“Over 30 years ago, I underwent sex reassignment surgery at the hands of a skilled sex change surgeon, Dr. Stanley Biber. Ever since I could remember, I felt like I was born into the wrong body. The diagnosis was gender dysphoria, or gender identity disorder. The transgender support community provided an answer—take hormones and get sex reassignment surgery. In other words, change into a woman. But can you really change?”

Introduction

A few days before this article was written (October 2013), Nathan Verhelst, aged 44 years, was legally euthanased (i.e. killed) in Belgium due to “unbearable psychological distress” after a series of sex-change operations, because the outcome failed to meet his expectations. What causes a person to firstly reject the sex (gender) they are born with and then seek surgery to attempt to become the opposite sex?

Genesis 5:2 “Male and female he created them, and he blessed them”

Evolutionists have no explanation for the origin of the sexes or gender in nature. While they acknowledge the advantages of sexual reproduction, they have no valid description for how the sexes came about.1 Creationists believe that sex is the product of an intelligent Creator.2

The male and female sexes are usually easy to tell apart in nature, for example the peacock versus the more modest peahen. Even male and female humans can be distinguished from external characteristics. However, there are some humans who do not identify with the gender that they are accorded by virtue of their external characteristics observed at birth, and who feel closely aligned to and identify as the opposite gender. These are folk who are known as transgender, and they are often misunderstood and, sometimes, mistreated.

In July 2013 Australian Health Minister Tanya Plibersek announced that gender discrimination would be removed from (the national insurance scheme) Medicare, meaning transgender and intersex people would not have to disclose or explain their gender in order to receive medical treatment. The Health Department and the Department of Human Services are also in early discussions about including a third sex on Medicare records.

Gina Wilson, president of Organisation Intersex International Australia, has welcomed moves to remove gender discrimination from Medicare, also stating that she had difficulty getting appropriate medical treatment because her Medicare record said she was female but she had some male features. “‘The doctors that think I’m female tend to treat me like that and ignore my male bits. And doctors that think I’m male tend to treat me like that and ignore my female bits,’ she said. ‘What medicine should be treating is the person and the parts of a person. Medicine should not be interested in a person’s sex’”.3

The number of people affected by the change to Medicare services is unknown as the number of transgender people in Australia is unknown. A recent study in the US determined that an estimated 3.5% of adults identify as lesbian, gay, or bisexual and an estimated 0.3% of adults are transgender.4 The Australian Census allows only for collection of data relating to male and female sex. Indeed, a key recommendation of ACON, formerly known as the AIDS Council of NSW, in May 2013, was that the 2016 Census of Population and Housing should collect data on sexual orientation, gender identity, and intersex status.5 The calculated prevalence of transsexualism in The Netherlands is 1:11,900 males and 1:30,400 females.6 The prevalence is similar in Belgium,7 slightly lower in Sweden, but higher in Singapore. The prevalence by self-report in New Zealand is approximately 1:6000.8

What is it like to be transgender? And should we acknowledge a ‘third’ sex? A person is born male or female based on the presence or absence of the Y sex-chromosome. Females inherit an X sex chromosome from their fathers and another one from their mothers, whereas males always inherit a Y sex chromosome from their fathers, indeed, the very same Y sex chromosome passed down to all males from Adam via Noah, as well as an X sex chromosome from their mothers. Therefore, females are XX, with one X being inactivated during early development, whereas males are XY. Anomalies during cell division, during meiosis9 can result in this process ending with problems that affect physical outcomes. For example, getting more than two X sex chromosomes leads to disorders that profoundly affect health.10,11 Similarly, problems during development can result in Y chromosome disorders.12 However, each of us has received an X or Y chromosome from Dad and we are each either biologically male or female. There are a number of congenital disorders that result in ambiguous genitals at birth, and this can cause an array of issues for the individual, however, this is another result of the Fall, “For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now” (Romans 8:22).

Gender reassignment surgery does not change a person’s sex, as sex is determined by X and Y chromosomes contained in every cell in the body. Male to female sex change surgery is a cosmetic change only.

Gender identity is described as the sense of being masculine or feminine. Gender dysphoria or gender identity disorder, GID, is a significant feeling of incongruence with one’s gender, to the point of distress, accompanied by the strong desire to be of the other sex, without there being a concurrent physical intersex condition such as congenital adrenal hyperplasia or a partial androgen insensitivity syndrome, according to the DSM IV13.

This explains what David, a patient of mine, had experienced.

During puberty, David experienced an inexplicable intense desire to be female. There ensued an internal struggle for a number of years, yet so committed was David in this endeavour to be female and so certain was he that life would never be right for him if he remained a male, that he took the ultimate steps in attaining his goal of becoming ‘female’. Around the age of 30 years, after taking female hormones and living as a female for the requisite two years, he underwent a gender reassignment operation.

I first met David, who was Danniielle at that time, late one afternoon at the clinic where I work. He explained that he had been born a healthy male and had been through a ‘sex change’ operation at the age of 30 years, and had been living as a female for several years. This major surgery involved the permanent removal of his male sexual organs and the construction of some female ones.

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