Current Events & Trends: Staying off the transgender-promoting bandwagon

Former Olympic athlete Bruce Jenner has recently been celebrated in the media for gender transition, with a name change to Caitlyn—helping to push the culture into greater acceptance of transgenderism. America has become increasingly liberal in its moral outlook in various ways, and now it seems a pivot point has been reached, with more people than ever embracing things that would have been unthinkable not long ago.

As pointed out in the New York Post: “Compared to just a few years ago, we have a completely different set of ideas about what constitutes acceptable behavior. As Caitlyn Jenner puts it in her new reality show, ‘I’m the new normal’” (Kyle Smith, “A Massive, Silent Cultural Revolution Has Changed America,” June 6, 2015).

Breitbart news noted that as a pushback, on June 3, 2015, “the Wall Street Journal’s online edition promoted a June 2014 op-ed by Dr. Paul McHugh, former psychiatrist-in-chief at John Hopkins Hospital, which argues that transgender identity is a mental illness akin to bulimia and should not be treated with surgery, which can cause more harm than good” (Joel Pollak, “WSJ Promotes Op-Ed Claiming Transgender Identity is a Mental Disorder,” June 3, 2015). Jenner, who’s had feminizing hormone therapy and plastic surgery, has not had actual sex-change surgery but has not ruled it out either.

The Journal article by Dr. McHugh is well worth reading. He says that “this intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality. The second is that it can lead to grim psychological outcomes” (“Transgender Surgery Isn’t the Solution,” June 12, 2014).

He further explains it as an “assumption” disorder like “anorexia and bulimia nervosa, where the assumption that departs from physical reality is the belief by the dangerously thin that they are overweight.” We should not support their delusion by condoning their efforts to lose more weight. Yet this is what is done for those who feel transgendered in providing them hormone treatment and surgery and demanding that they be recognized as the opposite sex and be allowed to use public restroom facilities of the gender they identify with.

Several state governments now bar psychiatric treatment to restore natural gender feelings to a transgender minor—even if parents give permission. We are all expected to accept the declared gender. But there are major problems with this. McHugh states: “When children who reported transgender feelings were tracked without medical or surgical treatment  . . . 70%-80% of them spontaneously lost those feelings.” Thankfully their bodies weren’t altered when the transgender feelings were present. Yet Boston Children’s Hospital is trying to treat supposedly transgendered prepubescent children “by administering puberty-delaying hormones to render later sex-change surgeries less onerous—even though the drugs stunt the children’s growth and risk causing sterility” (ibid.).

McHugh also mentions the results of a long-term study, up to 30 years, that followed 324 people who had sex-reassignment surgery. “The study revealed that beginning about 10 years after having the surgery, the transgendered began to experience increasing mental difficulties. Most shockingly, their suicide mortality rose almost 20-fold above the comparable nontransgender population” (emphasis added).

“At the heart of the problem,” McHugh concludes, “is confusion over the nature of the transgendered. ‘Sex change’ is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is a civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.”

Breitbart notes that when the op-ed was originally published, “the left reacted in fury,” some labeling McHugh’s views “transphobic” and a form of “science denialism.” Yet it is those who support transgenderism who are in denial of science and reality in their drive to completely redefine family relationships. And sadly, the public is more and more willing to comply. (Sources: Breitbart, New York Post, The Wall Street Journal.)