the new prerogative
CHOOSING GENDER
![](volume_images/gender-2.jpg)
by
ROBERT J. LEWIS
___________________________________
Gender gender on the
wall,
Who's the most of both of all?
Bambi and the Cry Babies
Is the
male-female binary fixed for all time, and everything that falls
outside that time-tested template aberrational? Or is there an
existential case to be made that gender isn’t strictly a
hormonal imperative, that it is also psychical, that one can override
or choose one’s gender?
Plucked
her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
Lou Reed
Never
before in the history of the species has that question been so
passionately debated, in part consequent to the revolution in
communication technology that facilitates minority issues and
causes going global in a matter of hours or days. There once was
a time when gays and transgenders, especially in remote and/or
homophobic areas and cultures, quietly suffered their condition.
Today, thanks to the Internet and social networking, androphiliacs,
gynephiliacs and cisgendered now have a voice and the world is
listening – and every vote counts.
Facilitating,
especially since the turn of the century, the acceptance of the
concept of gender fluidity are ground breaking medical advances
in sexual reassignment surgery, to the effect that more and more
especially males are stepping out and announcing that they do
not feel comfortable in their assigned gender.
In “Sexual
Relativity and Gender Revolution,”
Nick Catalano reports that 33% of heterosexuals and homosexuals
identify themselves as somewhere in between, numbers that would
have been unthinkable 50,000 years ago when men were living in
caves. The Independent
reports the number of children suffering
from gender identity disorder (gender dysphoria) has increased
tenfold in the past six years.
While
the new
data is disturbing to some, it opens up a line
of inquiry that directly implicates our fundamental values as
it concerns human sexuality. Have we come to a critical crossroads
(crossing over) in the evolution of the sexuality of the species?
“If you want to be a drag queen and your parents don’t
let you, you need new parents,” says eight-year-old
drag queen contestant Lactatia.
Why are
more and more men unhappy with their sexual dispensation? And
is there a relationship between this unhappiness and the disproportionately
high suicide rates among men compared to women? And finally, how
do demographics play into this confluence of issues, noting that
most demographers side with the view that current world population
growth rates are unsustainable.
GENDER
FLUIDITY – FACTS AND FRICTIONS
We know
that “The likelihood of being gay increases by about 33
percent with each additional older brother. From these statistics,
researchers calculate that about 15 to 30 percent of gay men have
the fraternal birth order effect to thank for their homosexuality.”
Depending
on the country, the suicide rate among both young and middle aged
males is between 3 to 7 % higher than women. According to the
HNCS
(National Center for Health Statistics), young males are 5-times
more likely than young women to commit suicide.
How do
we account for the divergence? Since the onus of sexual performance
falls to the man, men are disproportionately more vulnerable to
and adversely affected by performance anxiety (PA). PA is further
exacerbated by the Internet and the ubiquity of explicit sex that
imposes unrealistic standards and expectations that especially
the young are not equipped to deal with. There is considerable
anecdotal evidence (based on rape
and sexual assault statistics) that more and more
men are transferring their sexual frustration into resentment
against women who, to the everlasting vexation of men, are constitutionally
more sexually capable. On this delicate matter, the science is
unequivocal. The clitoris is appreciably more sensitive than the
penis, women are multi-orgasmic, the intensity of the female orgasm
doesn’t diminish with age, and most importantly women can
do it all day long and men cannot. Throughout history, men have
never forgiven women for their sexual advantage and have exacted
terrible revenge: from the deforming foot-binding culture in China,
to the Islamic practice of FGM (female genital mutilation), to
witch burning in Europe.
Thanks
to the Internet, what the 19th century Russian novelist Dostoevsky
feared most is now the distinguishing feature of our age: “everything
is permitted.” By the time kids reach puberty (as early
as ten in some cases), most of them have witnessed every kind
and manner of sexual congress imaginable. To pretend that an 11-year-old,
tucked under the sheets with his smartphone -- observing consenting
adults engaging in marathon coupling sessions in every possible
position and combination -- hasn’t been profoundly affected
if not altered by what he has seen is not only naïve but
irresponsible: especially in respect to man’s dark side
of the moon sexual propensities that might include incest, misogynist
sex, S & M, pedophilia and bestiality. We know that early
sexual experiences very often predict adult sexual behaviour.
Depending on the study, between 30% to 50% percent of sexually
abused children become abuser adults.
Completely
absent from Internet sex is the vital emotional component, or
precisely that which makes us human. The young -- lacking the
cognitive maturity to protect themselves against the first effect
of porn’s meticulously edited final product -- quite naturally
come to have totally unrealistic notions of what constitutes normal
healthy sex.
By the
time they hit their mid-teens, many regard sex less as a pleasure
and more of a duty to be performed, a disturbing if not distressing
state of affairs luminously revealed in the film It
Felt Like Love, where you have 15-year-old
girls measuring their worth by the number of guys they have blown,
while the males, mimicking the icy disengagement of their porn
role models, have artfully normalized the simple unzip to mask
their fear of cultivating real relationships where all sorts of
things can go wrong.
But as
the numbers suggest, young males, afraid or unable to measure
up, are surfacing as sexually damaged or disabled adults looking
for a quick fix (a new face, a new body). Recent studies suggest
that there is a direct cause and effect relationship between performance
anxiety, the high suicide rate among males and the nascent transgender
revolution.
According
to a McGill University report, 13% of the student body had admitted
to thoughts of suicide and 57% sought mental health counseling
services. A Dutch
study determined that males are 3-times more likely
to opt for transgendering than women.
What
is now becoming clear, despite those who insist the male-female
binary is a strictly genetic construct, is that men and women
who can afford the new wardrobe and costly medical bills can opt
out of their assigned gender, or overrule their orientation. Twenty
five to 50% of abused heterosexual women turn to lesbianism; in
prison heterosexuals frequently practice homosexuality, and in
the population at large, more and more males are identifying as
gender fluid.
Fifty
thousand years ago, when the earth was sparsely populated, there
would have been, as a percentage of the population, fewer homosexuals
than today, and the concept of gender fluidity would not have
existed. But today, in the face of numbers that are unsustainable,
man has shown himself indictably incapable of regulating population
growth, and the task, the clean-up job, by default, has devolved
to nature, already on the job. Homosexuality along with gender
abdication are two of nature’s early triumphs, or from the
demographer’s perspective, they represent the human equivalent
of the lemming suicide response to over-population.
As it
directly concerns the growing human threat to the health of the
planet, we can expect a major increase in both homosexual and
transgender populations. And beyond that, with major advances
in gene sequencing and reproductive technology, there may come
a time when procreation and conventional sex will be delinked,
especially since we are a species soft-wired to take the path
of least resistance.
If, with
the blessings of nature, stress-triggered
homosexuality, transgendering and suicide are the messy means
to the desirable end of curbing over-population, the skeptic will
quite naturally point to rampant population growth in India and
Indonesia, where there is no apparent increase as a percentage
of the population among the above mentioned groups. In these places,
why hasn’t stress had a negative impact on breeding outcomes?
The short answer is religion, which acts like a firewall against
all sorts of what would otherwise be stress inducing (birthrate
unfriendly) outcomes. Religion relieves men and women of the responsibility
of courtship and marriage, and provides for certainties (status,
class, afterlife) absent in secular societies. However, where
Islam and Hinduism have been destabilized by secularism, there
has been a concomitant increase in both homosexual and transgender
populations, and lower birthrates. Hindus living in the secular
West (1.3 births/couple) enjoy significantly lower rates (2.4)
than their counterparts in India. The birthrate among religious
Hassidic Jews is 4.1 while among the general Jewish population
it is 1.5. So if religion is abetting over population, and custom
and culture are unable to reign in the growth, nature, in its
own fashion, will step up to the plate.![](volume_images/gender-4.jpg)
To the
many who at a gut level are affronted by homosexuality and transgenderism,
you are urged to learn to think outside the box in which you are
comfortably (self-righteously) ensconced, pointing an accusing
finger at those very minority groups that are working and suffering
on your behalf. In the war against unsustainable population growth,
homosexuality and gender fluidity should be encouraged and subsidized
at the highest levels of government. In both India and China,
where female infanticide (selective abortion syndrome) is practiced,
there is now a predominance of men over women, which might not
be unrelated to what some have characterized as an epidemic in
sexual assault and rape.
For every
increase in the homosexual and transgender populations, a favour,
a blessing has been bestowed upon the world bursting at the numbers.
And what is required of us all, with a nod to nature and Lamarck,
is not our wrath and censure, but our infinite gratitude, if not
from the heart then from the head.
In the
absence of Divine Intervention, we now look to the non-breeders
of the world to lead us out of the wilderness of our folly and
failure to a new world order, where there is no disparity between
knowing and doing what we know is right for the planet.
I call
upon non-breeders of the world to multiply and unite, and save
the billions of us from our miserable plight.