By Roger-Luc Chayer / Translation by Robert Frank
On the heels of the Caitlyn Jenner debacle and his highly publicized sex-change that resonated around the world, and following some extremely violent attacks on transgendered people in the United States, expert psychiatrist Paul R. McHugh, of Baltimore’s Johns Hopkins University hospital welcomed the opportunity to clarify the issue while debunking some popular misconceptions about transsexuality.
The former Johns Hopkins hospital chief psychiatrist and emeritus professor of psychology stated in a June 2 interview that transsexuality is a mental illness that requires medical treatment; that sex change is “biologically impossible” and that those who promote or encourage the trans lifestyle by advocating gender reassignment surgery are making a big mistake.
It goes without saying that, in the midst of the current furor, the professor’s position is highly controversial, but it’s still worth giving pause to reflect on the topic in order to promote better understanding and to learn some of the facts. For example, it’s helpful to know that less than 0.5 per cent of people who say that they’re trans are affected by a rare physical disorder that can lead them to have sexual organs that don’t match their sex chromosomes: XX for men; and XY for women.
Dr. McHugh, who has authored six books and 125 medical reports, stated that sex change operations aren’t the solution for people who suffer from a “perceptual disorder”, a disorder that leads a man or a woman to feel sexually different from what nature determined.
On top of that, a new study shows that the suicide rate for people who have undergone sex change operations is 20 times the rate of the unoperated trans population. Other studies show that people who exhibit a “gender disorder” spontaneously stop feeling that way in 70-80 per cent of cases.
He added that politicians, Hollywood and most mass media outlets that promote transsexuality and make it fashionable are doing a disservice to transgendered people and the public by treating an illness as though it was a social issue like homosexuality, when it’s really a medical condition that requires understanding, treatment and prevention.
“The intense feeling that you’re transgender constitutes a mental illness in two ways,” the professor stated. “First, the idea that it’s a sexual imbalance is plainly wrong, it simply doesn’t match the physical reality. Then there’s this belief that it could lead to major psychological problems.”
Trans people’s “disorder” rests on their own perception that they are somehow different from their physical reality, from the masculinity or the femininity that nature assigned them. According to Dr. McHugh, it’s a disorder similar to skin-and-bones people who suffer from anorexia, look in the mirror and believe that they’re seeing someone who’s obese.
This perception, to the extent that it’s a psychological issue, notwithstanding the anatomical reality, drives some transgender people to seek social acceptance by asserting their own subjective “personal truth”, something which has led some American states like California, New Jersey and Massachusetts to ban psychiatrists from treating unoperated individuals for these sexual misperceptions.
“That’s the reason why at Johns Hopkins has halted all sexual reassignment surgery, because producing a satisfied but still-troubled patient seemed to be insufficient grounds to surgically amputate healthy sexual organs,” added the professor, who has devoted most of his career to the study and treatment of hundreds of patients.
The former Johns Hopkins hospital chief psychiatrist also cautioned the public against encouraging transgender subgroups like young children and teens, who are highly vulnerable and easy to manipulate, pointing the finger at certain community activist groups that urge these youth to distance themselves from their families in order to get their reassignment surgery. He advises against ignoring this fact and instead urges these youth to consult a doctor who will know how to treat the patient, the same way that intervtion and treatment can help anorexics who haven’t yet reached the point of no return.
At that point, Professor McHugh interjected that there are poorly trained and misinformed doctors who treat youth who mimic the opposite sex by prescribing hormones that suppress the natural sexual development of their patients to mitigate the cost and drawbacks of future surgery. They’re making a grave mistake, because those medicines can influence normal childhood development and even cause sterility. Given that nearly 80 per cent of these youth will, in time, spontaneously recover from this ailment, emerge from their confusion and develop normally if left untreated, such action constitutes child abuse.
“Sex change is biologically impossible,” concluded the psychiatrist. “Patents who undergo sex reassignment surgery are not turning themselves from men into women or vice versa. Rather, they’re becoming feminized men or masculinized women. To thing that this constitutes social justice and to encourage surgical intervention is, in truth, an incitement to let a mental illness go untreated,” Dr. McHugh wrapped up his interview, published at http://cnsnews.com/news/article/michael-w-chapman/johns-hopkins-psychiatrist-transgender-mental-disorder-sex-change
The famous doctor’s comments and analysis of transsexuality clearly stirred the pot anew in the media. Much of the buzz has centered on the social angle for trans people, their civil rights and their “coming out” while remaining mute about some of the realities that are nonetheless important to know about and understand.
It’s not the purpose of this writer to endorse Dr. McHugh’s analysis but, as for many controversial issues, media worthy of their name have a duty to give voice to dissenting opinions to ensure that the public debate remains as well informed as possible. Clearly, not all psychiatrists and health care professionals agree with Dr. McHugh’s assessment of the trans issue. Even here in Quebec, a parliamentary committee grappled recently with trans identity and serious questions about the militant trans ethos and access to surgery via a network of professionals who perhaps might be a bit too much on the militant side and out-of-step with medical reality. To that point, we shall return.
Here’s a short glossary that might be useful:
Transsexuality
Transidentity, transsexuality or transgender, is when an individual has a gender identity that doesn’t conform to their birth sex. Sometimes we refer more generally to someone as transgender to indicate their status as an individual whose gender identity is different from their appearance and sexual attributes (beards, breasts) or to talk about transsexuals who are not interested in having surgery. Transidentity is the feeling of having been born in the wrong body.
It’s not a choice, can arise at any age and often triggers inner conflict, deep hurt and, above all, anxiety, as the individual affected can’t adopt the roles and social conventions associated with men or with women, as the case may be. The usual adjective to refer to a person who has a gender identity opposite to their birth sex is ‘transsexual’.
Sometime gender identity can instead be ambivalent or neutral. In addition, the term ‘transsexual woman’ can refer to a male of female gender; likewise, a ‘male transsexual’ has a masculine identity, despite being female.