Is the transgender movement the latest in a series of civil rights campaigns? Or did psychiatrist Paul McHugh get it right when he described the movement as “cult-like”? Are children being helped or recruited?
How relevant or not are Jungian descriptions of anima, animus and self to experiences of gender today? Is somatophobia (hostility to the body) a factor in transgender culture?
How comparable or not is modern transgenderism to the worship of goddess Cybele in the ancient Roman world? Can we find gentler ways of acknowledging the goddess in everyman, and the god in everywoman?
An excerpt:
“So-called affirmative gender therapy leads young people through a series of steps (social, pharmacological, surgical), which is comparable to a process of initiation. The process is meant to bring out their true identity, and enable them to find happiness.
Initiation is not necessarily bad news. There are many forms of initiation in the world today, the Evangelical born again experience being a notable example. Different initiations have their claimed success stories about how wonderfully they changed someone’s life, and some of the claims may well be true.
Still, when gender therapist Margaret Nichols says ‘puberty blockers are a godsend’ to transgender children, I have to wonder what sort of god she has in mind?”
