"Living in a Shell of Something I'm Not": Transsexuality, Medical Ethics, and the Judeo-Christian Culture

A surgeon participating in a 2008 congress on the topic of trans-identified people posed the question of whether doctors would have to defend themselves when "judgment day" comes for having employed surgical means to turn men into women or vice versa? What might be viewed as a certain leve...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of religion and health 2015-10, Vol.54 (5), p.1584-1597
Main Author: Wirth, Mathias
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aging
Christianity - psychology
Clinical Psychology
Culture
Discrimination
Ethics, Medical
Female
Gender
Humans
Judaism - psychology
Male
Medical ethics
Medicine
Medicine & Public Health
Original Paper
Public Health
Religion
Religion and Medicine
Religious Studies
Transgender Persons - psychology
Transsexualism - psychology
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Summary:A surgeon participating in a 2008 congress on the topic of trans-identified people posed the question of whether doctors would have to defend themselves when "judgment day" comes for having employed surgical means to turn men into women or vice versa? What might be viewed as a certain level of (medical) irrationality surrounding transgender life, coupled with widely documented cases of violence directed at these groups may well partly be attributable to the deeply internalized doctrine of creation in Judeo-Christian culture. Objections, however, to the use of transgender medicine "in the name of normalization" cannot relate to the biblical tradition, for there is no normative concept of gender and no text whose scope is to articulate theory of gender. In the vast expanse and freedom of the Judeo-Christian creator there is space for diversity, variations, and, above all, for the development of individual freedom.
ISSN:0022-4197
1573-6571
DOI:10.1007/s10943-015-0085-7