Cory Morgan, author of yesterday’s aforementioned witless post about being opposed to funding gender reassignment surgery, has responded in similarly witless fashion. Suffice it to say he starts off with a reference to Comic Book Guy on The Simpsons - fresh and original! - then goes into a comparison between transsexuals and comic book fans which I am sure had his blog audience rolling in the aisles, except all the comments I see on it seem to be from people I know found him through me and they aren’t so much his audience as they are a newfound crop of antagonists. Although I’m fairly sure he’s happy to get any attention he can manage.

But I don’t really care about his insults about being a comic book fan (OH NOES, THE RIGHTY BLOGGER SEZ I AM A SEXLESS NERD, MY LIFE, IT IS LAID BARE). What I do want to briefly take issue with is this:

A line gets crossed when one is asking me as a taxpayer to fund their pursuits however. I do not and never will support public funding for surgery that simply is not medically required.

Gender reassignment surgery - even in private care situations - is not handed out willy-nilly because of the enormous liability issues it presents (and it is right and proper that those liability issues exist for such a serious, life-altering elective procedure). That’s why there are only eight to ten surgeries performed in Ontario per year.

And those surgeries are medically required, the same as pharmaceutical therapy is often required for those with mental health issues. Does Cory Morgan take issue with poor people being prescribed anti-schizophrenic medication? Anti-depressants? Mood stabilizers? After all, it’s entirely possible for people to function - for a given definition of “function” that is not very functional, but oh well - without those drugs, which artificially alter one’s neurochemistry to an extent that the differences between it and surgery are merely semantic.

They will just be, at the very least, chronically unhappy, anxious, and depressed. But they’ll be alive!

And transgenderism isn’t simply a mental health disorder. Know how I know that? Because we used to classify it as one, and tried to “cure” transsexuals of wanting to be a different gender, and it didn’t work. It simply resulted in greater anxiety and depression, and their psychological costs fiscally outstripped many times over what the surgery would have cost. Where gender reassignment surgery is necessary - and, again, it is worth noting that it is only necessary in a tiny number of cases - it is considered so because it is the best way to ensure that the patient enjoys the maximum and highest quality of life that is available to them, the best way to reduce their suffering and anguish to a minimum.

I would further note that my experience in this area is far from academic, because a friend of mine is transgender. She (male-to-female transsexual) actually works at one of the comics shops I frequent, which I am sure would make Cory giggle over his comparison once more. (Although I’m pretty sure she gets laid more than he does, and also has better clothing sense for that matter.) I’ve known her long enough that I knew her when she was still using her male name reluctantly, because she was scared of how people might react if she used her chosen female name, and when I confirmed by asking her if she was transgender, I said “so why didn’t use just tell me to call you (female name)?” and her expression was visibly relieved.

That relief is something for which that people should not have to work. That is why gender reassignment surgery is indeed medically necessary in certain cases. People deserve the right to feel comfortable in their own skin, and if medical intervention is necessary, then so be it.

So last week here in Ontario, the Health Minister announced that sex-reassignment surgery would once again be covered by our public health system, ten years after the Mike Harris Tory government delisted it and forced the required procedures into private care.

For my money, this is unequivocally a good thing. People in need of gender assignment are rare (the estimated need for these surgeries in Ontario, a province of thirteen million people, is eight to ten surgeries annually), but differing gender identity is a tragic and indeed horrifying condition. I don’t mean “horrifying” as in “disgusting,” but in that the idea of having to live one’s life knowing - not believing, knowing - that your body and entire identity are both completely flawed is one that is both thankfully alien and exceptionally terrifying to me. I am enormously grateful that my gender identity as a dude is secure and that I never, ever have to worry about deep down feelings that I shouldn’t have a dick.

But of course, there are always going to be assholes. This is nothing new. But what gets me - what really just fucking gets me - is that these juvenile fuckwits can’t just go ahead and say, straight up, “we’re bigots.” They can’t just say “you know what, I fucking disapprove of gender reassignment surgery. I think transgenderism is bullshit and people who need sex change operations are crazy.”

You know why they don’t say that? They don’t say it because they are goddamned chickenshits.

Consider the enormously stupid Cory Morgan, who prefaces his photo-essay on how he will chop a guy’s dick off for $200 (of course, there’s no question of what he does for a female-to-male transsexual - I mean, you’d think he’d come up with some amusing photo-essay involving a series of dildos! Such stunning lack of work ethic) by attempting to justify his dislike of publicly funded gender reassignment surgery on fiscal grounds:

it has been pointed out that the de-bonings will only cost around $20,000 each. That must be comforting to people dying on waiting lists in Canada’s increasingly unsustainable socialized healthcare system. I would hate to be the nurse who has to explain to somebody; “I am sorry sir, we will have to delay your bypass surgery a little longer, the operating room is occupied by a man getting his weiner removed.”

Now, first off, 10 surgeries at about $20K each is a whopping $200K per year cost to the taxpayers of Ontario, and out of the approximately $34 billion Ontario spends on health care yearly represents a staggering .0000006% percent of the total budget. Compare to the estimated $1.8 billion dollars that the province spends treating smoking-related illnesses and it seems like kind of a bargain! And, of course, Cory overlooks that performing a gender reassignment surgery requires a highly specialized reproductive surgeon, who probably isn’t going to be doing any heart surgery any time soon.

Kathy Shaidle, on the other hand, justifies her complaining about “fake twats” by first snidely mentioning that Health Minister George Smitherman is TEH GHEY, then making an appeal-to-authority argument, linking to Paul McHugh. Paul McHugh, for those not aware, has essentially kept his psychological career alive despite completely disagreeing with any treatment or diagnosis made after 1970 by becoming the poster boy for dipshits like Kathy to link to. “HE WORKS AT JOHNS HOPKINS!” they scream. Which is true. In fact, he worked at Johns Hopkins when he decided not to reveal the identities of confessed child molesters to the police and concealed incidences of child rape. But, what the heck, it was only child rape!

Shaidle and Morgan are of course both blitheringly stupid and evidence of the continuing Americanization of Canada’s extreme right wing, but it’s worse than that; they’re simply unwilling to come right out and say “we don’t like transgenderism.” Shaidle, ironically, followed up her weaselly little slam by posting once more about Mark Steyn and the horrible injustice he suffers from having people say he’s a fucking bigot. She’ll complain endlessly about how free speech is quashed in Canada, but she’s not exactly eager to get up and engage in it by saying what she really, really wants to say.

Because, again: they’re chickenshits.

Ben Goldacre writes a long, long and extremely pointed post on homeopathy and its practitioners.

Short version: he does not like it greatly!

As the American healthcare system continues to disintegrate, people are forced to make life choices that might otherwise seem foolish.

(Seriously: she has brain lesions for which she cannot get treatment. What the hell.)

Mike Smith will no doubt groan because he thinks I’m obsessed with health care policy, but I actually received this email this morning. (Admittedly, from someone who wanted to know how true it was.)

And the bit about family doctors is probably more true than the debunker gives credit for - twenty percent of the population is still a lot of people to be without a family doctor. That having been said, Mr. Anonymous Canadian doesn’t mention that the bulk of that twenty percent lives in Ontario - where healthcare cuts by conservative governments in the 1990s led to said shortage - or that over the past four years that figure has dropped because of additional hiring by the provincial governments, especially Ontario.

It hasn’t dropped to nothing, of course, because sadly there is no magical Doctor Fairy to instantly blink all the doctors we need into existence - but it is dropping.

Still, this quibble does not mean that said anonymous email is not full of the lulz.