OMG! I’m A Woman!–Waking Up To Transgender Fantasy

Apparently the natural child of Brad Pitt and Angela Jolie will be ‘transitioned’ from girl to boy and will undergo hormone treatment and more ‘substantial’ alterations to make her more completely and finally male.  Of course she is too young to have any say in the matter, but may wake up quite surprised at what she's become.



There is no doubt that there are boys who find the whole male macho trip tedious and uninteresting, and who would would rather dress in Dior and St Laurent than shoulder pads and starched shirts, but not many.  Most boys born with penises are quite happy to have them when the time comes; and while, yes,the phallus is the most obvious symbol of male aggression, it is also what women want.  Despite feminist claims to the contrary, most female desire is male-oriented.

It is one thing for an adult male to decide that he has had enough manhood to want to go over to the other side; but another altogether for a child to be transformed before the age of consent and certainly before he knows what’s sexually what.

Pitt and Jolie must have observed their daughter, noted non-traditional sexual behavior and decided that she was more male than female.  After all, they all had had many years of exposure to girly women and frontier men to know recognize sexuality of any kind in their daughter.

The Vicomte de Valmont, hero of Les Liaisons Dangereuses, was as foppish as any in the court of Louis, but who was as predatory a male as they come.  His dandy ways were simply part of the zeitgeist, powerful men in diffident, fey bodies.  Or Casanova himself who was as luxuriously prettified as any nobleman of the 18th century.  Why, then, wouldn’t the parents of the young Pitt-Jolie daughter let her dwell in a hermaphrodite world until she decided where she belonged.  Why not hold off surgery until she was sure?



Of course these days it is not so simple.  Not only is it difficult for parents to sense gender misgivings in their children, especially like Pitt and Jolie who have made a living impersonating others, but now they have the entire gender spectrum from which to choose.  Since the range of gender preferences is almost infinite, perhaps adding a male member to their little girl might not be necessary.

She could be girl-boy, boy-tending girl, girlish boy, tomboy, vixen, misogynist, ram-and-bunk boy, pretty dresses and cookies girls, half-one, half-the other, and any one of many gender combinations and permutations.  Why resort to neutering God-given gender characteristics before it is necessary or even desirable?

While there is little doubt that some girls should have been born boys and vice-versa, it seems rather extreme to assume that every young person is conflicted and must choose sexual orientation.  Ninety-nine percent of adolescent boys without having to be told, instructed, or encouraged think about girls night and day, are defined by their sexual longings, and will never be complete until their desire is consummated; and ninety-nine percent of teenage girls imagine what it is to have a hard, erec penis inside them, to give themselves to boys and be delirious with sexual passion.

The outliers – the very few sexually dubious who wonder what it might be like to wear dresses or be a Green Beret – will always be on the edge of Mrs. Linder’s hardwood dance floor, unsure whether to skate across to the boys or the girls – but who will always have to fend for themselves.  They don’t matter to the ninety-nine percent, have no significance whatsoever on birth rates, heritage, or the survival of the species, and are and always will be supernumerary to the majority and unnoticed.



The latest census figures suggest that the percentage of LGBTQ in the United States is under 3 percent, and the proportion of those who self-identify as transgender is well under a fraction of one percent.  Why, most demographers and social and political philosophers wonder, is so much made of such an insignificant proportion?

Although black people make up barely more than 10 percent of the population, the disproportionate attention paid to ‘inclusivity’, identity, and race is understandable.  Jefferson understood how freeing millions of slaves would affect the nation.   He argued long and hard for a negro homeland, a place of refuge and accommodation for former slaves, but was unsuccessful; so he and other Upper South slaveholders sold their slaves downriver where the demand for slave labor to work cotton crops was high and increasing.   One hundred and fifty years after the Emancipation Proclamation, we are still dealing with post-Reconstruction.  Even though the black population is statistically insignificant, attention needs to be paid.



Not so to the fraction of one percent of the sexually marginal.  Respect, tolerance, and civil rights is one thing and easily accorded.  Promoting the legitimacy and normative character of asymptotic sexual orientation is unnecessary, time-consuming, politically divisive, and totally unnecessary.

Whether little Bobby Benson is a girl trapped in a boy’s body or vice-versa; no matter how many Folsom Street, The Castro,  and Bay-to-Breakers LGBTQ street fairs, festivals and parades are held; no matter how many ‘L-Word Mississippi’ television series are aired, and no matter how many alternative gender candidates jump on the political bandwagon, American society remains and will always be heterosexual. Whatever the statistical anomalies may be, and however more or less non-polar sexual orientation fluctuates, human settlements will always be male-female.  It is one thing to let children sort out their sexual inconveniences in time; another altogether to promote non-polar sexuality.

In fact, many observers have suggested that sexual alteration of children should be considered a criminal offense. 

Many mothers think that their daughters’ piercings and tattoos are tantamount to mutilation.  While not so extreme as female genital mutilation, such defilement of a God-given body, they say, amounts to the same thing.   Most mothers and fathers would similarly look at sex change as the most extreme, most heinous, and most unconscionable act; and those who try to normalize such changes as morally complicit.

In the coming post-human generation parents will be able to choose the sexuality of their children as well as their intelligence, athletic ability, and artistic talent.  They will be able to choose from an electronic smorgasbord of attributes and pay for the DNA of Michael Jordan, Scarlett Johansson, or Albert Einstein; and in that near-future world such discussions of God-given anything will be moot.  Until that time, however, it seems more sane, more historically accurate, more moral, and certainly more sensible to stick with male and female.