Spock and his betrothed, T’Pring, inadvertently swap bodies in Strange New Worlds episode 1×05 “Spock Amok.” The two of them are facing relationship challenges and planned to spend some time together. Work interrupted. Spock was unexpectedly called to participate in diplomatic meetings. T’Pring delayed her work commitment and was not impressed that Spock ditched her for his work.
In an attempt to understand the other one better, Spock and T’Pring attempt a “soul sharing” and, oops!, they swap bodies. T’Pring, in Spock’s body, must attend the diplomatic meetings. Spock, in T’Pring’s body, must fill in for T’Pring (she works to rehabilitate violent criminals and bring them to logic with the goal of reintegrating them into Vulcan society) and escort a dangerous criminal to a treatment center.
And would you believe? They understand each other better after trading places! Seeing from the other one’s point of view contributed to their understanding, which strengthened their empathy for each other and thus strengthened their relationship.
Imagine an apostle and his wife switching places for a week. What would it be like if Elder Husband traded places with Sister Wife? Perhaps the apostle would learn something about how it feels to basically be someone’s travel/living assistant. Perhaps a spouse realizes that she would rather be a travel assistant than speak in public and pose for a million photos.
I read Laurie Lee Hall’s memoir, Dictates of Conscience: From Mormon High Priest to My New Life as a Woman (Signature Books 2024). I highly recommend it.
Transgender Perspectives
We all know that in many contexts, men and women have different experiences. Perhaps they are treated differently based on their gender, or have different priorities and want different treatment. Perhaps men tell women they’re overreacting. Perhaps women tell men that they’re being insensitive.
Wouldn’t it be amazing if we could hear the perpsective of someone who has functioned in society as both a man and a woman? We could learn so much about gendered experiences from transgender individuals.
This speaker, Paula Stone Williams, spent much of her life as Paul Williams, who worked for evangelical churches and was the CEO of a religious nonprofit until she transitioned. She’s a skilled public speaker, and her views on living as a man and living as a woman are fascinating.
Unfortunately, these voices are being silenced by hatred and bigotry. I know conservative Christians get upset when people don’t fit into their neat little box of religious beliefs, but we are missing out if we allow Christian beliefs about gender to silence such important experiences.
Transgender Medical Benefits
I’m not going to try and debunk all the conservative propaganda that says transitioning genders is medically risky. It’s all propaganda and fear-mongering. Conservatives don’t read stuff like that anyway, so no need to waste my time. Instead, I want to talk about the immense medical benefits that transgender people could contribute.
Women are three or four times more likely than men to have an autoimmune disease. Whether it’s lupus, multiple sclerosis, fibromyalgia, or rheumatoid arthritis, women are afflicted at much higher rates than men are. Why? Well, that’s a good question.
“Women have up to a fourfold increase in risk for autoimmune disease compared to men. Many explanations have been proposed, including sex hormones, the X chromosome, microchimerism, environmental factors, and the microbiome. However, the mechanism for this autoimmune sex bias remains obscure.” [source]
Is it genetic? Is it hormonal? How could scientists possibly separate out those factors to see if one factor has more of an impact than another? I mean, you can’t just turn off estrogen or change someone’s chromosomes. Except … maybe there is a population in which those factors could be separated. Do transgender women have autoimmune diseases at the same rate as cisgender women? Or at a higher/lower rate? Is the instance of autoimmune diseases among transgender women different based on whether they transitioned before or after puberty?
Then doctors can flip the factors and study autoimmune diseases in transgender men. Do those XX chromosomes cause autoimmune disease? What impact does testosterone have? Here’s a study that concludes that an X chromosome may contribute to autoimmune diseases. Wouldn’t it be fascinating and educational to see if transgender men have greater or lesser rates of autoimmune diseases?
Imagine being able to study the impact of chromosomes and hormones separately! Just by letting transgender people live their lives the way they want, and get adequate medical care and thus show up in databases of diagnoses, the transgender population could advance our understanding of causes and cures of gender-related diseases. Scientists could make progress in determining causes and treatment of autoimmune diseases if they studied these disease patterns in transgender women or transgender men.
A transgender pouplation could be a valuable resource in studying literally any other disease that is more prevalent in one gender than in another. Even for the reproductive anatomy diseases — like prostate cancer or ovarian cysts. Do transgender women get prostate cancer at greater or lesser rates than cisgender men? How do hormones affect cancers and diseases of the reproductive system?
One more medical benefit gifted to the world by transgender people: experienced genitalia surgeons. Heaven forbid, but say you’re in a terrible accident, or a burn victim, or get a tumor in that most sensitive part of your anatomy. Would you like reconstructive surgery by someone who has successfully completed dozens of bottom surgeries? Or by a surgeon who is a general plastic surgeon and your body is the first time they’ll be reconstructing genitals? I read an article (that I can no longer find because search results are now awash in conservative propaganda) pointing out that medical doctors have never really studied female sexual anatomy. Until surgeons started learning how to do bottom surgery on transgender people, the clitoris and other parts of a woman’s genitals were largely ignored. Thanks to transgender men and women, medical science is learning a lot. These specialties and studies will benefit cisgender people as well.
Conclusion
Transgender people benefit society in so many ways. On an individual level, there’s a human being who is living a happy life the way they choose to live. On a societal level, we can listen and learn from people who have lived as both genders and understand each other better. Medically and scientifically, doctors and scientists have learned and can continue to learn so much from transgender people — how hormones affect us, when chromosomes have more influence, studies of the reproductive systems. The knowledge they gain from transgender people will benefit countless cisgender people as well.
Questions:
- If you and your significant other switched places for a week, what might happen? What do you want your SO to understand from your point of view? What might you learn about your SO?
- Do you enjoy or dislike being a man or a woman? Which aspects particularly?
- Do you agree or disagree that medical science can learn a lot from transgender people?
[fn: some of the ideas in this post came from this tumblr post]
Wheat & Tares 
Question:
“If you and your significant other switched places for a week, what might happen? What do you want your SO to understand from your point of view? What might you learn about your SO?”
When my son was first born, I was in the middle of going back to school to be a nurse. My wife had full-time employment as a teacher and was well-established in her career. It didn’t make sense for her to stay home financially, and I was able to work my studies and rotations around caregiving responsibilities better. So I was the stay-at-home parent for the first couple of years. We also supplemented with part-time childcare when we both had school/work obligations.
Then after a year of doing that, she wanted a turn to be the stay-at-home parent. That is when i was working full-time at the hospital. So even though we did not swap genders, we both had the opportunity to swap roles. And we both experienced the thrill of being able to be connected and invested in precious moments of watching the newness of discovery through our infant son’s eyes. We also experienced the lonliness and monotony of caregiving and the craving of adult interaction, stimulating conversation, and a life/role outside of caregiver. I think this experience has greatly shapped how we see and approach the division of labor in our marriage.
As for #2, I love being a man. I love the rough and tumble play that I get to do with my son. I love that I have been able to coach his soccer games, his basketball games, that I do coding with him, that we read, do coding projects, art, music, science, and that I take him on special dad/son get-aways. I recently started taking him to the gym to lift and he is now just getting excited about working out. My wife is great at meeting my son where he is. She will play Switch games with him and that has been a special bond. But he still asks for dad. Even she recognizes that there are some differences in the way I push him to be a bit more independent and competitive than she is. It’s probably a function of how we were raised.
As someone raised to live traditional gender roles, it’s somewhat difficult to answer what I like being a man. My wife *loves* her role as the primary nurturing parent and was and still is a stay home mom even though we are empty nesters. The kids call her with emotional questions and they call me for school or work or functional questions. The arrangement works fine but I’m occasionally jealous and wish they would call me and say “Dad I’m sad today.” Of course I’d probably be in a work meeting…
As a male, I enjoy physical strength. I enjoy going for a run and not worrying about being assaulted. My wife tells me that every time she has to open a jar she’s reminded that she’s physically weaker than men. Not gonna lie, I enjoy being taken seriously and at face value although I wish it weren’t at the expense of women.
My wife and I were chatting about what we’d do if we swapped bodies for a day. She laughed and said she’d want to have sex as a man to see what the fuss is about.
Fascinating.
You laid it out. It’s a no brainer. We have much to learn from trans people. Unfortunately we live in an age of willful (and marketed) ignorance. The inmates are now running the asylum and medicine and science are being replaced by snake oil salesmen.
And how dare those confused misguided witches show such crass religious bigotry by objecting to being burned alive. In these times, children clearly need to be protected from the twin pillars of barbarity, trans folk and vaccinations.
As for myself i like being a woman and plan on staying a woman( no matter how many afterlife’s we get) I enjoyed teaching youngsters the basics of basketball, The rough and tumble with nieces and nephews. Taking them camping and hiking. And when I was a coed, helping my roommate get the attention of a guy she liked by shooting bottle rockets through his upstairs bedroom window. It worked and now they’re grandparents. When a friend got so mad she threw a rock through the front window (The husband was suppose to be home and he wasn’t), we fled the state and took refuge in a casino until I was able to convince her it was her house and she wasn’t going to jail. Woman friends taking me shooting and us laughing at how inept I was with a gun and then cooking up a good barbecue. Ah, Sisterhood.
I went through a period of time wondering if I was trans, and then I concluded that no, I was a woman who didn’t like some of the expectations and constraints of being a woman. I love fabric and craft stores, and immediately connecting with other women who quilt and sew. One of my most feminine moments was getting bridal pictures before the wedding. Our reception was in a restored old mansion and I floated around that beautiful space in a wedding dress and veil, holding my hand just so and somehow naturally striking poses. I felt so beautiful.
The times I resented being a woman was like … my grades were too high. I had a crush on the guy in school whose grades were actually higher than mine and he said some things about how I was intimidating. He saw me as a threat and I desperately wanted him to like me. Stuff like that — girls weren’t supposed to be smart. And to be clear, I was book smart, but I lacked a lot of smarts in friendships and interacting with people. Sometimes I would observe that if I was a guy, I would have a girlfriend. Because girls put up with awkward guys and helped smooth their rough edges, but it didn’t go the other way. I didn’t have girl talents with boys. I wish I’d known back then about being asexual and aromantic. As it was, I just felt like a failure as a girl and then as a woman.
I know trans people, but I’ve only ever known one trans person enough to talk to her about what it was like to be trans. We bonded over quilting and fabric stores. She was talented and had her own Instagram channel to show off her quilts. Her parents were accepting. Sometimes I envied her because she enjoyed being a woman so much. She’d chosen to be a woman; she loved femininity and long hair and linking arms while we giggled about whatever. When I was spending time with her, I liked myself as a woman better. It was joyful to see that there are different ways to be women. My awkwardness makes me feel out of place sometimes, but I never felt out of place with her.
Thanks for sharing experiences, those that have commented. I appreciate your perspectives.
Masculinity. Femininity. It’s something to enjoy. Trans people are seeking that joy and I wish them all the best.
I am like Janey, in that I am very much a woman emotionally, but I have not always liked being female because of role expectations, prejudice, and sexist attitudes. And, I hated that smart boys could be accepted even as the worst nerds, but smart girls had to have twice the normal social skills of average girls to be accepted. And to make things worse, the subject I beat the boys in was math, and they hated me for it. By high school, I knew I wanted nothing to do with any kind of career that required math. Because I didn’t know one person who was also good at math that was not a royal jerk. Most of my teachers were asshats, and the best of them *only* made nasty jokes.
I do remember wanting to be a boy. I was 4. My older brothers got these supper neat electric trains when they were 4. Yeah, I know, much too young not to electrocute themselves, but whatever. The world might have been improved if they had electrocuted themselves. But for Christmas when I was 4 I got annnnotherrrrrr doll. And a stuffed animal frog that I loved more than any dumb doll. I swear I slept with that frog until I was 19 and replaced him with a husband. It is an improvement as the husband comes with a built in warming device.
I suppose one could say that I didn’t want to *be* a boy; I just wanted a train set. But it was more than that even then. I wanted to be loved by my mother as much as she loved my brothers and I wanted the things they got to do that girls didn’t. I could see even then, train set or not, the world was better for boys and the only way I knew to fix it was to be a boy.
But the thing that most made me wonder if I should have been born male is that I think more like men than women and love being friends with guys because I understand them so much better than other women. But, dang, sexual attraction always got in the road. But I like the way men think, if they could just pretend I was their grandmother and relate to me as a human instead of always finding me attractive, because I wasn’t THAT attractive. I have a hard time relating to other women, because . . . their brains work wrong. It isn’t that we don’t have interests in common, it is just that I would rather talk to a guy about cooking or sewing if only they were interested in those topics. My best friend from high school was a guy (gay) and my current best friend is my husband (straight). And I have upset soooooo many wives by being friends with their husbands, which I just don’t get, because my husband has had women friends and I don’t care. Except when they get too obvious at trying to seduce him.
I will be glad when instead of being binary, gender is seen as a continuum, as a bimodal bell curve. We are all a little bit of both genders, some of us maybe more than others. I would have really liked the world if gender wasn’t everything about who a person is. But we live in a world where the first thing people want to know, before they even know if the child is healthy, is boy or girl. Then everything must be approved on gender lines, from clothing, to toys, to interests, to career, is all gendered. I want the world where I would have gotten a train set and a frog, instead of a doll and a frog. I want the world where a girl isn’t persecuted for being smart in math or engineering. I want the world where I can be friends with the guy if I like him better than his wife.
Maybe if we could all be individuals instead of being forced into gender boxes, my trans loved one could be accepted better whether or not she transitions, or can pass as cis. I want her to be happy and I honestly see two bad choices. She could transition and always look trans, or she could not transition and always be a really odd guy and feel wrong about herself.
I really appreciate all the comments. I can resonate that as my kids age when they need a task solved, they come to me, and when they need a situation sorted, they go to my wife. I wish I was better at listening and not solving. Sometimes it is what it is.
My perspective is a little different. If we were to switch, I think it would enrich our marriage for us both to get some things about the opposite gender. But the things I really want her to get about me aren’t gender specific. I have a lot of anxiety and never feel like I’m enough. In order to compensate I plan for every contingency I can think of, which is a huge emotional and time drain. I also overcompensate at work taking on extra projects so that I feel safe in my employment notwithstanding being with my company for 20 years and weathering the great recession and the COVID layoffs. I over think every conversation I have after word, wishing for a re-do, worrying that I offended the person but they were too nice to say anything. I wish my wife could experience that part of me. I related to the character Riley in Inside Out 2 and I think watching that helped my wife better understand.
My kids generation is way less rigid about gender roles and I’m kinda jealous of the teenage experience in my corner of earth in 2025 vs my teenage experience in Salt Lake City in the 90’s.
I am sad to see so many thumbs down when other beautiful human beings are being authentic and vulnerable. This kind of self-righteousness is what separates us and makes so many feel they need to wear a mask to be safe.
Have these negative naysayers been conditioned to disregard science and other’s lived experiences?
I’m not imagining that any commenters get hurt feelings over a few thumbs down. It’s the thumbs down people I feel sorry for!
This is a personal topic for me that I have experience with. Politics and religion have turned this topic into decisive hate-mongering-to further an agenda that has nothing to do with reality or truth.
Can we please have a bigger tent?
Amen Anna. Are you me?
LoudlySublime: I totally get what you’re saying. It’s amazing to me how many things we shut ourselves off to when we “believe in the truth.”
Chadwick: that sounds like dealing with AuDHD! I mean that in a constructive way – the ruminating, anxiety planning, etc., all sound like coping/masking mechanisms to fit into a neurotypical world.
I disagree with almost every declarative statement in this article; but, given the author – I’m not surprised. While I’m all for being as kind as possible, I think future generations will look back on our time and think we’d all gone absolutely insane. Of course, that’s assuming that the human race lasts that long. I support mental health programs and services for the treatment of Gender Dysphoria – but, as for accepting it as normal – Nope. Not going to happen. Sorry, not sorry.
“Tolerance will reach such a level that intelligent people will be banned from thinking so as not to offend the imbeciles” Fyodor Dostoevsky …
@grizzerbear55
Treating me like a normal person might inconvenience you for a few minutes, but for me this is my entire life! What you said implies that I shouldn’t expect to be treated with respect or decency anywhere I go just because there’s something uncommon about me that I can’t control, that I can’t escape, and that harms no one.
I hope you just haven’t thought through the consequences of your attitude.