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stellauk -> RE: Federal judge rules state must provide sex reassignment surgery for convicted murderer (9/5/2012 7:42:17 PM)
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I wonder what the general reaction would be if we had a murderer who was being denied medical treatment because they were male, or because they were female, or because they were black, or Hispanic, or Jewish, or disabled, or homosexual.
It would be unreasonable, it might even be unthinkable.
And yet to some here because the prisoner is transgendered it is perfectly acceptable.
Thing is there is no way possible, either scientifically, or medically, to transform a man into a woman. No amount of hormones or surgery will ever create a new person out of an existing human being, there is no way possible to change a man into a woman. It is science fiction, an illusion, nothing else.
But being transgendered isn't about becoming another person, but it's about being able to be oneself in terms of gender identity on a par with everyone else and being able to enjoy the same quality of life as everyone else with a gender identity which is congruent in psychological, emotional and physical terms.
Unlike most other medical conditions and illnesses, there are no physical symptoms, no 'transgendered gene', you cannot run a series of tests to identify it, and yet it is a very real condition.
It is a condition which relies on both self-diagnosis and the ability to function in society in one's acquired gender role. However the criteria for identifying GID isn't left to the transgendered individual themselves, but has been devised by the medical profession themselves together with the Harry Benjamin standards of care.
Therefore unlike most other medical conditions which can be tested for and identified in very real, concrete ways simply telling a doctor that you are transgendered isn't enough - you have to prove that you are transgendered and often over a long period of time before doctors will accept that you are transgendered. Unlike most other conditions, you are guilty until you prove yourself to be innocent.
To me Michelle Kosilek is very much a woman and the same person as Robert Kosilek who she was in her past. It's the exact same human being, and one who has shown and proven that she can function in society through having functioned as a woman in society and completed a course of hormones, therefore in the eyes of the medical profession and subsequently the law.. proving also that she is eligible for SRS surgery. She is not a woman of course in the same sense as a naturally born woman, but she is functioning in the same way, female is her acquired gender, and thus socially and legally at least, she is a woman.
This is medically necessary treatment to her to enable her to function as a woman and be on a par, and equal to other prisoners who are cisgendered and have a gender identity which is complete and congruent in psychological, emotional and physical terms. For that reason alone from an ethical standpoint her operation is necessary.
There is no dispute as to her crime or her conviction. She took the life of another person as a woman, she has been sentenced as a woman and from what I can make out, she is serving her time as a woman.
People who commit crimes are judged and sentenced on the basis of their actions and decisions alone. The fact that she has murdered somebody doesn't diminish her gender identity in any way, it just means that she is a convicted murderer.
She has therefore been sentenced to life without parole for the murder which is just enough punishment. To withhold or deny her surgery to complete her process of gender reassignment would be to additionally punish her for being transgendered.
This is something which I do feel does violate the Eighth Amendment and also the standards of mature and evolving standards of decency in a civilized society.
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