It’s a scandal to feed social contagion — also, to dismiss real illness.
It’s a scandal to feed social contagion — also, to dismiss real illness.
T here was some outrage surrounding the “Unholy” performance of Sam Smith and Kim Petras at the Grammys. They seemed to bring Hell to Los Angeles — as if that was something new. I’m grateful that there was a hat tip to a moral barometer at all. That any behavior is labeled “unholy” suggests there might be something else to aspire to.
What deserves more reflection than Sam Smith’s horned hat is Kim Petras. I confess the two of them are new to me. And I had to do a doubletake when Petras was heralded as the first transgender Grammy winner. Petras looked like a woman, sang like a woman, danced like a woman. Petras had transitioned as a teen.
As I read about Petras, I couldn’t help but think of Chloe Cole, an 18-year-old young woman who transitioned to a boy and wishes someone had stopped her. In her case, she was an awkward teenager, not fitting in. In other words, she was a teenager. Who among us didn’t have those feelings at some point? On the internet, she got the idea that becoming a boy would solve her problems. Doctors fast-tracked what she thought she wanted, and her parents were pressured, even bullied. “‘Would you rather have a dead daughter or a living son?’” they were asked. At 13 she was on puberty blockers and testosterone. At 15, she had a double mastectomy.
Cole is 18 now and is living as a young woman, but with the inability to have children, among other things, because doctors did her harm. “At 15, I wasn’t really thinking,” she has said. “I was a kid, just trying to fit in — not thinking about the possibility of becoming a parent.” She’s become an activist, insistent that she will give her testimony until the child abuse of puberty blockers and transition surgery on children stops.
Petras was convinced that Petras was not a boy from early childhood. “I have always felt like a girl,” Petras told the German newspaper Die Zeit. “I hated my body when I was five. . . . I couldn’t identify with gender, wanted it gone.” At some point as a young boy, Petras ran through a room with a pair of scissors declaring, “Cut it off.” Petras was bullied in school — and, after ten years of age, would sometimes go to school in latex. “At least I wanted to be well-dressed if someone threw their school lunch at me,” Petras has said. Unlike Cole, who was an example of social contagion, Petras may very well have gender dysphoria, an incredibly painful medical-psychological condition.
Petras made news in Germany for being an early transitioner, even before being in the U.S. and making “slut pop” music. Petras doesn’t necessarily want to be known first and foremost as a transgender singer but explained in an interview:
I’m very much part of the transgender community and part of the LGBT community. I will always fight for it and I have for my whole life. The first documentary I did was when I was twelve, and it was only about being transgender, and then I did a bunch of documentaries about it. I really let people look into my life and see what it was like to have such supportive parents and see how positive that was for me. I tried to help other people become educated about being transgender. And I still want people to be educated about it, but I think the ultimate goal for me is if a transgender person can be known for anything but being transgender. That would be a really great thing. That’s my goal. There are still too many people who think being transgender is very freaky. And they think you can’t live a happy life and try to tell their kids not to transition because they’re afraid their life will be harder. I want to help, but I also am very proud of my work and my talent.
No one should be made to feel “freaky,” but again, Do any of us adults remember what it’s like to be a teenager? Even the captain of the football team had to have his moments. And being bullied is a deep trauma. Our job as adults is to protect, not let people make money off the discomfort of adolescence.
As Petras is celebrated for transitioning, Amazon won’t sell Ryan T. Anderson’s When Harry Became Sally, a compassionate warning about what we’re doing to our confused children, and about ignoring what is — when not contagion — a serious medical condition. The scandal of health care in our day is protocols that seek to please patients and not necessarily to treat conditions.
“Everyone should be able to agree that adults should not interfere with the natural, healthy development of the bodies and minds of children,” Anderson has said. “Children must be provided with the time and space to develop to maturity. To tell a child that he or she is of the opposite sex (or both, or neither), or to encourage a child’s mistaken belief that he is something other than a boy, or she something other than a girl, is deeply unjust to that child.”
Petras is obviously having worldly success and appears content with what the adults let happen. But what was done to Petras should never happen to a child. It should be seen as unholy as adultery. It’s also unnatural, unethical, and abusive to children. That this isn’t an outrage is the real culture news of the Grammys.
This column is based on one available through Andrews McMeel Universal’s Newspaper Enterprise Association.