"Coy Mathis, 6, was born a male but has presented as a female since she was 18-months-old, her mother Kathryn Mathis told talk show host Katie Couric." I was confused and it was not about who used what bathrooms.
To be transgender is to identify with a gender other than your biological gender. Why was a 6 year old child identifying as a gender other than the child's biological gender? How did this happen from 18 months of age? How can an 18 MONTH OLD CHILD chose to identify with a different gender? Was he playing 'dress ups' one day and put on a dress, causing his parents to make this assumption? What kid doesn't do that? Did he sit down and explain to his parents his frustration at being a boy and that he wanted to identify as a girl? Society (in Australia) does not legally allow people to vote, drink alcohol or get married until they are 18. This is the age that western society deems a person responsible and mature enough to be able to make life changing decisions.
WHO let an 18 month old determine that he was confused with his gender and allowed him to begin presenting himself as a girl? This is a life changing decision that requires more maturity to process than voting or drinking alcohol.
As it seems ridiculous and unreasonable that an 18 month old child could make that decision, was it is fact the parents that made this decision on the child's behalf? If so, what are the implications of that? Has our gender simply become a choice? There is a massive ethical debate in the area of choosing the sex of children through IVF. Changing a child's gender at 18 months old on behalf of a child goes way beyond that debate and in my opinion can be nothing other than immoral. How does a child return from that to embrace his true gender if he wishes too? What are the emotional and social implications to 'change' his gender 'back' to his biological gender? What happens during puberty? The child will have no choice it seems other than to have the hormone treatment at a minimum. His parents have backed him into a corner that will be very hard to recover from. This is simply irresponsible parenting!
Richard Dawkins talks about Christians committing child abuse as they "brainwash" their children, teaching them about the Bible. This is unreasonable because children do not grow up in a vacuum, unbiased by the worldview of their guardians. Every parent teaches their children their values and worldview, even atheists. Later in life the child then makes a decision as to which worldview they wish to personally adopt. It is a natural process of becoming an adult. This situation is completely different based on my above thoughts! Would Dawkins call this child abuse? He would have trouble doing so because this idea is acceptable within his atheist philosophy. There is nothing wrong from an atheist's position, to raise their male child as a female.
The reason I believe it is child abuse and immoral is because the parents failed to implement and guide their child based on one of the simplest absolutes in life, gender. The problem is that this absolute has been undermined, especially over the last 2 generations. As society has rejected the idea that we are created by God and answerable to him, all absolutes are now up for question. The distinction was then made between a physical and non-physcial gender within a person to justify individual decisions to change their gender. I believe that people do have these internal struggles but that the source of the struggle is based in our sin. Many people struggle with different sinful thoughts that cannot act out for the sake of doing what is right, not selfish. This trend has begun a very slippery slope that has become very obvious through this particular news article, where an 18 month old child became transgender, under the influence of his parents who are supposed to lookout for and protect his wellbeing.
If we remove God and absolute morals from our world, there is nothing wrong with this story and we should have no reason to be upset by it. If you are upset by it, it is because you know it is inherently wrong based on the natural law that we all live under. If gender is up for question based on individual feelings or perceptions, what other physical attributes become relative such as eye colour, height or our age? Where will it end? I for one, do not wish to find out!
Kitwalker05,
ReplyDeleteElsewhere on the internet, it states that the parents received advice from doctors.
See: http://www.smh.com.au/world/a-little-girl-in-a-boys-body-how-sixyearold-coy-became-an-unlikely-poster-child-20130301-2fap6.html
Based on this, the arguement becomes less about a young male identifying as a young female with support or at least enabling actions by parents, but actually questions such as:
(a) Is transgenderism a biological and or psychological reality? If 'yes', at what age does/can it manifest?
(b) Given the parents went to the steps of seeking medical advice (presumably in good faith), is the medical advice binding on the parents?
(c) What is the foundation of the transgender diagnosis by the medical practitioners?
(d) Was a second opinion sought by the parents?
(e) Are in fact the parents fulfilling the original directions of the medical practitioners?
(f) If a right for a transgender child exists to use a particular facility, based on an 'interior' self-identification of gender, but yet yet presents externally as another gender what rights to "normal" gender children have who would identify the genders of others by 'external' factors, and so affirm their own 'interior' self-identification?
Regards,
Ben Oligrevie
Thanks for your reply Ben. I was not aware of this other article. Thank you for pointing it out. This is somewhat more disturbing that medical partitioners in fact advised the parents to act in this manner. I appreciate your questions and will think through them. I am very mindful to try and distinguish between being judgemental versus expressing and discussing the facts of the situation.
DeleteWhat I find interesting is the fact that moral relativism seems to find its grounding in our intellectual understanding of who we think we are. Much of this is based on the scientific discoveries over the last few hundred years. These discoveries are mostly based in physical science. The irony is that we take this mindset into the area of meta-physics that we do not fully understand. Our understanding of science seems to have created a mindset that we know more than we actually do. This arrogant and self centred attitude becomes dangerous as we apply it to the sphere of meta physics and pretend to speak with authority.