The Trans Debate

I haven’t said much publicly about transgender issues because those who are on my “side” politically (I’ve been cast as right-wing, you see) have been using it as a political football. Badly fumbling. No discipline, coming off as bigots who got the ick and want to yell about it. The truth is, I didn’t know much about the topic and didn’t want to wade in before knowing more. Now that I’ve read more, learned a few surprising facts that should be more widespread knowledge and had some time to think about it, let’s discuss.

First, let me express my relief that I did not grow up under today’s regime of gender ideology. I would have been classified as “boy stuck in a girl’s body” quicker than you could say “gender dysphoria.” Whether a person is trans appears to be determined by how closely they conform to gender stereotypes. As a child, I liked to play with cars (especially ones that changed color in hot water), dinosaurs and Legos. My favorite toy was a remote-controlled monster truck. Which I drove over my other matchbox cars. And dolls? After I pulled off their heads and limbs to see how they were attached and then reattached them, they held zero interest for me.

My mother loved to put me in frilly dresses, stockings with tiny pink hearts and patent leather Mary Janes: sending me to school looking like a porcelain doll. I hated this because one of my favorite school activities was mucking around in the dirt and mud. The other was climbing trees and jungle gyms. I’d inevitably rip my stockings or muddy my dress, resulting in quite some yelling. My solution? I started taking off my delicate clothes before going out to play, running around the preschool yard nearly-naked; a barefoot savage.

With my Legos, I’d make guns. Not just any guns, machine guns. Why? Because my dad let me watch movies like Rambo and Terminator. My friends, I didn’t just identify as male. I identified as one very specific male: Rambo. So, you see, I would’ve 100% been transed and you would know me today as “Rambo.” If a teacher offered me the deal of “You just have to say you’re a boy and we can force your mom to let you wear pants to school” I would’ve enthusiastically agreed.

But, for me at least, it would’ve been the wrong move to tell me I was actually a boy, socially transition me and put me on the path towards medical transition. All I really needed was to be sent to school in reasonable play clothes and patted on the head until my “Rambo” delusions passed. And they did. By the time I started elementary school, even I had forgotten that I once identified as Rambo.

But how common is my experience? I’m not sure. What I do know is that when adults take these pretend-play identities too seriously (even with good intentions) and socially transition their child, the progression towards medical transition becomes nearly inevitable. According to one study, 98% of children who were socially transitioned continue to experience gender identity disorder (GID) into early adolescence (age 11-12). On the other hand, without intervention, 80–95% of children who experience GID no longer do once they reach adolescence.

Similar statistics show that starting puberty blockers isn’t a neutral decision. 95% of children who go on puberty blockers escalate to cross-sex hormones and further medical intervention while 61-98% of those who do not will begin to identify as their birth gender during puberty. Not to mention the increased risk of bone density problems, suicidal ideation, and the lack of long-term data on this off-label usage of puberty blockers.

This point cannot be overstated. Here’s the crucial takeaway: social transition and puberty blockers are not neutral, reversible decisions that allow you to put off the decision. They put children on a slingshot trajectory towards medical transition — it’s nearly impossible to change course once started.

Aside from the issue of transitioning children, should we have an opinion about transgender ideology? I think a reasonable stance is, “it depends on what they want.” If the goal is body modification financed by the individual, I’m maximally laissez-faire. If the goals infringe on the rights (or even the cognitive load) of others, that’s a different story.

No, male to female (MTF) transsexuals shouldn’t have access to women’s spaces. The logic behind the existence of sex-segregated spaces doesn’t disappear when a man identifies as a woman. Women’s bathrooms, locker rooms and prisons exist because men have much higher rates of violent and sexual offending than women, and this holds true for men who identify as women.

Here, 2023 data shows that MTFs commit sex crimes at five times the rate of men and over 600 times the rate of women. A similar argument holds for women’s sports. Sports are sex-segregated because men are stronger on average and even elite female athletes are not competitive against men who are much lower-ranked amongst their male counterparts.