Letter to the Editor – IPA

From the late 20th Century to the early years of the 21st, the conservatives and the religious right have waged a war against same-sex marriage. They proclaimed it to be an “unnatural abomination” that tears apart the “moral fabric” of our society. They hammered upon our society the moral imperative of traditional gender roles.

It is only natural that this very ideology, the fear and demonization of any deviations of gender roles and sexual orientation, is behind the ban on intergender mind exchange. In many ways, intergender mind exchange presents a greater threat to the traditional gender roles than same-sex marriage. The proponents of the ban argue that allowing men to casually switch into female bodies and vice versa would encourage (some would even say condition) people to become transgender. The religious right believe that a rise in the transgender identity would be morally decadent for our society. They fear that, if the transgender identity overtakes our culture, it would divert people from forming what they believe to be one of the fundamental pillars of society, the traditional family unit.

Once again the political machine of the conservatives is pandering to the religious vote at the expense of human rights. In exchange for the alliance, the conservatives retain the voice of the psychiatric industry to undermine intergender exchange medically. They work to install uncertainty and paranoia within society regarding possible side-effects that intergender exchange would have on the mind. They are a powerful element in the cultural discourse around intergender exchange because they paint a coat of scientific legitimacy on the condemnation of intergender exchange.

The conservatives, the religious right and the psychiatric industry form a superpower in the political arena where the legal system surrounding mind switch is being created. This trinity is ingeniously synergetic. Each party contributes equally and each party stands to gain tremendously from it.

Mind switch should have been a miracle for many transgender individuals. Those born male, but feel that down to their very soul that they are female, could have simply switched minds with those born female but feel that they are male. No more sexual reassignment surgeries. No more financially, emotionally and psychologically damaging therapies.

It is well-known that recent research revealed that 30% of all black market transactions are for intergender exchange. The ban on intergender exchange seems to have a similar effect as the criminalizing of prostitution and marijuana or even the criminalizing of alcohol in the 1930’s. By pushing it to the realm of criminal activities, it is now within the control of organized syndicates and out of the reach of the law. It has been proven that conventional enforcements of the ban is incredibly costly and, just like prostitution and marijuana, will never eliminate intergender exchange. If anything, it has made intergender exchange unnecessarily more dangerous.

Dr. Gerald Lee has argued that mind switching has the potential of opening all of our eyes to greater and more profound understanding of each other. If we have all been in both the male and female bodies, perhaps the conflicts and issues that arise from separation of genders would dissipate.

To attempt to continue the no longer relevant mentalities of the past and to deny the current reality is backwards. The fundamental cultural shift that must to happen is a realization by our society that gender, thanks to mind switching, now exists within a completely different context. Our perceptions of gender roles and our relationship to gender must be appropriately reoriented to the landscape of the new context.