The Edge of Reason

On Wednesday, U.S. District Court Judge Mark Wolf ruled that Art Kosilek, a convicted murderer serving a life term in Massachusetts, was entitled to receive gender realignment surgery at the tax payers' expense. Koselik believes he is a woman in a man's body and to compel him to remain in that body constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. It was asserted that the surgery was the only way Koslek's condition can be treated. To deny him gender realignment surgery deemed necessary to his mental well being is to deny him his right to health care. Despite the fact that Kosilek is still biologically and physiologically a man, the court sought fit to refer to him as a woman. The decision was hailed as a great step forward on behalf of transgendered people everywhere.

The trouble with the ruling is that Mark Kosilek is not being denied health care. If Koselik falls ill or is injured he has full access to the same health care every other prisoner is entitled to. What Kosilek is being denied is a sex change operation at taxpayers' expense. But feeling you are living in the wrong body is not a medical condition. It does not hinder your mobility. It does not cause physical pain. It does not threaten your health. It is not fatal if left untreated. Believing you are living in the wrong body is not a physical malady. It is a psychological condition.

It is increasingly common for people to seek medical treatment to attempt to address their dissatisfaction with their appearance. Many, if not most, Americans have something about themselves that they are unhappy with. They believe they are too short. They are losing their hair. They have stretch marks. They are overweight. They have bandy legs. There is something out there for almost everybody. Indeed, if movie stars like Angelina Jolie can be dissatisfied with their appearance to the point of getting surgery, anyone can.  For some people, dissatisfaction evolves into preoccupation. Preoccupation can lead to anxiety, even obsession.  However, if that obsession becomes so occluded so as to prevent a person from functioning normally, it is psychological issue, not a medical one.

With the advancements in surgery and treatment, many conditions that had to be endured in the past can now be treated. By and large, this is a good thing. Why endure the pain and physical restrictions of a damaged knee if you can solve that problem through surgery? Why suffer physical deformity if that deformity can be corrected or compensated for? There is no reason to.

Some deformities and injuries are so severe they can fairly be described as requiring medical treatment even if there is no jeopardy to a person's health. Decency and compassion require us to provide a remedy to those who have lost facial features if a remedy is available, even if the law doesn't. None of those factors apply to Robert Kosilek. He is healthy. He suffers no deformity. His mobility is not limited. He is in no physical pain. His appearance and genitalia are a source of anxiety to him alone.

Despite the cries of activists, Kosilek is not being denied health care. No transgendered person is. If they are sick or injured they have access to the same care that everyone else has. If Kosilek requires medical attention he will be provided with it, just as any other prisoner would. The court in Massachusetts veered onto a new path when it agreed that the only way to treat Koselik's disorder is through surgery. The ruling was predicated on the idea that Koselik's disorder did not require psychological treatment, but medical treatment.

The lack of equilibrium between Koselik's vision of himself and reality is the source of his psychological turmoil, not his gender. It is becoming more and more common in instances where a person's view of themselves and the world they live in is in conflict with reality, for progressives to insist that reality that yield. This is a futile endeavor. Reality yields to no one. In Koselik's case, he finds himself in conflict with nature. He is biologically a man. No court or law can change that. The only thing that can be changed is his appearance. Transgendered people can get surgery to change the way their body appears but that appearance will be a deception. Surgery can no more make a man a woman than it can make a duck into a goose.

Mara Keisling, Executive Director of the National Center for Transgender Equality lamented that in our society "transgender people are... denied health care access all the time." She is wrong. They are not. They have access to the same health care that everyone else has. Evidently, she is aware of the precarious nature of her assertion because she went on to add that at the bottom, transgendered people are victims of "insufficient training, insufficient competency, and insufficient humanity". Deficiencies in training and competency are easily accounted for. They can be addressed through legislation. But "insufficient humanity" is another thing entirely. That is the key. If society's treatment of transgendered people is really going to change it has to be through getting at the roots of the matter. You have to change society. To change society, you have to change the way people think.

When progressives speak of changing society, they usually mean that the government should change society. That is why there is continual insistence that politicians be leaders possessed of great visions of what the country should be like. But the thought of great leaders setting out to change the way people think should be abhorrent to Americans. The thought of courts changing the way people think should be abhorrent as well. It is the ideologue that sets out to change the world. It was Marx who sought to raise men to their true potential through transforming political and economic conditions to realize his vision of what the world should look like. The thought of remaking society in accordance with some plan has frequently been the cause for great barbarism and cruelty. It contains within it the idea that society can and must be molded if it is to come into its full and proper condition. If people resist progress, they must be prodded. When prodding fails, force must be used.

It is the mark of the ideologue that, when their vision of the world is in conflict with the world in which they live, it is the world that must yield and, that when their vision of what mankind should be is in conflict with mankind as it exists, then mankind must be brought into line. It is the idea that is paramount. It is the idea that is the measure of society. Society is merely the form the idea takes when it realizes itself in existence.Men can either cooperate with the idea or they can resist it. They cannot in anyway alter its nature. When the idea is on conflict with reality, people, being the stubborn thing that they they are, must to change. They must be educated into the idea. When "education" fails in the task, legislation is relied upon. If legislation fails, coercion is used. One way or another, the ideologue will endeavor to mold mankind to fit the idea.

"There are still people who believe that being a transgendered person is a choice, or exotic or bad" said Keisling. For those at the cutting edge of human progress, too many people are thinking incorrectly. For people like Keisling, society has a duty to change the way people think. If that doesn't give you pause, nothing will. Transgendered people like Koselik are biologically and physiologically male. The only place they are female is in their mind. They want to reshape their physiology reflect the image they carry of themselves.  The problem in the case of transgendered people is that gender is a biological distinction, not a psychic state. To call Koselik a woman is to subsume reality to feeling. Koselik's feelings about himself cannot change his gender. The most that can be accomplished is that Koselik will look like a woman. He will never be a woman. All the surgery and hormones in the world will not change that. Nevertheless, it is asserted that society is obliged to conform itself to the feelings of the individual. There was a time when one of the chief goals of psychotherapy was to adjust a person's psyche in order to bring him into harmony with reality. But that was when reality was believed to have a stable existence outside the human mind. Those days are gone.

There are those who argue that every newly discovered right is merely the logical extension of the one that went before it. It is argued that because A equals B, it must equal C as well. They are willing to follow this chain forever to wherever it leads, even if it leads to the absurd. To say that society is obliged to accommodate the personal feelings and emotions of its members and provide remedy to their psychic angst is to embark on a journey with no destination.

But let's be honest here. To force Koselik to serve his term with the genitalia he was born with is neither cruel or unusual. Koselik is not being denied health care. The issue of whether Koselik's is entitled to gender surgery  is not about him at all. It is about sending a message. It is about the state bestowing its imprimatur on transgendered people and giving them their place in the pantheon being built to "diversity".

It was recently reported that Voyager 1 is approaching the edge of the solar system. It will soon escape the influence of the Sun's gravity and enter the void of interstellar space. Like Voyager, we are approaching the frontier of  human reason. Once we pass through we will find ourselves in the void of desire, free from the gravity of tradition and history. It will be an endless wandering with no destination, propelled by emotion.