Fairfax, VA, USA. As a species, we need to learn the difference between the sensational and the empirical. Our inability to readily distinguish between the two is at the root of our social problems.

We fall for the glib narrative, mistake the predictably flashy individual for our actual reality. The more vocal the performer, the more likely we are to assume they possess some special insight that we do not.


Neither our color of skin nor our political association bestows special knowledge or wisdom. Our religious belief or disbelief does not endow us with any unique ability to explain our observed behavior. We are an experimental animal, fond of our peacocks and well-maned lions. Given the choice, we will ignore the ground we stand upon and focus on the shiny pennies and bright flamingos.

Blind to the hard rock details of our own existence, we search for sureness and simple, black and white explanations amidst every increasing complexity. We are the victims of clever, pattern forming brains that latch onto facile commentary and definition at the expense of true understanding of the world we find ourselves.



"But I shall certainly admit a system as empirical or scientific only if it is capable of being tested by experience.

These considerations suggest that not the verifiability but the falsifiability of a system is to be taken as a criterion of demarcation.

In other words:

I shall not require of a scientific system that it shall be capable of being singled out, once and for all, in a positive sense; but I shall require that its logical form shall be such that it can be singled out, by means of empirical tests, in a negative sense: it must be possible for an empirical scientific system to be refuted by experience."

— Karl Raimund Popper [N1]Scholarly sounding verbiage and pious personal revelation are often two sides of the same coin. Fine words and good intentions do little to ensure that what we describe even remotely resembles what actually is. God and the Universe often work in ways mysterious to us.

Especially when we ignore the mote that is within our all too human eye. Our emotional desires are not a substitute for the relative certainty of empirical evidence. That we wish for a benevolent creator who rewards us after death for our good behavior does not change the fact that all living creatures must someday die.

The word empirical indicates information derive from observation or experiment rather than reasoning alone. [N2] “Information” attained via intellectual discussion or university professorship without direct reproducible observation and experiment remains personal opinion (no matter how many others share that opinion) and does not rise to the level of empirical fact or science.

Science and the scientific method demands that all evidence must be empirical or at least be empirically based. That is, it should depend on evidence or results that can be observed by our senses. No theory or explanation can be scientific if it lacks empirical evidence supporting it.

The bottom line is that empirical evidence can be use both to accept or counter any scientific hypothesis or theory. Empirical data is data produced by an experiment or observation, producing working hypotheses that are testable and capable of being disproved.

Men and women with a transsexual history are commonplace.

Since the middle of the last century, post-operative women born transsexual have existed in ever greater numbers. Our existence is documented by our rather substantial medical bills.

Few are us are visible (the author notwithstanding). From all appearances and available evidence, most of us lead the quiet lives of most other women, wives and girlfriends, mothers and providers, atheist and true believers, straight and lesbian, liberals and conservatives, feminists and subservient to our husbands, homemakers and professionals.

We are indistinguishable from the women around us. From the women around you. So much so that we thrive unnoticed in the general population. We are, as they say, an empirical fact that cannot rationally be denied.

That we do not stand before declaring our transsexual history is neither here nor there. Public declaration of our past in a political forum unravels the private lives we have worked so very hard to obtain. If anything, we chose to work quietly behind the scenes, using the political and social systems to change those things that impede our transition and threaten our existence.

I make no claim to special knowledge. Women and men with a transsexual history are an empirical fact that, because we are not sensational, is often overlooked by the media who prefer the raucous agendas and ten second video sound bites of the gender activists.

I exist. As do other post-op women with a transsexual history.

Our existence is not a point of scientific contention although we often find ourselves the targets of social polemics from both social conservative and the conservatively religious, as would be expected, on one side and liberal activists and gender theorists who blends us all into one gray non-sexual social blob on the other.

Both sides often find it easier to pretend we do not exist rather than address our empirical reality. Our continued existence as every day, run of the mill women is more than their various philosophies allow them to dream. We are the mote and timber made flesh that they would deny rather than admit.

While the media focus on the sensational and both preachers and politicians willfully conflate us with those who loudly march and demand access without commitment, men and women born transsexual continue to quietly exist. We threaten no one. [N3] Nor do we wish to. [N4]

Our existence, however, cannot be denied.

Even by those who publish glib narratives devoid of empirical evidence and shout their opposition in the university forums and political hallways. [N5]

As for church, mosque, temple, meeting hall or synagogue, I agree wholeheartedly with Jesus the Nazarene, Son of Mary

Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's. [N6]

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