Vanity Fair? Call Me Confused…

Last updated on: June 4, 2015 at 12:13 pm by Fr. Dwight Longenecker

Vanity Fair? Call Me Confused… 2015-06-04T12:13:09-05:00 Fr. Dwight Longenecker

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

It has been difficult not to have one’s nose pushed into a particular image this week.

It is that of a former Olympic athlete dolled up as a woman on the cover of the appropriately named Vanity Fair.

Readers may remember the original Vanity Fair appeared in John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Vanity Fair is a place where every earthly delight and fancy is up for sale. This aspect of Bruce Jenner’s transformation can’t be put on one side. Here’s a guy who is on TV and is caught up in a huge publicity machine to sell himself and now to sell his sexual confusion and medical and cosmetic transformation into a female. When I see that Vanity Fair cover I don’t see an attractive woman.

I see a man dressed up as a whore…which of course is just what you would expect to find in the original Vanity Fair where every human delight is up for sale. OK. That’s tough talk, but Caitlyn is not really presenting as a modest, beautiful and chaste woman is she? Wasn’t the swimsuit-lingerie outfit supposed to be provocative? Wasn’t her expression supposed to be steamy?

My main problem with this is not that a person with gender dysphoria has problems they think will be solved by a sex change. That is really between them and their psychiatrist.

What is most disturbing is that Jenner the sort of woman Jenner feels he must present as. When he poses all dolled up and wearing lingerie and pouting with a seductive pose isn’t he lending to the objectification of women? A good number of women have complained that he is contributing to the whole fake glamour industry in which unrealistic women are presented as role models. So the concern is not so much that he is transgender and having treatment, but that he thinks this is presenting as this kind of woman. How does that help women in general?

That’s my gut feeling, but putting that aside, what are we to make of this new push for acceptance of transgender condition and men (for it is mostly men) who think they are really women?

An excellent article from First Things from 2004 has surfaced in a timely way today. It is probably the best thing I have ever read on the transgender issue because it is written by a psychiatrist who has actually been involved in treating this very condition. He writes objectively about the condition using something called research and facts. As such the article is refreshing because this issue, like the same sex marriage issue, has now been caught up in a maelstrom of emotion and sentimentality.

Paul R McHugh was University Distinguished Professor of Psychiatry at John Hopkins University. He explains why they decided to stop recommending sex re-assignment surgery. First Dr McHugh explains his bewilderment at the confused sexual identity of the men. Although they said they were women trapped in men’s bodies, it didn’t ring true.

Men (and until recently they were all men) with whom I spoke before their surgery would tell me that their bodies and sexual identities were at variance. Those I met after surgery would tell me that the surgery and hormone treatments that had made them “women” had also made them happy and contented. None of these encounters were persuasive, however. The post-surgical subjects struck me as caricatures of women. They wore high heels, copious makeup, and flamboyant clothing; they spoke about how they found themselves able to give vent to their natural inclinations for peace, domesticity, and gentleness—but their large hands, prominent Adam’s apples, and thick facial features were incongruous (and would become more so as they aged). Women psychiatrists whom I sent to talk with them would intuitively see through the disguise and the exaggerated postures. “Gals know gals,” one said to me, “and that’s a guy.”

The subjects before the surgery struck me as even more strange, as they struggled to convince anyone who might influence the decision for their surgery. First, they spent an unusual amount of time thinking and talking about sex and their sexual experiences; their sexual hungers and adventures seemed to preoccupy them. Second, discussion of babies or children provoked little interest from them; indeed, they seemed indifferent to children. But third, and most remarkable, many of these men-who-claimed-to-be-women reported that they found women sexually attractive and that they saw themselves as “lesbians.” When I noted to their champions that their psychological leanings seemed more like those of men than of women, I would get various replies, mostly to the effect that in making such judgments I was drawing on sexual stereotypes.

So maybe not “Call me Caitlyn” but “Call me Confused”

McHugh set up a study to see if men who had transformed into women were cured of their problems. He also investigated the question of whether gender is genetic or cultural by doing a study on boys who were born with deformed genitals and who doctors decided should be castrated and raised as girls. The argument was that if they just changed the plumbing and treated the child as a girl they would be just fine.

What Dr McHugh found about the men who had surgically become women was interesting:

The psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Jon Meyer was already developing a means of following up with adults who received sex-change operations at Hopkins in order to see how much the surgery had helped them. He found that most of the patients he tracked down some years after their surgery were contented with what they had done and that only a few regretted it. But in every other respect, they were little changed in their psychological condition. They had much the same problems with relationships, work, and emotions as before. The hope that they would emerge now from their emotional difficulties to flourish psychologically had not been fulfilled.

We saw the results as demonstrating that just as these men enjoyed cross-dressing as women before the operation so they enjoyed cross-living after it. But they were no better in their psychological integration or any easier to live with. With these facts in hand I concluded that Hopkins was fundamentally cooperating with a mental illness. We psychiatrists, I thought, would do better to concentrate on trying to fix their minds and not their genitalia.

The study of boys who had their genitals removed and raised as girls was even more interesting. Continue Reading

Image via Bing

Uncategorized

Previous Post

June 1, 2015

The Dissolving Family and the Bio Tech Revolution

Next Post

June 2, 2015 Bruce Jenner's New Clothes

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category Anglican Matters Apologetics Architecture Blobble Study Book Reviews Brideshead Caitlin O'Rourke Catholic Art Catholic Culture Church Politics Chust for Nice Contemporary Culture Duane Mandible Ed Blanch Film Reviews Fr Harvey Nicolaitan Frank Viola Mantilla the Hon More Christianity Mrs Brady Catholic Old Lady Mystery of the Magi Norman Anderson Queen Hillary Saints and Supernatural Spirituality The Inklings The Vicar Theology Todd Unctuous Uncategorized

Select a Month October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz