Interventions???

Thursday, December 14, 2006

I was at one of my support group meetings recently and heard the story, first hand, from one of our members, regarding the intervention her family had attempted over Thanksgiving weekend. Needless to say, I was not only flabbergasted, but, as the details unfolded, found myself horrified. Was this still possible, given all the strides the LGBTI community has made? Did families exist that were so homophobic that they would put their child through this humiliation and terror? Evidently, yes!!

This person, a m to f transsexual, is scheduled for her gender reassignment surgery. She is young, bright and destined for a long and illustrious career. She has not only availed herself of therapy but regularly attends support group meetings. Was she deluding herself, as her family had insisted? Had she been imprudent and rash? I would answer with a resounding "NO"!!

Her travail started over Thanksgiving weekend and the juxtaposition of such a warm and wonderful holiday with the anquish that ensued was remarkable, as it was equally horrendous. She had been in her old room...she no longer lives with her parents, and had just been visiting for the long weekend. She was wearing comfortable and casual clothing...no makeup...had not been dressing or acting in such a manner as to exacerbate her mother's and her father's disdain for who she was and the path she was taking. All of a sudden...literally...her door was forced open by 4 uniformed policeman who handcuffed her and proceeded to take her to the psych ward of the local hospital.

Our friend spent the next 5-6 hours incarcerated and was continually grilled...fist by the admissions staff, next by an admitting nurse, followed by an intern and, finally, by a consulting team of pyschiatric physicians. One must assume that this inervention, so to speak...more like an illegal detention (this person is over 21, had been planned for there to actually be a psychiatric staff in residence over a holiday weekend. After the rigor and humiliation of repeated grillings, questionings and exams, the pysch staff made the determination that this girl was not mentally incompetent, was fully in her right mind, and was merely (if that can be said) guilty of having a gender identity disorder diagnosis. Nothing unususal. Thousands of TG and TS persons have been so diagnosed.

Of course, it is important for us to determine the etiology of such a stigmatized viewpoint that would lead a family to such a radical decision. In their case, they are strict and fundamentalist...literalist...Christians and their motive was to save their child from eternal damnation. Such a strong and prejudiced perspective is certainly not something with which we are unfamiliar. In fact, in today's polarized world where First Amendment considerations have been discarded, we find this to be a prevailing doctrine in the American South. Unfortunately, those who profess this dogma are often uneducated and lacking in the ability to see the forest for the trees. They have become so consumed by their literalist and revivalist interpretation of scripture that they have lost any ability to behave as one might expect a "Christian" to act.

The saddest part of this story and of people like this is that they are totally recalcitrant and unmovable within the confines of their dogma. Reasoning with such literalists is as effective as arguing with a wall. They consistently parrot select and favored statements and Biblical citations and any discourse with them can rarely be described as discourse, because discourse inplies a give and take. That rarely is the case.

Our hope must lie with their children, who have been exposed to a more diverse cross section of people and have seen and met enough people who might be described as different or as individuals that they are nonplussed by race, gender and religious variance. They are not so inclined to be myopic and have tunnel vision regarding a heterogeneous population. They represent a potential future wherein we can dispense with intolerance and fear, with hate and the violence which often accompanies it.

My friend, however, will be forced to live with the confusion of both loving and hating her parents, of wanting them to be part of her life and of wanting them to be a million miles away. That is truly what they accomplished with their Thanksgiving "intervention" and both my friend and her parents will have to live with the tragic consequences.

trickster108