If we are to believe a letter in your April 12 edition (‘Homosexuality and gender identity disorders are not the same’), then the five cross-dressers now petitioning the courts for constitutional change, may not have been homosexuals at all. Could simply have been guys suffering some form of ‘genetic identity disorder.’ And hence misunderstood victims.
Vicky Sawyer, the writer of the letter, claims to be a person to have made the surgical transition from male to female and states that ‘gender identity disorder’ has nothing to do necessarily with homosexuality. You could cross-dress and change your anatomy without being gay at all. Wonders as they say….
If we are to accept this disorder argument as truth then we conclude that homosexuality is to be considered in isolation from the genetic disorders that lead to ‘hermaphroditism,’ the ‘hormonal’ imbalances that lead to confusion, and from, as well, the psychic disorders that lead to behaviour such as cross-dressing. Which leaves it where it ought to rest, in the realm of a perverted behaviour and exposing these persons to the charge of premeditated deviance.
Sawyer’s case must be rare. Claiming to be married, living with a woman, and having happily transformed into woman. But neither Sawyer nor the woman are homosexual in any sense of the term, she says. This does not, to my mind, fall within the range of the normal. On this note readers are warned that my references to using organs from the sex changes as spare parts for the heterosexual ill, was intended as satire. In jest. As a Muslim we do not believe that man has the right to change God’s creation in the way some trans-sexuals insist. Islam does not approve of eunuchs although they existed in the Muslim world. The exaggerations and other obvious bits in my letter that should have betrayed its clearly satirical intent, were edited out. Also, I know that trans-sexuals need some of their own parts for their reformed female anatomy. But not all as she suggests. Not even much.
An observation about the turn the exchange has taken. Focus is made on the effeminacy of the homosexuals and the possibility of genetic or other dsyfunction. Little is said of the man standing behind him, just as homosexual by all definitions, but unprotected by the claim of female genes or gender, or, as Sawyer urges upon us, “soul.” The argument by Kissoon and Sawyer then throws the man behind, if we may call him that, without exculpatory justification to the wolves of the law. Inverse with women.
The idea that a man may have his corporeal sheath inhabited by two souls, one male, one female, is frightening enough. One cannot believe in multiple souls or multiple personalities. For people of my faith, as for the criminologist and the judge, you are held responsible and treated as a single unit for all practical purposes. Does not matter if you overhear one of your souls telling the next that you are Napoleon or Harry Potter.
The transgender ‘hijra’ of the Indian sub-continent to whom Stewart and Kissoon refer are unfortunates. Generally sex workers and singers at wedding houses and fairs. Beggars and bothersome. Not the kind of role most Guyanese men wish for their sons. Sawyer ought to know we are still at the stage of wanting doctor and lawyer for our boys and good husbands for our girls. What do I do if one of the sons-in-law I will have, after many years of marriage and kids, does like Sawyer?
Yours faithfully,
Abu Bakr
