When Sally became Harry

My wife tells me I write too much about climate change – perhaps, but it just galls me to no end how the left (with the aid of a complicit media) has highjacked a legitimate medical issue and turned it into a political one – but hey, she’ probably correct, I have spent too much time on the left’s biggest lie, so I’ll set this topic aside (for a while) and hit on another of my pet peeves.

But first, I have to be candid; I don’t buy into the left’s position on transgenderism.  To be clear, I do believe transgenderism is real, but it’s also trendy and a very “in thing” amongst certain demographic groups – namely teens, from America’s middle and upper classes who are recipients of more privileges and advantages than 99% of the world’s population.

If you graduated high school more than a decade ago, it was unlikely you knew anyone who was transgender because, according to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the condition underlying transgenderism afflicted only .01% of the population.  Interestingly, in almost none of these cases were teenage girls ever the dominant group affected; in fact, prior to Obama leaving office in 2012 there was no scientific or medical literature discussing adolescent girls who wanted to transition to the opposite sex.

So, when we look at this issue, it is truly astounding what social media and woke ideology have done to a legitimate malady affecting a very minute percentage of the population.  And contrary to activists’ claims, what a woman is does not depend on a subjective sense of identity.  Quite simply, a woman is an adult human female.  A woman belongs to the female sex, which means she has two x chromosomes, female reproductive organs, and female gametes. Now a man may identify as a woman, wear make-up, put on a dress, give himself a female name and pronouns, take estrogen, and even have his penis removed and replaced with a pseudo-vagina, but his sex remains unchanged – he’s a man and will always have an x and a y chromosome.

Activists think that by changing the language used to define sex, they can change reality.  From their perspective, the sex with which a person identifies is that person’s sex, regardless of his or her innate physical characteristics.  But the problem with that thinking is that medical science disagrees.

The reality is that our sex manifests itself in every level of our being, from the obvious physical differences between men and women, to our internal organs, the way our bodies are structured and continuing all the way down to our DNA.  While cosmetic surgery and cross-sex hormones can affect appearances, they cannot change the underlying biological reality that men and women are and remain different from the moment of conception.

But in spite of the science, transgender activists continue to rely on a reinvented definition of sex, causing great harm to their community by encouraging them to disregard important medical safeguards.  There’s a mountain of evidence proving that transgender “treatments” cause harm, and as liberal talk show host Bill Maher recently said, transitioning “isn’t just a lifestyle decision — it’s a medical one.”  And embracing transgenderism by “transitioning” often exacerbates an individual’s suffering because there is no medical evidence that “transitioning” from one sex to another relieves the emotional pain such individuals experience.  In fact, quite the opposite.

Even the Obama administration concluded in 2016 that there were no clinically significant improvements in the quality of life of people who underwent gender-reassignment surgery.  And a recent study https://www.dailysignal.com/2020/08/03/transitioning-procedures-dont-help-mental-health-largest-dataset-shows/)  using the largest data set ever, confirmed that neither hormonal nor surgical “transition” brought any benefits to patients.  In fact, in a recent 30-year Swedish study (https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0016885&type=printable)  found that people who underwent sex-reassignment surgery had a suicide rate 19 times higher than their peers.  In addition, studies conducted here in the U.S. indicate that when children with gender dysphoria are given time to process their internal conflicts without puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones, 80–95 percent of them will naturally embrace their bodily sex.

Sadly, people who identify as transgender are not the only ones who suffer the consequences of transgender semantics.  Other people are shamed into adopting their language and endorsing the concept of gender fluidity at personal expense.  There are also increasing examples of people being fired for failing to address a person by that person’s preferred pronouns or for not specifying their own.

Meanwhile, weaving the transgender narrative into children’s education, using teaching methods such as the “genderbread person” or drag queen story hours https://thefederalist.com/2021/07/13/i-went-to-drag-queen-story-hour-in-washington-dc-so-you-dont-have-to/) does little more than to confuse them.  And the intense push for transgender ideology over the last several years has led to decidedly aberrant increase in teenage girls identifying as transgender.

No one questions that these girls are experiencing real psychological pain—rates of anxiety, depression, and instances of self-harm are all at record levels for this generation, so it’s understandable why the idea of a “quick fix” becomes tempting.  All the popular social media influencers (YouTube, Reddit, Tumblr, TikTok Instagram) insist that if you feel uncomfortable in your body, you’re probably trans.  Even more alarming, these outlets promise that if you start a course of treatment, say testosterone for example, all of your problems will go away.

It is a catastrophic mistake for psychologists, educators, and the medical establishment to rush these teens towards “a solution” that will almost certainly harm rather than heal.  Because here’s what’s not in dispute: unnecessary medical gender transition causes irreversible damage including a high risk of infertility, sexual dysfunction, and the creation of a permanent medical patient.

Gender dysphoria is a serious condition and young people who experience a gender identity conflict should be treated with respect and compassion.  However, they also deserve to know the truth.  Fortunately, we now know the truth because the world’s largest relevant dataset reveals hormones and surgeries don’t bring wholeness and happiness.  It’ll be interesting to see if the left delivers that message.