May 11, 2015 2 min read

Transgender, the news topic of the day: cover story of Time magazine, NBC feature on young children, Bruce Jenner story, NPR reports from colleges across the country on students deciding when, and under what circumstances, they will be called “he” or “she.” Men marrying men, declaring who will be the “husband” and who the “wife.” Women, likewise.

Is it something in the water? There are some who are concerned about hormonal discharges in the water supply, and from what I understand, a situation for which there are not adequate tests and no known correction.

Then there are the cultural factors at work. We are the inheritors of the unisex movement. Is our complacency related to our disregard for the meaning of true masculinity? True femininity? Is it, perhaps, because we don’t even want to think about what that would mean? No less a psychiatrist than Carl Jung recognized that we all have masculine and feminine elements in our human nature and that the proper integration of those traits is important in our development. The Chinese Yin-Yang expresses the two poles between which life flows.

Is it because we consider everything to be changeable and are in love with our ability to recreate ourselves in whatever way we wish? We are created male and female. In 1973, when the APA reached its decision to remove homosexuality from its list of disorders (under circumstances never before experienced by that body) some members deplored the fact that once the decision was made, we would stop looking at the factors that affect the human integration of biology and the development of gender identity. How prophetic!

But if you are happy about the present situation, you just don’t ask questions.

Dolores Jarrell

McMurray