Transgenders Face Lifetime of Regret
Boys are Boys. Girls are Girls.
Drugs and Surgery Cannot
Overcome Mental Issues.
by Jerry Bergman, PhD
One of the most profound differences in humans is sexual dimorphism.
Sexual dimorphism is widespread in animals.
Sexual dimorphism is where sexes of the same species exhibit very different morphological characteristics in addition to those organs involved in reproduction. It is more important than an IQ score, more important than ethnicity and more important than where you live. Nothing will change this fact.
Children become aware of their sex, and become conscious of the physical differences between boys and girls, at around age two. Before their third birthday most children label themselves as either a boy or a girl. By age four the vast majority of children have a stable sense of their gender identity. They did, at least, until the “trans” craze hit America recently. By age six most children spend most of their playtime with members of their own sex, often also gravitating towards sports and other activities associated with their own gender. Children typically express their gender by their clothing, hairstyle, sports involvement, and preferred name or nickname.
Other ways children express their gender include social behavior that reflects dominance, aggression, dependency, gentleness, physical gestures and other nonverbal actions identified as masculine or feminine. Also important is their choice of social relationships, including the gender of close friends, and the people they imitate, such as movie celebrities or sports stars. [1]
The vast majority of children adjust to their biological sex.
Gender Dysphoria: A Disorder Now Celebrated
A rare few persons do not have a consistent accurate self-perception about their gender, a problem we label gender dysphoria. Most gender dysphoric children adjust to their birth-assigned gender on their own as they grow up and mature. If this adjustment proves to be very difficult, the proper response for most of history was to take advantage of counseling and psychotherapy to help them deal with their concerns.
All this has changed with the movement to not only accept, but to glorify and support—by law—the current distorted “transgender” fad. On the internet are websites glamorizing young girls who were very unhappy with their lives, who then transitioned and now claim to be happier than they ever have been. Part of this movement uses terminology that emanates a happy glow, or at least less-offensive expressions, such as ‘gender-affirming surgery’ instead of mutation of the body, which is what so-called gender-affirming care is. The gender-affirming care industry is enormously profitable and supported by the politically left and the “if it feels good, it is good” movement.
Examples include former Pennsylvania Secretary of Health Rachel Levine who became the new Assistant Secretary of Health at the Department of Health and Human Services.[2] He was reared Jewish and attended Hebrew School when growing up. In medical school, Richard began dating a fellow medical student named Martha Peaslee. The two earned their medical degrees and married in 1988. They had two children named David and Dayna. In 2011 he began transitioning from Richard to Rachel while still married to Martha Peaslee Levine. Martha Levine and Rachel Levine divorced in 2013.
The former male has received many accolades after his transition including being named as one of USA Today‘s ’Women of the Year’ in 2022, which recognizes women who have made a significant positive impact in society. Shortly after Rachel’s confirmation as Assistant Secretary of Health at the Department of Health and Human Services, Levine told NBC News that LGBTQ youth are topmost in ‘her’ mind when it comes to health disparities in the United States.[3] One wonders if he will consider the results many studies showing the documented harm of transitioning, such as the one reviewed here, when considering the problems of transgendering.
Sex differences appear in every organ and cell.
Transgender Percentages
The transgender rate in the population depends on the research design and when it was completed. One study determined (by meta-analysis of 32 studies) it was 9.2 per 100,000 population (0.0092 percent).[4] Another study further estimated that the prevalence of transgender people among California’s adults is 0.1% or 100 per 100,000.[5] According to a recent Pew research poll, roughly five percent of Americans under age 30 now identify as a gender different than their at-birth assigned sex. In Canada, over 100,000 transgender, nonbinary, and gender-diverse people, comprise approximately 0.33% of the national population. These enormous differences in the rate of the number of persons transitioning and detransitioning exist for many reasons. These reasons include (1) the fact that most of the research populations are taken on a very small sample size, (2) social differences in different countries (in Arab Muslim countries, the rate is essentially zero), and (3) the numbers are both statistically fluid and ephemeral.
The Christian Aspect
God created us male and female (Genesis 1:27)—“So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them.” Mark 10:6 reinforces this teaching, proclaiming “But from the beginning of creation God made them male and female.” As Thomas White, Cedarville University’s 10th President, says, “Perhaps no other verse in the Bible does more to establish the foundation of a Biblical worldview than Genesis 1:27… This God who created us made us in His image, a fact repeated twice in Genesis 1:27. In the New Testament, [where] Jesus implies …. Man and woman created in the image of God implies that God has ownership over our lives and will one day justly pass eternal judgment upon us.”[6]
In contrast, evolution teaches that sexual reproduction evolved from asexual reproduction, consequently there are no ironclad boundaries between the sexes as Christianity teaches. Evolution’s fluid conception of sexuality leads one to believe that humans can at least partly bridge the mental and physical differences between the two sexes.
Research Supports the Scriptural View
As expected from the Scriptural worldview, an unbridgeable gap between the sexes exists and attempts to transition not uncommonly fail, producing a desire for detransitioning.[7] A new study which confirms this conclusion has explored the “care experiences and perspectives of individuals who discontinued or reversed their gender transitions [referred to as detransitioning]… Participants were between the ages of 20–53 (71% were between 20–29).”[8] The methodology use was:
Between October 2021-January 2022, Canadian residents aged 18 and older with experience of stopping, shifting, or reversing a gender transition were invited to participate in semi-structured, one-on-one, virtual interviews. A purposive sample of 28 was recruited by circulating study adverts over social media, to clinicians in six urban centres, and within participants’ social networks. Interviews ranged between 50–90 minutes, were audio-recorded, and transcribed verbatim.[9]
The conclusions were enormously enlightening and confirm my own conclusions:
All participants identified along the LGBTQ2S+ spectrum. Twenty-seven out of 28 of the participants received medical/surgical interventions (60% were ages 24 and younger). A majority (57%) reported three or more past gender identities, with 60% shifting from a binary transgender identity at the time of initiating transition to a nonbinary identity later in their transition journey.[10]
It is significant that they found a “majority (57%) reported three or more past gender identities, with 60% shifting from a binary transgender identity at the time of initiating transition to a nonbinary identity later in their transition journey.” This observation confirms my clinical experience with clients. These people were very unhappy with their life and drifted from one self-identity to another. It’s not unlike a person who tries one diet after another and experiences failure in every diet attempted, or a person who tries one therapy after another including psychoanalysis and does not find fulfillment, and so moves on to another treatment in their attempts to find satisfaction in life.
Summary
This research confirms my supposition that sexual transitioning is an attempt to deal with mental adjustment problems. As with other issues, the attempt often fails. In the MacKinnon research, many subjects reported three or more past gender identities and ended up detransitioning back to their birth-gender assignment. Each transition obviously failed. If they had received help dealing with the underlying mental issues in the first place, much anguish, surgery, and pain could have been avoided. Instead of accepting the Genesis declaration that one is born either male or female, the societal glorification of transitioning helps push innocent people into what often turns out to be failed attempts to find happiness and contentment in their lives.
References
[1] Rafferty, Jason, MD, MPH. Gender Identity Development in Children. Heathchildren.org., 11 May 2022.
[2] Pecorin, Allison. Rachel Levine confirmed by Senate, becomes highest ranking openly transgender official https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/rachel-levine-confirmed-senate-highest-ranking-openly-transgender/story?id=76653829, 2021.
[3] Transgender federal official Rachel Levine tells LGBTQ youths: ‘I have your back’. NBC News, June 2021.
[4] Collin, Lindsay et al., . 2016. Prevalence of Transgender Depends on the “Case” Definition: A Systematic Review. Journal of Sexual Medicine. 13(4). https://academic.oup.com/jsm/articleabstract/13/4/613/6940166?redirectedFrom=fulltext /
[5] Collin, Lindsay et al., . 2016.
[6] https://www.cedarville.edu/-/media/Files/PDF/President/Presidents-Magazine-Articles/Cedarville_Magazine_Spring_2017.pdf.
[7] Flawed Research Underlies Gender Confusion From two sexes to sixty genders in only a few decades.
. https://crev.info/2023/10/gender-confusion/, 16 October 2023.
[8] MacKinnon, Kinnon R., et al. Exploring the gender care experiences and perspectives of individuals who discontinued their transition or detransitioned in Canada. PLoS One; https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0293868, 29 November 2023.
[9] MacKinnon, et al., 2023.
[10] MacKinnon, et al., 2023.
Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,300 publications in 12 languages and 40 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,800 college libraries in 27 countries. So far over 80,000 copies of the 60 books and monographs that he has authored or co-authored are in print. For more articles by Dr Bergman, see his Author Profile.