Brody's Scribbles... Op-Ed from Australian Columinst Zoe Ellen Brain: Today's Battle- Into The Belly Of The Beast

By Zoe Ellen Brain (Canberra, Australia) Feb 1 | From the Michigan Messenger: State Rep. Paul Scott, (R-Grand Blanc), announced his candidacy for the GOP nomination for Secretary of State just five days ago, but he’s already caused a shock wave. Scott, who just completed the first year of his first two-year term in the state House, is rankling feathers with a promise he made in his Jan. 15 announcement letter, which listed four top policy priorities, including:

"I will make it a priority to ensure transgender individuals will not be allowed to change the sex on their driver’s license in any circumstance." 

Scott said the issue was about “values.” 

“It’s a social values issue. If you are born a male, you should be known as a male. Same as with a female, she should be known as a female,” he said.

When asked to explain how such a mandate from the Secretary of State would benefit Michigan, he said it was about “preventing people who are males genetically from dressing as a woman and going into female bathrooms.”  

While Scott is aware that federal courts have ruled that gender dysphoria, the medical diagnosis for transgender persons, was a disability, he said he did not think he would run afoul of discrimination laws. For the 27-year-old state representative, the issue is about biological gender. He said his mandate would be in place even for those who had completely undergone sex reassignment surgeries. 

“That’s who you are. You can have cosmetic surgery or reassignment surgery but you are still that gender,” he said.

So I ventured over to Rep Scott's blog. My comment is still to get through moderation, and it may not. So here it is, on the record. Nothing new, readers of this blog will have seen it all before.

Dear Rep Scott – I’ve been on the right since way back. I applaud most of your policies. But in one, you’ve gone badly astray, and your political enemies will have you for breakfast over it.

Bigotry is arrogance, ignorance, and malice.

You confess to being malicious “as a matter of principle”. That’s not always a bad thing – I bear considerable malice to those who beat children to death, as a matter of principle.

That you’re arrogant is obvious by the fact that you’re ignoring all the actual biologists and medics whose views contradict your own. You know better, obviously. Well, again, sometimes people do – but they better be prepared to prove it. Arrogance, while unpleasant, is excusable if you happen to be factually correct. I’ve been guilty of it myself sometimes. 

Now onto the ignorance. Everyone knows that XY is male, XX is female, right? You get taught that in grade school. One problem: while that’s usually true, not always. The concept of “genetically male” is biological nonsense. 

“A 46,XY mother who developed as a normal woman underwent spontaneous puberty, reached menarche, menstruated regularly, experienced two unassisted pregnancies, and gave birth to a 46,XY daughter with complete gonadal dysgenesis.” – J Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2008 Jan;93(1):182-9.

Look that up. It’s on the web. While you’re at it, look at how many men labelled “transgendered” were born with the usual 46,XY chromosomes of men, but were surgically altered to look female shortly after birth, castrated, with artificial vaginas fashioned, because their genitalia was “ambiguous”, and as one surgeon famously put it, “it’s easier making a hole than a pole”. 

The surgeons guess – and get it wrong, by their own admission, one time in 3. These men and women who revolt against this wrongness, and try to get it corrected as adults, are now to fall foul of what your opponents will call “this arrogant, malicious bigot’s ignorance”. Worse… they won’t be lying. 

Such cases are the exception rather than the norm. But they exist. That’s why we have procedures, rarely invoked, that deal with them. People in this position already have a hard enough row to hoe. Now your opponents will be able to say “some bigot is trying to make their lot even harder – just because he can.” Just because of your pardonable lack of knowledge, but less pardonable arrogance in not bothering to have that lack corrected. 

What about those people – as in this story by CNN – who are born looking female, but masculinise later? There’s thousands like them in the USA. It’s rare, but not that rare. 

What’s next – requirements for a genetic test before one gets a drivers licence? You see, fully 1 in 60 people are Intersexed in some way. At least 1 in 500 have genes that don’t match their appearance. You could well be one of them. You could have De La Chapelle Male syndrome, for example, and be “genetically female” with 46,XX chromosomes. Most don’t know, you see.

Finally, let’s look at the group you’re really targeting. Transsexual women. 

Pardon me if I quote a few more medical articles. Just the titles. They’re all available on the web.

Male-to-female transsexuals show sex-atypical hypothalamus activation when smelling odorous steroids by Berglund et al Cerebral Cortex 2008 18(8):1900-1908; 

Male–to–female transsexuals have female neuron numbers in a limbic nucleus.J Clin Endocrinol Metab (2000) 85:2034–2041

A sex difference in the human brain and its relation to transsexuality by Zhou et al Nature (1995) 378:68–70.

A sex difference in the hypothalamic uncinate nucleus: relationship to gender identityBrain. 2008 Dec;131(Pt 12):3132-46.

Androgen Receptor Repeat Length Polymorphism Associated with Male-to-Female Transsexualism by Hare at al in Biol.Psych. Vol65, Issue 1, Pp 93-96

“Intersex” means “having an anatomy neither wholly male nor wholly female”. And Transsexuals are Intersexed. Male brains in female bodies, or the reverse. Chromosomes may be 46,XX, 46,XY, or even 47,XXY. One in 500 people are 47,XXY, though only a few percent of those are Transsexual. 

It’s as much a congenital condition as being born with a cleft palate. And as much of a choice as being born African-American.

I urge you to get a staffer to check what I say. All the data I gave is on the web. Please have a look at the presentations of seminar S10 at the recent American Psychiatric Association (annual meeting):

S10. The Neurobiological Evidence for Transgenderism

1. Brain Gender Identity Prof. Sidney W. Ecker, M.D.

2. Transsexuality as an Intersex Condition Prof Milton Diamond, Ph.D.

This data doesn’t come from some “Gender Studies” or “Feminist” or “Leftist” group with a political agenda, but from fMRI scans and autopsies of neuro-anatomy. Kruiver et al by Garcia-Falgueras et al

Yes, another cut'n'paste job. Yes, saying the same old same old. Nothing new. A Tedious repetition of facts that have appeared on this blog many times before. 

But that's only because the prejudice, the hysteria, the bigotry, the arrogance and ignorance and malice are nothing new. Tediously repetitive. The same old same old. 

It never seems to end. Here is one guy who thinks it's vitally important that transgender individuals will not be allowed to change the sex on their driver’s license in any circumstance A priority, in fact. 

Just on the off-chance that he's not a demagogue who's picked demonisation of a convenient scapegoat as a road to political power... just in case he believes what he says... I wrote to him as I did. Will it be published? Doubtful, but hope spring eternal in the human breast. Will he read it? Perhaps. One can only hope. Will his views, and his policy change? Breath-holding is contra-indicated. I'm giving him a chance, that's all. Now he can't say he wasn't informed. 

On to another place - the Washington Examiner: 

Loudoun County supervisors blasted one of their colleagues Wednesday for sending out a constituent e-mail referring to "cross dressing freaks" in response to the board's recent decision not to discriminate in hiring based on sexual orientation.

The e-mail in question was sent by Supervisor Eugene Delgaudio, R-Sterling, on Jan. 5, the day the Board of Supervisors updated language in its hiring policy.

In 2006, Tim Kaine, then the Virginia governor, signed an executive order protecting employees from discrimination based on sexual orientation. The board's move updated the county's equal employment opportunity statement to conform to the state's policy. 

That "means that if a man dressed as a woman wants a job, you have to treat 'it' as a normal person," Delgaudio's e-mail reads.

That is the idea, yes. As I wrote: Rep Delagudio is not saying anything that many Good, Church-Going Americans aren't thinking. That Intersexed and Transsexual people aren't really human.

Many Good, Church-Going Americans thought that way about Blacks too, not so long ago. Some, a tiny minority now thank goodness, still do. 

Zoe Ellen Brain is a Systems Software Engineer residing in the Australian capital city of Canberra. Ms. Ellen has her own blogspot on Transgendered issues as well as other interests located at  A. E. Brain.