As usual for Sullivan, the piece is thoughtful, circumspect, and very smart. After a survey of the current terrain in public disputes about transgender issues, Sullivan proposes a series of compromises between opposing camps in law, medicine, and public policy. My purpose in citing the piece is not to summarize Sullivan’s arguments (some of which are sound, others not so much), but rather to respond—by reference to recent headlines and statements by the woke intelligentsia—to a couple of questions that he raises at the end of it.
After citing the astonishing increase in boys and girls presenting for gender dysphoria treatment to Britain’s Tavistock Center from 2009/10 (32 girls and 40 boys) to 2018/19 (1740 girls 624 for boys), and referencing similar dramatic increases in Sweden, New Zealand, and other places, Sullivan asks two questions: “Can we really be sure this isn’t a craze or a fad for many? And can we have that discussion without accusations of callousness and bigotry?”
Almost certainly, the answer to the first question is: “No.”
Sullivan explains that “in almost every teen trans story, there is a pattern: obsessive Internet use.” Twenty years ago, the corresponding demographic of adolescents and teenagers would spike their hair and wear dog collars until it wasn’t cool anymore, after which they would move on to the next (temporary) self-absorbed fad. Now they take hormone blockers and have mutilating surgery.
The answer to the second question — the most troubling one for long term transgender public policy — is also, almost certainly, “No.”
Judging from the postures from both (all?) sides of the debate, there is very little hope for anything like rational public discussions of transgender issues. From the transgender advocacy side, there is no hope. Indeed, even for Sullivan to raise the question is to prove that he is a transphobic bigot, whose intention is to “deny the existence of,” “erase,” or “exterminate” so-called transgender people.
The possibility of reasoned public debate is vanishing apace with the surrender of secular media and public institutions to the most extreme versions of transgender ideology.
First, in a purported straight-news story at cnn.com on 31 March about an executive order in South Dakota prohibiting males from competing in female high school and state university athletic events, reporter Devan Cole matter-of-factly stated, “It’s not possible to know a person’s gender identity at birth, and there is no consensus criteria [sic] for assigning sex at birth.” After the assertion was ridiculed in social media, a revised version of the story modified the second clause of the sentence to render it unintelligible: “and for some people, the sex listed on their original birth certificate is a misleading way of describing the body they have.”
Regardless of the incoherence of the statement, in other words, issues of how gender identity relates to sexual physiology are not highly contentious issues in the medical, legal, and scientific communities. Rather, the question is settled. And the appearance of such assertions in the most mainstream of mainstream media suggests that Sullivan’s hope for reasoned compromise is to be found only in places serving free lunch.
A 7 April USA Today opinion piece asserts, “In Kentucky … proposed legislation would allow health care providers to turn away LGBTQ+ and other patients, and bar trans youth from K-12 public school and university sports … [I]n Texas, legislators have proposed bills that would ban transgender girls from youth sports.”
Similarly, a 27 March New Yorkerstory headlined, “The Movement to Exclude Trans Girls From Sports,” asserts matter-of-factly that “[a]bout fifty different bills pending in more than twenty state legislatures seek to ban transgender athletes from team sports.”
Many public institutions obediently follow along.
On 12 April, for example, the ACLU tweeted, “Today the NCAA confirmed it will pull events from states with bills banning trans students from participating in school sports.”
Today the NCAA confirmed it will pull events from states with bills banning trans students from participating in school sports.
State lawmakers take note: discriminating against trans youth is wrong, against the law, and costly.
Needless to say, no one actually advocating such a ban is cited in either the USA Today story or the one in the New Yorker. If the NCAA can identify a single state that meets the criterion stated in the ACLU tweet, I’ll stand corrected.
Many legislative initiatives have been proposed across the country that would protect health care workers from lawsuits and sanctions for refusing to participate in the surgical mutilation of healthy organs. Legislation is pending in several states that would protect school girls from being forced to compete against boys.
No legislation would allow physicians to turn away LGBTQ+ patients as such. No legislation—enacted or proposed—bans any otherwise eligible child from competing in school athletics. None. But for USA Today and The New Yorker, that doesn’t matter.
It’s ideology all the way down.
It’s almost too obvious to cite the novel 1984 in contexts like this. But while it is usually invoked for the image of “Big Brother” as the all-encompassing state, Orwell’s description of “Newspeak” is the more apt allusion for our times. “Newspeak,” he explains in the appendix, was “devised to meet the ideological needs” of the regime.
“The purpose of Newspeak,” he continues, “was not only to provide a medium of expression for the world-view and mental habits proper to the devotees of Ingsoc, but to make all other modes of thought impossible. . . . This was done partly by the invention of new words, but chiefly by eliminating undesirable words and by stripping such words as remained of unorthodox meanings.” The goals of transgender ideological gatekeepers are no less ambitious.
And they are winning.
Kenneth Craycraft is an attorney and the James J. Gardner Family Chair of Moral Theology at Mount St. Mary’s Seminary and School of Theology, in Cincinnati.
Areas of Catholic Herald business are still recovering post-pandemic.
However, we are reaching out to the Catholic community and readership, that has been so loyal to the Catholic Herald. Please join us on our 135 year mission by supporting us.
We are raising £250,000 to safeguard the Herald as a world-leading voice in Catholic journalism and teaching.
We have been a bold and influential voice in the church since 1888, standing up for traditional Catholic culture and values. Please consider donating.