Someone should really explain to CNN that a rebuttal is not the same thing as a “fact check.”
CNN.com on Thursday ran the headline, “Fact-checking Rand Paul’s comparisons of genital mutilation and gender confirmation surgery.” The article came in response to comments the Republican senator made last week during the confirmation hearing for assistant health secretary nominee Rachel Levine.
Paul had asked Levine, a transgender woman, a series of questions related to transgender health, including so-called “gender confirmation surgery,” hormone replacement therapy, and whether minors should be able to undergo such treatment.
“Like surgical mutilation, hormonal interruption of puberty can permanently alter and prevent secondary sexual characteristics,” Paul said. He also referred to sex reassignment surgery as “surgical destruction” of the genitalia.
CNN’s “fact check” said that Paul’s comparison of reassignment surgery with genital “mutilation” was based on “a misunderstanding of gender affirmation treatments and misinformation from non-credible sources.”
But that’s not the case. And this is what happens when you ask an intern to fact-check a senator who also happens to be a medical doctor. (Yes, the author of the CNN article is an intern. I’m not making that up.)
If Paul’s opinion is that sex reassignment surgery is a form of “mutilation,” it’s within his right to hold that view. The CNN article didn’t dispute that hormone replacement therapy and cosmetic surgery of the genitals can, as Paul said, “permanently alter and prevent secondary sexual characteristics.” It only cited other doctors and medical groups, such as the messy World Health Organization, that support transgender treatments and procedures.
That’s called a rebuttal, or a difference of opinion. It’s not a “fact check.”
In any event, the documented experiences of many transgender people who undergo surgery, only to regret it, would lead anyone to conclude that the procedure did nothing short of mutilating their bodies.
Urological surgeon James Bellringer has performed hundreds of male-to-female sex changes, and he told the Guardian that reversing the surgery is ultimately impossible. “The erectile tissue has been taken out, so you need a prosthetic,” he said. “The urethra’s gone, so you’d have to construct one out of a tube of skin. The tip of the penis will have been made into a neo-clitoris, and I don’t think you could put it back in its original place. It would probably be at the base of the artificial phallus.” In short, he said, “It’s a mess.”
As described in my book Privileged Victims: How America’s Culture Fascists Hijacked the Country and Elevated Its Worst People, there are people who had sex reassignment surgery and were left irreversibly scarred, mentally and emotionally.
In 2004, the Guardian told the horrifying story of Marissa Dainton, a 36-year-old transgender woman who over the course of just 11 years had gone from man to “woman” and back to man before once again transitioning to “woman.” Dainton’s first procedure involved cutting up the penis to create a “vagina.” When she decided she wanted to once again be a man, she then had a second surgery to remove the artificial vagina. It left her with a flat, smooth area resembling no human genitalia at all.
“What happened to me should be a lesson in the need to make sure you’re really ready before changing gender,” Dainton said.
In February 2019, Walt Heyer wrote in USA Today that as a 42-year-old man, he attempted to transition to female. He said that he consulted with a psychiatrist about the sexual abuse he had experienced as a child at the hands of his teenage uncle. The doctor told him that his gender dysphoria was unrelated to the childhood trauma and that a sex change “was the only solution.” Heyer began taking estrogen, and he scheduled the surgical procedures to change his penis, his chest, and other features to make him appear more like a natural woman. He changed his name to Laura. Soon after, though, he said the trauma from his childhood resurfaced, and he became suicidal.
“Why hadn’t the recommended hormones and surgery worked?” he wrote. “Why was I still distressed about my gender identity? Why wasn’t I happy being Laura?”
Heyer eventually decided to revert back to his old self, as best as he could, even though he knew that some of the physical changes were permanent. He had his implants removed, and he began a new hormone treatment to stabilize his body.
“I lived as ‘Laura’ for eight years,” he wrote, “but, as I now know, transitioning doesn’t fix the underlying ailments.”
Heyer didn’t get into the details of his surgical reversion, but as Bellringer, the urological surgeon, said, it’s easy to remove an appendage from the body. It’s impossible to grow a new one. Men with gender dysphoria who regret their bottom-half surgeries have no good options.
CNN’s interns ought to read a little more before “fact-checking.”
