Studies in Identity

Robert Kosilek was born male.   In 1990 he wore a beard, and lived as a man.  He was married.  In fact, he was arrested and formally charged with strangling his wife.  Three years later, at the time of his trial, he had assumed a new identity.  His name was no longer Robert, but Michelle.  He wore female clothing, he had grown his hair long while in prison, and he used nail polish on his long nails.

He is now 63 years of age.   And he is a she, a woman in a man's body trying, through the use of hormones, to make it a woman's body.  She remains incarcerated, as a woman named Michelle, living in a prison for men.  And she has twice sued the prison system for refusing to give him/her an operation that would alter his/her body from male to female.

Understandably, prison authorities are concerned that with his surgically altered body Michelle would be ripe for sexual attacks.  U.S. District Judge Mark Wolf has ordered prison officials to provide sex-reassignment surgery for Michelle Kosilek.  Ruling that this is the only way that Michelle's "serious medical need" can be met.

Taking into account that although the regular administrations of hormone therapy have helped somewhat the inmate "continues to suffer intense mental anguish", believing she is a woman trapped in a man's body.  "That anguish alone constitutes a serious medical need.  It also places him at high risk of killing himself if his major mental illness is not adequately treated", claimed Judge Wolf.

If Robert/Michelle Koselik has a medical illness that the judge characterizes as a "major mental illness", then why not treat the mental illness of his warped mind that has resulted in his confused gender orientation.  Unless his acute mental illness is really a result of overweening vanity, of someone who craves attention and will go to any lengths to get that attention.

Attention that results in press coverage, tying up court proceedings, forcing the prison system to expend a hefty additional sum of money for a surgical procedure to satisfy the demands of a convicted murderer; that kind of thing.  He/she sued the Massachusetts Department of Correction 12 years ago, first time around.  At that time the same judge ruled he was entitled to gender-identity disorder assistance, stopping short of surgery.

He/she sued again in 2005, arguing the medical necessity of surgery on his/her behalf.  In his final ruling ordering the Department of Corrections to allow and proceed with surgery, the judge also said it would be up to prison officials where Robert/Michelle would be housed, post-surgery.  Not everyone is thrilled at this win for surgical sex-change.

U.S. Senator Scott Brown filed legislation in 2008 to ban the use of tax funds to pay for prison inmate surgery, although it was not made law.  Senator Brown had more to say recently: "We have many big challenges facing us as a nation, but nowhere among those issues would I include providing sex change surgery to convicted murderers.  I look forward to common sense prevailing and the ruling being overturned."

Unsurprisingly, a senior attorney at the legal group Gay  Lesbian Advocates  Defenders, claimed that the ruling recognizes what some medical experts have long maintained; sex-reassignment surgery can be a "legitimate life-saving medical treatment for transgender people".  The victimhood industry that supports the 'rights' of people claiming all manner of extraordinary privileges from society is in full sway.

Who is prepared to challenge their righteousness, their smug sense of championing the underdog?  The more bizarre the tale of 'difference', the more sympathy goes out to them.  The wretched of the Earth have their defenders, who excuse all excesses and absurd demands in the belief that they are entitled to do and behave as they will and all others must defer to them.

There appear to be a number of fascinating social grievance studies published as books: The Victim's Revolution: The Rise of Identity Studies and the Closing of the Liberal Mind by Bruce Bawer; Prison Notebooks by Antonion Gramsci; Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire; and The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Vanon. 

Sounds like revealing reading material for anyone with an enquiring mind not co-opted by the politics of exceptionalism.