Why does Warren Beatty’s daughter want to become a male?

I sent Laura Wood, the Thinking Housewife, an item I had seen in the Mail’s Femail section—that daily update on which reality TV star has just changed boyfriends and how a TV presenter you’ve never heard of’s breast implants are working out:

So why does Warren Beatty’s daughter want to be a boy? Although she wishes to become male, it is clear from her blogs that she’s attracted to men

Laura replied:

If homosexuality is morally superior to heterosexuality, as it is in Hollywood, and you are a girl who is attracted to the opposite sex, it makes sense to become a boy in order to attain higher virtue.

I said to Laura:

Oh my gosh, even I wouldn’t have thought of that.

- end of initial entry -

Jim C. writes:

1. homosexuality is not superior to heterosexuality in Hollywood—being labeled gay is still dangerous. Ask Cruise and Travolta.

2. I’d imagine this poor girl’s confusion about her sex derives more from her father’s wealth. There is absolutely no evidence that she’s trying to be virtuous.

Steve W. writes:

This young woman’s decision to live her life as a man (which, frankly, is a preposterous concept) clearly is a form of mental illness. Like many mental illnesses, it is not subject to ready explanation (albeit lots of speculation). What is more easily explained is how our society today, unlike in past generations, tolerates, facilitates, even encourages this kind of mental illness. A person in this exceedingly strange and unnatural condition almost certainly is no less miserable today than in the past. Modern society, on the other hand, considers itself more virtuous and enlightened. I think this is one of the ways that modern liberalism deals with the “bad” side of human existence. Not by acknowledging that life can be unfair and has unavoidably tragic elements, but rather by pretending that we can overcome this unfairness and tragedy through various political and technological interventions. Sometimes we can, of course; but often we can’t. Yet the real point is that we feel better about ourselves, and about human existence itself, for trying. The price of liberal virtue is “gender reassignment surgery” for Ms. Beatty.

Laura Wood writes:

I agree this is a sign of mental illness and my remarks were very much an off-the-cuff speculation, but I think it is more tempting for individuals to exhibit deeper problems this way in a climate that celebrates homosexuality and sexual confusion. Hollywood does openly embrace homosexuality and sexual disorders even though it doesn’t tolerate or want these in most of its stars.

Mike Berman writes:

Crossdressing, transgendered, transsexualism, gender dysphoria, and gender identity disorder are other types of sexual deviance which may or may not overlap with homosexuality.

Ben W. writes:

Jim C.: “There is absolutely no evidence that she’s trying to be virtuous.”

She’s just trying to find himself…

Leonard D. writes:

(a man, really — she is an adult.)

I think that transsexualism like that of Beatty’s daughter is inborn, or determined very soon after birth at latest. Just as is homosexuality. As such, the ultimate reason she is doing it is because she wants to, because she feels she is male. There is no doubt, scientifically, that male brains and female brains are different, and that these differences are created early in our development. It is strange to think it, but evidently our brains are sexed in several different ways. Beatty is female, and as is normal for a female has the “men” setting for “what turns me on”. But evidently she got the abnormal “male” setting for “sexual self image”.

Certainly in other places and times, a person with such an abnormality would have to acquiesce to social sex/gender norms. So the fact that Beatty is in liberal Hollywood (and daddy has the money to pay for a sex change) are surely factors which encouraged her to “come out”.

I prefer to call sexual identity disorder a “mental abnormality” instead of “mental illness”. To call someone “abnormal” is well defined, and it is quite anodyne. Nonetheless it drives progressives crazy (they want to normalize the abnormal, and to celebrate deviance from the norm rather than tolerating it). Of course, “mental illness” also drives progressives crazy.

I guess technically “mental illness” is not wrong, but I think the use of the word “illness” here is misleading. It suggests that “wellness” or a “cure” is possible for such people, when there is very little evidence to suggest that. In a similar way we could call having an amputated limb an illness. (I am leaving aside the idea that a sex change operation is a “cure” of sorts.)

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 09, 2010 12:17 PM | Send