A HEALTHY BODY

Does it Matter?

This is a repost with permission from Hippiesq’s Newsletter.

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As I was writing this essay, I thought it was way too obvious, and that I would not end up publishing it. After all, who doesn’t realize that a healthy body is important in life? This notion is the furthest thing from a novel or controversial concept that I could think of. Yet I am still compelled to publish it, because I am concerned that the most obvious and undisputed ideas are the ones that are being thrown under the bus in the age of faux kindness and pretend activism. Here goes.

Nowadays, it seems that a healthy body is not a priority. There seem to be many over-riding goals that supersede the preservation of our health. For instance, if somebody is stressed or emotionally upset, it’s of supreme importance to sooth the emotional pain, even if that requires treatments that may cause serious effects and side effects, detrimental to physical health.

The most concerning of these “treatments” for emotional distress is related to sex - male or female. It is becoming more and more common, acceptable, and even laudable in today’s society, if someone is uncomfortable with their sex (we call this “gender dysphoria”), to immediately, or as soon as practicable, provide medical interventions to remove the offending sex characteristics, such as breasts, periods, and female voice patterns in biological females, or testicles and penises, flat chests, and body hair in biological males. This applies not just to adults, but also to pubescent teens, starting at Tanner Stage II of puberty (an early stage of puberty, reached by girls around age 11 and by boys around age 12). A large majority of these young people are either on the Autism spectrum, suffer anxiety or other mental health issues, or are homosexual and/or gender non-conforming, making them more vulnerable than the average teen (who is somewhat vulnerable based on age).

For younger children, we do not - because we cannot - engage in any medical interventions. However, we engage in extreme social interventions by assuring children - starting around age 3 or 4, who express dissatisfaction with their biological sex, or who declare that they are actually the opposite sex - that they are “really” the opposite sex. We also make everyone around them agree to keep up the pretense. These children are guided by the adults in their lives to believe that they should never grow up to be the sex they are. Instead, as they approach puberty, perhaps around age 9 or 10, we explain to them that they will soon have medical interventions to assure that they will never appear as the sex they are, but can appear as if they are the opposite sex, the sex we all pretend they are. Thus, while we do not medically intervene in children before Tanner Stage II, we set the scene for the inevitability of those later medical interventions with our words and our actions.

The question I pose is whether a healthy body deserves to be prioritized. Personally, I believe it does. After all, we only have one body for our entire life, and, when it has health problems, they can prevent us from accomplishing everything else in life worth striving for. For example, when treatments for discomfort with biological sex render individuals sterile, as these treatments often (but not always) do, they make it impossible to have biological children. While not everyone wants to have biological children, a large majority of people do want this at some point in their lives, and most individuals who have and raise children find the experience to be one of the most rewarding parts, if not the defining experience, of their lives. Granted, adoption is a wonderful and valuable experience as well, but that does not mean the ability to have biological children is not important or should be sacrificed simply because someone is having difficulty accepting one’s biological sex.

Further, the time-consuming and energy-consuming nature of medical transition itself prioritizes the elimination of emotional distress over a healthy functioning life. This is particularly true when transition is accompanied by medical complications such as infections from surgeries, brittle bones, strokes or heart attacks, cancer, or chronic pain. However, even without those complications, these medical interventions require a certain devotion of time and energy - to schedule, experience and recover from surgeries, or deal with increased doctor’s visits to monitor hormone levels. The mental energy devoted to keeping up the pretense that one is the opposite biological sex also must be noted. Name changes, erasing photos, deciding who can meet who from one’s past, whether one’s family home has “evidence” of one’s biological sex - all takes mental energy and time, and inconveniences the transitioning individual, as well as family members.

But the most important point is that, in prioritizing a desire to reject one’s “problematic” biology, the body is looked upon as something to manipulate at will, with little regard for the obvious potential to harm and weaken it. This seems, to me, a foolish endeavor that ignores the fragile nature of life itself, as well as the benefits of a healthy body. With a healthy body, we can accomplish everything from artistic creations to intellectual pursuits to caring for others. Health challenges will always inhibit our ability to accomplish these pursuits. A shortened life will also negatively impact our ability to accomplish our life goals. Furthermore, simply enjoying a walk in the park, or a nice meal can be severely impaired by the existence of health issues, pain, mobility problems, etc.

An analogy to our treatment of Earth seems appropriate here. Quite clearly, we - people - have often failed to prioritize the health of our planet, instead prioritizing convenience. We want cars, consumption, luxury, profits. Sometimes, this makes us forget what we are destroying. Like our bodies, Earth is resilient, but not without its breaking points. Holes in the Ozone Layer are difficult to repair. Very few people would argue that we should ignore Earth’s health in favor of temporary convenience. We need to strike a balance, and have been failing at that in recent times. Most people agree that this is concerning and that we have to reconsider our lifestyles in order to prioritize the health of our planet. We now bring re-usable bags to stores, recycle old bottles, cans, paper products, and plastic containers. We are questioning things like fracking, and we are trying to use renewable energy instead of depleting the planet of fossil fuels.

Yet the same people who would march with Greta Thunberg to protect our Earth will march to allow, and even encourage, vulnerable teens and vulnerable young adults like Greta Thunberg (who is on the autistic spectrum) to destroy their bodies, removing healthy tissue, filling their bodies with toxic levels of synthetic hormones, simply because they don’t currently feel comfortable with their primary and/or secondary sexual characteristics. For some odd reason, we have decided that the known fact — that children and teens, and particularly those with mental or emotional issues, are fickle, are often uncomfortable with their bodies and their social roles, and will grow and change well into their 20s, if not beyond — somehow does not apply to “gender.”

We take teenage emotional discomfort and elevate it to a level of importance that it has never seen before. We are literally cutting off body parts and chemically altering these young people’s appearance simply to assuage discomfort with their sexed bodies. We as a society are simply shrugging our shoulders at the consequences these treatments have on these young healthy bodies, including bone density issues, increased chance of stroke or heart attack, increased risk of cancer, infections from experimental surgeries, and sterility and sexual dysfunction - and those are the known detriments. We don’t even know what other problems we are courting with these experimental treatments, - but apparently, we don’t care.

It is worth noting that these medical interventions are not only an assault on the healthy bodies of the young vulnerable individuals expressing distress over their sex. These treatments are also a diversion of our limited medical resources from those who truly need intervention - those suffering actual medical ailments, like cancer or the loss of a limb - to those who are simply having an emotional reaction to the difficulties of life. Apparently, it is common for health care providers to fudge the reasons for these medical interventions (categorizing the provision of synthetic cross-sex hormones as “medication management,” for example) in order to get insurance to cover the treatments. The more insurance companies have to pay out for these interventions, the more difficult it is for those with actual medical ailments to receive the treatments they need to be healthy or as close to healthy as they can be with whatever ailments they have. Why this type of insurance fraud is considered acceptable is beyond me. I assume it’s because these medical providers believe these interventions are “life-saving,” even though there is not one shred of evidence that this is true (a subject for another essay).

As usual, I would ask the reader what I am missing here. Is there any reason we should not protect the health of young bodies, but should instead immediately satisfy the emotional urge to be seen as the opposite sex? Is our health really something to be sacrificed in exchange for the quelling of anxiety over our sexed bodies? Does this make any sense at all?

I will end this by paraphrasing my mother, who died after a long battle with Parkinson’s Disease. She would often say to me: “If only I could just feel normal, without pain and discomfort, my life would be so wonderful.” If only we could all appreciate this sentiment, and be thankful for a healthy body, life would be so wonderful.