Ranger from the North

What is needed now is public clamor for coherent science – biological and therapeutic science – examining the real effects of these efforts to "support" transgendering.  Although much is made of a rare "intersex" individual, no evidence supports the claim that people such as Bruce Jenner have a biological source for their transgender assumptions.  Plenty of evidence demonstrates that with him and most others, transgendering is a psychological rather than a biological matter.

In fact, gender dysphoria – the official psychiatric term for feeling oneself to be of the opposite sex – belongs in the family of similarly disordered assumptions about the body, such as anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphic disorder.  Its treatment should not be directed at the body as with surgery and hormones any more than one treats obesity-fearing anorexic patients with liposuction.  The treatment should strive to correct the false, problematic nature of the assumption and to resolve the psychosocial conflicts provoking it.  With youngsters, this is best done in family therapy.

The larger issue is the meme itself.  The idea that one's sex is fluid and a matter open to choice runs unquestioned through our culture and is reflected everywhere in the media, the theater, the classroom, and in many medical clinics.  It has taken on cult-like features: its own special lingo, internet chat rooms providing slick answers to new recruits, and clubs for easy access to dresses and styles supporting the sex change.  It is doing much damage to families, adolescents, and children and should be confronted as an opinion without biological foundation wherever it emerges.

But gird your loins if you would confront this matter.  Hell hath no fury like a vested interest masquerading as a moral principle.

If we give immunity from criticism to children – such as David Hogg, et al. – then adults will rely on children to do what adults want done.