Paper Genders: Taking Down The Arguments - Part 1

I've already given an overview of Walt Heyer's book Paper Genders in the Book Review: Paper Genders post.  These posts will delve into the details of the specific arguments and themes that Mr. Heyer relies on in making his case.  The problems in his arguments come in many flavors - some of them simple factual errors, others are more serious issues that need to be addressed.



I've already pointed out the problems with Heyer's apparent insinuation that the astronomically high suicide rate among transgender people is somehow related to GRS.  According to Heyer, someone who commits suicide has an untreated, underlying pathology.  That may be true, but the evidence is firmly against Heyer's assertion that it is related to post-transition, post-surgical regrets.  The latest version of the WPATH Standards of Care is quite clear on the research with respect to outcomes for transsexuals post-surgery:

Since the Standards of Care have been in place, there has been a steady increase in patient satisfaction and decrease in dissatisfaction with the outcome of sex reassignment surgery. Studies conducted after 1996 focused on patients who were treated according to the Standards of Care. The findings of Rehman and colleagues (1999) and Krege and colleagues (2001) are typical of this body of work; none of the patients in these studies regretted having had surgery, and most reported being satisfied with the cosmetic and functional results of the surgery. Even patients who develop severe surgical complications seldom regret having undergone surgery. Quality of surgical results is one of the best predictors of the overall outcome of sex reassignment (Lawrence, 2003). The vast majority of follow-up studies havevshown an undeniable beneficial effect of sex reassignment surgery on postoperative outcomes such as subjective well being, cosmesis, and sexual function (De Cuypere et al., 2005; Garaffa, Christopher,& Ralph, 2010; Klein & Gorzalka, 2009) ...

Somehow, I'm not buying the unresearched claim that Heyer makes that Gender Reassignment Surgery leads to regrets after the fact.  Especially not for those whose transitions are thoughtful and honestly undertaken.

The second line of argument that Heyer attempts to make is more egregious.  Heyer basically accuses all of the key figures who are involved in the early days of studying and treating transsexuals of being pedophiles or supporters of pedophiles.  Within the context of transsexualism, accusing Dr. Harry Benjamin and others of some kind of connection with pedophilia is tangential at best.  At its worst, it may be considered slanderous in some contexts.

His evidence with regards to Dr. Harry Benjamin is flimsy at best:

Dr. Harry Benjamin agreed with Kinsey's views of pedophilia.  What is the evidence?  Benjamin and Kinsey were close friends with Rene Guyon, a prominent, acknowledged pedophile.  Benjamin endorsed Guyon's 1948 book, The Ethics of Sexual Acts, which advocates the normalcy and decriminalization of behaviours such as sex abuse against children.  The endorsement reads:

 Writing an introduction to a new edition of a book by Rene Guyon is a signal honor ... There is hardly an author anywhere with qualifications comparable to those of Guyon ...

First of all, the accusation that Guyon was a pedophile is not well substantiated.  Guyon is noted for arguing that Western cultures have an unreasonably rigid view of sexuality, but I have been unable to find anything that suggests that Guyon himself was a pedophile so much as a very open-minded thinker who was making his observations based on living in an Asian context after growing up in western Europe.

To infer from the writing of an introduction that Benjamin agreed with everything that Guyon wrote or represented is at best conjecture unless that introduction actually contains explicit endorsements by Dr. Benjamin.

His attack on Dr. Money is similarly spurious, confusing a clinical statement with advocacy for pedophilia.

Even if Drs Benjamin and Money were proponents of pedophilia, that has little or nothing to do with the study of transsexuality, which both men are noted for their contributions to.  As near as I can tell, Heyer thinks that anyone who even writes about the subject of pedophilia cannot have anything valid to say about other aspects of human sexuality.

To the contrary, I would point out that pedophilia is arguably a natural (if horrifying) aspect of human sexuality that warrants study.  Since both Dr. Benjamin and Dr. Money were groundbreaking in the study of human sexuality, it would hardly come as a surprise that they might have studied pedophilia as much as other phenomena in the often surprisingly diverse field of human sexuality.  Clinical study and research is not equivalent to advocacy, nor should it ever be mistaken as such.

Mr. Heyer's arguments with respect to a connection between these doctors and pedophilia seem to be poorly substantiated, based more on inferences made with respect to indirect actions on various people's parts rather than clear evidence of advocacy for pedophilia, or active pedophilia on anyone's part. 

Further, since gender identity issues have little or nothing to do with sexual identity issues, it seems to me more than just a little bit irrelevant to any reasoned assessment of the situation.