SLIPPING INTO FANTASYLAND

On a Saturday night some years ago a gurney carrying a trauma victim burst through the ER doors of Charity Hospital of Louisiana.  A white sheet covered a very attractive woman, apparently in her early-30s, an almost lifeless body, with full red lips gasping each breath, her still half-brushed strawberry-blond hair to the side, with blood stains seeping through the sheets betraying multiple gunshot wounds.

​As one of eight members of the trauma team on this particular day I followed the fast-rolling gurney into the trauma room where some team members had hastily assembled in preparation for the patient's arrival.  I was present on this day because as a senior medical student at the University of Mississippi School of Medicine I had opted for a one month ER rotation at Charity Hospital in order to gain hands-on experience in emergency medical care and the procedural skills that go with it.  At the time I was thinking about a career in Emergency Medicine.

​Everyone on the assigned trauma team had a job to do; all acting individually but in concert as one unit working to the benefit of saving the life of someone who was a stranger to all.  My job was to assist the nurse who would be inserting the urinary catheter, to be connected to a bag that would record the volume of urine output the patient might or might not produce.

​The surgery resident pulled back the sheet to examine the woman's abdomen.  Four entrance wounds were still oozing blood.  A chest was revealed that could have easily competed in any swimsuit competition and I remember the fleeting thought of how tragic it was for such a beautiful woman, flowing blond hair, attractive looks, and an apparently shapely physique, to have been shot multiple times as she had been.  And for what reason?  A pitiful thing, I thought.

​In order to prepare for the insertion of the urinary catheter the nurse pulled the sheet down further.  At that moment an indelible memory was created when a full male genitalia burst into view.  The incongruence between what should have come into view and what was in fact before our eyes was stark, to say the least.  A mental clashing of cymbals.  It was my first lesson in learning that what sometimes appears to be one thing can be something altogether different.  It was an event that was not uncommon in Charity Hospital's ER which was located only several blocks from Bourbon Street, known for its salacious and bawdy behavior.  The ER personnel thought nothing of it; it was another person in serious distress, another life to save, another opportunity to exercise learned medical skills.  I never have forgotten that encounter, not that I ever wished to retain it.

​This took place in the late 70s, when such persons then were known as transsexuals or transvestites, long before the word "transgender" was invented or in vogue, a new word to reflect an overarching component of an ideology designed to blur the sexes, as well as to promote the acceptance by others of people who wish to live their lives as the opposite gender from which they were born.

​But I was reminded of this interesting medical encounter when I recently read in our local newspaper a 2-1/2 page article detailing from an interview given by the accused killer, the events that led up to the killing of an alleged transgender woman (a biological man behaving as a woman) by a biologically born man.  The accused man, a gang member, said that upon discovering in the midst of sexual foreplay in the car that there "was something there that shouldn't have been there", his words, he immediately became enraged, "blacked out", and beat the young man (transgender woman) to death -- a boy whom he had, up to that moment, taken to be a young woman.  An act for which he was remorseful and regretted, as he now awaited and admitted to many years of impending incarceration.

​In reading between the lines, the writer of the article, an extension of the newspaper's editorial position, wished to convey to the reader that they too should be indignant at both the killer's emotional reaction, as well as his actual deed in the killing -- of the biological man who was presenting himself to the killer as a woman.  An indignation, however, that they wish the reader to place, with them, upon the accused's emotional reaction -- equally so with his killing.

​The outrage should indeed be over the killing, a death which no one deserves under these circumstances, regardless of the sex, gender, or anything else with which the perpetrator or victim identifies.  But one of course takes his/her chances when living in a false reality -- whether it's hallucinatory, perceived, or willed.

​But how should most people respond in such an encounter?  The Politically Correct Police are trying to tell us we should accept and go along with the fantasy, disorder, and unreality of another person believing they are a female when they were born a male.  How many heterosexual men or women would be shocked to the core to discover at the altar on their wedding day that the person they were marrying was someone of the same sex?  Or even to simply learn that your dinner date is not really of the sex they are presenting outwardly.  Or worse, they are in fact one sex and for them to suddenly tell you they believe themselves to be of the opposite sex.

​It's certainly no excuse to kill someone over such a discovery but is it not within the norms of emotional response to emotionally react with anger over such a discovery?  Why?  Perhaps because it does not comport with reality -- with the understood order of how things work around us -- from our own personal observation and intuition.

​And now we see people upset over a notable heterosexual man, albeit a presidential candidate, who while in a private moment with a business associate, verbally lusted after a woman.  These upset people are the same folks who are promoting in our society, even in some schools, the act of anal intercourse between two men.  To what moral breach should we be most indignant?  Neither one is more morally acceptable than the other.  But one does comport with order and nature while the other comports with disorder and the unnatural.

​We can all live with and tolerate disorder and that which is not normal.  But if we're looking to improve society all around, should we not be promoting and furthering those things that are not only moral but also conforms to reality -- and not fantasy?  Should we not be promoting that which is conducive to healthy behavior and not that which invites disorder, confusion, and the unnatural?