7/2017
Jimmy Soul’s “If You Wanna Be Happy” is based on the song “Ugly Woman” by the Trinidadian calypsonian Roaring Lion recorded in 1934. (1) Ancient history, right? Uh, maybe not.
You can read the entire lyrics (2), but for illustration purposes, lets at least look at the chorus.
If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life,
Never make a pretty woman your wife.
So from my personal point of view,
Get an ugly girl to marry you.
When first I saw Alex (need I say that this is not his/her real name), he was laying on the bed holding his girlfriend’s hand. He had on khaki shorts and a T-shirt. He was a bit overweight, had hairy legs and on his face was a goatee, of sorts. But Alex was not what he seemed. He also had breasts and a vagina, ovaries, tubes and a uterus. He labeled himself a transgender.
According to Merriam-Webster, transgender means, “of, relating to, or being a person (as a transsexual or a transvestite) who identifies with or expresses a gender identity that differs from the one which corresponds to the person’s sex at birth.” Transsexual means that the person actually altered his/her anatomy to replicate (copy, not repeat) something other than what it is, was or was wanted to be. Transvestite means dress-up, no permanent physical change has occurred. How is a person’s sex at birth determined? Well, that’s a sticky wick, to say the least (no pun intended). But even definitions change with cultural pressures. There is no reality, really.
As of the time of this writing, a vagina/uterus transplant has only been considered and attempted in women who have congenital absence of a uterus, that we know of. In other words, the patient has the plumbing and control mechanisms (meaning the exceedingly complex endogenous neuro-hormonal system to support the transplanted organ) and just need the parts hooked up. It has not been successful across genders, meaning that the organ transplanted has not succeeded in functioning as intended by carrying a fetus to delivery. Except in the movie Junior with Arnold Schwarzenegger.
A penis/testicular transplant, well, is not. The penis is not really a transplant and the testicular “transplant” is just a couple of glass marbles rattling around in a sack of skin. What happens is that the surgeon uses extra tissue not needed anymore (the vagina and harvested fat tissue that will not be missed from other parts of the body) to create an appendage that hangs out, not hangs in. So, technically this is a mixed autologous and exogenous fabrication, not a transplant.
So, this whole business is about self-identity?
During my exam, the patient exhibited obvious embarrassment at having breasts and continually tried to pull his shirt down, or uh, her shirt down (whatever) to cover them when he or she thought I had finished my exam. Most women do the same, although for a different reason.
Not that I am a big Freud fan, but let’s give the dude his due. Freud proposed that:
1. Id (das Es) is the unorganized part of the personality structure that contains a human’s basic, instinctual drives, particularly our sexual and aggressive drives and acts according to the “pleasure principle”, or the psychic force that motivates the tendency to seek immediate gratification of any impulse.
2. Ego (das Ich) represents what may be called reason and common sense.
3. Super-ego (das Uber-Ich) strives to act in a socially appropriate manner. Whereas the id just wants instant self-gratification, Uber Ich controls our sense of right, wrong and guilt and helps us fit into society by getting us to act in socially acceptable ways.
Very similar to that portrayed by Michael Keaton(s) in Multiplicity.
Alex’s chart lists anxiety and depression as his chronic “medical” problems. But these are not “medical .” They are psychiatric problems. In fact, everything I have said here is founded and grounded in psychiatry. Everything but the surgery and that I’ve shown to be a farce. A transgender “female” cannot conceive or carry a child and a transgender “male” cannot beget a child regardless of how much psychotherapy they go through. At least, not without a lot of test tubes, laboratories and artificial growth media. We are told that these issues are not psychiatric problems but rather the true core of our essence, our being. But those millions (or million trillions) of cells in our body still have either 2 X or an X and a Y chromosome. (3) Except those that have a mix of both. Rather than having a psychiatric origin to this conflict, we now have a battle of XXs and XYs within a body. Who wins? Is it a matter of quantity, quality or control? Or is it a matter of who’s DNA predominates? (4,5,6)
With all this being said, can a white boy be black because he wants to? Like our first black President?
Your grumpy Uncle/Brother Dave, puzzling through the biology, physics, genetics, culture and politics of sex determination.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_You_Wanna_Be_Happy
- http://lyrics.wikia.com/wiki/Jimmy_Soul:If_You_Wanna_Be_Happy
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XY_sex-determination_system
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/3-human-chimeras-that-already-exist/
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/q-a-mixed-sex-biology/
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intersex
Weary.