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[av_heading heading=’ RAMBLINGS OF THE UNMARRIED | Irreversible change’ tag=’h3′ style=’blockquote modern-quote’ size=” subheading_active=’subheading_below’ subheading_size=’15’ padding=’10’ color=” custom_font=”]
BY GORDON Q. GUILLERGAN
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Thursday, June 8, 2017
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“I just want girls to realize, everybody’s born a way for a reason, and you are who you are. You should just be yourself at all times. The only way you’re going to get through life, happily, is being yourself.” – Nikki Blonsky
THEY SAY never accept a “no.” If you want something so bad, there are ways to circumvent the situation just so you get what you want or what you believe you deserve.
But suppose you are a man or a woman madly in love with the same gender, would you consider sex change just so you can marry?
The Supreme Court was once confronted with this dilemma. Does the law recognize the changes made by a physician using scalpel, drugs and counseling, with regard to a person’s sex?
May a person successfully petition for a change of name and sex appearing in the birth certificate to reflect the result of a sex reassignment surgery?
Flerida Ruth P. Romero, in her study “Concerns and Emerging Trends on Laws Relating to Family and Children” published by the Philippine Law Journal, noted that the Supreme Court declared: “[I]t cannot be argued that the term ‘sex’ as used (in the Civil Register Law which was enacted in the early 1900s) is something alterable through surgery or something that allows a post-operative male-to-female transsexual to be included in the category ‘female’…
“Considering that there is no law legally recognizing sex reassignment, the determination of a person’s sex made at the time of his or her birth, if not attended by error, is immutable. The changes sought by petitioner will have serious and wide-ranging legal and public policy consequences.”
The Supreme Court has yet to solve its initial dilemma: “When is a man a man and when is a woman a woman?”
However, in the case of Republic vs Cagandahan the Supreme Court allowed the change of name of Jennifer Cagandahan to “Jeff Cagandahan” and her change of gender from “female” to male.
Cagandahan was diagnosed with Congenital Adrenal Hyperplasia (CAH) which, according to the Supreme Court, “causes the early or inappropriate appearance of male characteristics.”
Interestingly, the Supreme Court expressed a liberal view in entertaining actions of this character as can be gleaned from the following:
CAH is one of many conditions that involve intersex anatomy. In the 20th century, medicine adopted the term “intersexuality” to apply to human beings who cannot be classified as either male or female. The term is now of widespread use.
According to Wikipedia, intersexuality “is the state of a living thing of a gonochoristic species whose sex chromosomes, genitalia, and/or secondary sex characteristics are determined to be neither exclusively male nor female. An organism with intersex may have biological characteristics of both male and female sexes.”
Intersex individuals are treated in different ways by different cultures. In most societies, intersex individuals have been expected to conform to either a male or female gender role. Since the rise of modern medical science in Western societies, some intersex people with ambiguous external genitalia have had their genitalia surgically modified to resemble either male or female genitals.
More commonly, an intersex individual is considered as suffering from a “disorder” which is almost always recommended to be treated, whether by surgery and/or by taking lifetime medication to mold the individual as neatly as possible into the category of either male or female.
The Supreme Court considered compassionate calls for recognition of the various degrees of intersex as variations which should not be subject to outright denial.
Ms. Romero further noted that, “It has been suggested that there is some middle ground between the sexes, a ‘no-man’s land’ for those individuals who are neither truly ‘male’ nor truly ‘female’.” The current state of Philippine statutes apparently compels that a person be classified either as a male or as a female, but this Court is not controlled by mere appearances when nature itself fundamentally negates such rigid classification.”
The Supreme Court noted that Cagandahan’s case is exceptional considering her rare condition has endowed her with predominantly male characteristics, which ultimately justified her petition for change of name and gender.
I know it is innate for every man to go to great lengths in the name of love but I wonder if one would ever consider changing his or her anatomy in the name of love.
For one, gender re-assignment should be done because psychologically and emotionally you want it. It’s a choice you make for yourself because you want it for yourself and not so you can win the man or woman you want.
Some things in life are reversible, others aren’t once they’re done and that is exactly what happens in gender re-assignment procedures. I think love may be said and shown in great ways, but this should be not one of it. Love is selfless yes. But “learning to love yourself is the greatest love all.” (gordon.qg@hotmail.com/PN)
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