The National Association For Research And Therapy Of Homosexuals (NARTH) and the TVC have both used the term “She/Male” to refer to pre-op and non-op transsexuals.  Most transpeople I know find the term “She/Male” pretty ofensive.

David Gonzales at the Box Turtle Bulletin interviewed me for their “If It’s Wednesday, It’s Ex-Gay” segment to talk about the term She/Male, and has a podcast posted.

 I won’t boast of my performance during the interview.  I don’t seen to be able to sit still these days (new med), and I think that comes accross in the interview.

I’ve been the victim of sexual harassment.

Near the end of my 20-year, U.S. Navy career, a subordinate of mine decided I was gay and didn’t want me in his Navy – he talked to my last four division officers trying to get an investigation into my alleged homosexuality started on me.

My subordinate finally found a sympathetic ear in a new Executive Officer (XO). I got called in front of the XO twice. I’d stayed within the Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell (DADT) rules, but he asked me if I were gay anyway.

I wrote up my subordinate and my XO for male-on-male sexual harassment — they violated the DADT rules in a way that met the Navy’s three criteria for sexual harassment:

1. The attention was unwelcome.
2. The harassment was sexual in nature.
3. The harassment involved the workplace.

Unfortunately for my harassers, for seven years of my military career I’d been a Naval Equal Opportunity and Sexual Harassment instructor. Both of my harassers were found at the end of investigation to have committed male-on-male sexual harassment. The Navy didn’t take male-on-male sexual harassment seriously, so my subordinate’s punishment was a verbal reprimand, and my XO got a “fiche 5″ service record entry.

I knew the rules and criteria for sexual harassment. (One can read more of my DADT story on the SLDN‘s or HRC‘s website.)

Why mention my story of harassment here? Matt Barber of the Concerned Women For America’s Culture And Family Institute recently announced what he believes a sexually harassing, hostile work environment is created when a transwoman uses a female designated bathroom.

Read the rest of this entry »

This is an oral history that was taken while I was at the Transgender Leadership Summit for a documentary project — Clocked: An Oral History (blogsite on project here).

This segment is rather long, but I believe the filmmaker is going to take smaller sound bites out of this longer segment for his piece, and not use all of this online video material in the final documentary output.  At least that was my impression.

Click image to play.

Whenever I discuss transgender medical or therapeutic treatments over at the Ex-Gay Watch, I always seem to go back to the Harry Benjamin Standards Of Care. Like or hate this document (and the GID diagnosis), what the document does is provide criteria for determining if one has a condition that falls under the document’s purview; it provides a general outline of what medical and psychological treatments are appropriate for transsexuals; and it lists timelines and benchmarks for when particular treatments are considered appropriate.

Many medical and mental health conditions have standards of care — evidence-based clinical practice guidelines. There are standards of care for everything from treating ingrown toenails to managing Alzheimer’s disease; from treating acute dental trauma to treating bipolar disorders.

The National Guideline Clearinghouseâ„¢ maintains a public resource for many of these guidelines.

Not too surprisingly, there are no entries in the National Guideline Clearinghouseâ„¢ for Same Sex Attraction Disorder (SSAD) — no evidence-based clinical practice guidelines listed there for how to conduct conversion therapies for a SSAD (or any other named disorder relating to treatment of homosexuality or unwanted homosexual propensities) diagnosis.

National Association For Research & Therapy Of Homosexuality (NARTH) indicates this about its function:

NARTH’s function is to provide psychological understanding of the cause, treatment and behavior patterns associated with homosexuality, within the boundaries of a civil public dialogue.

After reading the organization’s function one might think that the organization would maintain an evidence-based clinical practice guideline for treating unwanted homosexual propensities. Yet, if one searches the NARTH website, one finds they have no published standard of care for SSAD, or standard of care for any other titled disorder relating to treatment of homosexuality or unwanted homosexual propensities.

Read the rest of this entry »

The National Association For Research And Therapy Of Homosexuality (NARTH) is again commenting on transgender issues, although their mission, vision, and previous leadership statements have indicated that their focus has “nothing to do with any social issue other than same-sex attraction.”

NARTH recently posted an article on their website entitled NYU Students Find Accepting Campus For Transsexuals. In the article, Christopher Rosik, Ph.D. (a member of the NARTH Scientific Advisory Committee) is quoted:

While transgendered students are clearly in need of our compassion, I suspect that simply affirming their disjuncted gender identity does them a disservice. A preferable first response would be to determine if any help can be provided to lessen the disjunction for these individuals.

Follow up studies of transsexuals have suggested that, while interventions such as sex change surgery reduced distress due to the perceived gender incongruity, their relational, vocational and emotional difficulties continued unabated. The collusion of NYU officials with these students’ psychological reality to the apparent exclusion of encouraging them to seek help is therefore ill advised.

The gist of Rosik’s message seems to be that he doesn’t believe New York University should be trans-affirmative. Since a significant number of post-operative transsexuals still have employment, relationship, and emotional problems, Rosik believes the goal of treatment shouldn’t be to affirm a transgender person’s gender identity, but rather to affirm that their gender be joined or rejoined to their natal sex. Rosik doesn’t clarify whether or not he believes joining or rejoining gender to natal sex would then, by itself, solve all of these individuals other employment, relationship, and emotional problems.

Beyond treatment, he appears to be implying that no government or private agency should recognize a person as transgender — again, because a significant number of post-operative transsexuals still have employment, relationship, and emotional problems after sex reassignment surgery.

He also appears to be implying that if transgender people seek assistance that isn’t help joining or rejoining one’s gender identity to one’s natal sex, and then these transgender people aren’t actually seeking help.

What Rosik is proposing is outside of mainstream medical thought. He wants NYU, and other public and private entities to adopt his minority medical opinion as policy instead of the Harry Benjamin Standards Of Care. The mainstream medical opinion indicates public and private entities’ trans-affirmative treatments/policies are appropriate for transgender people.

If Rosik and NARTH were actually interested in changing NYU policy on transgender people — or affecting public policy in general regarding transgender people — they would work within the system (i.e. American Psychological Association, American Psychiatric Association, etc.) to change the standards of care for transgender people to non-trans-affirmative.

Or, an alternate strategy might also be found in NARTH adding transgender issues to their mission/vision statement, and then developing an alternate standard of care to rival the Harry Benjamin Standards Of Care. Then, they could argue to public and private entities that their standards of care are the ones that should be adopted as mainstream medical thought, and should be utilized for developing public policy instead of the Harry Benjamin Standards Of Care.

My suspicion is; however, that Rosik is merely voicing his opposition opinion regarding trans-affirmative public policies, and that’s as far as he and NARTH will go. He and NARTH likely have no intent to do anything about trans-affirmative public policies except to provide quotes for the future use of ex-gay and ex-transgender affirming organizations as to why trans-affirmative public policies are the “wrong” policies. Basically, NARTH doesn’t appear to have sufficient transgender mission identification or alternative documentation to offer real, actionable alternatives to the trans-affirmative public policies that NARTH (via Rosik) objects to.

Of course, why would the lack of a transgender issue mission identification statement or alternative documentation preclude either Rosik or NARTH commenting on transgender issues in the future? The lack of these haven’t stopped them previously — I doubt the lack of a transgender issue mission identification statement or alternative documentation will stop them in the future.

——
David Roberts of the Ex-Gay Watch contributed to this article.

——
Crossposted here to/from the Ex-Gay Watch.

Cherry picking. It’s also referred to as Argument By Selective Observation. It’s counting the hits and forgetting the misses — such as counting the benefits of increased employment and tax revenues when a city embraces the gambling industry, without counting the costs associated with gambling addictions. Cherry picking also is perhaps an applicable term when Americans For Truth About Homosexuality‘s Sonja Dalton points out Biblical scriptures that support one’s preconceived notions on sex and gender, and ignores scriptures that bring that view into question. Here is a quote from her recent article there:

The Bible describes a strict gender binary – only two sexes, male and female. God did not create a “FTM trans-male” and a “MTF trans-female” or a “genderqueer” or a “two-spirit” person. He created man and woman, and that is what He blessed.

A woman shall not wear a man’s garment, nor shall a man put on a woman’s cloak, for whoever does these things is an abomination to the LORD your God.
Deuteronomy 22:5

Notice that Scripture says whoever a completely inclusive term that leaves no room for justifying alternate behavior, even despite confused emotions, discomfort or dissatisfaction, or intense desire. This passage teaches that whoever (i.e., anyone, all, no matter who) cross-dresses, whoever mutilates their natural sexual organs in order to emulate the opposite sex, is an abomination to the LORD your God not to “trans-phobic, hateful, judgmental Christians,” but to Jehovah God who created them.

Sonja Dalton also quotes Genesis 1:27 and Genesis 5:1-2, which in summary both state that God created man as male and female. Ms. Dalton ignores intersexuals apparently because they don’t fit into her understanding of man as being male and female. She also ignores Isaiah 56:4-8 and Matthew 19:12, which refers to those whose genitalia were born ambiguous, and those whose genitalia were modified by human intervention — human modifications which Christ apparently stated could be done for the kingdom of heaven’s sake.

Ms. Dalton quotes one Bible Scholar in her piece to support her understanding of sex and gender — Dr. Albert Mohler. She apparently liked his viewpoint, so she apparently looked no further.

Rachel Miller, on the other hand, researched thirty Biblical and Rabbinical commentaries for possible reasons for, and possible scriptural interpretations of Deuteronomy 22:5 — she didn’t stop at one commentary as Ms. Dalton did for her article. The following are examples of what Ms. Miller found:

Plaut’s commentary states:

The Torah forbids the wearing of apparel customary for the opposite sex. From this rule, tradition concluded that men’s apparel included implements of war, and…a woman was not supposed to wield a man’s weapon… This also meant that women were precluded from joining the army…the rule further implied that women were forbidden the wearing of talit and tefillin (prayer shawl and phylacteries). . .

Maxwell’s commentary states:

One explanation is that this practice was associated with the religion of Canaan… Apparently women appeared in male garments and men in women’s clothes when they worshipped pagan deities. Yahweh wanted His people to be unique and do nothing that was in any way connected with foreign religions. Another theory is that this verse could refer to war. A woman was not to put on the trappings of a soldier or dress like a man in order to gain admission into the army. . .

Expositor’s Bible Commentary states:

The prohibition against a woman wearing the habiliments of a man and of a man wearing the clothing of a woman can scarcely refer to transvestism. Though evidence for religious transvestism in ancient Canaanite religion is not conclusive, the inclusion of this rule under the proscription of the things the Lord detests suggests a serious problem, one that involves alienation from the Lord because of the adoption of the proscribed religious practices.

J. A. Thompson’s commentary states:

. . .this law in its original setting has no direct implication for modern life.

In the thirty Biblical and Rabbinical commentaries Ms. Miller reviewed, she found the following interpretations of Deuteronomy 22:5 (with the number of each shown in parentheses — the number adds up to more than thirty because many of the commentaries cited multiple interpretations of the scripture in their text):

- Pagan religious connotation (12)

- Deviant sexual practices or moral issues (9)

- Maintain proper distinction between the sexes (8)

- Part of a collection of laws with a common theme (5)

- Definitely not about simple cross-dressing (5)

- Magical connection related to disguise or deceit (4)

- Related to armor or wartime attire (3)

- No comment (3)

- Hard line literal interpretation to be applied to all cross-dressing (2)

- Doesn’t apply because we aren’t under the law (1)

There’s a lot of interpretations of Deuteronomy 22:5 to cherry pick from. But even if one reads Deuteronomy 22:5 without much critical thought, Angela Rose of Whosoever.org referenced Deuteronomy 22:5-12 to make sure that we don’t simply pull verse 5 out of context:

(5) A woman must not wear men’s clothing, nor a man wear women’s clothing, for the LORD your God detests anyone who does this.

(6) If you come across a bird’s nest beside the road, either in a tree or on the ground, and the mother is sitting on the young or on the eggs, do not take the mother with the young.

(7) You may take the young, but be sure to let the mother go, so that all may go well with you and you may have a long life.

(8) When you build a new house, make a parapet around your roof so that you may not bring the guilt of bloodshed on your house if someone falls from the roof.

(9) Do not plant two kinds of seed in your vineyard; if you do, not only the crops you plant but also the fruit of the vineyard will be defiled.

(10) Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.

(11) Do not wear clothes of wool and linen woven together.

(12) Make tassels on the four corners of the cloak you wear.

So if Deuteronomy 22 applies to transgender people, then these laws should apply to Christians: When one goes shopping at the market, one should be leery of buying both chicken and eggs on the same trip. When one owns a home, one should build a fence along the edge of the roof. If one has a vegetable garden in one’s backyard, most shouldn’t consider planting more than one kind of vegetable in that backyard garden because most municipalities and county governments consider single homes as being on single plots. And, when picking out clothing, one shouldn’t wear any blended fabrics, such as cotton/poly or wool/linen; and one also should sew four tassels on the ends of one’s outerwear.

Or, perhaps Christians could put some faith in Romans 10:4:

“Christ is the end of the law so that there may be righteousness for everyone who believes.”

Believing in that New Testament scripture would seem so much easier than reading a commentary wrote about how one is cherry picking scriptures and/or commentaries, or conversely getting municipal zoning approval and a contractor for adding a sturdy parapet to one’s roof.

Transsexual pioneer Renee Richards regrets fame. That’s what the headline reads.

She decided to take the United States Tennis Association to court for banning her from playing in women’s events at the US Open as she was a transsexual – and she won, winning headlines globally as a pioneer for transsexual rights.

Richards, now 72 and without a partner, said she does not regret the sex change operation at the age of 40 – although she might have liked to have gone through the process a bit earlier – but she does have misgivings about her notoriety.

“I made the fateful decision to go and fight the legal battle to be able to play as a woman and stay in the public eye and become this symbol,” Richards, an ophthalmologist, told Reuters in an interview in her Manhattan offices.

“I could have gone back to my office and just carried on with my life and the notoriety would have died down. I would have been able to resume the semblance of a normal life. I could have lived a more private life but I chose not to.

“I have misgivings about that. I am nostalgic about what would have happened if I had done it the other way,” said the 6-foot-2-inch tall Richards with an unmistakable air of sadness as she folds her man-sized hands in her lap.

And yet, the article ends with:

In the mid-1970s and when her memoir, “Second Serve: The Renee Richards Story,” came out in 1983, was treated as an curiosity and besieged by television chat shows.

But with the release this month of her second memoir, “No Way Renee, The Second Half of My Notorious Life,” few came knocking and television showed no interest.

“It is annoying to me,” said Richards. “I’m so ordinary now; they’re not interested. There’s lots about transsexuals now.”

Of course, she’s previously been quoted as saying…

[Transitioning is] not something for somebody in their 40s to do, someone who’s had a life as a man, – - – If you’re 18 or 20 and never had the kind of (advantages) I had, and you’re oriented in that direction, sure, go ahead and make right what nature didn’t. But if you’re a 45-year-old man and you’re an airline pilot and you have an ex-wife and three adolescent kids, you better get on Thorazine or Zoloft or Prozac or get locked up or do whatever it takes to keep you from being allowed to do something like this.’

…Which of course left Jerry Leach (of Reality Resources — a ministry affilliated with ex-gay ministry Exodus International) salivating at the idea that transitioning is bad, period.

Richards isn’t happy she was famous, but also isn’t happy she’s not famous enough to get anyone seriously interested in her new book. And, most transpeople who might be interested in reading her book because she was a transsexual pioneer aren’t as interested in her anymore as she’s managed to piss off transpeople.  She globalized her personal dissatisfaction with transitioning after 40 – indicating the rest of us transfolk  need/needed psychotrophic drugs to keep us from transitioning.

Renee has my personal non-thanks for her 1999 statement — a statement picked up by ex-gay/ex-transgender organizations as a reason not to transition. 

As for me reading her book — I’m not interested, and won’t ever be interested.

(Crossposted here from my post at the Ex-Gay Watch.)

Recently, I wrote a piece on Mike Ensley’s take on gender fluidity. He responded in his personal blog with an article entitled What do I know about gender? In the entry he states:

…I can see how in a different circumstance (different city, family, influences) I might have gone down the road of transgenderism. A lot of people have backgrounds similar to mine, but didn’t end up struggling with same-sex attractions like I have. We’re all different and broken in different ways–but we can still understand one another.

Furthermore, transgenderism represents to me one of the biggest loopholes in the new sexual ethic of our society. We’re told gays can’t and/or shouldn’t change because people are supposedly born gay, but then the T segment of the LGBT community is encouraged to do everything–therapy, drugs, surgery–to change the way they truly were born.

Anywho; I could get into the whole why-I-believe-in-male-and-female thing, but that’s a whole new post.

The piece as a whole is an outpouring of how he believes he could of ended up transgender — it reads as another Argument from Spurious Similarity. But beyond that, he seems to indicate a belief in sex dichotomy determined by biological forces.

Ensley’s faith in a two-sex dichotomy is shared with other religious conservatives. As a recent example, Sonja Dalton on the Americans For Truth about Homosexuals website responded to the San Francisco Chronicle’s Shaking up transgender assumptions with her piece Shaking Up Gender Assumptions — Destroying Teenagers.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sound the alarms! Danger! DANGER! Danger Will Robinson! The HO-MO-SEX-U-AL LOBBY is out to evilly destroy the world!

…Again.

*sigh*

If you didn’t know it, dear homosexual friends, you, in a most bleak and evil way, support sex change operations for 12 year olds. It’s part of your homosexual agenda.

How do I know? Well, the new “concerned woman” Matt Barber (of the Concerned Women for America’s Culture And Family Institute) says that’s what you think. Read it here in this Concerned Women For America press release:

A 14-year-old German boy has decided to undergo a sex change, making him the youngest patient in history to receive this extreme procedure. The young boy Tim, who prefers to be called “Kim,” has wanted gender reassignment surgery since he was 12 and claims to have considered himself female since age two. Concerned Women for America (CWA) is saddened that doctors and parents have fostered this young boy’s gender confusion and are allowing him to go forward with the surgery.

“This poor kid’s situation really undercuts the homosexual lobby’s deceptive equality-fluff and hyperbole,” said Matt Barber, CWA’s Policy Director for Cultural Issues. “It casts a bright light on the truly destructive, bleak and evil nature of the homosexual agenda. Has our world completely lost all sanity? That parents would allow their child to be treated like this is mind-boggling.

“Rather than addressing the emotional or chemical problems responsible for Tim’s gender confusion, his parents and doctors have bought into the homosexual lobby’s PC puffery hook, line and sinker. They’re about to rob him of his ability to father a child, and render him horribly disfigured and further confused. It’s not just a tragedy. It’s a travesty.”

For those of y’all who are not read up on exactly what the experts actually say about transsexual youth, please take a read at the Point 1. of the Ex-Gay Watch’s Mike Ensley On Gender Fluidity piece — no one is going to support doing sexual reassignment surgery on a 12 or 14 year old. Summed up briefly, the Harry Benjamin Standards Of Care actually state “…irreversible physical interventions should be delayed as long as is clinically appropriate” because ”[i]dentity beliefs in adolescents may become firmly held and strongly expressed, giving a false impression of irreversibility; more fluidity may return at a later stage.” So, the standards of care plan is actually to put transgender youth off of irreversible changes as long as possible — and put off irreversable surgeries until adulthood.

Heck, most transgender activists don’t support sex reassignment surgery for folk under 18 because the surgeries are significant…irreversible. A lot of us transpeople — believe it or not — actually think about the consequences of sex reassignment surgery for adolescents! Imagine that — thinking!

But don’t let us get in the way of what Matt Barber and Peter LaBarbera believe you darn evil homosexual agenda-ists believe. You bleakly and evilly think sex reassignment surgery for 12 year olds is a super idea — Matt and Pete said it’s so, so it must be true…Right?

Oh that’s right — not right. The statements of Barber and LaBarbera are what we call straw man arguments. Duh.

So maybe the alarms were sounded for nothing? Quoting the always cross-dressing Bugs Bunny, “Could be!”

[O]pponents say the prospect of same-sex book-borrowing endangers the moral fiber of the country’s most sacred reading traditions.”What’s next—gay people at the DMV, being granted licenses to drive cars?” Rev. Brian Peters of Verona, WI said. “Will we be soon seeing gays and lesbians at our local post offices, being sold stamps and mailing packages? We must protect our nation’s public institutions from relentless encroachment by those who threaten our values.”
–Satire from The Onion‘s article Nation’s Gays Demand Right To Library Cards

The Onion’s very funny take on GLBT civil rights issues is funny in its pure hyperbole. It’s such a well done, ludicrous exaggeration for humorous effect that it left me laughing out loud.

Perhaps an equally ludicrous take on GLBT equality is found on the NARTH website in an article by Christopher H. Rosik, Ph.D., entitled Clinical And Theoretical Parallels Between Desire For Limb Amputation And Gender Identity Disorder. But, unlike the satire of the Onion article, this article is sincere commentary.

This piece by Christopher H. Rosik, Ph.D., takes some pretty incredible leaps to draw his pretty incredible final conclusion. Rosik reviews an article by Anne A. Lawrence that compares apotemnophilia to transgenderism. He then, in his commentary, equates the identities of people who desire to remove their limbs to the identities of all GLBT people…

The existence of apotemnophilia raises some very intriguing questions for current discussion about human sexuality, particularly as pertains to transgenderism and the limits of pursuing civil rights for sexual minorities. Lawrence seems mostly concerned about understanding the reasons for finding such parallels between these conditions in order to enhance treatment.

But when it comes to the surgical option, Lawrence’s very tentative conclusion seems to beg the larger question: Should surgery ever be considered? However, in the current sociopolitical climate transgendered persons (including transsexuals) are riding the coattails of the gay rights movement with reasonable success. Therefore, given these extensive parallels it may be difficult for the mental health professions to make a rational argument against permitting amputation of a limb that would not also apply to the amputation of one’s sexual organ.

Although Lawrence clearly treats the desire for amputation as a clinical disorder, the trajectory of contemporary sexual minority rights ideology would suggest that this appraisal may well be questionable. The American Psychological Association’s recent FAQ about transgenderism states:

. . . A psychological condition is considered a mental disorder only if it causes distress or disability. Many transgender people do not experience their transgender feelings and traits to be distressing or disabling, which implies that being transgendered does not constitute a mental disorder per se.

–

…It’s probably a long shot at present, but Lawrence’s observations about individuals desiring amputation would seem to point them toward a strategy of playing up their sexual minority status and affiliating with other sexual minority groups. Then perhaps some day in the future we just might be hearing about the pursuit of GLBTIQA (i.e., gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, intersex, questioning and amputee) equality.

I don’t want to get too deep into the subject, but sex reassignment surgery (SRS) for male-to-female (M2F) transsexuals isn’t penis amputation. And for female-to-male transsexuals, SRS is actually penis creation. Calling SRS “amputation” is a misnomer. Plus, there are no standards of care that outline prcedures for removing a limb for “identity” reasons, whereas there are standards of care that set criteria for SRS.

But really, that’s a minor part of what Rosik is saying. The underlying message of his commentary on the NARTH website is found in his comparison of those who identify as gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, queer, intersex, or any other letter in the alphabet soup of sexual orientation/gender identity/gender expression terms with those who identify as apotemnophiles. He is equating the LGBT civil rights movement as having the same moral equivalence of the non-existent civil rights movement for apotemnophiles.

His argument on identity; however, is an Argument Of The Beard — a logical fallacy. He makes the false assumption that LGBT people see ends of the spectrum of human behavior as all being the same, since one can travel along the spectrum in very small steps. The existence of pink should not undermine the distinction between white and red — all identities aren’t considered the same hue, and the LGBT community sees a difference between transsexuals and apotemnophiles.

Let’s clarify this in terms of heterosexual identities. Rosik’s comments on LGBT identities would be equivalent as stating that since Christian heterosexuals approve of males and females entering marriage relationships that Christian heterosexuals approve of sixty year-old men marrying twelve year-old girls. That argument is fallacious at the face.

What passes for commentary on the NARTH website is ludicrous — just not ludicrous funny like on The Onion’s website. We’ve seen previous NARTH website commentaries on slavery and gender-variant children — and now this one by Rosik on identities and civil rights. With NARTH’s history of posting untenable, poorly reasoned commentaries, one has to wonder why NARTH is still hosting commentaries at all.

In his blog, Mike Ensley responded to my Ex-Gay Watch article.

Excerpt:

A couple people who emailed me accused me of not knowing anything about transgenderism. This is an assumption they make either because I myself am not transgendered, or because I don’t embrace their view of it. But I think I know more than they would give me credit for.

I believe transgenderism, like homosexuality, is a state of mind rather than a state of being. Just like many people’s life stories could have gone down the path of the homosexual struggle–but didn’t–I believe mine could have gone down the path of gender identity crisis, with the right circumstances and stimuli. These two issues have a lot of similarities, just as they each have with many other issues, and some differences.

I didn’t feel like a boy growing up. Like I’ve shared many times, I failed at all the typical “male” activities and attitudes as a child. I was often called a girl, and I often just accepted it and hung out with girls. That was much more preferable than enduring humiliation among boys.

There’s more at the link to his response, but again we’re dealing with Appeals to False Authority and Arguments from Spurious Similarity. What Ensley doesn’t get about logical arguments is one needs to avoid logical fallacies.

I’m an M2F transsexual. I’m not confused about my gender, and I’m not confused about my natal sex. Just as gay, lesbian, and bisexual people aren’t confused about their sexual orientation, I’m not confused about my gender identity not matching my natal sex.

People at ex-gay and ex-gay affirming organizations have called both gay and transgender people “gender confused.” Most of the time it seems the concept of gender confusion is used by these organizations in a lordly, parochial way of saying we are smarter than you gay and transgender people, and know better than you who you are.

We can now add Mike Ensley to the list of folk who’ve identified transgender people as “confused.” In his January piece for Exodus Youth Voice (entitled Gender & Sexuality: Fluid Or Solid) he states:

A lot of people say it’s dangerous to pursue counseling to help bring your sexual identity in line with your faith and the life you want, because they say we’re “born that way.” But, in the next breath they will say it’s safe and okay for some kids to take hormone-altering drugs and even go under the knife to change the way they were born, just because they’re confused. Which do you think is more likely: that God accidentally puts the souls of men in female bodies (and vice versa), or that our understanding of our gender is just one of the many paths human beings can get lost on?

Maybe you feel like you fit in more with people of the opposite sex than the same. Perhaps you’ve considered that you are someone of the opposite sex, or that you should have been. You might be unsure exactly where you fit in.

You don’t need a new body, and you don’t need to invent a new gender for yourself because God really doesn’t make mistakes. There is great diversity within the male and female genders, but the truth is that you don’t need to go outside them to find you.

The last paragraph in his the piece seems to directly counter what Christ said in Matthew 19:12:

For there are some eunuchs, which were so born from their mother’s womb: and there are some eunuchs, which were made eunuchs of men: and there be eunuchs, which have made themselves eunuchs for the kingdom of heaven’s sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it.

It appears that no matter what definition of eunuch one uses, Christ himself actually endorsed body reshaping (castration) done for the kingdom of heaven’s sake, and in the same verse seems to indicate that body reshaping not done for the kingdom of heaven’s sake wasn’t sinful. Isaiah 56:4-8 seems to agree, stating about eunuchs that:

“…their sacrifices shall be accepted upon mine altar; for mine house shall be called an house of prayer for all people.”

On top of the possible doctrinal problems with Mike Ensley’s latest Exodus Youth piece, Ensley has the same Appeal To False Authority problems regarding expertise on transgender issues that Alan Chambers has. Ensley’s Exodus International biography doesn’t indicate a why he might be a transgender issues subject matter expert, and his personal blog (or his old personal blog) doesn’t list any variant of “transgender” in the list of message tags. Much as transgender issues isn’t an area where Alan Chambers can claim to be a subject mater expert, it doesn’t look like transgender issues is an area where Mike Ensley can claim to be a subject matter expert. He demonstrates his inexpertise in indicating he believes transgender people are confused about their gender identities.

What Ensley offers in his current.tv video testimony is the “change is possible” message via the scripture “but with God all things are possible” — which coincidentally is also from the same chapter in Matthew as the one I referenced for Christ’s comment on eunuchs. And, much as I pointed out in the case of Peter LaBarbera, Ensley’s personal religious conversion and/or ex-gay experience doesn’t make him an authoritative voice on gender identity, gender variance, or gender fluidity.

I hope Mike Ensley won’t always be spreading the lie to Christian youth that all of my transgender peers and I are confused. We aren’t. Combining my personal experience of non-confusion with the messages of Matthew 19:12, Isaiah 56:4-8, and Acts 8:26-40, I’m left with this feeling that it’s Mike Ensley who may be the one confused about gender and transpeople.

I had a real strange experience at the Southern Comfort Conference last Summer. The person who signed me into the conference knew my name from transgender community work I do, and acted like I was a celebrity — she said she was excited to meet me. To say I was surprised is an understatement — I see myself working from behind the scenes most of the time — someone who barely arises to the point of any notice. When eye-popping recognition occurred another four or five times at the Conference, it dawned on me I was drawing some attention online to myself, whether I wanted it or not.

Since then, I’ve became a regular contributing author on the Ex-Gay Watch, and have guest posted and diarized on Pam’s House Blend. My profile has raised some since my experiences at Southern Comfort.

So with my growing profile, today I reached a new milestone — Peter LaBarbera of Americans For Truth (AFT) profiled me as a “radical gender activist,” and he’s listed me as a reason as to “why [Americans For Truth]‘s work is so important.”

Apparently, I’m not only a “radical gender activist,”, but I’m also a “transvestite,” someone who is “still a man,”, and someone who has a gender-confused identity. Well heck, better keep them kiddies away from me — I’m going to give ‘em TRANSVESTITE! Sheesh.

I guess it’s worth mentioning that I’m apparently so evil and a threat to Christians everywhere that he’s using his post on me as a reason to raise money for his “ministry.” My head is spinning with that bit of news. Timothy Kincaid at the Ex-Gay Watch sent me a message today saying:

Welcome to the Club!!!

Your final initiation as Ex-Gay Watch contributing author is when the kooks and haters run an attack piece on you.

But raising money over me! Timothy — did they do a fund-raising campaign over your articles?

*sigh* From this point forward, I’m nicknaming myself “Evil Autumn.”

—–
Cross-posted on Pam’s House Blend.

Those who read what I post at the Ex-Gay Watch and The View From (Ab)Normal Heights know I tend to point out logical fallacies in people’s arguments. Well, many ex-gay and ex-gay affirming organizations — such as NARTH and Exodus International– rely heavily on Statements Of Conversion. This is where a person asserts that he or she used to believe one way, but now has a rejected that previous belief, and now because he or she has personally experienced belief in both sides of a particular argument that he or she is now a topic authority. This is a version of Argument From Authority — where the speaker is claiming to be, or has been asserted to be an expert, and it’s implied that because the person is an expert he or she should be trusted..

Americans For Truth‘s President Peter LaBarbera is using a Statement Of Conversion in his recent article Great News: IL Student ‘Trans’-formed by the Christ of Christmas!

Long story short, suburban Chicago high school student John identified last year as transgender student Joanna, but now has converted back to John. From Peter LaBarbera’s telling of the story:

God intervened and John was “born again” through faith in Jesus Christ, he told his student newspaper.

Now “transgender” Joanna is no more and John is reestablishing his true, God-given male nature at his high school. His newfound reality is precisely the sort of story that homosexual/transsexual activist groups like GLSEN (Gay, Lesbian, Straight Education Network) do not want other teenagers to hear. Because GLSEN knows that such stories undermine the “gay” myth that people are born GLBT (gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgendered), and that such aberrant identities are mere natural and innocuous “orientations.”

The problem with resorting to a tale of conversion as a tool for arguing is that other stories exist. For example, I’ve gone from fundamentalist Christian to agnostic to non-fundamentalist Christian, while also in my life going from identifying as a boy, to identifying a transsexual teen, to identifying as a cross-dressing teen, to identifying as an ex-transvestite, to realizing I needed to explore my gender with a professional therapist, to now identifying and living as a transgender/transsexual-identified woman. Is John more of an expert on transgender and ex-transgender experience because of his life conversions, or am I more of an expert due to my life conversions?

The reality is that one can’t draw wide conclusions by means of Statements Of Conversion. John’s and my conversions make us each a little more knowledgeable about transgender issues than John Q. Public (and Joanna Q. Public), but our conversions alone don’t make us authoritative speakers on transgender issues.

If we want to draw wide conclusions, we need to ask:

- What do studies and research reveal?
- What do the subject matter experts in the field think?
- What do the professional organizations state about a topic in their position papers?

It goes without saying that the experts don’t agree with the broad conclusions Peter LaBarbera draws from John’s conversion testimony. (To read up on what some of the experts say, one can read the Harry Benjamin Standards of Care, the American Psychological Association’s Answers to Your Questions About Transgender Individuals and Gender Identity, and info about Gender Identity Disorder (GID) on Gid Reform Advocates.)

Peter LaBarbera in his piece further states:

But, of course, change is possible, because God is in the business of changing repentant sinners. If the Christ of Christmas can turn around the lives of drug addicts, murderers, and drunks, He certainly can save men and women — and adolescent children — trapped in gender confusion and homosexuality.

And Peter LaBarbera is an expert on the change is possible dogma because…?

I’ll end this on that rhetorical question.

What makes one an expert in a subject? Often it’s credentials, such as degrees or certificates. Often it’s position, such as being the executive in charge of a university department, or a non-profit or business that works in a particular area or field. Often it’s research one has done has done on a subject, such as research for an article or book. Sometimes its personal experience with a subject, such as an alcoholic with alcohol abuse, or knowing about spouse abuse because a person was the victim of domestic violence, or a police officer who’s assigned to the domestic violence beat of his or her city.

There are degrees of expertise, and relative values of expertise. Does one put more Lose Weight Exercise to what a domestic violence counselor knows about domestic violence, or does one put more Lose Weight Exercise to a researcher with a Sociology doctorate whose researched domestic violence? It may depend on whether one is gauging the personal pain of domestic violence victims, or gauging the societal costs of domestic violence.

And then there is Appeal To False Authority, where an authority is speaking outside his area of expertise, but still functions as an authoritative speaker. When false authority is coupled with Argument From Spurious Similarity (where it’s suggested that some resemblance is proof of a relationship), or an Appeal To Widespread Belief (which includes the idea that a belief held by many people makes something true), arguments become particularly troublesome.

Recently, I pointed out in In Defense of Harassment: Ex-Gay Opposes Unisex Rest Rooms that self-identified former homosexual Sylvia Bertolini claimed expertise on transgender issues specifically because she is a former homosexual. Her initial piece read to me and others as an Appeal To False Authority, coupled with an Argument From Spurious Similarity; the spurious similarity being that sexual orientation and gender identity are the same thing, or are so intertwined that these two issues have the same root cause or causes.

Now in a similar fashion, Exodus International’s Alan Chambers (in World Magazine’s “Pick and choose; Health: Sex selection in New York City soon will be all about how he — she? — is feeling”), comments on New York City’s now abandoned plan for altering the birth certificates of pre-operative and non-operative transgender people:

Alan Chambers of Exodus International, a Christian ministry that helps people leave homosexual and transgender lifestyles, agrees that the policy [of allowing the city's residents to change the sex on their birth certificates if they believe they are transgender] is “dangerous . . . especially for the people confused enough to believe they were born in the wrong bodies.”

Chambers, a former homosexual, recalls the anguish of feeling, “I should have been born a girl.” He says society shouldn’t “put a stamp of approval on gender fluidity. . . . The most loving response is to tell people the truth and show them grace.”

The critique of Alan Chambers here in this article isn’t about the merits of changing the gender marker criteria for non-operative or pre-operative transsexuals — it’s not about even about his opinion he expressed on the subject. Instead, it’s about Chambers’ qualifications to be quoted as a subject matter expert on transgender issues — Are transgender and gender identity issues subject matter areas where Chambers can plausibly be identified as an authority?

I’d argue “no.”

Chambers’ authority to speak on gender identity issues as an expert doesn’t seem to be derived from his formal education or formal credentials, as his biography doesn’t indicate he has any formal education or credentials related to the subject. Also, none of Alan Chambers credited published works deal with transgender issues directly, so from the public record it appears he hasn’t done any scholarly research specifically related to transgender people. (And, neither of Exodus International’s uncredited pieces relating to transgender issues — LGBTQ labels and Gender Identity — are scholarly, referenced works.) And even though the World Magazine piece describes Exodus International as “a Christian ministry that helps people leave homosexual and transgender lifestyles,” Exodus International’s Who We Are webpage describes themselves as “…a nonprofit, interdenominational Christian organization promoting the message of Freedom from homosexuality through the power of Jesus Christ.” Exodus International’s work with transgender and ex-transgender people is only mentioned when a spokesperson from the organization comments on transgender and gender identity issues; Any work Exodus International may do with transgender and ex-transgender people doesn’t appear to be found within the primary mission of the organization.

And, since about 75% of children diagnosed with Childhood GID report a homosexual or bisexual orientation in adulthood, drawing conclusions about to the similarity between adult transgender people and adult gay people based on one’s own experience with Childhood GID appears a suspect means to make an analogy. Although there are similarities of experience (such as shared experiences of societal discrimination), there are dissimilarities in the adult experiences of gay men and transgender women, as well as lesbian women and transgender men. For example, most transsexuals want to express a gender identity different than that of their natal sex, most gays and lesbians are comfortable with their gender identity matching their natal sex. The dissimilarities are significant enough to indicate that just because one is an expert on gay, lesbian, and/or bisexual life experiences, it wouldn’t mean that one is an expert on transgender life experiences, and vice a versa.

It appears to me that what we’re left with then is Chambers’ apparent lack of academic or professional credentials indicating expertise, his personal statement of experiencing Childhood Gender Identity Disorder (GID) in his personal childhood belief he “should have been born a girl,”, his presidency of an organization whose “Who We Are” page doesn’t identify itself as an organization with any distinctively transgender/ex-transgender focus, and his status as a self-identified former homosexual. Given what we know about Alan Chambers’ resume before us, it’s difficult to support recognizing him as an expert on transgender or gender identity issues.

And given what we know about Chambers, we’re left much as we were with Sylvia Bertolini’s claims of expertise — Appeal To False Authority coupled with an Argument From Spurious Similarity. And perhaps in Chambers’ case, an added Appeal To Widespread Belief can be added, in that many in Chambers’ circle of ex-gay, religious right, and anti-gay friends believe sexual orientation and gender identity are tightly entwined in sexual confusion.

For Alan Chambers to be presented as, or present himself as, an expert in gender identity or transgender issues based on his resume seems unsustainable. Since I now see a propensity for Chambers’ overreaching his resume to speak on issues, I, and I hope my peers, will keep their eyes open for other Exodus International false claims of authority.