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Tag Archives: gender incongruence

And now, a rebuttal of one of Dr. McHugh’s supporters

30 Monday May 2016

Posted by ts4jc in About Me, General Transsexual issues, Living Female, Uncategorized

≈ 2 Comments

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Anorexia, authentic, BDD, believed, biased studies, biological construct, brain sexuality, Chester Schmidt, children, cure, Dana Beyer, delusional, denial, feelings, feminine, FTM, GCS, Gender Identity, Gender Identity Clinic, gender incongruence, gender non-binary, genitalia, GRS, how others see us, human brain, identity, in utero differentiation, Intersex, John Money, Johns Hopkins Hospital, Johns Hopkins News-Letter, Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, Jon Meyer, Karolinska Institute, knowledge, male-female spectrum, masculine, mental health, MTF, obsession, Paul McHugh, peer review, persistence, physical body, physical features, presentation, real life test, rejection, Schizophrenia, science, sexual differentiation, SRS, success rates, transformation, Transgender, transgender discrimination, Transition, Transsexual, unbiased studies, Wall Street Journal, wrongness

Nearly two years ago, I wrote a rebuttal to a Wall Street Journal Op Ed piece by Dr. Paul McHugh. It continues to be one of the most frequent search items and reads on my site. About two weeks ago, someone supportive of Dr. McHugh posted a comment worthy of reply. And reply I have!

Here is the unedited comment. The link to my original post is contained in the first line:

Marshall commented on My rebuttal to Dr. Paul McHugh’s Wall Street Journal Op Ed

On June 12, 2014, an Op Ed article by Dr. Paul McHugh was highly critical of the prevailing trends in the treatment protocols …

You say: …”why 25% of those tracked in the Vanderbilt and Portman studies would persist in having transgender ‘feelings’. Could it be that the subjects know who they are?”

It’s far more likely that, as with other psychiatric conditions like Anorexia, the “feelings” are simply wrong. There’s no reason to believe transgender is different from the numerous other conditions whose root symptom is the same: a mental rejection of the physical reality. This is a huge problem for the “transgender as identity” movement and why it relies on emotion-based justifications like the one you make that the earnestness and “realness” of the transgender “identity” separates it from other delusional conditions. Yet patents with other conditions like BDD and schizophrenia are just as convinced that their perception is absolutely real. Transgender has no corner on realness.

Moreover, the thought that someone can actually know what the other gender feels like makes no more sense than someone knowing what another species feels like because you can’t experience something you aren’t. Whatever experience there is is entirely the result of BEING that thing, not imagining it.

Whether SRS is better than psychotherapy or hormone therapy or a combination… science just doesn’t have enough data for consensus, but again – when transgender is viewed in the light of similar delusional conditions, the idea of altering the physical body to fit the mental perception is dangerous. You wouldn’t indulge an Anorexic by administering liposuction. SRS has severe drawbacks and potential complications and is the only treatment that’s essentially irreversible. Science doesn’t yet have a cure for transexual – there may not even be one – we just don’t know. But the lack of a cure doesn’t mean SRS is the best treatment, nor that those who recommend against it like Dr. McHugh are out to get transexuals. Someone truly interested in helping transexuals accepts the science over the emotion.

paul-mchughFinally, brain studies do nothing to refute the fact that gender is purely a biological construct. Schizophrenics, Anorexics and people with BDD all have have been shown to have brain abnormalities which, while potentially valuable in assisting treatment, don’t substantiate the reality of their delusions.

And here is my reply:

Hi Marshall,

First of all, your comparison of transgender to anorexia (or the more general BDD) shows how little you understand the nature of transgender.  No matter how thin anorexics become, even to the point of skin and bones, they remain obsessed with losing weight.  Many will continue to see themselves as overweight even when dangerously underweight.

Transgender people, on the other hand, are all too aware of the reality of our bodies. Some of us may loathe them, but we acknowledge them.  Often, we go the opposite direction and enhance the features of the gender assigned at birth in an effort to cure.  For example, an MTF will grow facial hair and/or develop a muscular, athletic build.  That is totally opposite what an anorexic would do.  It is totally opposite what your assertion would predict.

We are under no delusion as to what our faces look like, how much hair we have, what our breasts look like and what our genitalia is comprised of.  That knowledge is very real and accurate.  And whatever each one of us chooses to do, we do it knowing that the physical transformation isn’t perfect.  But it almost always helps. 

What we attempt to do is deny our mental reality, not our physical one.  But if we live long enough, that attempt will inevitably be in vain.  Furthermore, once we reach the point where we begin physical transformation to our innate gender identity, it is a rare case when we don’t reach a point of relative satisfaction.  Yes, we have the common human trait of wanting to look attractive to others.  But obsession with continually becoming more feminine (in the case of an MTF) or more masculine (in the case of an FTM) is rare and it isn’t a trait confined to transgender people.  We have certainly read of cisgender people who undergo surgery after surgery to look like Barbie or Ken or their favorite movie star.

Transgender isn’t so much a matter of our body being wrong, but our conviction that our minds are right.  Yes, we transform for our own sense of what we want to look like.  But just as much, we transform so that others will identify us consistent with the person we are inside.  It isn’t enough that I know that I am female. I want others to see me as female, too.  Fortunately for me, that seems to be how everyone sees me.

In my case, I was in denial of how feminine (or at least androgynous) I was in appearance.   As to how attractive I am, others may judge (my Links page has a link to my Flickr page).  But when I tell people that one of my reasons why I waited so long to transition was concern that I couldn’t look female enough, most of them are incredulous.

I also find your argument on this point somewhat disingenuous.  First of all, if we didn’t transform physically at all (at least in our presentation), the authenticity of our gender identity would be severely questioned.  Second, many people in our culture are unhappy with their appearance and go to various lengths to do something about it: everything from diet and exercise, to body sculpting and body building to plastic surgery to supplements (ranging from the mild to the extreme).  When people do these things in a healthy way, there is nothing wrong with it.  When it becomes an obsession or is taken to an extreme, then there is indication of a psychological issue.  Similarly, some obsessive people may be transgender, but most transgender people are not obsessive about appearance.

To compare transgender brains with schizophrenic brains, as you then proceed to do, is not only disingenuous, it is insulting.  The brain abnormalities in schizophrenics include significantly lower amounts (up to 25% less) of gray matter, particularly in the temporal or frontal lobes, and significantly lower levels of activation in the middle frontal cortex and the inferior parietal cortex compared to mentally healthy people.  It is these abnormal deficiencies that cause the problems that schizophrenics have with hallucinations and dealing with reality.

On the other hand, the so-called abnormality of transgender brains is that various studies have shown that transgender people tend to have brains more like their innate gender than their gender assigned at birth.  But these brains all lie within a male-female spectrum.  So unless you are claiming that either male brains or female brains are somehow deficient or diseased in and of themselves, your argument doesn’t bear up to scrutiny.

You state that it is not possible for someone of one gender to know what the other gender feels.  On face value, I can accept that statement for the sake of discussion. But then you take it someplace beyond facts in evidence.  You have made the assumption that every person’s gender identity must automatically be consistent with their genital anatomy, and that anything else is “wrong”.  What is this based on?  How do you propose to prove this to be so? 

You are aware, are you not, that the brain and the genitalia are differentiated at different stages of fetal development?  Why is it so difficult to conceive of the possibility that in a small percentage of cases, the baby received predominantly testosterone at one of those stages and predominantly estrogen at another?  And if anatomy automatically determines gender identity, then what gender are Intersex people?  Are they automatically non-binary?  Some are and some aren’t.  Are they automatically consistent with the predominant characteristics?  Some are and some aren’t.  What about people who have both XX and XY?  What about people who have neither?  What do you do with people who suffer from various hormone based syndromes?  The bottom line is this: how can you judge the wrongness of someone’s gender identity without knowing either their physical or mental situation?

True, I have no idea what the other gender feels like.  That “other gender” for me is the male gender.  By virtue of having spent a great deal of time in men’s only spaces (athletic team locker rooms, college dorms, men’s ministry meetings, men’s bathrooms), I have a pretty good idea of what men are likely to do.  But I have little clue as to why they do things the way they do and how it feels for them when they do it.  I generally felt like an interloper at men only gatherings, but I am now right at home in women’s Bible study or women’s only social gatherings. 

Now as far as your statement about lack of evidence: seriously?  I can easily find at least hundreds of people who transitioned to live a successful, satisfying life in their innate gender.  Undoubtedly many more are successfully living post-transition out of the public eye.  And in the 2011 Karolinska Institute study that Dr. McHugh misconstrues, he blithely ignored the preponderance of patient satisfaction with the results of transition that includes surgery.  Isn’t that one of the goals of treatment, that the patients are satisfied with the results?  Furthermore, he totally ignored the Institute’s conclusion: inadequate follow up care for post-GCS transgender patients impedes progress in their post-operative mental and emotional health.

Meanwhile, where is the parade of transgender people who have been “cured” by methods espoused by Dr. McHugh?  Surgery as a possible treatment for transgender people is no more than 85 years old and extremely rare until 50 years ago.  For the vast majority of that time, most mental health professionals were treating transgender patients in the general manner endorsed by Dr. McHugh: psychotherapy and pharmacology to attempt to rid the patient of their transgenderism.  And there are still doctors using these methods.  Where are there success stories?  Surely they aren’t all in stealth mode.  There should be thousands more than those reported by those who transition to their innate gender.  Their absence shows that there was no significant success with these methods when they were the mainstream practice and there is no significant success with these methods now.

For a moment, let’s imagine we are talking cancer rather than transgender.  If faced with two possible treatments, one with a success rate comparable to those who physically transform in some way, shape or form, the other with a success rate comparable to methods espoused by McHugh and others who still follow that methodology, you would be a fool not to choose or recommend the first method in a heartbeat.  And I will tell you unequivocally that if social stigma against transgender people was a thing of the past, that success rate would soar much higher.

We now have two studies, one in Ontario and the other in the State of Washington, that show a high correlation of life success for transitioning youth with a high degree of parental support.  If transgender were merely a delusion, should such a correlation exist?  In fact, shouldn’t supporting a delusion be more harmful?  That’s what you and McHugh are claiming, no?

And we now have a better grasp of why many gender variant youths revert back to their birth-assigned gender.  Those who are exploring and experimenting with gender roles before puberty overwhelmingly tend to revert.  But those who prior to puberty know with confidence that their innate gender identity is incongruent with their genitalia overwhelmingly tend to persist in their transgender identity for life.  But when you lump the two groups together to get a larger sample size, it gives the erroneous impression that most transgender children revert and that there is no predictor of which children will persist.  The experimenters and explorers should not be considered part of the transgender population.

I can accept that gender is purely a biological construct: once we factor in that the human brain is an organ and biological part of the human body.  In fact, it could be reasonably argued that the brain to be the most significant sexual organ in the body.  Where do attraction, desire and arousal begin, in the genitals or in the brain?

Furthermore, if transgender gender identities were so “wrong” and “delusional”, then one could not expect to find very many successful post-transitional transgender people, certainly few who could handle careers that call for mental acuity.  And yet there are many transgender people who are college professors in both the arts and sciences, many who have high level positions (and some with PhD’s) in STEM fields, high ranking military officers, airplane pilots, financial professionals, salespeople, successful entrepreneurs, high ranking government officials, attorneys, medical doctors, architects, and the list goes on.  (My professional and personal accomplishments were mentioned in my original blog post about Dr. McHugh’s Op Ed, and can also be found on my LinkedIn page.)  Considering the discrimination that most of us faced during and after transition, this is a remarkable list.

Marshall, you keep going back to basing gender identity on feelings rather than knowledge.  So how do you know your gender identity?  (For the sake of the post, I am going to assume that Marshall is male name with apologies if I have misgendered Marshall.  I ask that when this section is read, the reader substitute the appropriate gender term for their situation.)  Do you feel male?  How do you know that is the way males feel in general?  Do you have discussions with other males at the golf course, bar, office, locker room or men’s organization meeting?  (I am trying to picture that discussion!  I’ve been in those types of situations many times and never once did I witness such a discussion.)

Or do you assume this is how males feel because of what you see when you look between your legs and because your parents, teachers, etc. told you that you are a boy and you blindly accepted it?  Or perhaps you answered a series of questions as part of a test (if such a test exists) to accurately assess your gender and it came out “male”.  If such a test existed, I took it and it came out “female” would you then accept my female gender identity as genuine?

Well, I can offer a test: the real life test.  I have been presenting as the female that I know myself to be for a little over 3½ years now.  I have dealt with four distinct test groups: those who knew me before transition; those who I met after transition to whom I have come out; those who only know me as Lois to whom I have not come out; strangers in public.

The vast majority (sometimes 100%) of every one of these groups see me as female.  I have had no negative moments from strangers.  People who have been willing to stay in my life accept me as female, although some had to overcome their prejudices first.  About 30 people who I have come out to in my new church accept me as female, as well as the dozens more who I have not come out to.  More than physical characteristics are involved here, although they help.  But it is also mannerisms, speech patterns, body language, fashion sense, comportment and a host of little things that clue a person as to whether they are dealing with someone male or female.  I am successful and happy over an extended time period.

Even more important, mentally living as a female is authentic and relatively effortless compared to having tried to act like a guy for decades.  For the most part I pulled off the charade and no one ever accused me of being effeminate.  But inside, it was often a struggle to be something I’m not.

In my previous blog post, I never accused Dr. McHugh of being out to get transsexuals or transgender people.  What I accuse him of is having an agenda, for whatever his reason, and that it leads to bad science.  A neutral scientist will seek to test a hypothesis by designing an experiment or study that is as unbiased as possible to come up with a valid result and then having it peer reviewed.  McHugh is on record as having sought his position at Johns Hopkins in part so that he could shut down the Gender Identity Clinic.  He promoted a study that would produce the desired result. 

I now quote from the Johns Hopkins News-Letter, a story written by Rachel Witkin on May 1, 2014:

In 1979, SBCU [Sexual Behaviors Consultation Unit] Chair Jon Meyer conducted a study comparing 29 patients who had the surgery and 21 who didn’t, and concluded that those who had the surgery were not more adjusted to society than those who did not have the surgery. Meyer told The New York Times in 1979: “My personal feeling is that surgery is not proper treatment for a psychiatric disorder, and it’s clear to me that these patients have severe psychological problems that don’t go away following surgery.”

After Meyer’s study was published, Paul McHugh, the Psychiatrist-in-Chief at Hopkins Hospital who never supported the University offering the surgeries according to [Chester] Schmidt, shut the program down.

Meyer’s study came after a study conducted by [John] Money, which concluded that all but one out of 24 patients were sure that they had made the right decision, 12 had improved their occupational status and 10 had married for the first time. [Dana] Beyer believes that officials at Hopkins just wanted an excuse to end the program, so they cited Meyer’s study.

…

A 1979 New York Times article also states that not everyone was convinced by Meyer’s study and that other doctors claimed that it was “seriously flawed in its methods and statistics and draws unwarranted conclusions.”

However, McHugh says that it shouldn’t be surprising that Hopkins discontinued the surgeries, and that he still supports this decision today. He points to Meyer’s study as well as a 2011 Swedish study that states that the risk of suicide was higher for people who had the surgery versus the general population.

…

Beyer, however, cites a study from 1992 that shows that 98.5 percent of patients who underwent male-to-female surgery and 99 percent of patients who underwent female-to-male surgery had no regrets.

“It was clear to me at the time that [McHugh] was conflating sexual orientation and the actual physical act with gender identity,” Beyer said.

As I stated in my previous post, it is also clear that McHugh errs horribly by comparing the histories of transgender patients with the general population.  The comparison is invalid due to the overwhelming prejudice that we face in society.  Marshall, try living for a couple of years with what most out transgender people face: higher murder victim rates, higher victim of violence rates, rampant job discrimination, significantly higher incidence of UIT’s because most of us rather “hold it in” than risk using public bathrooms, significant rates of discrimination in basic health care including outright refusal to provide any care at all (2% of transgender people report having been assaulted at medical facilities), frequent rejection by family, frequent rejection by one’s faith community … I submit that it is a testimony to the mental health and strength of transgender people that so many of us have achieved any success at all after transitioning to live in our innate gender.  Yet we have achieved far more than the bare minimum.

You say that “science doesn’t yet have a cure for transexual [sic]”. The evidence is in and mounting. We don’t need a cure. We just need to be believed. 

They that sow in tears shall reap in joy. – Psalm 126:5

God bless,

Lois

 

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My rebuttal to Dr. Paul McHugh’s Wall Street Journal Op Ed

19 Thursday Jun 2014

Posted by ts4jc in About Me, General Transsexual issues, Uncategorized

≈ 6 Comments

Tags

bias, body dysmorphia, born again, Christian identity, control group, core identity, delusion, Dr. John Money, fallacy of the excluded middle, Gender Identity, Gender Identity Clinic, gender incongruence, Gender role, Gender variance, Johns Hopkins, Karolinska Institute, Lynn Conway, mental illness, nature vs nurture, Op Ed, patient satisfaction, Paul McHugh, peer review, Sex reassignment surgery, transsexual children, Wall Street Journal

On June 12, 2014, an Op Ed article by Dr. Paul McHugh was highly critical of the prevailing trends in the treatment protocols of transsexuals, in particular with regard to the use of surgery.  At the core of his argument is Dr. McHugh’s persistence in believing that transsexuals are mentally ill and suffering from some sort of delusion rather than there being authenticity to some people having gender incongruence between mind and body.  

For copyright reasons, I am posting a link the Dr. McHugh’s Op Ed rather than reprinting it here.  My rebuttal follows the link.

http://online.wsj.com/articles/paul-mchugh-transgender-surgery-isnt-the-solution-1402615120

Dr. McHugh wonders why 25% of those tracked in the Vanderbilt and Portman studies would persist in having transgender “feelings”. Could it be that the subjects know who they are? Just because the majority of children who display gender non-conformity eventually abandon their experimentation and settle into a gender role that matches their body parts does not invalidate the experience of those of us whose incongruent gender identity persists.

The doctor’s bias is revealed when he calls them “feelings”. To borrow a phrase from Tom Scholz of the music group, Boston, what transsexuals experience is “more than a feeling”. It is common for us to describe our life in our target gender as authentic. We know who and what we are.

When I was seven years old, I wanted to be at various times a scientist, a policeman or centerfielder for the Dodgers. At the same age, I knew I was female. There was no “wannabe” aspect to it all. It was knowledge. Any conflict came from external forces. Now that I have been living full-time, I have a peace hitherto unknown to me.

Dr. McHugh is proud of the fact that he shut down the Gender Identity Clinic at Johns Hopkins. Then again, he admitted in an article in American Scholar (“Psychiatric Misadventures”, Autumn 1992, as reprinted on the website of Lock Haven University) that he came to that institution with the intention of ending sex-change surgeries. When one has an agenda, studies can be designed with bias and the results interpreted with bias. So even when Dr. John Money, certainly no supporter of nature over nurture, argued that another colleague had grossly distorted results to reach the conclusion that the GIC should be terminated (and many outside peer reviews agreed with Money), Money was overruled.

Dr. McHugh touts the 2011 Karolinska Institute study as affirmation of his early position. Upon review of this study, significant problems with it are obvious to someone who understands the transsexual population. The sex-reassigned persons are compared to a control group of individuals who had no history of gender variation. Historically, the study group faces far greater discrimination, experiences far more violence against them, tend to be underemployed and underinsured, are far more likely to encounter negative prejudice when attempting to establish a meaningful and lasting personal relationship, and are often ostracized by their own families and support structures like the church. Therefore, it is no surprise that their outcomes will not compare favorably with a control group that generally does not face that same onslaught of obstacles.

I suggest that if the study group was compared to a control group from another, non-gender related, marginalized group, the comparison would be far more equal. For example, what if a random sample of American blacks was chosen as the control population? Yet even then, blacks do not face above average rejection in personal relationships, and are not rejected by their families or their local place of worship.

Furthermore, Dr. McHugh offers no proof of any other psychiatric intervention that yields better results. Nor does he offer proof of psychiatric treatments that can “cure” transsexuality. If a cancer treatment had only a 20% success rate, would he propose that it be dropped even if there are no better alternatives? Or would he be grateful that 20% were healed?

Moving on to the doctor’s description of three so-called “subgroups” of transsexuals, he crafts descriptions that subtly attempt to exclude everyone from being a legitimate candidate for SRS. The transsexuals in the first two subgroups come out of the closet too old for it to be trusted. Those in the last subgroup are too young to be considered trustworthy.

But a careful read of Dr. McHugh’s last subgroup shows that he is guilty of the fallacy of the excluded middle. The doctor’s point of view appears to be that nearly 80% of gender questioning children will eventually lead their lives in gender roles consistent with their anatomy. Even so, is he proposing that the other 20% be kicked to the curb? The persistence of the feelings that he found so puzzling earlier in his Op Ed is not puzzling to me and many of his colleagues. The simple reason is that the identity is true. Genuine gender identity is at the core of who we are as individuals. In any other circumstance, attempts to tinker with core identity would immediately be seen for what it is: brainwashing.

Despite the doctor’s overt protests and denials, his own statistics point to the fact that some people are truly transsexual. And for those of us who make an informed choice for SRS (and there are many transsexuals who choose to be non-op), it is an important and viable part of our treatment.

Yes, screening procedures should continue to be refined and improved. Any person misdiagnosed and altered creates the very situation that authentic transsexuals need to escape. And yes, since the treatment of minors with strong and persistent transsexual symptoms is in its incipient stages, at least fifty years behind the treatment of adults, we need to continue to work on proper ethical protocols that make sure that the child is helped and guided to the best possible result rather than being pushed toward a result that reflects the practitioner’s bias in either direction.

I also agree somewhat with the doctor on what surgery does not accomplish. But in part that is because the medical profession has misnamed the surgery. This is why many of us are now using the term “confirming” as in “Gender Confirming Surgery”.  At this time, surgery can only make changes that help the body conform more closely to your gender identity. But with all the advances in stem cell research with the ability to grow organs, who knows what will be possible in the future, perhaps the near future. Even so, surgery cannot change your gender. If you were female before, you will be female after. But we are still left with Dr. McHugh’s unsupported assumption that a person’s gender identity must have a 1:1 correlation with a single body part. Where’s the scientific proof? Taken to absurdity to prove the absurd, it validates those women who accuse men of thinking with that same body part.

There are still more problems with Dr. McHugh’s Op Ed article:

– It ignores brain studies which indicate a correlation between transsexual brains and the normative brain of their target gender. The growing evidence of physical causes of incongruent gender identity is an inconvenient truth to those who label transsexuals as delusional, or suffering from mental disorders such as body dysmorphia.

– It arrogantly and cavalierly dismisses the importance of patient satisfaction. All else being equal, shouldn’t that be primary? The quoted studies do not claim that the circumstances get worse, but rather that they tend to show little change. I contend that if patients are more satisfied with their lot in life, even when it has changed little, is evidence that SRS is beneficial.

– It insults devoted parents, many of whom were not part of the “diversity” crowd when they faced a gender non-conforming child, who have seen that child transformed from an intransigent, tantrum-throwing monster into a happy, calm, obedient and well-adjusted child upon being allowed to live life in his or her target gender.

– It discounts the success stories of people like Lynn Conway and the many other success stories that she features on her website. Does Dr. McHugh believe that these examples of transsexuals who have gone on to live successful, productive lives would have been better off untreated, marginalized, miserable and broken?

Finally, a little bit about my own personal experience for what it is worth. I became aware of my female identity at age seven, which I have since learned is the average age for transsexuals. I have never considered myself ugly or hated my genitals. They merely seem as out of place as a soda can would be in the hand of Venus in Botticelli’s painting.

I qualify for Mensa. I am a college graduate and have been gainfully employed or self-employed for most of my adult life. I have no psychiatric or mental health therapy history prior to my gender counselling that began in May 2012. During the intake by my gender counselor, she questioned me as to whether I experienced a whole laundry list of mental health issues such as sleep problems, eating disorders, anger, depression, a desire to hurt myself, and so on. To every one of those questions, my truthful answer was “no”.

Like most transsexuals my age, I tried to cure myself. But I reached a point when I could no longer deny that this had to be dealt with head on. Many of the people in my life closest to me affirm that it has been positive for me. Many of my personal relationships have improved. I am pleased with the results and expect that life will also improve if bottom surgery is performed after a thoughtful review of all relevant factors.

I am intelligent and aware enough to know the difference between how it feels to want to be something and how it feels to know what I am. One other thing: I also know how it feels to undergo a major identity change in a totally separate area of life. Twenty-five years ago this month, I received Jesus Christ into my life as my personal Lord and Savior. As a new creature in Christ, I have a new spiritual identity. My female identity persisted after this experience, even in the face of opposition from many in evangelical circles. Comparing and contrasting the two, I understand that my Christian identity is the result of a profound life change while my female gender identity is innate and permanent.

People close to me note that since I transitioned, I am happier and no longer in conflict. As a Christian, I know that happiness can be ephemeral and pleasure deceitful. But you cannot counterfeit peace and joy. Since living full-time as a female, my peace and joy has increased abundantly.

But wait!  I forgot that there are those in the mental health profession with the view that people who believe they have a personal relationship with God are also delusional. Maybe I shouldn’t have mentioned that I am born again. Oh well.

But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness, faith, Meekness, temperance: against such there is no law. – Galatians 5:22-23

God bless,

Lois

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