Forty years ago, I lived in the nation’s transexual capital. Dr. Stanley Biber, at Mount San Rafael Hospital was the world’s leading surgeon for transexual surgery – performing, according to Wikipedia, over 2,300 male to female surgeries, and over 1000 female to male surgeries. That article says that at times he was doing five surgeries per week. I don’t recall any of those people flipping out and doing mass shootings.
Stanley Biber – once a Korean War MASH surgeon – developed his own criteria for mental health of his patients. I didn’t know Biber – but we shared acquaintances, so I knew that he reserved his work for adults who had lived a year dressed as the opposite sex and seemed mentally healthy. I remember the story about one of my students – a medically retired cop who drove his VW beetle up to Mount San Rafael to pick up his wife after work. Glenn had been sitting behind the wheel, watching a sweet young thing putting on her jogging shoes, smiling and giving the sweet young thing a wave as she began her run, only to have his wife slide into the passenger seat with the comment “Like that tranny, huh?” After that incident, she walked home.
Trannie Anny – one of the early transitions – spoke about the experience to many of our classes at TSJC. Again, I was teaching ag – the classes were my colleague’s. Still, from a student’s perspective, it was probably good to learn the views of a one-time infantry soldier (Silver Star, no less) who had transitioned into a rather unattractive female, and was happy about it. In the mid-eighties, transexuals were telling classes about their experience and views of the world – not shooting up elementary schools.
What’s happened? The Rhode Island shooter, with his Totenkopf tattoo would have never made it past Stanley Biber’s initial interview. The BC shooter – who began transitioning at 12, would not have gotten past the psych evaluation at Mount San Rafael. Simply enough, when you carve on a crazy man, the result isn’t a sane woman. Dr. Biber dealt with people who had been screened. The former wife of the Rhode Island shooter, listed reasons for the divorce as his transexual surgery and narcissistic personality disorder. I’ve known a couple of narcissists – it would take a hell of a surgeon to correct that personality disorder. Maybe that famed French Physician Joseph-Ignace Guillotin?
I don’t know why people – transexual or not – go in for shooting bunches of strangers who can’t shoot back. I feel a certain sadness for people who aren’t accepting of the roles associated with the sex they were born with. Combining that with a personality disorder likely describes someone who may become a mass shooter – I’m no psych, but it seems like stacking up mental health problems. Stanley Biber stuck with the dictum “First do no harm.” I suspect we have people defining ‘do no harm’ differently today.
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