CNN said it, I believe it, that settles it

CNN came under mild criticism recently when it claimed “ It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is [sic] no consensus criteria for assigning sex at birth.” I value CNN’s expertise on all subjects, and believe everything it says, but I was left a little confused by this: is “consensus” reached by everyone agreeing with the person who’s doing its own self-identification, or are there objective criteria to be considered? Prowling the Internet, it seems that the LGBT++-- ???! community believes we should go with the first option: an individual’s belief trumps anything biology might have to say on the matter.

So okay, I stayed on the net a bit longer and came up with this case history from Psychology Today. Question: does a genuinely held belief about one’s species overrule conventional biology?

Thought experiment: substitute “girl” of “boy” for “cat” in this story: would your answer be different?

Discuss. Twenty minutes.

The boy who believed he was a cat

…. Paul Keck Jr. of the Harvard Medical School, wrote up the case in a 1990 issue of the Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. One day, a 17-year-old boy was in a psychiatrists’ office seeking help after experiencing a bout of major depression. During the session, he made a passing remark that was nothing short of astonishing. He said that since early adolescence, he had led a secret life as a cat. Even more astounding – he had been able to keep his secret from his friends and relatives. 

During the initial consultation, the patient admitted that as a child, he felt closer to his family’s pet cat Tiffany than to his parents. In fact, he said he fell in love with Tiffany and came to believe that he too was a feline, and that at age 11, he learned to “speak cat.” The man’s childhood was far from normal; he was often tied to a tree in the yard, and grew angry with his parents. It was at this time, he ‘fell’ for Tiffany and looked upon her as a “surrogate parent.” What he reported next is so remarkable, I will quote directly from the psychiatrists report, lest you think I am embellishing: “When alone, he began to regularly hunt with cats, to eat small prey and raw meat, to have sexual activity with cats in serial monogamous relationships, and to converse with them by mewing and feline gestures. He reports that the activities have been continuous and are not confined to episodes of depression.” He also told of paying frequent visits to zoos to see the tigers, where he attempted to talk to them “in tiger language” and collect their loose fur. By age 17, he reported coming to the realization that he was a tiger cat due to his affinity for tigers and his large build. It was at this time that he began to confide in his friends and psychiatrists of his secret cat identity. He said that Tiffany had encouraged him to ‘come out of the closet’ with his human friends. 

At the time the psychiatrists wrote their report on the case in 1990, he was 26 years-old, and had been under psychiatric care for the past several years. Treatment ranged from electroconvulsive shocks to psychotherapyand an array of anti-depressants. His most severe episode of depression occurred after he had been infatuated with ‘Dolly,’ a zoo tiger, whom he had hoped to release. Upon learning that Dolly had been sold to an Asian zoo, he tried to hang himself. He had become obsessed with Dolly after breaking up with his girlfriend who left to attend a distant university. 

While the man was able to function in society, his belief that he was a cat was unshakable. He also would have stood out from the crowd as he wore tiger-striped clothes, sported exceptionally long nails, and had long, bushy hair and a beard, giving him a distinctive cat-like appearance. At the time of their report, the man, while taking a variety of drugs to control his depression, was gainfully employed. He was living in an apartment that he shared with two flatmates, and yes, a cat!