The Texas Supreme Court just upheld a state law banning so-called gender-affirming care for minors, to explosive consternation from predictable quarters. Progressive commentators portray this and similar laws passed by more than a dozen Republican — controlled state legislatures as “anti-LGBTQIA+.” In truth, the laws are aimed not at that whole bramble of capital letters, but solely at the “T.”
The left claims withdrawal of puberty blockers and sex ‘reassignment’ surgery violates trans kids’ ‘rights’
Slamming these bans histrionically as “genocide” (four in 15,000 patients of the Tavistock Clinic or on its waiting list committed suicide between 2010 and 2020, but according to propaganda it’s up to 50 percent of trans kids who try to kill themselves), the American left claims withdrawal of cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and sex “reassignment” surgery for children violates the “rights” of trans kids. Yet progressives never seem indignant over the gross unfairness that children can’t buy alcohol, purchase cigarettes, join the army, get a tattoo, work in factories, marry or consent to sex with an adult. Why doesn’t being prevented from snagging a packet of Marlboros violate children’s rights?
Oh, no, we must protect minors from injuring their health when they’re too young to appreciate the threats of cancer and addiction. But according to the American left, which used to decry female genital mutilation, twelve-year-olds are mature enough to decide to halt the progress of puberty (potentially imperiling their brain and skeletal development), commit to a costly pharmaceutical regimen replete with irksome side effects for the rest of their lives, have healthy body parts hacked off, accept a future of sexual dysfunction and forgo parenthood altogether. In the frenzy of the culture wars, Republicans have passed some clumsy legislation, but these laws are spot on. Nevertheless, Canada has issued a comical travel advisory about the “risks” in certain US states for citizens who belong to that ever-extending string of upper case letters.
Gotta hand it to these doctors: “gender-affirming care” is genius branding. Usefully, “gender” has become a nonsense word. What could possibly be wrong with “affirming?” Why, the adjective exudes niceness, solace and esteem. And no physician or parent could oppose “care.” Yet the euphemism translates to “sex-denying medical experimentation.”
One witness who testified in support of the Texas bill during the legislature’s debate was Corinna Cohn — who now often goes by “Corrie” — a self-identified “transsexual” who was well ahead of the curve when he transitioned in 1994 at nineteenth. He now says he is male and always has been, though he can never turn back the clock, having lopped off certain equipment. Pilloried as a quisling by trans activists, Cohn is on a national mission to stop underage transitions.
As he told Wesley Yang on the Year Zero podcast, the rage for castration and mutilation of minors is bound to “blow up on us,” and “it’s going to get worse from here.” He predicts that similar laws will soon be passed in most states, even Democratic ones. The trans phenomenon, he says, is about “self-perfection. It’s not to cure an illness. It’s not to cure even a mental disease. This is about helping someone who has a fantasy achieve their fantasy. It would not be ridiculous at all for us to string up guide wires from building to building and let people strap themselves on so that they can pretend to be superheroes flying from place to place.” Cohn despairs: “Doing this to kids? It’s so unjust, the amount of pain, and the elimination of so many healthy futures.” And he warns that the products of “gender-affirming care” are prone to exaggerate their happiness with the results: “No one wants to seem like a fool for getting what they asked for.”
Another famous early adopter was Jazz Jennings, who under the influence of his lunatic Munchausen mother became quite the online poster boy — or girl — for trans in 2007. Though as a kid Jennings had an androgynous cuteness, alas, he’s grown up. Having never gone through puberty, the boy developed only a micro-penis, giving surgeons fashioning a fake vagina little to work with. Constant dilation to keep the wound from healing shut is excruciating. Politically what’s happened to Jazz Jennings, now twenty-two-years-old, is a powerful cautionary tale. He’s not only in pain, neurotic and miserable; he’s fat. Really fat. Any woman could have warned him about the effect of all that estrogen. Let’s hope Jennings tours the same states where Cohn is campaigning: look, kids. Do you want to grow up to be like me?
In a rare instance of taking the cultural initiative, both Europe and the UK are steadily retreating from “gender-affirming care” in preference for talk therapy — a story the American left-wing media scrupulously buries. By contrast, the entire US medical establishment is intoxicated by Frankensteinian maiming of children. In a self-sustaining feedback loop, the enthusiastic endorsement by the American Medical Association and the American Academy of Pediatrics of an “affirmative” approach to underage confusion has been successfully deployed to strike down in court multiple state bans on sex-change treatments for minors.
The trans mania took off in 2013, and I didn’t stick my neck out in public on the issue until 2016. Although the unwritten prohibition on saying a single discouraging word about the transgenderism craze didn’t partially lift until around 2021, I’m still not proud that I kept my journalistic mouth shut for three years. But then, even in 2016 observing “this is completely nuts” could have been career-ending — and it still paints a bullseye on one’s forehead.
We’re an adaptive species — and it’s possible to get used to anything. Hence it takes daily application to maintain a crucial incredulity. On a dime, the entire western world became obsessed with drastic medication and gratuitous cosmetic surgery to allow tens of thousands of mostly young people to pretend to be the opposite sex. There will be hell to pay in the fullness of time, but not soon enough. The Texan families complaining on the American news that they can’t get their kids poorly researched off-label puberty blockers, irreversible cross-sex hormones and permanently mangling surgeries don’t know how lucky they are.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s UK magazine. Subscribe to the World edition here.
