“No worst, there is none,” wrote the poet Gerard Manley Hopkins, about human states of mind. If he were alive today, he might write, “No most absurd, there is none,” about our current contortions of language.
In a publication aimed at dermatologists, the Dermatology Times, we read in an article devoted to the treatment of the skin in transgender patients the following:
Patients of reproductive potential who are not…abstinent with penis-containing partners, 2 forms of contraception are required.
In other words, women who would like to be men but still have their ovaries and wombs can become pregnant by sexual intercourse with fertile men, the latter now being known as “penis-containing” persons. (The venerable but increasingly lunatic medical journal The Lancet recently decided to call women “bodies with vaginas.” How long can it be before we no longer address meetings or assemblies as Ladies and Gentlemen but as Penis-containers and Vagina-bearers, or perhaps P and V for short?)
At the same time as we are enjoined to think of biological sex as unimportant to the point of nonexistence, and to believe that men who can have babies by penis-containers are men in precisely the same sense that Tarzan was a man, we are also told to distinguish human beings solely by one or other of their genitive features. This makes the doublethink of Nineteen Eighty-Four seem straightforward or even lucid by comparison.
Acne is a distressing condition and when it is severe enough can provoke suicidal thoughts. Moreover, one of the best treatments for acne is isotretinoin, a well-known side effect of which is suicidal thoughts sometimes resulting in suicide, even in those not previously suicidal. As if this were not enough, the rate of depression and suicide among such gender-diverse individuals assigned female at birth is already high—according to the article itself. What is the poor dermatologist to do? The answer is simple: prescribe isotretinoin and shift the responsibility onto a psychiatrist. If the dermatologist refers the patient to a psychiatrist but the patient nevertheless commits suicide under his treatment, it is then the psychiatrist’s fault, not the dermatologist’s.
Did the writer of the article use the term penis-containing partner spontaneously, or was it the end result of a serious deliberation, either on his part or that of the editor, as to what term would cause the least trouble with the intimidatory lobby that has, in the words of Rudyard Kipling, come up like thunder ’crost the bay, though in this case not from China? (In fact, how they must be laughing in China at this further evidence of Western decadence.)
It is possible that I am mistaken, of course, and that thorough research would prove me wrong, but I do not think that anyone would have used the expression penis-containing partner ten, maybe not even five, years ago. It seems that civilizations go bankrupt like people, first slowly, then quickly.
There are several wider cultural trends discernible in the current agitation over transsexualism, or whatever name one wishes to give it. (“Words are wise men’s counters,” said Hobbes, “they do but reckon by them: but they are the money of fools.” It is only fair to add that, with inflation, money could soon become the money of fools.)
