Roger & Me
Roger Helmer has done one, apparently over a dispute with Baroness Warsi according to the Daily Mail, and has joined fellow cranks in the UK Independence Party.
To mark the day on which Helmer finally decided to jump ship, I want to share with you, readers of TCF, the time I blogged about how stupid I thought he was on my old blog, and his reply to me – and my reply back.
The post went as follows:
Roger Helmer MEP for the East Midlands region asked on his twitter feed today:
Why is it OK for a surgeon to perform a sex-change operation, but not OK for a psychiatrist to try to “turn” a consenting homosexual?
At first the question seems stupid – what’s the connection between homosexuality and gender reassignment? Isn’t this blatant homophobia? As David Allen Green has put it, has Helmer not confused “the distinct issues of gender identity and sexual preference”?
Then you read it again.
It’s still stupid.
For a longer discussion on the issue read Heresy Corner, I’m going to keep this brief. Gender reassignment is, as it is well known, the process of altering the sexual characteristics of an individual. That means a therapeutic measure of hormone replacement, replacement of organs, and other secondary sexual characteristics that aren’t reproductive organs (such as facial hair or breasts). As far as is physically possible an individual reflects the gender they have been reassinged to – nowhere in the surgery is there any attempt to mentally reassign a person, to make him/her feel like a man/woman (perhaps because there is no such feeling at all).
The notion that Helmer is comparing this with is the attempt to change, not a set of physical characteristics, but the complex psychosexual structure of an individual, which is far trickier in many ways to reassign, some would say impossible.
I’m of this latter opinion; you can’t try and “turn” a consenting homosexual, you can only try and make a person forget he or she is homosexual, or do things contrary to his or her sexuality (like be attracted to, or enjoy sexual practices with, a person from the opposite sex). And it ought not to be available by national health services like gender reassignment is. However if you want a homophobe to rub you with salts and tell you that you’re really attracted to people of the opposite sex, and that homosexuality is a myth or a lie one tells themselves, then what people get up to in their spare time is up to them – like with homeopathy it will be incumbent upon sane people to promote the truth of such ridiculous practices.,
Once again therefore, Helmer is way off the mark.We can add this to the list of other gaffes and witless opinions such as:
2 days later he replied on my blog saying:
Great piece of analysis here (and some misquotations). I draw a parallel between two distinct phenomena, and you point out that the two phenomena are — well, distinct! But there is also a parallel. A man who is uncomfortable with his gender seeks to change it, and we approve, and the NHS pays for the surgery. Another man is uncomfortable with his gender orientation, and seeks to change it, and we strike off the therapist. I simply asked why the apparent double standard. And I’m still waiting for the answer.
to which I replied
You draw a false parallel though; while you can change a person’s physical features, you can’t change somebody’s complex psychosexual structure – all you can do is try and convince that person they are something they’re not. You do this at risk of emotionally scaring the individual (for whom you can tell that black is white and white is black until the cows come home, but this does not make it so) and also at the wider risk of making homosexuality appear little more than a mental disorder. I can quite understand why the NHS would choose to distance themselves from this risk.
I’ve always said he’s a wrong’un. And I’m not alone.
