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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 8, 2024

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This is taking a physically healthy and "natural" male and turning it into a defective and unnatural male: a male with no penis, no testicles, and a hole where a hole shouldn't be.

This begs the question of whether the patient was supposed to be a man or a woman. They could be thought of as having been born as a defective and unnatural woman, lacking the parts and capabilities she is naturally supposed to have; the operation would then be turning her into something closer to her natural form.

Admittedly she would not be entirely there with the current state of medical practise (e. g. unable to bear children); however, this is less an ironclad proof of the One True Ontology Of Gender and more of a Skill Issue on the part of surgeons.

If we had the technological capability to turn a man into a "natural" woman with all the parts and capabilities of a "natural" woman, then it would lead to an interesting Natural Law question. Arguably it would not be against Natural Law, but may still be against Catholic doctrine: the whole "creation is prior to us and must be received as a gift. At the same time, we are called to protect our humanity, and this means, in the first place, accepting it and respecting it as it was created” bit. But from a Natural Law perspective, it may well be licit.

Though there is the question of how you would know that someone is "naturally" a woman despite having a healthy male body. It may seem more likely that their abnormality is not having the wrong body, but having an abnormality of the mind. Imagine we had the technology to perfectly change someone's sex, and also had the technology to cure their GID (as in, they won't feel like they're in the wrong body anymore). From a Natural Law perspective, curing the GID seems to be the superior treatment. After all, humans are not "naturally" supposed to believe they are in the wrong bodies and suffer depression and anxiety and the rest around that belief.

In any case, what is certainly not licit under Natural Law is to take a natural human and lop off bits of it to make an unnatural human, unless the alternative is even more unnatural.

Imagine we had the technology to perfectly change someone's sex, and also had the technology to cure their GID (as in, they won't feel like they're in the wrong body anymore). From a Natural Law perspective, curing the GID seems to be the superior treatment.

From a 'considering second-order effects' perspective, 'curing' someone's mind to make them accept their existing body opens a slippery slope to those who do not accept 'Natural Law' to 'cure' their workers of the desire for humane working conditions.

Therefore changing someone's body, into a form which exists naturally (men and women both naturally exist), may forestall the un-natural transformation of human beings into something that does not naturally exist.

In any case, what is certainly not licit under Natural Law is to take a natural human and lop off bits of it

Again, that is begging the question of whether a trans person, prior to medical interventions, is a 'natural human'.

From a 'considering second-order effects' perspective, 'curing' someone's mind to make them accept their existing body opens a slippery slope to those who do not accept 'Natural Law' to 'cure' their workers of the desire for humane working conditions.

The same can be said the other way: 'curing" someone's body by radically transforming it into the opposite gender opens a slippery slope for those who do not accept Natural Law to 'cure' their workers by giving them new body forms that make them better workers. The solution in either case (assuming we have such powerful technology) would be to keep to a Natural Law ethic which would oppose radical modifications of the human mind from what is normal (for instance, modifying a mind not work for 16 hours a day without a break and not mind it) or the human body (by, say, modifying a body so that they are 50% more efficient at their job by giving them six arms, twelve eyes, and three brains or something).

Again, that is begging the question of whether a trans person, prior to medical interventions, is a 'natural human'.

Well they are physically "natural". They have all the parts and pieces a male should have (as opposed to someone with an intersex abnormality). Given the healthy and natural body, the question becomes whether this natural body is actually unnatural because the it does not match the mind, or if the mind is unnatural because it does not match the body.