Narcissism

The "T" in LGBTQ is short for transgender. The transgender identity has been closely associated with Gay Liberation from the Stonewall Riots in 1969. Transvestites are reputed to have started the riots in reaction to police harassment. Within the gay community, drag queens have always held a special place as icons of gay humor and gay rage. 

The confusion between gender identity and sexual orientation has remained entrenched in society, which is struggling to emerge from homophobic ignorance. While they may lie on a continuum of sexual  identification in the opinion of some, I believe gender confusion and conscious sexual orientation are vastly different.  

Some gender confusion is concretely based. Some human beings are born with combined gender characteristics. They are physiologically bi-gendered. A person may have female breasts and a small penis with no scrotum, for example. Or, a person may have small breasts and an exaggerated and protruding clitoris. These are real physiological conditions, the happenstances of birth. The usefulness of surgical intervention in this cases to proximate some normalcy is positively life-changing for many, but the fact that they feel compelled to have surgery to be other than they are by birth speaks a great deal about the lack of tolerance and appreciation in human minds for difference. 

I recently heard the case of Kristin (born Chris) Beck, a U.S. Navy Seal who is peddling a book about being transformed from a macho, violent man to a woman as part of his exploration of his "feminine side", as she puts it. While I have no business telling Mr./Ms. Beck to do with her own body, I do have a right to question whether hormonal and surgical interventions are a sane way for a man to get in touch with natural femininity within his consciousness. I also has a right to question the ethical behavior of medical personnel who too readily indulge this approach to self-discovery with prescription pad and scalpel. 

I happen to be fond of a transgender person whom I see regularly in a commercial setting. She is charming, articulate and well adjusted. The extreme interventions she has chosen are working for her. But, in my professional capacity as a psychiatric nurse, I have experienced many more transgender people who are conflicted, narcissistic and simply a mess. These individuals were not well served by a medical establishment which wrote prescriptions and cut away at genitals without thorough attempts to understand the motivation of the patient in pursuing gender re-assignment. It is easier and more profitable to do the mechanical interventions. The growing number of transgender people who are trying to reverse these interventions to return to their birth state is evidence enough. 

The current popular "so what" attitude toward gender re-assignment procedures is consistent with the popular "so what" attitude toward homeless addicts begging on the streets. There is a social callousness toward mental health problems in U.S. society. "We don't want to know," is the message. This is not new. Shame associated with mental illness is ancient. Intolerance of difference is also ancient. However, as a humanist, I think a compassionate society must pay attention to and understand mental illness in an effort to provide adequate services to avert needless individual and social violence and pain.

The current narcissistic cultural  lack of interest in those with mental illness or simple ignorant confusion feeds the narcissism of the impaired, which is a severe problem. This in turn can lead to a severity of symptoms ranging from crippling psychosis to murderous acting out with a bomb or firearm. I think we are all too aware of the recent examples of this.