The Transgender Imbroglio

 My best friend and closest political comrade Barry Finger, who, like me, is a decades-long left activist, thinker, and writer, reviewed my blog below before I posted, at my request, and said this of it:  "I think your manner of approaching this is kind and expansive, without a trace of demagoguery. It dials the passion down, which is exactly what should be done."  I hope it is received in that spirit--GF

I realize I’m opening the proverbial can of worms by bring up this topic the way I am going to do here, but what I’m going to write below on transgender issues I’m writing because not only do I think it is important, but also, there’s a lot of major confusion on the issues involved.  So, I write to invoke clarity on the issue.  I won’t be surprised if I’m misunderstood on this, but I can’t help or avoid that if I am to be honest.

 

To start off, let me restate the obvious:  the transgender opponents of the far right, the right-wing Culture Warriors such as Ron DeSantis, are reprehensible.  They are using scare tactics and red herring scenarios to promote an openly bigoted agenda based on dubious “what if” scenarios, e.g., males entering women’s bathrooms or locker rooms as phony “females.”  These are the same Culture Warriors who rejoiced when Roe v. Wade was overturned, who want to impose Christian Nationalism on the US public despite the US’s deliberate founding as a secular nation, who are against gay marriage, and even no-fault divorce, contraception, in vitro fertilization, and a whole range of other measures that have made life in the US more bearable than it was when it was under the thrall of “tradition.”  They are truly despicable, and that goes without saying.

 

But among these I do not include feminist transgender critics such as J.K. Rowling and Kathleen Stock.  Their criticisms are of a different, more valid, order, and they are undeservedly maligned as TERFs (Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminists, as if somehow their feminism was corrupted and fake).  The truth is, there is such a thing as biological sex, and it does not go away just because someone of one biological sex feels differently about what is his/her “real” sexual identity.  Fact is, rapes of biological women have occurred in women’s shelters and prisons by transgender biological males, and many women who use such shelters to protect themselves from abusive males do not at all feel comfortable as sharing such safe spaces with biological males, no matter that such males do not consider themselves male at all.  I consider these valid objections, and quite simply, biological sex doesn’t just go away because of one’s subjectivity.  That is why such disconnect between gender and sex is called a “dysphoria,” meaning a mismatch, a glaring contradiction between biological objectivity and psychological subjectivity.  Quite simply put, biological males have penises and testicles, and produce sperm; biological females have vaginas, and within them have uteruses, fallopian tubes, and produce eggs to be fertilized by sperm to reproduce new humans.  Surgery nowadays can create an artificial penis or vagina, but cannot create the inner workings of such—such created organs are not able to biologically reproduce, the whole biological purpose of sex and different sexual parts in the first place.  For those feeling transgender, a mismatch between psychological identity and biological sex is automatically built-in, and there’s nothing automatic in any psychology that can replace biology.  No social construct, no subjective sense of identity, nothing. 

 

However, a medically diagnosable gender dysphoria is real, and affects a small number of people (I’ll say more on that below, with statistics).  It is a chronic unease and anxiety due to a sense of mismatch between one’s biological sex and one’s perceived sexual identity, and are rooted in nerve pathways rather than in the brain, though the evidence for this is not presently conclusive.  Genetics and heredity also play a part.  Still, it is there, causes extreme distress, is unrelated to sexual orientation (i.e., preference for sexual partners of one particular sex or the other), and is included in the latest edition of  the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (the bible of psychiatric diagnosis classifications), DSM-5.  However, it is found only in 0.005-0.014% of the male population, and only 0.002-0.003% of the female population (biological sex in both cases).  That means that in the US, with an overall present population of 335,000,000 in round numbers (as taken from the US Census) with a 50-50 split between males and females (also taken from the Census, June 22, 2024), the number of gender dysphoric males and females overall ranges from 117,250-294,750.  Far smaller than the population of Indianapolis where I live, or many another medium or small city!  Contrast these numbers to the number of hermaphrodites (i.e., people with both male and female genes), 1.7% of the population, or 5,695,000 people; schizophrenics, 1% of the population, or 3,350,000 people; people who are bipolar, 2.8% of the population, or 9,380,000; or depressives, i.e., people who suffer from depression, 8.3% of the population, or 27,805,000 people.  So, the number of people with actual, genetically based, biological gender dysphoria is quite small.  However, of course, culture wars over transgender, both from the left as from the right, as well as social environmental concerns, e.g., mental illness, peer pressure, cultural and social susceptibility, the Internet and the way it promotes certain social identities, have evidently created a phenomenon far larger than the actual number of such individuals.  This is a societal “ill” at least as much as it is a biological or genetic one.

 

Yes, for certain sectors of the left, especially the Western left, gender dysphoria or transgenderism is quite “hip,” quite trendy, and attracts more people to it that there are actual biological people with gender dysphoria.  Or so it certainly seems.  This was borne out by a recent polling at elite Brown University, where 40% of the students identified as homosexual or transgender (whereas the actual percentage of male homosexuals is 10% of the male population, and female homosexuals, 5% of the female population, according to Dr. Kinsey’s classic study of sexual prevalence in the US).  In fact, in certain sections of the left it’s quite faddish and fashionable to be anything but a heterosexual male or female!  Moving the issue from biology to social psychology and sociology.

 

In fact, one has honestly to admit, the disconnect between those identifying as transgender, and those with actual gender dysphoria, makes gender dysphoria diagnosis, treatment, and the place of the gender dysphoric in society a matter of cultural and social norms, along with peer pressure, every bit as much, if no more, than biological and genetic factors.  That’s why it’s become a major “culture wars issue” for both the right and the left, why it’s led to such acrimony, cultural shaming and affirmation, and such divisiveness, with “culture wars” hostility on both sides of the divide.  Missing on both sides, of course, is regard for the gender dysphoric as human beings; they are but “culture wars” chess pieces, to be maneuvered and even sacrificed as the strategy of either left or right demands.  Humanity and humanism once again fall by the wayside. As much victims of left intransigence as they are of right bigotry and insistence on “proper” sexual norms.

 

Further, on the standard treatment regimen for gender dysphoria, the application of puberty blockers, initiation of hormone treatments, and even massive surgery:  while the majority view as expressed in scientific papers appears to be that such treatment is effective, there is also a significant minority of such that states it isn’t.  As an example, one 2020 review of the literature found 51 papers positively affirming such treatment as effective; however, 4 papers stated such treatment’s effects were null or negative.  A small number of papers on both sides, which means there quite simply may not be a statistically significant sample of participants in such studies as to draw meaningful scientific conclusions.  (Later, as more research came in, more negative studies were written, as reported reliably in the US newsweekly The Week, January 26, 2024.)  Certainly, treatments through puberty blockers, hormone therapy, and even major surgery are medically invasive, and the ethics of such, not to say common sense, informs us that such major means of treatment had better be of very high efficacy and easily medically justified.  That, to this author, doesn’t seem to be the case right now.  Especially with being transgender somewhat of a societal “fad,” at least in some social circles, it may well be that some people are being “treated” for a gender dysphoria they don’t genetically have.  Further, remember, though it’s cynical, it’s also realistic to remember—medicine is a business, and major medical treatments command major revenues for the doctors involved. Moreover, as there are a number of transgender clinics now in the Western world, where the diagnosis of gender dysphoria seems like its given automatically, are these clinics really effective treatment centers, or are they more akin to the oxycontin “clinics” that fueled the opioid addiction crisis?  Seems to me, a good answer is, “We just don’t know.”  As the field right now is very much unregulated.  (Worth briefly mentioning is that certain illnesses are more prominent in biological women than in biological men, e.g., breast cancer and lupus; and in biological men, of course, testicular cancer and the rare penis cancer [which occurs only in uncircumcised men].  So, wouldn’t it be medical malpractice to treat transgenders without regard for their original biological sex for these biological sex-based illnesses and their biologically based prevalences?)

 

Social factors and peer pressure simply can’t be ignored propellants in the explosion of persons identifying as transgender.  Especially among young teenagers, social and peer pressure are immense; yet the decision to change one’s gender is permanent, and adolescence is also a volatile time.  Is it really smart or correct to allow an adolescent to undergo such major sex change treatment when that adolescent isn’t even old enough to get a learner’s permit to drive an automobile?  Can’t get a tattoo without signed parental permission?  Can’t vote, let alone drink alcohol or consumer tobacco or vape legally?  And how many of us in real life made such major conclusions about our life identities that we didn’t change later?  How many of us are what we were as teenagers, only just older?  Very few, if any, I’d say.  Certainly, I’m not the person I was at 12, or 16, or even 18; and even what I was in my late twenties or early thirties corresponded very precious little to my adolescent expectations, desires and wishes, not to say identities.  Yet, when it comes to identifying as gender dysphoric, we allow mere adolescents to make such permanent choices even before they’re legally able to drive an automobile!

 

The whole matter thus calls for a big warning sign:  “Proceed with caution.”  But the “culture wars” left dismisses such caution as transphobia, unfortunately, while the “culture wars” right is openly and demagogically transphobic.  I say, both sides are wrong, terribly, simplistically, wrong.  “Proceed with caution” needs to be our societal watchword.  Period.

 

Especially since an identity or diagnosis as transgender doesn’t negate biology.  Biological males are still male, still have testosterone as the major sexual hormone, same as biological females have estrogen.  Further, and this is especially important for sports, biological males, even if transgender, especially those not biologically “neutered” by early hormone treatments, are bigger, stronger, weigh more, and are taller generally than the corresponding biological females.  Certainly, this is bound to create a valid sore spot among women athletes, who might well feel subject to unfair competition—as has happened.  Not to mention rapes in prisons and in women’s centers by transgender “women” who are actually biological males.  After all, one’s social or individual psychological identity does not negate the biological “facts of life.” 

 

Nor does extensive sexual surgery create a fully biological male or female.  While an artificial penis can be surgically created, it does not ejaculate the sperm that fertilizes the biological woman’s egg.  An artificial vagina can similarly be created, but again, without the biological function of the real biological one.  It can’t hold eggs for fertilization by male sperm.  And it is reproduction that drives sexuality and sexual differentiation biologically in the first place!

 

Such is certainly far from being a mere “social construct.”  While we can be many things societally, in the end it is based substantially on what we are biologically, and that can’t be brushed aside.  Societal norms of what it means to be “male” or “female” ultimately come down to the biological question of producing offspring.  Without such, the species does not survive.  As true for humans as it is for fishes, or salamanders.

 

That is why the transgender imbroglio is truly an imbroglio, a conflict where social norms often conflict with biological realities, which do not disappear because we within society would like them to disappear.  Throw in peer pressure, changing societal expectations, cultural fluidity, and the dividing up of the public into us vs. them tribes, and the imbroglio truly becomes an intense one, one for which, this author believes, there just is no easy answer except “Proceed with caution,” meaningfully regulate the transgender clinic and transgender clinic industries, understand that major invasive processes such as the standard treatments for gender dysphoria require a firmer scientific and ethical basis than they have now, and that, diagnostically, it is mandatory that real gender dysphoria be distinguished from mere adolescent whim and bowing to peer pressure.

 

But how should we treat those who identify as transgender, no matter what the cause of it?  With kindness, dignity, and respect, of course.  They are, above all, human beings, and even if we think them wrong, we do not negate their humanity.  And we shouldn’t through rejectionist bigotry.  Period.