The Child in us All

I had put on my coat to leave the gym and was finishing a conversation with other victims of good health and rigorous exercise, when I caught sight of myself in a full length mirror. Who was that man staring back at me? When did I ever get to be so big? How did I come to look so deceptively grown up and respectable? Aware of the possibility of looking vain (a weakness of mine I confess) I looked away and rejoined the conversation, having gained an insight into what my interlocutors saw. In my head I don't see myself according to my outward appearance. The child is too much with me still.

One of the things I like about the now sadly missed comedy series Last of the Summer Wine is it's portrayal of three old men wandering about the Yorkshire countryside acting like boys. Look carefully and you see one man's pomposity as simply a grown-up role being played by a boy hiding behind a disguise of 'respectability', another man's willing resignation to the truth that they are all big kids, and a third man's wonder at and fascination with it all. Officialdom, iconoclasm, and philosophy out for an afternoon stroll.

I find it fascinating and bewildering in equal measure. The problem is, I can't take it all seriously enough to play 'respectable' bordering on ridiculous like the first man, I am yet a little too serious-minded to resign to the childishness of it all like the second, so I am left like the third, to wonder at it, fascinated by my ability to see everyone still in their juvenile greenery, their schooldays, wondering what it's all about.

I see the teachers' pet, I see the thinker who will enjoy quizzes and teach maths, the misfit who only shone on the rugby field, or in the carpentry shop, the prefect, the sensible one who will end up working in a bank, or a chemist's, the adventurous one who will travel and fill their life with memories, the timid one who will work a job, save money, and wear beige, the one who will surprise us all and become a successful writer.

Though old now, I see them in the classroom and school yard still. I find myself looking for, and am often rewarded with that sly, watchful eye that glances to see if they've been found out, the big kid in the bank queue, the little boy at the supermarket checkout, the little girl at her office desk, the class clown in the pub, holding a pint and incredulous that he is up so late and drinking beer. I have found them out. I have found you all out. I see the child in us all.

Dysphoria by Any Other Name

My wife and I were watching the ITV Wales News last evening and two items covering very similar stories followed each other in quick succession. The first put a positive spin on plans to open Wales’ very own gender identity clinic, which will be the first in the country. The report, which you can read here. said:

'It’s a step forward which many in Wales’ trans community have welcomed, including one 20-year-old [transgender person]. He transitioned from female to male at the age of 14, but waited five years to see a gender specialist on the NHS. He eventually opted for private treatment, costing him £7000.

“Knowing that you should look different to how you look, it’s so traumatising”, he said. “At the end of Year 11 I just thought I need to start hormones. I can’t go to college not starting hormones. I knew I wasn’t going to start taking them until I was 19 on the NHS”.'

There followed a report about a model and TV presenter from Aberystwyth, who has spoken out for the first time about the pressures she experienced whilst working in the fashion industry and how she subjected herself to laxative abuse in order to try and lose weight.

You can read the report here, which goes on:

'Shortly after [one particular] experience, [the model] received a message from a modelling agency which expressed an interest in representing her. After sending her measurements to the agency, she was told that they would only be willing to represent her if she lost weight and slimmed down to a “genuine size 8”. This particular experience made [her] turn to extreme lengths to try and get the “perfect figure” by taking laxatives.'

Having learned her lesson the hard way the model reports:

“If I’d have realised before that I could do all this as me and embrace who I am, rather than trying to change to suit the industry, I would never, ever have done it and my body would still be working as it should be.”

The first story concerned plans, at great expense to the NHS, open a clinic to treat self-identified gender dysphoria with extreme surgical procedures, an acceptance, even a celebration of dysphoria, the second concerned efforts to persuade young models to avoid taking extreme measures, such as laxative abuse, and learn to be happy with the body in which they were born, an attack on a dysphoria.

Both reported on the trauma of thinking they don't look the way they should look. Both took extreme measures to 'fix' what they imagined was wrong. One is in the vanguard of making their extreme measures more readily available to others, at great expense to the taxpayer, while the other issues a stark warning of what can happen if you take extreme measures to change how you look, and urges young people to accept their bodies.

Both 'suffer' from a dysphoria, but the approach to each is very different. One is accepted, the other rejected. The extreme measures to treat the one are embraced, those to treat the other met with dire warnings.

Dysphoria is defined as 'a state of feeling very unhappy, uneasy, or dissatisfied.' (Merriam Webster Dictionary. The Concise Oxford gives the same definition) There seems to be a cognitive dissonance between how we regard gender-based dysphoria, and how we regard other forms of dysphoria. Both stem from the same place, a feeling of dissatisfaction that can so trouble someone that they are driven to extreme measures, but one is treated as a physical problem, while the other is regarded as a psychological problem. One declares, 'your body shape is wrong, nature has made a mistake,' the other declares, 'your body is naturally what it is intended to be, you have made a mistake.'

The prefix dys means abnormal, impaired. It is used to describe something that has gone wrong with body (dystrophy, dyspepsia), mind (dysthymia, dysphasia) even society (dystopia), it is a dysfunction. In the case of the model the dysfunction is mental/emotional, is 'it's all in your head,' while for the transgender person the dysfunction is physical, 'your whole body is wrong.' Both are dysphoric, but one regards radical surgery a reasonable solution, the other considers a change of mind a better solution. If you were to advise the model that she is making unhealthy choices you might be regarded a caring friend. If you were to offer the same advice to the transgender person, you might be accused of hate speech and prosecuted.

To my mind this demonstrates we are an increasingly dystopian society as we cherry pick which problems we identify, how we describe and diagnose them, and what treatments we prescribe, not according to sound medical and psychological knowledge, but according to a frighteningly overbearing ideology of the left that thinks it can reshape the whole world in its own bizarre and dysfunctional image.

Society has to pick up the bill for the proposed clinic, but that same society will have to pay again, it seems to me, to undo the terrible wrong being done to vulnerable people whose issues are being identified and resolved according to an ideology. Perhaps it will take a lifetime's therapy and support to deal with the outcome of a momentary ideological fallacy.

The Way ‘They’ do Things These Days

In her latter years my mother would explain to herself an increasingly confusing world with the words, ‘Well, that’s the way they do things these days.’ From free love to microwave ovens this phrase explained it all, ‘I don’t understand it, but that’s the way they do things these days.’

Most people follow the way they do things these days, whoever ‘they’ are. From the clothes we wear to the opinions we hear and retail, from what we choose as entertainment to our eating habits, and ther company we keep we all do things the way they are done these days.

But what if ‘they’ make bad  lifestyle choices, express dangerous, destructive opinions? How would we even know those choices were unwise if the way ‘they’ do things is our only measure of what is good, If man is the true measure of man?

I am reminded of the adage, ‘Who marries the spirit of the age will end widowed.’

James, in his letter to Christians scattered across the empire, writes about the trials of many kinds that come and test our faith (Js.1:2-3). He encourages us to have a firm faith, warning against doubt, or we will find ourselves ‘like a wave of the sea that is driven and tossed by the wind,’ driven by the way things are done these days. Does that sound familiar?

When Jesus spoke of John the Baptist he said, ‘What did you go into the wilderness to see? A reed shaken by the wind?’ (Lk.7:24) A single reed was the personal emblem of Herod, a man blown about by every political wind, driven by the way things are done these days, defined by expediency, nothing to cling to but the latest piece of fashionable flotsam.

What we learn from my mother’s ‘explanation’ of the way things are done these days is that the spirit of the age will pass. The way things are done is not the way they were done in her lifetime, neither is the way things are done today the way things were done in my memory, The way you do things will pass too, another generation will rise and do things their way.

We are mistaken, of course, if we assume the way things were are preferable to the way things are, to imagine a golden age. At the same time it is folly to assume improvement is inevitable with each passing generation. Things can’t only get better, as history teaches us. What can we find to cling to in this process of rising and dying ages, this sea of life that tosses us this way and that?

James reminds us, ‘If any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask God, who gives generously to all without reproach and it will be given him.’ (Js.1:5) The Father, he reminds us, is one ‘who does not change like shifting shadows’ (Js.1:17) and Jesus, we are told, is, ‘the same yesterday, today, and forever.’ (Heb.13: 8)

Isaiah reminds us, ‘All flesh is grass, and all its beauty is like the flowers of the field…The grass withers, the flowers fade, but the word of our God will stand forever.’ (Is.40:7-8)

If you’re looking for stability in a changing world look no further than the word of God. It will often make you unpopular with those married to the age, but when this age has died and another rises, you will still be standing faithfully doing things God’s way, while they seek yet another marriage of convenience leading inevitably to another funeral.