Posted by Dan Ewert : 8/27/2003 06:23:00 PM (Archive Link)
Once upon a time, there was a boy who wasn’t really a boy. Oh sure, he looked like a boy on the outside, but on the inside he was really a girl. So he asked his fairy godmother to change him and it was so. Now he’s a she, people talk about her not him, and everything that was his is now hers (well… not EVERYTHING). Such is the story of James/Jennifer Boylan.

I have some definite qualms about the whole concept of “gender reassignment.” It seems like one of those areas where man just wasn’t meant to meddle. Even the term sounds arrogant. Nature assigned one gender but obviously got it wrong, so it’s now up to us to reassign it. Aside from that issue, though, the other troubling aspect is the effect it has on the gender-confused’s loved ones. They have to deal with some very difficult issues brought on by one person’s selfish desire to be something or have something they currently are not or have not. It follows along the same lines as men leaving their families to “find themselves,” to pursue other women, to pursue other men, or to pursue some idiotic single lifestyle that properly belongs in the fantasies of 20-year-olds. So that Boylan could feel fulfilled, he created a strange new reality for those around him. He has 7 and 9 year old sons who are reportedly dealing with the situation just fine. That likely belies the truth and does little to convey how things will go as their childhood progresses and they have to explain to other kids why their father has breasts.

Our culture has gone off the deep end in making sure that everybody is true to themselves and achieves a transcendental state of doing whatever they think is their pure purpose in life. Should people pursue such things? Sure, but only to whatever extent their current circumstances allow. If you can’t do what you seem to feel is your higher purpose in life because you’re married with kids, you don’t get a divorce and leave the children. You made other decisions earlier in life and those decisions have consequences. One of the best descriptions of being an adult is doing what you don’t want to do. It means that you have commitments and obligations to honor that supercede your own personal desires. It means looking beyond your self.

Finally, if you do decide to buck what you are supposed to be doing in order to do what you would rather be doing, at least don’t make the new set of circumstances you’ve created into something neutral. Referring to himself and his wife, Boylan says, “We're two pretty average people thrown into remarkable circumstances and we're just making it up as we go along, trying to do the best we can.” It’s as if he was walking down the street, a piano fell on him, and when he crawled out from under the wreckage, he was miraculously a woman. They were not thrown into remarkable circumstances by circumstance itself, they were thrust there by Boylan’s decision to change his whole persona. Try to be accountable for your actions.