What you are saying is confusing me. Are you referring to unnaturally transgendered people? Because I am fairly sure the OP is referring to those who are born with ambiguous gender, something that DOES happen, without outside influence.
He was referring to people born with ambiguous sex, who were randomly assigned and surgically altered to the most “convenient” sex by doctors after birth, since society hasn’t traditionally liked the fact that not everyone are born “purely” male or female. Some of those individuals turned out to have gender identities that didn’t match their assigned sex, and have needed gender reassignment as adults because their doctor (or parents, in some cases) made the wrong decision.
That said, what you call “unnaturally” transgendered people also DOES happen, without outside influence. Studies have shown that transgendered individuals have brain structures like the gender they identify with; this is easily seen during an autopsy, but brain imaging techniques aren’t advanced enough to show this while the person is alive yet. But still, close to 100% of the transgender individuals who were autopsied, had brains like the gender they identified with. The study also included pre-hormone treatment individuals, to ascertain whether this change happens because of the treatment; it doesn’t.
There’s also the fact that many people who are known to be intersex today, were considered transsexual a few decades ago, since their intersex conditions weren’t known at the time - sometimes, ambiguous sex isn’t very visible on the “outside”. With the multitude of intersex conditions we know about today, it is more than likely that transgender will be history in a few more decades, because it may turn out that it simply was another form of intersex.
But whether that happens or not, today we know that the transgender condition most probably happens because the brain is exposed to the wrong hormones during pregnancy, which e.g. causes the brain to develop to a female brain, while the genitals develop according to XY chromosomes; these processes don’t happen at the same time, and while they’re usually congruent, they’re sometimes not. With the amount of knowledge we have about these conditions today, speaking about transgender as “unnatural” is uninformed at best.
So God created man in his image, in the divine image he crated him; male and female he created them. - Genesis 1:27
This at least defies Scripture. I mean, I know these people exist, but normally I’d like to reply to those in the gay movement who talk about “transgendered people”, that all people are made as either male or female.
Note that Gen 1:27 does
not say “male
or female”, it says “male
and female”. It is a statement about the default state of man, it does not say there can’t be exceptions.
That said, I believe the ideal (“pre-fall”) state of the world does not have gender identity incongruence, intersex or other anomalies related to gender. But the ideal state of the world also does not have Down’s syndrome, cleft palates or cystic fibrosis. God didn’t create those either, they are a product of the fall, but yet, I don’t see many Catholics deny their existence. I also don’t see a lot of condemnation regarding fixing a cleft palate.
But, then there are these rare, androgynous, hermaphroditical persons which you mention.
They aren’t really that rare - intersex/ambiguous sex characteristics, either chromosomal or physical, happen in around 1 of 500 newborns. Transgenderism happens in around 1 of 30,000 individuals - I’ve seen estimates of 1 of 10,000, though, but that’s still
a lot less than 1 of 500.
Also please be advised that intersex individuals usually don’t like being called “hermaphrodites” - it’s a bit like calling people with Down’s syndrome “mongoloid”.
There’s actually some scientific evidence that it’s possible for the brain to not get the same gender patterning as the chromosomes. (…) An extreme example is androgen insensitivity syndrome (…)
Complete Androgen Insensitivity Syndrome (more often just written as CAIS since typing it out is a pain) is regarded as intersex, not transgender, but you’re right. In the old days, CAIS women would simply be regarded infertile women - today, we know their chromosomes are XY, but they still generally have female identities, since their brains also weren’t masculinized during pregnancy.
There are also (but this is less common) men with XX chromosomes, and then of course you have people with XXY, XXXY, XXX etc. There are more varieties within sex characteristics and chromosomal abnormalities than we’ve even been able to imagine just a few decades ago - it’s been a while since anyone with more than a primary school knowledge about this thought that “XX = woman and XY = man”. In some individuals, sex is simply impossible to determine - there are too many inconsistencies.
This is “our time’s heliocentrism” - sex and gender have proved to be way less clear cut and “pretty” than we thought it was, and right now, this seems to be contrary to our Faith. But yet, “we” thought the same about heliocentrism (actually, the condemnations of it have not been cancelled by the Church - I suspect it would simply be too embarrassing to formally recognize that it is not a heresy to believe that the earth revolves around the sun at this time), and managed to find theological ways to accept it. I think the same will happen regarding gender.
