Paper Genders: Taking Down The Arguments Part 2

Heyer's next brainstorm argument is to claim that you can't make a woman out of a man with a scalpel.

Just the statement "A surgeon and a knife can change a man into a woman" is a bit presumptuous on its own.  When you realize it cannot be done, you can only laugh your way into hysteria, except it is not funny when so many die.  ...

It's easy to point out that DNA tells the true story of male or female.  In a court of law, you can convict a man of rape and murder just on the strength of a DNA test alone.  But a DNA test is never permitted to determine male or female sex gender for transsexuals in court.  Why is this?  Because a DNA test would prove with absolute certainty the transgender hormone therapy and surgery had failed to change a male to a female or a female to a male.

 There are more issues with Heyer's assertion in this set of statements than I care to count.  However, let me enumerate some of the more obvious points:

1. Heyer's argument completely overlooks the existence of Intersex conditions which often have some very interesting chromosomal variations.  
2. Chromosomes, ironically, do not necessarily establish whether someone is biologically male or female.  (Consider Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome for example)
3. Male and female are arguably terms with biological meaning; man and woman are more defined by social context. 
4. I can't imagine very many situations where it is essential to establish someone's sex in court.  You may at various times wish to establish their gender, but that is knowable simply by looking at how the individual is presenting.
5. Gender exists as much in the brain as in the physiology.  If physical sex is arguably ambiguous, surely it is no big leap to understand that the brain and individual psychology is even more so.  If someone can be born with ambiguous genitalia, the sheer variety of people in the world should mean that it is no surprise to anyone that there are going to be a few whose brains are wired in a manner consistent with the opposite sex to what was assigned at birth.

Thinking he has "cleverly" demolished the idea that transsexuals can't really "change sex", Heyer moves on to conclude as follows:

When medical tests objectively prove the need for surgery, revising the birth record could be necessary.  Transgenders do not have a medical need for surgery.  Desire does not equal need.

Hmmm...we should take a look at a few things, shouldn't we?  Since we are dealing with a situation which is assessed psychologically, the objective discussion comes from the psychotherapy side of WPATH's Standards of Care:

While many transsexual, transgender, and gender nonconforming individuals find comfort with their gender identity, role, and expression without surgery, for many others surgery is essential and medically necessary to alleviate their gender dysphoria (Hage & Karim, 2000). For the latter group, relief from gender dysphoria cannot be achieved without modification of their primary and/or secondary sex characteristics to establish greater congruence with their gender identity

Heyer is, of course, being unreasonably narrow in his interpretation of "medically necessary".  Personally, I'm inclined to work with the view of the professionals.  Being transsexual may not be physically diagnosable today, but that doesn't make it any less real for those who find themselves living with that state of being. 

But we should remember that Heyer is writing from the perspective of someone who is NOT transsexual, but made a choice to have gender surgery anyways.