Harry Did Not Become Sally — She Always Was Sally

Ryan Anderson’s new book When Harry Became Sally is a good example of the current anti-transgender busybody thinking that seeks to keep transgender people out of view and in the closet. Although he pretends to have only the best interests of transgender people at heart, his real agenda is to defend the cultural faith that rejects transgender people. (I use the word faith in that it has no basis in science.) To do this he must gut gender behavior of its meaning and make gender behavior into “a social manifestation of sex.”

Let us take a look at the opening arguments he makes:

Anderson: Is it true that a boy could be trapped in a girl’s body?

Bevan: No, but it could be true that a child with a masculine gender predisposition could be trapped in a female child’s body.

His question is a clear and deliberate confounding and confusing of sex and gender and Anderson knows it. He concedes later in his book that the work “gender” was coined by John Money in the early 1960s to represent cultural behavior categories of masculine and feminine and to distinguish it from biological sex. Despite this admission, he continues with the confounding.

Boy and girl are gender categories of, respectively, the masculine and feminine genders in the Western gender system. They have no meaning with respect to creating the body of a person or their sex. I say Western gender system because, as my readers will know, other cultures have more than 2 gender behavior categories, up to 5. Culture is invented by human beings and there is no guarantee that it will agree with biology. Culture is human-made. Man proposes but nature disposes.

Why does he continually confound sex and gender? Like McHugh and others, he seeks to replace gender with “sex-linked behavior.” Rather than change gender behavior categories through cultural change to help transgender people, they seek to link gender behavior categories inextricably to biological sex in an effort to defend the inflexible culture. The underlying idea is that if the Western gender system is biological, then it cannot be changed. They are indeed defenders of the cultural faith. They are using sex to distract from their cultural rejection of transgender people. Sex, of course is a big shiny object, ideal for use as a distraction.

Now gender predisposition is another matter. Yes, it is biological and genetic formation of gender predisposition is one of the four factors in transgender causation that I have identified in my writing. But gender predisposition is not sex. The most obvious proof of this is that if one member of an identical twin pair (twins with identical DNA at conception) is transgender, then the likelihood of the other being transgender is about 50% but all twin pairs have identical sex among the pair. In these studies of identical twins, gender predisposition is dissociated from sex.

Two new studies are out in the past weeks that support the genetic basis of being transgender and also support the dissociation of sex and gender. One is a review article by prominent geneticists concluding that multiple genes are likely involved in or being transgender. This was the Vanderbilt group that was recently denied funding to do full genome scans to look for transgender genetic markers. But it was denied funding by the current administration. The other study involved, for the first time, full genome scans of transgender and non-transgender groups. Although the groups were relatively small (14 and 16) compared with those planned by the Vanderbilt research group (3,000 transgender samples already collected to compare with 10,000 cisgender), they found multiple gene markers for being transgender and they were not the same markers as those for sex.

Putting modesty aside, I must say that I predicted that genetics was a factor in transgender causation back at the WPATH meeting in 2011 here in Atlanta based on then existing twin studies. In 2016, I identified this genetic link as a gender behavior predisposition. There has been progress in this research area but research funding has been spotty, witness denial of funding for the Vanderbilt effort.

Anderson: Is our sex merely assigned to us?

Bevan: Yes, it is assigned to us at birth; almost universally based on the anatomy of external genitalia between our legs. The word “merely” implies that there is something else that determines sex beyond the observations of genitalia at birth and in his book. Ryan tells us that we can predict sex from X and Y chromosomes which is simplistic and incorrect.

It is currently beyond the state-of-the-art to always determine the configuration of sex organs a person will have. Witness the struggle that the Olympics and international athletics has had in determining sex. The idea that every cell in the body has a uniform sex based on DNA genetics or chromosomes is false. Most cells have no DNA or chromosomes at all, some 25 trillion of them—our red blood cells. We have just begun to understand the other 12 trillion cells with respect to sex and gender behavior predisposition. There are plenty of human exceptions to the idea that XY chromosomes or the presence of a particular (SRY) gene on the Y chromosome will always form male sex organs.   There are all kinds of variations of X and Y chromosomes and genes (e.g. XXY, XXYY. But the recipe for forming sex organs is mainly found in the other 44 chromosomes, not on X and Y, and there are several hundred recognized differences in sexual development (DSD or Intersex) mainly attributable to these 44 other chromosomes.

People get cells from their mother, previous siblings through their mothers, their opposite sex fraternal twins, blood transfusions and bone marrow transplants. All potentially have genetic information that could affect behavior. One study found on post mortem that there were XY male cells in the brain of a female due to a bone marrow transplant. The brain appears to be a safe harbor for alien cells that are not successfully killed by the immune system. And a few people are their own twins, having different DNA in various parts of their bodies. Most people never get tested for chromosomes or the sex of their genes. Best stick with sex assigned at birth based on inspection of sex organs as the definition for now.

Anderson: Can modern medicine reassign sex?

Bevan: Yes, if you accept that sex pertains to the anatomy and functionality of the sex organs. We can reassign most of the sex organs now and more will be possible in the future.

Hormones and surgery change most of the sex organs including the brain, spinal cord, breast, hair, and genitalia. Most people deem the effects of hormones and surgery sufficient except for internal genitalia and penises which are not usually seen. Transplants of these organs are emerging medical techniques that show signs of success with several successful births to female transplant recipients. The US military is standing by to perform penis transplants on over 60 service males, injured in the line of duty, once this technique is perfected.

Anderson: What is the most loving and helpful response to the condition of gender dysphoria, a profound and often debilitating sense of alienation from one’s bodily sex?

Bevan: The most loving response is to let a person be what they want to be changing the culture and to provide counseling to help cope with cultural rejection.

Now we get to the main subject of the book which is to pathologize transgender people. There is hardly any mention of the transgender people who are not diagnosed with gender dysphoria, who comprise over 98% of transgender people. Most transgender people experience rejection but not enough for it to create “clinically significant stress” or “debilitation.” These are the required criteria for a diagnosis of gender dysphoria in the DSM or gender identity disorder in the ICD. Transsexual people (they constitute about 10% of transgender people) are distressed enough to change their bodies but most are no longer dysphoric after transition and their quality of life improves. Transition does not solve all of a person’s social problems so it is recommended that counseling be available after transition.

Only 15-25% of people who transition have transsexual genital plastic surgery (TGPS aka sex change surgery) and of those less than .3-1% have transition regret. The percentage is currently dropping due to improved screening. While having even one person with TGPS regret is too many, one has to weigh that against the 99% of transsexuals who do benefit from TGPS.  There must be some reason that Anderson concerns himself intensively with people who regret TGPS. It is, of course, to undermine the legitimacy of being transgender and transsexual transition by falsely indicating that sex prevails in these cases, not that that gender predisposition was incorrectly assessed.

Anderson believes that alternative treatments should be explored for the gender dysphoric, especially to avoid current affirmative treatment in children. But the methodology he advocates is “random assignment” to treatment groups which presumably would include reparative therapy groups or no-treatment groups. This may make for a neat experimental design in theory but it violates US law and ethical research practice because reparative therapies are known to do harm and have been shown to be ineffective.

Anderson: Should our laws accept a subjective notion of gender?

Bevan: Our laws do not need to accept a subjective notion of gender. Observation of objective gender behavior should suffice. We do not need psychiatry explanations of why people behave the way they do which are almost certainly wrong until we know more about the brain. In this, I refuse to define being transgender in terms of psychiatric “identity” which is pathologizing and not observable.

Laws and people should accept that there is diversity in gender behavior. People should not be locked up for crossdressing or denied their rights based on their gender behavior predisposition. If someone wants to claim subjectively that they feel that their gender is masculine or feminine or genderqueer, that is their business and not the business of the law. The U.S. Constitution and International Agreements assign rights to all people, including transgender people. Some of the best ethicists in the world have gathered together to establish the Yogyakarta Principles which have identified human rights pertaining to transgender people.

People think they can save money by designing rest rooms and locker rooms that do not allow personal privacy but they are short changing not only transgender people but also those who do not want to display their bodies. Ask high school freshmen whether they want to take their first communal shower after Phys Ed! I have been in locker rooms for 9 seasons as a football player, 14 years as a football official and 4 years in a dorm with communal restrooms and I have found even the richest schools to have facilities with no privacy that are universally dirty. As my father, who was a football manager in high school, used to say, he was amazed at the human tolerance for filth. Other countries have rest rooms and locker rooms that have designs that protect privacy and are more sanitary. They are not bound by government protection of manufacturers with particular designs and equipment. Spend the money on better designs and facilities and these problems go away. We have just been too cheap in the past.

Anderson: Paul McHugh’s legacy at the Johns Hopkins to disband the gender clinic was overturned by ideology and not science.

Bevan: Quite the opposite. McHugh came to Johns Hopkins with his own ideology which was and still is a sex-only cultural faith. (Again, I use the word faith in that it has no basis in science.)

Although the number of gender clinics decreased for a time in the US, they have come back because of clinical science results. With regard to adults, affirming treatment and counseling were being found to be effective by clinicians without the help of university gender clinics. Gender clinics for children have proliferated in the US because of science indicating that affirming treatments were found to be effective by clinicians in the Netherlands.

Anderson: 80% to 95% of transgender children stop their transgender behavior as they get older.

Bevan: Truth is that we do not know how many stop and how many continue.

The data he cites is from the disbanded Toronto CAMH children’s gender clinic and from clinicians who were treating pre-homosexual children, not transgender children. Examination of the record of CAMH now shows that many of the children were misdiagnosed. Pre-homosexual children present as sexually aggressive whereas transgender children usually present as withdrawn and concerned about their gender, not about sex. From 1972 until about 2011, there are research reports of clinicians charging off treatments for pre-homosexual children using the gender identity disorder code in the DSM. The clinicians did not attempt to conceal this in their research reports. (Homosexuality was deleted from the DSM in 1972 but treatment of prehomosexual children persisted using this trick). Actually, the clinicians were pretty good at spotting prehomosexual kids and most of them actually grew up to be homosexual. This also which demonstrates that the treatments were not effective. Not that there is anything wrong with being homosexual. After my transition, I find that I am a lesbian.

I will point out a blinding flash of the obvious that CAMH could not simultaneously be claiming that 80-95% of children spontaneously stop transgender behavior and that their own reparative therapy techniques were effective. Why provide such harsh “treatment” if the children were going to stop being transgender anyway?

I hypothesize that transgender people may reduce or curtail their transgender behavior as they mature because of cultural rejection and involvement in activities that are important to them. We know that cultural rejection increases in childhood and becomes more intense during the early teenage years and persists beyond that. Although transgender people may delay or defer their behavior to raise families, fight wars or participate in highly engaging activities, the gender behavior predisposition that is a factor in transgender behavior is still there. For me, it was fighting the Cold war, raising a family, and helping first responders with technology. In the old days (my time), transgender people would simply go underground but many are emerging in later years (me). If affirming treatment of children succeeds, this current generation will not have to go through the pain and stress of keeping their transgender behavior a secret. As far as we know, transgender is for a lifetime.

So why does Anderson live in this make-believe world of cultural faith? The answer appears to be that he has joined those, like Paul McHugh who espouse a sex-only explanation of being transgender. Their unstated logic is that if only sex exists and sex is biological, then the cultural gender system is biological and therefore immutable. But as you know from reading my blog posts, sex, gender behavior predisposition, and the gender system are all different and somewhat independent. Sex and gender predisposition are both biological but they can be traced back to different genes and they are disassociated in twin studies. The Western gender system is human-made and not biological. So, Anderson and McHugh and the like are deliberately confounding different phenomena in an attempt to protect their cultural faith. (Again, I am using faith here as a belief which is not substantiated by science.) They may be defenders of the cultural faith but they do harm to transgender people by supporting hate-mongers.

Anderson is fond of saying that biology is not bigotry. In this book, he panders to his believers to help them to hide bigotry behind false and incomplete biology.

Tags: featured, Identity, Transgender, Transsexual

Category: Transgender Body & Soul