorry—Dr. Money’s plans several years later, the boy’s suicide in 2004, and his twin brother’s drug overdose in 2003. Ruined lives, broken relationships, a devastated family and generational lines lost.
The 60’s weren’t all bad and neither is some blurring of traditional gender roles. What is truly disturbing about the 60’s legacy is the indifference to and devaluation of life. People and traditional roles have become much less valuable with the approval and growth of abortion, assisted suicide, pornography, hedonism, and a culture that says it’s OK for anyone to do anything he wants as long as no one gets hurt. You’d think this legacy and the work of quacks like Dr. Money would teach us not to mess with God’s order.
Apparently the lesson hasn’t been taught in Omaha.
This past week, the Sioux City Journal reported that a local family planned to enroll their 8-year old son in a different school next year. Why? According to them, he is transgender and has wanted to be a girl since he was 4. The evidence? He says he’s wanted to be a girl, been allowed to wear girl clothes at home, and claims his inside doesn’t match his outside. No news on whether surgery will be involved.
Of course, the child’s family is responsible for making this decision and encouraging their son to live a heartrending lie. But we shouldn’t be surprised that this would happen in our “enlightened” post-60’s age. It used to be that men were men and women were women. And historically each sex was primarily responsible for certain familial and societal obligations. It is also true that these distinctions were the result in part of, as feminists might put it, male hegemony and a desire to keep women subjugated.
Most of it, however, was due to the fact that boys are boys and girls are girls. They are inherently different from each other! That’s God’s design. Boys will make guns out of any nearby toy because they are wired to be boys. Same with girls and tea parties. Yes, there are (very) few exceptions. I don’t know what causes the exceptions but I’m sure they are not the result of a choice one makes to be one sex or the other.
The approach of the Omaha parents is that their boy wants to be a girl, so let him be a girl and we’ll raise him that way. This has happened because either the parents have given up or society has deteriorated such that they’ve concluded their decision is valid and won’t be condemned. Either choice is a reflection of the changes in society that grew out of the 60’s—ambivalence and spiritual malaise, or free love, hedonism and the devaluation of life. Since the parents refused to permit publications of their names for fear of retribution, I suggest that they’ve given up. This family can likely expect broken relationships, heartache, and family devastation, courtesy of the “progress” our society has made.
Dr. Money’s work should be a cautionary tale to them and all of us. Thankfully, he died in 2006. He can’t mutilate anyone physically anymore, but his legacy and that of the era of his most prominent work will continue to mutilate families, lives, and life itself.
Comments
This case and horrible tragedy caused by Dr. Money's "experiment" have absolutely nothing in common. And in comparing the two you show nothing but closed minded ignorance to the facts of the case.
Dr. Money FORCED the female gender role onto the child. When the child questioned it, he punished the child. The child "knew" inherantly which gender role he was suppossed to be displaying. Yet Dr. Money pushed the feminine onto him and urged the childs parents to keep the secret, and raise him and
(cont'd)
as a girl. The revalation later of what had been done is what detroyed the twins. The child knew what he was all along. He simply felt it.
The case in Omaha is same thing. This child knows they are female. Where it counts the most... in her heart.
Nature does not deal in dualism. Not all boys like comics books and not all girls love Barbie.
Such a simple and ignorant view is disheartening.
In this piece, Mr. Shishmanian arguments are flawed and not well researched. As the previous comments stated, the example of Dr. Money demonstrates that one can't force an arbitrary gender role upon a child and expect them to live without gender-related stress. If, as Mr. Shishmanian states, people are "wired" a certain way, then going against this wiring causes trauma.
(cont'd)
If the child in Omaha is "wired" as a girl even though the child was born with male genitalia, then Mr. Shishmanian argument should conclude that the child should be raised as a girl. Mr. Shishmanian appears to be contradicting himself.
It's ironic that the American Psychiatric Association has just had their annual meeting, where researchers demonstrated conclusively that trans people were neurologically wired up as the opposite sex to their external appearance.
Mr Shishmanian is right - boys are boys, and girls are girls. It's just that some boys look like girls at birth, and vice-versa.
As one expert said:
"We spoke for 2 1/2 hours on why cross gender identity was a normal inherited variation of humans. We showed how
"We showed how Transgender Brains think, smell, and hear like the opposite sex. "
Mr. Shishmanian has a highly idealized view of life prior to the 60s. His concept how the progressive values of the 60s somehow devalued life is absurd. Um, Leo, in what way was life valued prior to the 60s? In the Armenian or Jewish Holocausts? In the way children were forced to do labor? In the way entire people's were forced into slavery? Was the US involvement in the Vietnamese civil war a sign of our value for human life?
As the prior posters have explained, gender identity is innate. I
Mr. Leo Shishmanian has drawn the wrong conclusion from the David Reimer case. There are a lot more cases like that, where the child is born with ambiguous genitalia, and parents and doctors just have to 'fix' the genitalia to make it 'right'.
But about half the time they choose wrong, and give the child genitalia the opposite of his or her brain sex. Gender identity is developed in the womb, but not REVEALED until between age 3 and 6. Children know, it's the adults who are confused.
Adenda to below. In the cases where doctors choose the wrong genitalia, the doctors CREATE a transsexual. But the children know...
As a post op transsexual woman who lived through the 60's, I can assure you that I felt that something was horribly wrong with my body from the age of 8. I knew I was a girl. I spent my entire life trying to convince myself otherwise. That since I had male genitalia, I had to be a male.
Decades of depression and therapy and suicide attempts convinced me finally that at age 55 that I must change my gender or die. Perhaps it was God's will that gave me the strength to endure the hardship th
"Boys will make guns out of any nearby toy because they are wired to be boys. Same with girls and tea parties."
What a sexist view. I thought that we had progressed beyond this viewpoint of gender roles. Sadly, it appears the author is living an obsolete fantasy.
Tally, In a general sense, the author is right. Gendered behaviour is dimorphic, and the 'guns/tea-party' dichotomy is scientifically measurable, verifiable and repeatable. There's room, though, for a lot of variance between individuals. And transgenders have brains and behaviours opposite to their bodies' sex.
I was born in the late 40's and lived through the 60's as the news and history rarely gets it right. Just like Iran today everything that was taboo when on regardless of the culture. The abortions where not counted and church going public was the ones having them. It is marketing and consumerism that changed people not sex and freedom. It was a much more human time than today which has laws against everything and no morals of business.
I think Dr. Moneys experiments clearly show that gender identity is hard to change and possibly hard wired. The writer of this article also adheres to this idea. I agree.
So absolutely if someone is hardwired to be a gender that is different to their physical sex, we should not be forcing them to live in a role as per their physical sex. Thank you writer! Thank you also for pointing out that god does not make mistakes and that transgendered people are there by gods design and we should not be
Thats quite a leap from a botched experiment that tried to enforce a gender to demonizing the Omaha parents for supporting their transgendered child. As always the word "choice" gets thrown in for good measure. After all, how do you convince the unwashed masses of their sins without the use of fear and supposed morality?
Ive known since I was 5 that Im transgendered, would you blame my parents to? Would it have been better if I had succeeded in taking my life so long ago? We cannot change our
I would first like to know when, and how god told you personally of his order,your experence with transgenderism, and witch transgender specialist you consulted with before writing this.
"Will" has it right! Money FORCED a gender identity on his victim. The child in Omaha made HER OWN feelings known. John Money was proven wrong. Not only that, but he was proven guilty of fraud! Mr. Shishmanian's so-called logic actually makes a strong case for the child's parents.
For more, accurate information, I suggest that he visit imatyfa.org.
"Boys are boys and girls are girls ... that's God's Design". It would be so simple for everyone if that were true, but it ignores fact. There are hermaphrodites. There are people born with extra chromosomes. There is even one documented case in Europe of a child born with XY chromosomes (male DNA), but who is a fully female seven-year old, complete with ability to one day be a mother (should she decide so). Life is not only black & white, Mr. Shishmanian.
Indeed, even Jesus spoke of th
(cont'd) Jesus spoke of this, noting there are "eunuchs made so in the womb by the hand of God," as well as eunuchs made so of men. This isn't a recent phenomenon easily blamed upon the "free love" 60's, easy (and inaccurate) as that would be to apply. It's like saying only white western European men are intelligent and successful because a larger majority of them were more so for many years (even though there was manipulation involved via laws, societal viewpoints) that kept power consolidate
I fully understand what the parents of this child are doing and applaud them. My parents did everything to beat and intimidate the gender incongruity I felt. No amount of boxing or football was able to change my innate sense of who I was (and was only intimidated into repressing for society's sake). At the age of four, I had no clue of two genders, only presuming until then that I could grow up and be like my mom and grandma. My speaking up about it only made my life more difficult. So the
repression commenced. But it never cures what's innate to the individual. It's like taking a child with math and business aptitude and insisting he be a farmer or mechanic, or vice versa. We know who we are better than anyone else, and that the parents actually listened rather than force their child into conformity should be lauded.
In fact, it's for fear of people like Mr. Shishmanian and others -- those dead-enders whose intransigence, meanness and possible physical retributions -- that
the parents correctly kept their identity secret. Why insist they invite the Fred Phelpses or other simplistic redneck types to make their and their child's life hell? Would you allow that Mr. Shishmanian?
Thank you for sharing Vanessa Edwards Foster, I hope you found serenity.
"Strength and Happiness"
Like so many, the author of this article tends to HAVE an opinion first and then seek out information to support the opinion, rather than seek out unbiased and broad information and then form an opinion. And so it goes,
"Thats Gods design"? Is the author God? or does he have a bit of a narcissistic personality disorder? Idiot and redneck first, writer second.
Many trans people think that Dr. Money's expiriments were sick and twisted, because he forced people into a gender role NOT of THEIR choosing. JUST like NOT letting the little girl in Omaha go to school as herself would be. Idiot.
Oh, and what did boys and girls make out of "whatever was around them" before guns and tea parties? That phrase SHOWS that gender is socially constructed, it has a historical and cultural context. There is no essential gender, only what we prefer to express.
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