Blinded By Science
The Search For a Scientific Explanation For Transgendered Behavior

I just saw a recent News Headline: 

NEW RESEARCH SUGGESTS GENETIC BASIS TO SEXUAL ORIENTATION

Somehow, this doesn't seem like new news to me.  This search has been going on for a long time.  And, as often as we see headlines like these, we see headlines about people who point to Sexual Orientation as a choice, as something unnatural, as an abomination.  They find ways to cure it.  They find ways to demonize it and those who fall prey to it.

The exact same is true for being transsexual.  Replace the words "Sexual Orientation" with "Transsexuality" in the headline above and you'll get the exact same thing.

Don't get me wrong.  I suppose there's scientific merit to these experiments.  But to be perfectly honest, I think we're looking for answers in the wrong places here.  Perhaps even more importantly, I don't even think that these are the right questions.  (My dad was a scientist, and he'd be turning over in his grave if he heard me say this...)

Somehow, our culture has become so dependent upon science to provide real answers that we're forgetting that science can't answer everything.  From an early age we're taught the scientific method (hypotheses-theory-proof-fact) and hard sciences are drilled into our heads.  We're taught that if science can't explain it, it can't be real.  Well, you tell that to anybody who believes in God.  Or, you tell that to anyone who falls in love.  Those things are as real as anything that anyone can prove, and the fact that you can't provide scientific evidence doesn't minimize their reality.

Frankly, I don't care whether you can prove it through science.  I don't care whether they identify the "transgender gene" and even if they did, I wouldn't approach things any differently.  I don't care whether DES in pregnant mothers is identified as a possible culprit.  Trying to explain your personality will never be an exact science, and scientific explanations or proof are not magic pills for me.  Perhaps the most difficult part of my journey was learning this - that science is not going to provide my answers.  I needed to do that myself.

Rather, I'm the way I am because I know me.  At this point, how I got this way really isn't important - it's an ultimately futile and misguided search.  I think - therefore, I am.  More importantly, I have learned to trust myself, and to be perfectly honest, I don't need science to validate what I already know. 

There are 5 key words in that sentence:

• Learned:  This did not happen overnight.  It took a long time, and was a gradual process of trial and error. 
   
• Trust:  This is the crux of the matter.  It's about trust, and it's about doubt.  It's about the vain search for hard evidence to prove something that you know to be true.  Know this: the key to becoming authentic is learning to trust yourself.  This is not easy to do.  Get to know yourself.  Get to know how you feel.  Get to know what you need.  Get to know who you are - not who you think you should be or who others might want you to be.  Once you learn to trust yourself, scientific proof becomes a moot point. 
   
• Science:  What has science got to do with my gender identity, or my sexuality?  Let's say scientists identify a gene as being the source for being transgendered.  Would you accept that?  If you knew yourself to be transsexual, maybe even had SRS and was very happy and content as your authentic self, and you took this genetic test and it came back negative would you accept that?  Or, would you believe what you already know?  Do you really think there's one answer to this question that fits each and every one of us?  Or even two or three or four answers?  No.  Each of us is this way because we know we are.  The question at hand should NOT be "What is the reason for this?"  It should be: "I already know that this is true about myself.  Now, what am I going to do about it?"
   
• Validate:  Why are we even looking for proof?  Because we think that if we have hard facts to prove this then others can't dispute it?  Or, is it to help ourselves feel better that it's not our fault?  Think about it....
   
• Know:  Know Thyself.  Don't think you can, know you can.  Life is about learning to know things.  Why is it that so many people seem to willing to put their trust in something external to themselves to tell them what's going on about themselves?  We look to others to tell us.  We look to science to prove it to us.  We look to God for answers.  And, unfortunately, the answer to many of these questions isn't in any of these places.  Frankly, I think part of the answer is that deep down we actually already know the answers that we're looking for.  We just want to be told that it's ok.

If we look a little deeper, there's something disturbing about the need to find proof in the first place.  A human personality is a complex thing, and we're not looking for similar proof on other aspects of our existence.  Why is that?  Personally, when it comes to gender identity or sexuality I think it's because we each deal with our own homophobias and transphobias for a long, long time.  To accept these things about ourselves is to admit membership as part of a group that many people have difficulty affiliating with.  If we were discussing conditions or situations that our society held in far higher esteem I think many of us would be much more likely to accept these things about ourselves without having to gain external validation or justification.  But, since we're talking about things that our culture would teach us are undesirable, we fight that knowledge. 

"Faith is taking the first step even when you don't see the whole staircase."
                       -- Martin Luther King, Jr.

As Groucho Marx says, "I'd never join a club that would have someone like me as a member," and that's how many of us feeling about being trans.  But you know what?  Whether you want it or not, or whether you like it or not, or whether you accept it or not isn't really the issue here.  It is what it is.  How it got that way really isn't going to help you much now.  And, as I mentioned earlier, the question at hand is "What are you going to do about it?" 

There was a time when I was very much a matter-of-fact, just-the-facts-ma'am type of person.  At the risk of stereotyping, I think that way of thinking is much more typical in men than it is in women.  I hate to say that men are more logical than women, but I think most men look at problems and situations from a much more clinical perspective then most women do.  And, I think the name we give to this elusive quality of self-trust, this added component that isn't necessarily fact-based but is much more feeling-based, is "intuition".  It's based on trust in some deeper quality to help make decisions, and I would suggest that part of these transitional processes is slowly learning to do that.  Lord knows, it doesn't come easy.  But that component of self-trust, that component of knowing yourself well enough to add that ingredient into the mix,  is part one of the critical changes that takes place over the course of learning to accept ourselves.

I'm not suggesting that intuition is a gender-based thing where women have it and men don't.  That would be a cop out.  What I am suggesting, though, is that self-trust is something we all have.  It's just that women in our society are given more permission to actually use it.  Men are taught to be as detached from things as possible - most of all their inner feelings and emotions.  Getting over this hump - this barrier that keeps many of us from being able to access our deeper selves - is the key to so many things.  Finding your intuition there is one of the many special things we experience on our way to a more fulfilling life.

"To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom."
                   -- Bertrand Russell

But, what if you're wrong?  What if you trust yourself and you later find that you were wrong?  That's part of being human.  What if you spend your entire life looking for reasons and proof and didn't do anything about it - what have you gained?  There is no binary answer here.  There is no right or wrong answer.  We each need to get over the fear of making a mistake.  It's not as though each moment of your life is filled with an infinite number of choices and only one of them is the right one.  Who can live their life in that much fear?  People who are so afraid of making a wrong decision that they can't make ANY decision, that's who.  People who let life happen to them rather than living it so they can't be blamed for anything that goes wrong. 

That's what I see.  A world full of scared people.  I see a world full of people ready to let others tell them what is real about themselves.  I see a world that would make decisions for you, a world that would tell you what's real and what's not, and a world that would tell you who you are (or who you should be).  To grab control of your life is to unplug from this Matrix.  It is to control your own destiny.  It is to have faith in yourself, in others, in God, and in any number of other things.  The key is to find your space - to find peace in the answers you learn.  And, I'd suggest that the path there is far more likely found deep within yourself.  Not in science.

"Your faith is what you believe, not what you know."
          -- Mark Twain

The hardest part of coming to terms with all of this was learning to accept it.  To accept it in me.  I didn't ask for it.  I didn't deserve it.  I had other obligations and plans.  And, I spent years struggling to avoid having to accept the obvious.  That's okay.  Maturity is the progressive process of learning to trust yourself.  .Time and maturity worked their magic and I was finally able to see it for what it is.  It's not a curse.  It's not a punishment.  It's not something wrong, or bad, or evil.   It's a unique opportunity, and in the end it will be only what I make of it.  That's true about life in general for each of us. 

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