Being What You Are

Commentary by: Jane M. Orient, M.D.

From a favorite song we sang on long road trips when I was child (long, long before smart phones):

“Oh, you can’t get to heaven with powder and paint

“Cuz it makes you look like what you ain’t….”

It appears that the heaviest make-up users are trans-women and drag queens.

Not all women use make-up. Whether or not they “put on their face,” few women are mistaken for a man. The reason for the cosmetics is not to be recognized as a woman—that occurs automatically, but to look more attractive—to men.

The LGBTQ++ movement seems to think that womanhood means coloring your face and your nails, exposing cleavage, wearing long hair and a short skirt, and cramming your feet into spike heels or other painful shoes in an effort to make your big male feet look smaller. What devotion to stereotypes!

The plea of transgenders is to be recognized and appreciated for “who they really are”—even if that is who they really aren’t. They pose as heartbroken when a parent grieves the loss of a son and fails to recognize and celebrate the “transitioned” daughter.

The whole concept of a transition is bogus. A person of one sex does not turn into one of the opposite sex, either suddenly or gradually. One can only remove characteristic male or female features, say by shaving the Adam’s apple or amputating breasts; induce changes such as a deep voice or beard or breast development with cross-sex hormones; or try to surgically mimic anatomic parts of the opposite sex.

One can transition from being strong to being weaker, as happens over a period of months when a male soldier identifies as female. There is an awkward period when he has trouble meeting male physical requirements as his testosterone levels fall, but is not considered sufficiently feminized to qualify under female criteria. To be blunt, this could be called iatrogenic crippling. It is highly unlikely that our foreign adversaries are deliberately handicapping the troops ours might have to fight.

The essence of being male or female is deep within every cell and every organ. Most people can reliably recognize the sex of a person walking toward them from too far away to see the features. Men walk differently. The pubic angle in their pelvis is about 90 degrees in contrast to 120 degrees in the female, which accommodates the birth canal. The femoral-tibial angle varies accordingly.

Men act differently. They may say they are one of the girls in the locker room, even if 6 ft 2 in tall, but as described by the teammates of Lia Thomas they might act like voyeurs or exhibitionists. Men enjoy ogling women’s bodies. Knowing that, daddies don’t want men showering with their daughters.

How can a man “know” that he thinks like a woman—or like any other human being? There is no Vulcan mind meld outside of Star Trek.

Men and women tend to have different interests and aptitudes, with much overlap. But a girl who likes to play with trucks is still not a boy. As the symbol shows, there’s a bit of yin in the yang and yang in the yin, but you can’t turn one into the other. They are opposites but interconnected.

Some adults with gender dysphoria are evidently living successfully as a member of the opposite sex. They have had elaborate, expensive plastic surgery, and expert medical management of their hormones and medical complications. Persons who do not know them intimately may not suspect what sex they really are. Though such treatment may help some deeply troubled patients cope, surgery does not cure delusional thinking.

Heavy make-up is a vain, superficial attempt to cover up reality. Powerful hormones can unleash real, deeper problems. One of the only two lone female school shooters in U.S. history used pronouns he/him. Will we ever learn how much testosterone this angry, suicidal person was given? Will we blame the person who sold the gun—or deadly transgender and rage-inciting ideology and the $5 billion industry that prescribes mind-altering therapy to mentally ill patients?

Happiness depends on accepting who you are—not on trying to force others to pretend that you are what you really aren’t.

Jane M. Orient, M.D. obtained her undergraduate degrees in chemistry and mathematics from the University of Arizona in Tucson, and her M.D. from Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons in 1974. She completed an internal medicine residency at Parkland Memorial Hospital and University of Arizona Affiliated Hospitals and then became an Instructor at the University of Arizona College of Medicine and a staff physician at the Tucson Veterans Administration Hospital. She has been in solo private practice since 1981 and has served as Executive Director of the Association of American Physicians and Surgeons (AAPS) since 1989. She is currently president of Doctors for Disaster Preparedness. She is the author of YOUR Doctor Is Not In: Healthy Skepticism about National Healthcare, and the second through fifth editions of Sapira’s Art and Science of Bedside Diagnosis published by Wolters Kluwer. She authored books for schoolchildren, Professor Klugimkopf’s Old-Fashioned English Grammar and Professor Klugimkopf’s Spelling Method, published by Robinson Books, and coauthored two novels published as Kindle books, Neomorts and Moonshine. More than 100 of her papers have been published in the scientific and popular literature on a variety of subjects including risk assessment, natural and technological hazards and nonhazards, and medical economics and ethics. She is the editor of AAPS News, the Doctors for Disaster Preparedness Newsletter, and Civil Defense Perspectives, and is the managing editor of the Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons.

Dr. Jane Orient:, AAPS, 1601 N. Tucson Blvd. #9 Tucson, AZ 85716