DE-TOXIFYING THE TRANSGENDER DEBATE (PART 1)
How To End The Argument Before It Even Starts With A Simple Challenge
I certainly have strong opinions about transgender women participation in women-only sporting events, transgender women sharing women-only bathrooms, prisons, dormitories, etc. with females. I have opinions about the appropriate age for introduction of sexual topics to school children. I’m sure that you have your own opinions, and this essay is not intended to indoctrinate you.
I am going to introduce a proposal that is a peace treaty for the combatants in this debate to accept so that their disagreements can be transferred outside of legislatures, school boad meetings, and court rooms, and then be privately settled between parents and their children in a manner that forces both sides to relinquish their ability to impose their solutions upon the other side.
What Are The Combatants Saying?
There are several protagonists in this political controversy about using drug and surgical interventions in a child’s body to alter their sexual development. There are the professional specialists at hospitals, physicians, surgeons, therapists, and drug makers who earn money from these interventions.
The cynical observers of this controversy insist that the main goal for these professionals is to require insurance companies to pay for transgender interventions. The best path for gaining this validation is to make these medical interventions acceptable and routine.
However, I’m going to allow each side to put forth the Steel Man (not the Straw Man) arguments for their case.
From the Human Rights Campaign website:
Transgender, or trans, is an umbrella term for people whose gender identity is different from the sex assigned to them at birth. Although the word “transgender” and our modern definition of it only came into use in the late 20th century, people who would fit under this definition have existed in every culture throughout recorded history.
Cisgender, or cis, generally refers to people who do not identify as transgender. Cisgender describes people whose gender identity or expression aligns with traits typically associated with the sex assigned to them at birth. Some people may not identify as cisgender, but that does not mean they are necessarily transgender.
The Genderbread Person is a popular teaching tool used to convey these concepts to children.
Then there is the rejection of the male/female binary. The American Psychological Association defines gender identity as “a person’s internal sense of being male, female, or something else.”
As Mey Rude wrote, most of us are using a
simplistic and outdated understanding of biology to perpetuate some very dangerous ideas about trans women,” and failing to acknowledge that biological sex “isn’t something we’re actually born with, it’s something that doctors or our parents assign us at birth.
In opposition to these positions, there is Colin Wright’s analysis of the divergence between the Transgender Boosters and Skeptics:
But the claim that intersex conditions support the sex spectrum model conflates the statement “there are only two sexes” (true) with “every human can be unambiguously categorized as either male or female” (false). The existence of only two sexes does not mean sex is never ambiguous. But intersex individuals do not demonstrate that sex is a spectrum. Just because sex may be ambiguous for some does not mean it’s ambiguous (and, as some commentators would extrapolate, arbitrary) for all.”
“By way of analogy: We flip a coin to randomize a binary decision because a coin has only two faces: heads and tails. But a coin also has an edge, and about one in 6,000 (0.0166 percent) throws (with a nickel) will land on it. This is roughly the same likelihood of being born with an intersex condition. Almost every coin flip will be either heads or tails, and those heads and tails do not come in degrees or mixtures. That’s because heads and tails are qualitatively different and mutually exclusive outcomes. The existence of edge cases does not change this fact. Heads and tails, despite the existence of the edge, remain discrete outcomes.”
“In regard to the argument from secondary sex organs/characteristics, the primary flaw is that it confuses cause and effect. Remember, secondary sex characteristics are anatomies that differentiate during puberty. In females, these include (among others) the development of breasts, wider hips, and a tendency for fat to store around the hips and buttocks. In males, secondary sex characteristics include deeper voices, taller average height, facial hair, broader shoulders, increased musculature, and fat distributed more around the midsection. However, these secondary sex characteristics—while plain to the eye, and inseparable from the way most laypeople think about men and women—do not actually define one’s biological sex. Rather, these traits typically develop as a consequence of one’s sex, via differences in the hormonal milieu produced during puberty by either testes or ovaries.
What Is At Stake In This Debate?
The major areas of the Transgender Debate that you might have heard about:
Use of puberty blockers and the mutilation and removal of sex organs from minors.
Legislation to require the provision of gender transition treatments to minors without parental consent.
Legislation to ban transgender transition treatments for minors
This post will not offer a proposal that solves the following controversies:
Persons with male sex organs identifying as women participating in women-only sporting competitions
Persons with male sex organs identifying as women using women-only bathrooms
Lessons on transgenderism and sexuality for public school children starting in kindergarten.
Drag Queen Story Hour for Kindergarteners
Tomorrow’s post will offer a different proposal for these issues.
Both sides in this debate insist that they are only doing what is in the best interests of children. The gender-transition medical professionals and counselors insist that “gender-affirming care is lifesaving care” that prevents teen suicides. Other medical professionals and biologists insist that it is unethical to perform irreversible procedures on minors prior to age 18, especially if it is done without the knowledge or consent of their parents. They insist that the transgender movement is a potent threat to young homosexual children whose behavior doesn’t conform to man/woman gender roles. These pre-pubescent homosexuals are frequently misdiagnosed as transgender in need of irreversible interventions when all they really need is more time to grow up, experience puberty, and discover if they have same-sex attraction.
Give The Children A Guarantee And A Vote
Because both sides insist that they are doing what is best for the children, I believe that the best way to end the conflict is to let the children have a say what they believe is in their best interests.
Instead of proscribing treatment for minors, legislators should empower minors with a Surgical Warranty of Satisfaction if these minors later regret the treatments once they attain adulthood.
For example, law makers should enact legislation that enables any person, who received puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or surgeries prior to age 18, to seek damages prior to age 30 from any physicians, surgeons, or other professionals involved in the recommendation for and administration of puberty blockers and surgeries.
These legislators would forgo the ability to make Transgender treatments illegal, a questionable privacy intervention between a physician and the patient’s parents. In exchange, the physicians and parents would have to recognize the minor child’s ability to make an independent decision as an adult if they later regret undergoing the treatment regimen.
If the parents and the medical professionals are confident about their prescriptions for the child, then they should expect the grown, adult version of this child to thank them for their interventions. However, if the child was undergoing confusion and anxiety as a minor and waiting for puberty to occur could have removed that confusion, then recommending surgery would have been a mistake. The persons responsible for these mistakes should be held accountable for the errors in their diagnosis.
Anyone who opposes this legislation reveals that their primary motivation is not the well-being of the children. Opponents on both sides will insist that they know what is best. They shudder at the thought that they should be held accountable by the very people they purport to help.
Next time you are in the midst of a vociferous, racous argument about sexual transition policies, you now have the means to cut the debate short and force each side to confess their biases, and then go in peace.