Rob Smith joins us again. Rob is a theologian who lectures in systematic theology and ethics

at Sydney Missionary and Bible College in Australia. Rob, I have a lot of questions for

you. Today, I want to talk technology first. It seems that earlier transgender discussion

of maybe 30 years ago seemed especially to center on things like cross-dressing and

external behaviors. With the rise of medical technology and the new possibilities for how

our bodies can be physically rearranged, to what degree does technological advance drive

the new possibilities and the new expectations of transgender changes within the body?

Yes. Well, I think the answer is in a major way. It's the old thing of technology leading

the way and a reality having to catch up, which is really the wrong way of doing things.

We often are asking, can we do this before we ask, should we do this? Things get back

to front. Again, just in terms of the history of six reassignment surgery, there's about

a century of attempts that have gone on here and that you write it in the last few decades

that I think it's become more possible and more successful. All the issues, however,

still go on. There's cross people who are cross-dressing who have no desire to even engage

in cross-woman therapy, let alone six reassignment surgery. Again, for some people are gender

dysphoria, that's one of the ways they try to manage or partially resolve the distress

is through whether it's cross-dressing or simply some kind of gender bending. You get

a whole range as watching some YouTube clips just a week or so ago for a number of people,

for a number of women who began on a cross-woman therapy taking testosterone injections and so

on, and then decided to stop and to go back. You get people who begin down the path and then

retreat, and I'll see in my view a very good thing when they do that, if they resolve their

questions in the process. But I guess what's happening now more and more is that six reassignment

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