The Grim Reaper is a notorious transphobe, as are medical school students and God Himself.
University of Maryland School of Medicine, praise the heavens, has instituted a remedy to right the historic and enduring injustice of misgendered corpses.
Via MIT Technology Review (emphasis added):
Programs collect different kinds of information about donors. Western Carolina’s intake form asks for both biological sex and culturally expressed gender. Though Maryland’s form only asks for sex, [University of Maryland School of Medicine professor Adam] Puche emphasizes that the anatomy board recognizes the gender identity of donors, and that living donors can use the “sex” field on the form to write in whatever best describes their identity. Students are expected to respect the identities and pronouns of the donors they work with.
It’s unclear what “respecting the identities and pronouns of the donors they work with” would entail precisely. For one thing, once the soul has evacuated, it’s not obvious who would be victimized by “misgendering” the donor, as they are presumably not conscious unless their two-spirit is looking down on the crime scene from transgender heaven.
Related: Converted Pagan Headhunters and the Shining City on a Hill
As the old saying goes, “no victim, no crime”!
And another issue with the “respecting identities” mandate is that, once the medical school students take a look under the hood, they’re going to figure out quick what the sex of their specimen was. Even if they’ve had their genitals butchered to hell, you’re going to have the telltale infrastructure of a uterus or lack thereof, dimorphic hip structure, facial structure, mastectomy scars, etc. It wouldn’t take a Sherlock Holmes to crack the case.
Continuing:
But in some cases, the larger medical system’s failures in treating all patients with respect may prompt people to question the value of donating. Liam Hartle, a 30-year-old from Albany, New York, who has an autoimmune disorder, has thought seriously about donating his body. Maybe someone could learn something about the condition from studying him.
“There’s part of me that’s like, donating to science would be a really good idea,” he says. “But also? I’m a trans dude who hasn’t done any hormone therapy yet, because my husband and I are going to try to have a kid. Even if I had undergone any sort of physical transition, I don’t trust medical science to handle that delicately.”
What on Earth does “handling that delicately” mean in the context of a “trans dude” (a woman) in the context of a body donation for scientific study?
Imagine devoting mental energy and finite time resources to pondering whether, once you’ve departed this vale, a medical student cutting open your lifeless corpse is going to “handle” your gender identity “delicately.” If you can put yourself in that mental space, you have glimpsed the total neurosis that has consumed the Western mind in the last several decades.
H.L. Mencken, the Sage of Baltimore, a relic of a simpler time, had a much simpler request to honor his legacy in death: “If, after I depart this vale, you ever remember me and have thought to please my ghost, forgive some sinner and wink your eye at some homely girl.”
