America in Transition

American Spectator ^ | May 2012 Issue | Stephanie Guttmann

[IbJensen]

You get to be the sex you think you are (and everybody else has to acknowledge it).

I am used to surprises from the New York Times—a newspaper so far from me culturally and politically it might as well be a daily bulletin about life in a parallel universe—but last August I read a personal essay in the “Modern Love” space of the “Styles” section that really brought me up short. “My Husband is Now My Wife” (quite a tabloidy title for this genteel newspaper) was about the deeply ambivalent day the author escorted her husband to a hospital for surgery in which he would “take his first surgical step into womanhood.”

I’m a jaded ex-Manhattanite, awright? “Sexual reassignment surgery,” as it is called, is not news. I know about the clinics in Colorado where they slice up existing organs and then do Play-Doh sculpturing with the tissue that’s left. The surgery thing has been going on since the sixties. And I know from cross-dressing. On my Upper West Side block it was not uncommon to encounter a neighbor—skinny, middle-aged, bald pate surrounded by a cap of stringy graying locks—taking his daily constitutional…on roller skates, wearing a tiara and a pink tutu, blessing passersby with a Tinkerbell wand.

So it wasn’t the soo-last-century, Dude-Looks-Like-a-Lady part that startled, it was the part near the end where the author lets slip that all her fussing about losing a husband and gaining a wife was actually over a hospital stay in which her husband would have “facial feminization surgery, a not uncommon procedure in male-to-female transitions, in which a surgeon carves out a more femininely proportioned version of a male face.”

“In my husband’s case,” she wrote, “this meant higher eyebrows, a smaller nose and a more pronounced chin......

[IbJensen]

The nation should set aside a week to get to know your homosexual, transssexual, bisexual, bestiality fellow man. Take him, or her, or it, to lunch. Have a few cocktails first then delve into his or her or it's innermost self. Probably should barf before luncheon.

[IbJensen]

This is apparently one of 'them'.

[IronJack]

On my Upper West Side block it was not uncommon to encounter a neighbor—skinny, middle-aged, bald pate surrounded by a cap of stringy graying locks—taking his daily constitutional…on roller skates, wearing a tiara and a pink tutu, blessing passersby with a Tinkerbell wand.

Then your Upper West Side block isn't a residence; it's an asylum. And you have to be as crazy as one of the inmates to live there

Or am I just being bourgeoise? An unenlightened flyover rube for not appreciating the spectacle of a scrawny, chicken-necked poof rolling around playing Tinkerbell?

[The_Media_never_lie]

Or am I just being bourgeoise? An unenlightened flyover rube for not appreciating the spectacle of a scrawny, chicken-necked poof rolling around playing Tinkerbell?

No, you nailed it. In America, we worship the bizarre and punish the normal.

[AndrewB]

Hey, what are ya gonna do?

[LaineyDee]

spectacle of a scrawny, chicken-necked poof rolling around playing Tinkerbell?

Well...we did close most of the nut houses in the 60s/70s. They had to go somewhere...

[blueunicorn6]

“The empire is falling and the Senator’s wives sneak outside the walls at night to fornicate with the barbarians.”

[cradle of freedom]

She can always get a job as the circus bearded lady.

[Venturer]

When a woman takes her husband to a hospital to have his gender changed, she is as crazy as he is.

Drop this fool and find yourself a man honey, what you have isn’t worth keeping.

[peeps36]

A picture of Woody Allen popped into my head while I read that part of the article.

[Psalm 144]

This stuff is a tragedy. A tragedy for the fools who do it, and a tragedy for those who love those fools. Parents in particular must suffer when their kids go off the deep end like this.