The Circleville Herald, July 11, 1934: Sex Change for Youth Turned Down By Parents
ST. CLAIRSVILLE, July 11 — Parents of Glen and John Deltrich, 16 and 17-year-old brothers, who are expected to die within a year because of a strange paralysis which strikes only male members of the family, today refused to allow their sons to become subjects of “sex change” experiments.
The suggestion had been made that the brothers be sterilized and then be inoculated with a serum that would develop female characteristics in the boys and perhaps prolong their lives.
TOOK FATHER
Glen and John, their bodies twisted into contorted shapes, are victims of a mysterious hereditary spinal paralysis that has claimed the lives of seven other members of the Deitrich family in ‘the past three generations.
Because the disease strikes only male members of the family, the “sex change” experiments were suggested. Victims of ‘the malady, in the past, always have died at the age of 18 years.
Many doctors have offered to treat the boys but a clinic of 50 famous surgeons once was unable to determine the cause of the disease nor check it.
AGAINST IDEAS
I appreciate the suggestions and help of ‘the medical profession regarding my children,” said Mrs. Deitrich, “but now they are about through with their suffering and I will let God handle the matter and net doctors who couldn’t help them in their youth. Particularly am I against sex-change ideas.”
Thoughts
Anyone have any ideas on what this mystery illness was supposed to have been that would be cured by a “sex change”? I mean, I can think of a ton of jokes to make about this, but I’d be interested in learning what they hell these doctors were thinking.
I find it an interesting testament to the patriarchal system of the 1930s that these parents would rather that their boys die than life long lives as women. While I’m guessing that this presumed cure may have just been quackery, that’s not the point. The point is that the parents were given 2 choices: their kids could be male and die or be female and live and they chose to not take the step that would supposedly save the lives of their children because, to them, apparently death was the better option.
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Comments
I don't think that's quite fair to say. You're painting the choice in black-and-white -- male and die, female and live -- but I suspect that even then the parents were able to say to themselves: "I’m guessing that this presumed cure may just be quackery, and quackery that may maximize stress and misery for the whole family while doing nothing to prolong their lives, instead of giving us time to say goodbye in peace."
It would be one thing if the article made clear that the boys wanted to try it, but it certainly doesn't indicate that at all so we have no idea what their feelings may have been. They may have been adamantly opposed to it -- and I wouldn't be surprised if they felt the same about it that most people feel about the idea living in a body that doesn't match their gender identification.
For me, if my teen was "contorted" into strange shapes by a mysterious "spinal paralysis" that would end in their slow painful and imminent death, and the medical establishment told me that a cure would mean that they would have a female physiology and health, I'd absolutely give the doctors a green light.
Again, my comment is that this seems to say something about that time and culture's devaluation of what is thought of as being female.
Whether you do or do not think they would have agreed in that case, does that support or detract from your argument that the decision was based on patriarchal concerns?
I understand that in 2011 we would certainly say "OMG! You're idiots! Is your license made of rubber?!?" But, we can't know what it was like in the dawn of modern medicine when penicillin was the new wonder drug that was curing people right and left.
The only unbiased assertions that can be made are:
1.) The parents were offered an either/or choice
2.) The choice presented was slow torturous death or a female physiology.
3.) The parents chose slow torturous death.
That is all that can be said and anything else - especially assertions based in our era's cultural relationship with medicine - is simply conjecture.
You said, "They may have been adamantly opposed to it..." Yes, or they could have been begging their mother to not let them die too. Either way, it doesn't change the fact that given the choice, the parents chose death over the supposed cure. Why didn't the parents try the cure? In her own words, the mother said: "Particularly am I against sex-change ideas.”