Open Letter To A Bigoted Wimp

by Katherine Cummings

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Society is blinded by the taboo nature of gender roles and awed by the sacredness on genitalia and cannot understand that humans have as much right to remodel their genitalia as they have to remodel their noses.

An article by Stephen Gunther entitled "My Transsexual Father" appeared in a 1995 Masculinist journal called "XY" in which he aired his self-centered, ignorant and bigoted views concerning his father who had transitioned as a male to female transsexual late in life. The article was reprinted by the Sydney Morning Herald the following year as "When Father Became Mother" and then turned up in the Australian Humanities Review in 1997. I recently discovered that the Herald version and the Australian Humanities Review version still exist on the Internet, and feel that the response I wrote in 1996 is still relevant. Now read on:

Your first error of judgement, Stephen, is your failure to recognise the fact that transsexualism is a medical condition, probably genetic, treated by medical specialists, including psychiatrists, endocrinologists and surgeons. Few critics of transsexualism appear to understand this, preferring instead to make moral judgements as if this were a whim, or a hobby, or a dark pervasion cultivated for one's own pleasure. Try substituting the word "diabetes" for "transsexualism" and ask yourself whether moralistic prejudice, denial of human and legal rights and withdrawal of support by family and friends would be deemed acceptable in terms of this more recognisable medical condition. Society is blinded by the taboo nature of gender roles and awed by the sacredness on genitalia and cannot understand that humans have as much right to remodel their genitalia as they have to remodel their noses.

Above all, I dislike the fact that you have failed to accept your father's right to self-determination. Can you not see that your father gave up sixty five years of his life to satisfying the needs and desires of his family and now wants to live out the remainder of his life as Elaine? Is that hard to understand? If a medical condition is revealed which alters the subject's personality or appearance, is it too much to ask that all the years of love and support provided beforehand be placed in the balance against the minor inconveniences created by these changes? It is hardly a unique situation. Few weeks pass without a news item concerning transgenderism, and my surgeon alone has performed more than 500 gender reassignments.

You say "it's not the kind of thing you would expect a staunch fundamentalist Christian, patriarchal 65 year old to do, totally out of the blue". Are fundamentalist Christians immune to medical problems then? Or are you making a moral judgement? If so, on what authority (other than Deuteronomy 22, which is full of brutal tribal caveats)?

You go on to say "While accepting his decision [oh really?], I nevertheless tried to dialogue [sic]; why not try therapy? What if you regret this? Look at the other transsexuals - by your and their own admission they are not a particularly happy bunch."

First, Elaine could not possibly achieve gender reassignment surgery in Australia if she had not been to a therapist sufficiently often to receive referral for surgery. There is usually a minimum requirement of two years living fulltime in the gender of choice. Second, people often regret major decisions in life ... divorce statistics demonstrate this. We make the best decisions we can and we try to live by those decisions. Third, who are these "other transsexuals" who are not particularly a happy bunch? Do you have documentation for this statement? For that matter, what group of human beings can be referred to as a particularly happy bunch? And if some transsexuals are unhappy, this probably results from the prejudice, denial of rights and primitive spite which many suffer daily. Isn't there a message there for society, rather than for the potentially transitional transsexual who has no real choice?

"Fortunately", you state smugly, "I have 20 years of meditation ... clear, strong and resilient." Meditation? Why not try thinking? Meditation is to thinking as masturbation is to intercourse. You do it alone and the end result is unlikely to be a jewel in anyone's lotus. If you had tried thinking you may have come unaided to a lot of facts including your moral responsibility to support your father in his transition from male to female.

An educated and intelligent person who holds his father up to ridicule in two academic journals and a major newspaper and who suggests that "transsexuals are generally the object of lurid fascination, or total repulsion, or extreme discomfort, or overt hostility" without a word of criticism for these attitudes, seems to me to be a self-centered and bigoted wimp who does not have the intellectual capacity to explore the phenomenon, nor the courage to stand by his own flesh and blood in adversity. You are not mistaken in drawing attention to negative public attitudes, merely culpable in failing to deplore them. In addition you appear to be unaware that there are laws against vilification of the transgendered.

To suggest that "there are some books by transsexuals, a few radio programs, and one or two movies" is a gross understatement of the material available. Did you try your local library? The University Library? On the specific topic of the children of transsexuals, for whom you are so concerned, I carried out a search of Psyclit (Psychological Abstracts on CD-ROM) and found a quantity of material. I am sure you will be relieved to know that none of the offspring of transsexuals studied showed any adverse effects and were, in fact, better balanced and socially integrated than their peer groups.

You appear to be the exception.

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