Is
the male-female binary fixed for all time, and everything
that falls outside that time-tested template aberrational?
Or is there an existential case to be made that gender isn’t
strictly a hormonal imperative, that it is also psychical,
that one can override or choose one’s gender?
Plucked
her eyebrows on the way
Shaved her legs and then he was a she
She said, hey babe, take a walk on the wild side
Lou Reed
Never
before in the history of the species has that question been
so passionately debated, in part consequent to the revolution
in communication technology that facilitates minority issues
and causes going global in a matter of hours or days. There
once was a time when gays and transgenders, especially in
remote and/or homophobic areas and cultures, quietly suffered
their condition. Today, thanks to the Internet and social
networking, androphiliacs and gynephiliacs now have a voice
and the world is listening – and every vote counts.
Facilitating
-- especially since the turn of the century -- the growing
acceptance of gender fluidity are ground breaking medical
advances in sexual reassignment surgery, to the effect that
more and more especially males are stepping out and announcing
that they do not feel comfortable in their assigned gender.
In
“Sexual
Relativity and Gender Revolution,”
Nick Catalano reports that 33% of heterosexuals and homosexuals
identify themselves as somewhere in between, numbers that
would have been unthinkable 50,000 years ago when men were
living in caves. The Independent
reports the number of children suffering
from gender identity disorder (gender dysphoria) has increased
tenfold in the past six years.
While
the new
data is disturbing to some, it opens up a line
of inquiry that directly implicates our fundamental values
as it concerns human sexuality. Have we come to a critical
crossroads (crossing over) in the evolution of the sexuality
of the species?
“If you want to be a drag queen and your parents
don’t let you, you need new parents,” says
eight-year-old
drag queen contestant Lactatia.
Why
are more and more men unhappy with their sexual dispensation?
And is there a relationship between this unhappiness and the
disproportionately high suicide rates among men compared to
women? And finally, how do demographics play into this confluence
of issues, noting that most demographers side with the view
that current world population growth rates are unsustainable.
GENDER
FLUIDITY – FACTS AND FRICTIONS
We
know that “The likelihood of being gay increases by
about 33 percent with each additional older brother. From
these statistics,
researchers calculate that about 15 to 30 percent of gay men
have the fraternal birth order effect to thank for their homosexuality.”
Depending
on the country, the suicide rate among both young and middle
aged males is between 3 to 7 times higher than women. According
to the HNCS
(National Center for Health Statistics), young males are 5-times
more likely than young women to commit suicide.
How
do we account for the divergence? Since the onus of sexual
performance falls to the man, men are disproportionately more
vulnerable to and adversely affected by performance anxiety
(PA). PA is further exacerbated by the Internet and the ubiquity
of explicit sex that imposes unrealistic standards and expectations
that especially the young are not equipped to deal with. There
is considerable anecdotal evidence (based on rape
and sexual assault statistics) that more and
more men are transferring their sexual frustration into resentment
against women who, to the everlasting vexation of men, are
constitutionally more sexually capable. On this delicate matter,
the science is unequivocal. The clitoris is appreciably more
sensitive than the penis, women are multi-orgasmic, the intensity
of the female orgasm doesn’t diminish with age, and
most importantly women can do it all day long and men cannot.
Throughout history, men have never forgiven women for their
sexual advantage and have exacted terrible revenge: from the
deforming foot-binding culture in China, to the Islamic practice
of FGM (female genital mutilation), to witch burning in Europe.
Thanks
to the Internet, what the 19th century Russian novelist Dostoevsky
feared most is now the distinguishing feature of our age:
“everything is permitted.” By the time kids reach
puberty (as early as ten in some cases), most of them have
witnessed every kind and manner of sexual congress imaginable.
To pretend that an 11-year-old, tucked under the sheets with
his smartphone -- observing consenting adults engaging in
marathon coupling sessions in every possible position and
combination -- hasn’t been profoundly affected if not
altered by what he has seen is not only naïve but irresponsible:
especially in respect to man’s dark side of the moon
sexual propensities that might include incest, misogynist
sex, S & M, pedophilia and bestiality. We know that early
sexual experiences very often predict adult sexual behaviour.
Depending on the study, between 30% to 50% percent of sexually
abused children become abuser adults.
Completely
absent from Internet sex is the vital emotional component,
or precisely that which makes us human. The young -- lacking
the cognitive maturity to protect themselves against the first
effect of porn’s meticulously edited final product --
quite naturally come to have totally unrealistic notions of
what constitutes normal healthy sex.
By
the time they hit their mid-teens, many regard sex less as
a pleasure and more of a duty to be performed, a disturbing
if not distressing state of affairs luminously revealed in
the film It
Felt Like Love, where you have 15-year-old
girls measuring their worth by the number of guys they have
blown, while the males, mimicking the icy disengagement of
their porn role models, have artfully normalized the simple
unzip to mask their fear of cultivating real relationships
where all sorts of things can go wrong.
But
as the numbers suggest, young males, afraid or unable to measure
up, are surfacing as sexually damaged or disabled adults looking
for a quick fix (a new face, a new body). Recent studies suggest
that there is a direct cause and effect relationship between
performance anxiety, the high suicide rate among males and
the nascent transgender revolution.
According
to a McGill University report, 13% of the student body had
admitted to thoughts of suicide and 57% sought mental health
counseling services. A Dutch
study determined that males are 3-times more
likely to opt for transgendering than women.
What
is now becoming clear, despite those who insist the male-female
binary is a strictly genetic construct, is that men and women
who can afford the new wardrobe and costly medical bills can
opt out of their assigned gender (overrule their orientation).
Twenty five to 50% of abused heterosexual women turn to lesbianism;
in prison heterosexuals frequently practice homosexuality,
and in the population at large, more and more males are identifying
as gender fluid.
Fifty
thousand years ago, when the earth was sparsely populated,
there would have been, as a percentage of the population,
fewer homosexuals than today, and the concept of gender fluidity
would not have existed. But today, in the face of numbers
that are unsustainable, man has shown himself indictably incapable
of regulating population growth, and the task, the clean-up
job, by default, has devolved to nature, already on the job.
Homosexuality along with gender abdication are two of nature’s
early triumphs, or from the demographer’s perspective,
they represent the benign human equivalent of the lemming
suicide response to over-population.
As
it directly concerns the growing human threat to the health
of the planet, we can expect a major increase in both homosexual
and transgender populations. And beyond that, with major advances
in gene sequencing and reproductive technology, there may
come a time when procreation and conventional sex will be
delinked, especially since we are a species 'soft-wired' to
take the path of least resistance.
If,
with the blessings of nature, stress-triggered
homosexuality, transgendering and suicide are the messy means
to the desirable end of curbing over-population, the skeptic
will quite naturally point to rampant population growth in
India and Indonesia, where there is no apparent increase as
a percentage of the population among the above mentioned groups.
In these places, why hasn’t stress had a negative impact
on breeding outcomes? The short answer is religion, which
acts like a firewall against all sorts of what would otherwise
be stress inducing (birthrate unfriendly) outcomes. Religion
relieves men and women of the responsibility of courtship
and marriage, and provides for certainties (status, class,
afterlife) absent in secular societies. However, where Islam
and Hinduism have been destabilized by secularism, there has
been a concomitant increase in both homosexual and transgender
populations, and lower birthrates. Hindus living in the secular
West (1.3 births/couple) enjoy significantly lower rates (2.4)
than their counterparts in India. The birthrate among religious
Hassidic Jews is 4.1 while among the general Jewish population
it is 1.5. So if religion is abetting over population, and
custom and culture are unable to reign in the growth, nature,
in its own fashion, will step up to the plate.
To
the many who at a gut level are affronted by homosexuality
and transgenderism, you are urged to learn to think outside
the box in which you are comfortably (self-righteously) ensconced,
pointing an accusing finger at those very minority groups
that are working and suffering on your behalf. In the war
against unsustainable population growth, homosexuality and
gender fluidity should be encouraged and subsidized at the
highest levels of government.
For
every increase in the homosexual and transgender populations,
a favour, a blessing has been bestowed upon the world bursting
at the numbers. And what is required of us all, with a nod
to nature and Lamarck, is not our wrath and censure, but our
infinite gratitude, if not from the heart then from the head.
In
the absence of Divine Intervention, we now look to the non-breeders
of the world to lead us out of the wilderness of our folly
to a new world order, where there is no disparity between
knowing and doing what we know is right for the planet.
I
call upon non-breeders of the world to multiply and unite,
and save the billions of us from our miserable plight.
