“Cultural
Implications of Transgender Identity”
Richard Klaus
Truth Seekers (August
18, 2018)
Introduction
·
I changed the topic for tonight! talk about “Bigfoot”
o
Bigfoot: interesting but inconsequential
§ Interest would fade in a few
weeks
§ Not relevant to my life
·
Transgenderism is different!
1. Our culture is awash with
controversy in regards to transgender issues…
a. Every day seems to bring
another fault-line of division… Consider the following:
Parental
and Family Rights
i. A proposal in Delaware to let
children as young as 5 years-old choose their race and gender identity—without
informing parents of the decision.[1]
ii. “On February 16, 2018, Ohio Judge Sylvia Sieve Hendon handed
down a decision in Hamilton
County Juvenile Court that removed a gender dysphoric child from the custody of her biological parents and awarded custody
to the child’s grandparents. The decision was made on the grounds that the
grandparents are affirming of the seventeen-year-old’s desire to undergo
“transition” through hormone therapy, while the parents question the child’s
judgment and object to the transition on religious grounds.”[2]
iii. Canada’s recently enacted
“Bill 89”
It
requires child protection, foster, adoption service providers, and judges to
take into account and respect a child's "race, ancestry, place of origin,
color, ethnic origin, citizenship, family diversity, disability, creed, sex,
sexual orientation, gender identity and gender expression."
"I
would consider that a form of abuse, when a child identifies one way and a
caregiver is saying no, you need to do this differently," Minister of
Child and Family Services Michael Coteau, who introduced the bill, was quoted
as saying. "If it's abuse, and if it's within the definition, a child can
be removed from that environment and placed into protection where the abuse
stops."[3]
Education
iv. Jordan Peterson
Professor Jordan Peterson at the University of Toronto, who
has been a strong opponent of proposed Canadian legislation (BC-16) that would
make it a prosecutable offense to refer to a transgender person using pronouns
inconsistent with their gender identity, took to his Twitter page last week to
explain he was denied a Social Science and Humanities Research Council grant
that he would have used to research "personality predictors of political
correctness."[4]
v. James Caspian at Bath Spa
University in England
Last week, it was alleged that Bath Spa University has turned
down an application for research on gender reassignment reversal because it was
a subject deemed “potentially politically incorrect”.
James Caspian, a psychotherapist who specializes in working with transgender people,
suggested the research after a conversation with [Dr. Miroslav]Djordjevic [a world-leading genital reconstructive surgeon] in 2014 at a London restaurant where the Serbian told
him about the number of reversals he was seeing, and the lack of academic
rigour on the subject.
According to Caspian, the university initially
approved his proposal to research “detransitioning”. He then amassed some
preliminary findings that suggested a growing number of young people –
particularly young women – were transitioning their gender and then regretting
it.
But after submitting the more detailed proposal to Bath
Spa, he discovered he had been referred to the university ethics committee,
which rejected it over fears of criticism that might be directed towards the
university. Not least on social media from the powerful transgender lobby.[5]
Sports
vi. “Female Athletes Crushed by
‘Women Who Were Once Men’”[6]
Business
2. Underlying these cultural
controversies are differing worldview presuppositions
a. Elements of a WV:
metaphysics, epistemology, ethics
b. Issues of sexuality involve
differing conceptions of the human person
“The
problem is that many people treat morality as a list of rules. But in reality, every moral system rests on a worldview. In every decision we make, we are not just deciding what we
want to do. We are expressing our
view of the purpose of human life.”[8]
--Nancy
Pearcey
3. My goal: examine some of the
philosophical underpinnings of those who promote transgender ideology
4. NOTE: Crucial distinction
between…
a. Transgender individuals—those
who experience gender dysphoria
i. Compassion
ii. Compassion is also worldview
dependent
1. How shall we assess
compassion?
2. What treatment options are
best in accord with compassion?
3. What public policy decisions
are truly compassionate?
b. Transgender ideology—my
focus today
i. “So members of the church
who do not experience gender dysphoria should not assume that all transgender
persons want to deconstruct sex and gender per
se. There are voices in our
culture that do want that, to be sure.
But the average person who identifies as transsexual is unlikely to be
that person.”
ii. “However, most people
sorting out gender identity concerns do so in a cultural context in which a
culture war has been taking place.”[9]
5. At the heart of ideologies
are ideas—two points about ideas…
a. Ideas never stand alone—always based on WV
commitments and a philosophical substructure
b. Ideas never stand still—implications and
applications in the social, cultural, political, medical realms
6.
Ideas never stand alone
Definitions of gender
a. American Psychological
Association—difference between “sex” and “gender”
i. “Sex is assigned at birth, refers to one’s biological status as
either male or female, and is associated primarily with physical attributes
such as chromosomes, hormone prevalence, and external and internal
anatomy.
ii. “Gender refers to the socially constructed roles, behaviors,
activities, and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for boys
and men or girls and women. These
influence the ways that people act, interact, and feel about themselves. While aspects of biological sex are
similar across different cultures, aspects of gender may differ.”[10]
iii. “Transgender is an umbrella term for persons whose gender identity, gender expression, or behavior does not conform to that typically
associated with the sex which they were assigned.”[11]
iv. “Notice the politicized
language: a person’s sex is ‘assigned at birth.’”[12]
v. “The phrase ‘sex assigned at
birth,’ i.e., imposed from outside, is now favored because it makes room for
‘gender identity’ as the real basis of a person’s sex.”[13]
b. More radical definitions
i. “From a medical perspective,
the appropriate determinant of sex is gender identity.” –Dr. Deanna Adkins
(Duke University School of Medicine and director of the Duke Center for Child
and Adolescent Gender Care [2015])
ii. Shifting paradigms[14]
Older Paradigm
|
Newer Paradigm
|
Sex: biological reality
|
Gender
identity: destiny
|
Gender: social construct
|
Sex: social construct
|
c. “The Gender Unicorn”
i. According to TSER:
“Biological sex is an ambiguous word that has no scale and no meaning besides
that it is related to some sex characteristics. It is also harmful to trans people. Instead, we prefer ‘sex assigned at
birth’ which provides a more accurate description of what biological sex may be
trying to communicate.”[15]
ii. This diagram “deconstructs
sexuality into five separate factors that call all contradict one another.”[16]
d. Gender is fluid and a social
construct … even the body is a construct!
i. “It is a choice to refer to
some bodies as male and some bodies as female, not a fact. … It is an
ideological position—and not a scientific fact.” –Trans Activist quoted by
Nancy Pearcey[17]
ii. This view “treats the body
itself as infinitely malleable, with no definite nature of its own.”[18]
iii. Goal of gender ideologues à de-naturalize gender
1. Deny that gender has any
grounding in nature.
2. “Why do postmodernists want
to de-naturalize gender? Because once we reduce sexual morality to merely a
social construction, then we are free to deconstruct
it.”[19]
3. “Why would anyone hold such
an extreme view? What’s the
appeal? If the body cannot be
defined, then it places no constraints on our gender identity. The goal is
complete freedom to declare oneself a man or woman or both or neither.
“The sovereign self will not tolerate having its
options limited by anything it did not choose—not even its own body.”[20]
e. Nancy Pearcey’s concept of “Two Forms of Reductionism”[21]
Postmodernism
|
Gender is of
product of social forces.
The human will creates
reality
|
Modernism
|
Sexuality is a
product of material forces.
Materialism; no teleology
(purpose)
|
i. “Postmodernism thus takes
modernism to its next logical step.
Modernism denies any purpose or teleology in nature. And if nature reveals no purpose, then
it cannot inform our morality.
Morality is de-naturalized.
Both are forms of reductionism.
Modernism reduces the human body to product of blind, purposeless material forces. Postmodernism responds by reducing
gender to a product of social
forces.”[22]
Ideas of
transgender thought…
i. The brain can be at war with
your body (Pearcey, 194)
1. Usually we consider this a
disorder to be treated with psychological counseling and therapy
a. Body Dysmorphic Disorder
(BDD)—harbors the erroneous conviction that she is ugly
b. Body Integrity Identity
Disorder (BIID)—identifies as a disabled person and feels trapped in a fully
functional body
c. Anorexia Nervosa—a
persistent mistaken belief that one is obese
2. But in the case of Gender
Dysphoria—transgender ideologues…
a. Do NOT seek to change the
person’s feelings of gender identity to match the body…
b. But, rather, engage in a
process of changing the body through hormones and surgery to match the feelings
ii. Rests upon two convictions…
1. There is a de-coupling of
sexual identity from the body
2. An act of the will seemingly
creates gender reality.
iii. Indicative of a “postmodern
view of psychosexual identity” (Pearcey, 201)
·
“pomosexual” view (Pearcey, 201)
b. Transgender ideology (TI)
rests upon key philosophical concepts: postmodern, antirealist assumptions
i. Gender is fluid
ii. Transgender activist Judith
Butler argues in her book Gender Trouble…
When “gender is
theorized as radically independent of sex, gender itself becomes a
free-floating artifice, with the consequence that man and masculine, might
just as easily signify a female body as a male one and woman and feminine a male
body as easily as a female one.”[23]
iii. “At the heart of the
transgender movement are radical ideas about the human person—in particular,
that people are what they claim to
be, regardless of contrary evidence.
A transgender boy is a boy,
not merely a girl who identifies as a
boy. It is understandable why
activists make these claims. An
argument about transgender identities will be much more persuasive if it
concerns who someone is, not merely
how someone identifies. And so the
rhetoric of the transgender movement drips with ontological assertions: people are the gender they prefer to be. That’s the claim.”[24]
iv. “At the core of the ideology
is the radical claim that feelings determine reality.”[25]
v. Philosopher Elliot Crozat
argues that…
“These claims appear to rest on the postmodern
antirealist assumption that what one takes as reality is a mere subjective or
sociocultural construct.”[26]
vi. Professor Crozat goes on to
give the implications of such a view…
“Hence, there are no objective natures, no human
nature, no male nature, no female nature, and no such thing as human
flourishing that results from the proper functioning of the essential
properties and capacities of a human nature.”[27]
c. It this notion of postmodern
truth that underlies the transgender ideology that must be noted.
d. The cultural conflicts
remind us that Ideas never stand alone.
7. Ideas never stand still—there are always implications and applications in
culture, science, law, and medicine
·
Ideas have trajectory—they go somewhere
·
“[T]ransgender policies follow from transgender ontology.”[28]
o
Can be conceptualized: when you see a debate about transgender issues
watch for the underlying philosophical issues!
8. Some negative implications
flowing from transgender ideology…
a. Hurts and undercuts women’s rights
i. “To protect women’s rights,
we must be able to say what a woman is.
If postmodernism is correct—that the body itself is a social
construct—then it becomes impossible to argue for rights based on the sheer
fact of being female. We cannot
legally protect a category of people if we cannot identify that category.”[29]
ii. Not just a philosophical
abstraction
iii. Ashley McGuire—Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and
Female—“the unintended consequences for women”[30]
iv. Example: Kimberly v. Vancouver Rape Relief Society
1. Fight to keep a biological
man out of a woman’s rape crisis center
2. Kathleen Sloan—prominent
liberal feminist and pro-choice activist
“The threat that the gender identity movement poses
to women is that ‘gender’ is detached from the biological differences between
males and females (present in all mammalian species) and consequently male
supremacy and the oppression of women is obscured and ultimately erased…
Without being able to name humans male or female, women have no hope of being
able to protect ourselves from the violence men commit against us, much less
overturn the patriarchal misogyny that has oppressed and terrorized us for
millennia.”[31]
3. “The gender identity
movement, she [Sloan] said, is just and abstraction of Descartes (in)famous
line, ‘I think, therefore I am.’
Today, she argued, it’s become, ‘I think, therefore I demand that
society recognize who I say I am based on my subjective interpretation.’”[32]
b. Undercuts human rights
i. Remember Professor Elliot
Crozat’s contention about the postmodern, antirealist conceptions of
transgender ideology…
“Hence, there
are no objective natures, no human nature, no male nature, no female nature,
and no such thing as human flourishing that results from the proper functioning
of the essential properties and capacities of a human nature.”
ii. But this postmodernist view
is at odds with the concept of rights in general.
“If the concept
of natural human rights is sensible, then reality is not a mere construct;
there must be something objectively real and valuable to serve as the basis of
these rights.
“Objective
rights do not exist on the postmodernists worldview, regardless of how
vigorously one believes in them.
For a postmodernist to believe in objective rights is like believing in
centaurs (the character of Greek myth that are half-man and half-horse). One can believe in them, but doing so
makes no significant difference in the world. Consequently, the supporter of transgenderism cannot deny
human natures and rights but at the same time assert the right to define
himself or to use a preferred restroom.
Nor can he legitimately claim that his rights are violated by gender
dichotomist policies. To do this
is intellectually inconsistent, and perhaps an example of a performative
contradiction.”[33]
iii. Deep internal contradiction
between transgender philosophical presuppositions and the quest for rationally
grounded human rights.[34]
c. Redefines the nature of family relationships. Nancy Pearcey states:
o
“When gender is de-naturalized, parenthood will also be
de-naturalized.”[35]
o
“Until now, the family was seen as natural and pre-political, with
natural rights. That means it
existed prior to the state, and the state merely recognized its rights.
But if the law no longer recognizes natural sex, then it no longer
recognizes natural families or natural parents, only legal parents. You, as a mother or father, have only
the rights the state chooses to grant you.”[36]
d. “Sexual Orientation/Gender Identity”—SOGI laws—lead to an increased
interference by the government into public philosophy and law
i. “By sheer logic, SOGI laws must deny the importance of biology.”[37]
ii. “These legal changes do not
affect only homosexual or transgender people. In the eyes of the law, no
one has a natural or biological sex now; all citizens are defined not by their bodies but by their inner
states and feelings… Your basic identity as male or female, husband or wife,
mother or father, son or daughter, sister or brother no longer follows
metaphysically from your biology but must be determined by an act of will.
“But whose will?
Ultimately, it will come down to who has the most power—which means the
state.”[38]
iii. SOGI laws—presented as
opening up rights to a discriminated class
1. But, in truth, SOGI laws
serve to impose certain philosophical assumptions upon all…
2. Under threat of punishment
and civil sanction.
iv. “Every social practice is
the expression of fundamental assumptions about what it means to be human. When a society accepts, endorses, and
approves the practice, it implicitly commits itself to the accompanying
worldview. And all the more so if
those practices are enshrined in law.
The law functions as a teacher, educating people on what society considers
to be morally acceptable.”[39]
e. Harms children by legitimizing unhealthy medical procedures and
penalizing alternatives that recognize the reality of gender desistance
i. Washington Post (2012) article “Transgendered at Five”
ii. Transgender activists plan
of action: (Anderson, 120-121)
* Form of treatment…
1. Social transition—new
clothes, name, pronouns
2. Puberty blockers
3. Around 16—cross-sex hormones
(the rest of their lives)
4. Age 18—sex reassignment
surgery
iii. NOTES…
1. Age for each phase is
getting lower
·
July 2016 Guardian reported
that “a doctor in Wales is prescribing cross-sex hormones to children as young
as 12…” (Anderson, 121)
2. “There are no laws in the
United States prohibiting the use of puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones for
children, or regulating the age at which they may be administered.”[40]
iv. These medical practices are
not driven by science but by a postmodernist ideology.
§ “That postmodern view is
filtering down to even younger ages.
The mother of a twelve-year old told reporters, ‘Some days Annie is a
girl, some days Annie is a boy, and some days she’s both.’ When the pair went shopping for Annie’s
graduation outfit, they purchased both a dress and a suit because they were not
sure which gender the child would align with for the evening. The article helpfully explains, ‘Annie
believes gender is more of a mental trait rather than physical.’ Gender has become a purely mental trait
with no grounding in physical reality.”[41]
v. Dr. Michelle Cretella—board
certified pediatrician and president of the American College of Pediatricians
writes in the Journal of American
Physicians and Surgeons in 2016:
“To be clear,
this ‘alternate perspective’ of an innate gender fluidity arising from
prenatally ‘feminized’ or ‘masculinized’ brains trapped in the wrong body is an
ideological belief that has no basis in rigorous science.”[42]
vi. What is known? What does the evidence show?
vii. The fact of gender desistance among
children as they move into late adolescence.
§ “Experts on both sides of
the pubertal suppression debate agree that within this context, 80 percent to
95 percent of children with GD [Gender Dysphoria] accepted their biological sex
and achieved emotional well-being by late adolescence.”[43]
§ Dr. Kenneth
Zucker—psychologist who ran the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health in
Toronto along with its Gender Identity Clinic for 30 years—described by Ryan Anderson…
§ “He is perhaps the most
frequently cited name in research on gender identity and the editor of the
journal Archives of Sexual Behavior. Zucker has been at the forefront of
developing treatments for people with gender dysphoria, and he headed the group
that wrote the entry on gender dysphoria for the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the official
handbook of the American Psychiatric Association.”[44]
§ In an interview with NPR,
Dr. Zucker noted…
“But the follow-up studies I’ve done, and others
too, show [that] a substantial majority of kids seen for GID Gender Identity
Disorder] in childhood show desistance—that is, when they’re older they don’t
want to be the other sex. We just
published a study of 25 girls we first saw in childhood and found that only 12
percent seem to have persistent gender dysphoria when they’re older. We find similar rates of persistence in
boys.”[45]
viii.
The fact of
the side-effects of puberty-blocking hormone therapies… some known and some
unknown
ix. The fact of the “self-fulfilling nature” of
transgender activists’ protocols for puberty suppression
·
“In a follow-up study of their first 70 eligible candidates to receive
puberty suppression, de Vries and colleagues documented that all subjects went
on to embrace a transgender identity and request cross-sex hormones. This is cause for concern. There is an obvious self-fulfilling
nature to encouraging a young man with GD [Gender Dysphoria] to socially
impersonate a girl and then institute pubertal suppression. Given the well-established phenomenon
of neuroplasticity, the repeated behavior of impersonating a girl alters the
structure and function of the boy’s brain in some way—potentially in a way that
will make identity alignment with his biologic sex less likely. This, together with the suppression of
puberty that further endogenous masculinization of his brain, causes him to
remain a gender non-conforming prepubertal body disguised as a prepubertal
girl. Since his peers develop into
young men and young women, he is left psychosocially isolated. He will be less able to identify with
being male and more likely to identify as ‘non-male.’ A protocol of impersonation and pubertal suppression that
sets into motion a single inevitable outcome (transgender identification) that
requires a life-long use of synthetic hormones, resulting in infertility, is
neither fully reversible nor harmless.”[46]
x. Transgender ideology
subjects children to experimentation with life-long consequences
“The treatment
of GD [Gender Dysphoria] in childhood with hormones effectively amounts to mass
experimentation on, and sterilization of, youth who are cognitively incapable
of providing informed consent.
There is a serious ethical problem with allowing irreversible,
life-changing procedures to be performed on minors who are too young to give
valid consent themselves.”[47]
xi. Surely, even among those of
us who differ about adult transgender issues we could come to a common cause
and agreement about the dangers of transgender ideology for children!
9. Conclusion—What I’ve
attempted to argue…
a. Debates we see in the media
in the realms of cultural and law have deeper philosophical issues undergirding
them
b. Ideas never stand alone
& Ideas never stand still
c. In particular, transgender
activists pursuing the implementation of their ideology are working with a
postmodernist view of reality and the human person.
i. An act of the will
determines reality
ii. There are not a essential
human nature; rather we create ourselves and our gender
d. This philosophical
commitment has serious and negative implications for…
i. Women’s rights
ii. Human rights
iii. Family rights
iv. Laws about gender that will
punish those who do not embrace the underlying postmodernist conception of the
human person
v. Children’s medical and
psychological well-being and care
Appendix: Extra
Thoughts
1.
Ryan T. Anderson on defining “gender”
“Sex is a bodily, biological reality, and gender is how we give social
expression to that reality. Gender
properly understood is a social
manifestation of human nature, springing forth from biological realities, though shaped by rational and moral choice. Human beings are creatures of nature
and culture, but a healthy culture does not attempt to erase our nature as male
or female embodied beings.
Instead, it promotes the integrity of persons, in part by cultivating
manifestations of sex differences that correspond to biological facts. It supports gender expressions that
reveal and communicate the reality of our sexual nature.
“Gender is socially shaped, but it is not a mere social construct. It originates in biology, but in turn
it directs our bodily nature to higher human goods. A sound understanding of gender clarifies the important
differences between the sexes, and guides our distinctly male or female
qualities toward our well-being. A
misguided concept of gender, on the other hand, conceals, denies, and distorts
the realities of our nature and hinders human flourishing.”[48]
·
John Frame’s “Tri-perspectivalism”
o Normative
= Biological
o Situational
= Social
o Existential
= Rational & moral choice
2.
Steve Hays on “Are Souls Gendered?”[49]
Are
souls gendered?
This is
a question that a commenter over at Randal Rauser’s blog asked. (“Does
Christian theology hold that the soul has gender?”). Of course, the answer is
somewhat speculative.
i) Some
folks might think the question is inherently nonsensical. Surely gender is a
property of embodied agents. Only bodies can have primary and secondary sexual
characteristics.
But we
need to distinguish between gender as an abstract property and its concrete
exemplifications. For instance, every man is male, but every male isn’t a man.
Maleness is more general than manhood, while masculinity is more general than
maleness. Same thing with femininity.
ii)
There are different ways to model the mind/body problem. Different versions of
monism and dualism. For discussion purposes, I’ll take interactionist dualism
as my operating model.
iii)
The question of whether souls have gender raises the nature/nurture debate.
It’s really two questions with two possible answers:
a) Does
the soul have innate gender?
b) Does
the soul have acquired gender?
Apropos
(a), I don’t know that we’re in a position to tell one way or the other.
Assuming
that (a) is true, there’s not much more to be said. But if (b) is true, then that
generates other permutations:
iv)
Take a comparison. I’m psychologically American. That’s acquired rather than
innate. I could have been born to the same parents, but in a different country
(if they were living abroad).
I’m
psychologically American because I was raised by American parents, and I grew
up in America, around American relatives, neighbors, and classmates. Because
I’ve been immersed in American culture (both media and society) from as early
as I can remember. So I’ve been conditioned to be psychologically American. Moreover,
that conditioning is irreversible at this stage. It’s part of my formative
years. To a great extent, personal identity is bound up with memory. Remembered
experience.
v) In
principle, gender could be conditioned by physical experience. Say a soul is
united to the body of a human male from conception to death from old age. His
experience of the world is filtered through a physical medium. Specifically,
male embodiment. That’s how he perceives the world, interacts with the world,
remembers the world. That informs and thereby forms his psychological makeup to
some degree.
vi)
When he dies, he leaves his body behind, but not the lasting effect of his
physical conditioning.
vii)
But suppose he dies in the womb and goes straight to heaven? Then what? There
are two possibilities:
viii)
The soul of the baby remains in a state of psychological stasis until the
resurrection of the just, at which time it’s united with the body of a baby,
and naturally matures. Perhaps the discarnate baby has little sense of time’s passage
during the intermediate state. It’s happy, but there’s no character
development. No acquisition of knowledge.
ix)
That’s one possibility. Here’s another: the discarnate baby enjoys a simulated
physical existence. Like dreams or virtual reality. The discarnate baby
undergoes a simulated lifecycle–infancy, boyhood (or girlhood), adolescence, adulthood
(manhood or womanhood, as the case may be).
3.
[2]
Andrew T. Walker, “Parental Rights: A Causality of the Transgender Revolution” Public Discourse (February 26,
2018). Online: http://www.thepublicdiscourse.com/2018/02/21122/?utm_source=The+Witherspoon+Institute&utm_campaign=bb4409bc42-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_15ce6af37b-bb4409bc42-84153673.
[3]
Anugrah Kumar, “Ontario Passes Law Allowing Gov’t to Seize Children From
Parents Who Oppose Gender Transition” Christian
Post (June 4, 2017)—online: https://www.christianpost.com/news/ontario-passes-law-government-seize-children-parents-oppose-gender-transition-186332/
[4]
Samuel Smith, “Professor Who Opposes Gender-Neutral Pronouns Denied Grant
Funding” Christian Post (April 4,
2017)—online: https://www.christianpost.com/news/professor-jordan-peterson-gender-neutral-pronouns-denied-grant-funding-179461/
[5]
Joe Shute, “The New Taboo: More People Regret Sex Change and Want to
‘Detransition’, Surgeon Says” National
Post (October 2, 2017)—online: https://nationalpost.com/news/world/the-new-taboo-more-people-regret-sex-change-and-want-to-detransition-surgeon-says
[6]
“Female Athletes Crushed by ‘Women Who Were Once Men’” World Net Daily (March 26, 2017)—online: https://www.wnd.com/2017/03/female-athletes-crushed-by-women-who-were-once-men/
[7]
Doug Mainwaring, “Planet Fitness Bans Woman for Objecting to Sharing Locker
Room with ‘Transgender’ Man” Life Site
News (July 16, 2018)—online: https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/planet-fitness-bans-woman-for-objecting-to-sharing-locker-room-with-transge
[10]
American Psychological Association, “Answers to Your Questions About
Transgender People, Gender Identity and Gender Expression,” (2014), 1—online: http://www.apa.org/topics/lgbt/transgender.pdf.
[26]
Elliot R. Crozat, “Reasoning About Gender” Evangelical
Philosophical Society Website (2016), 3. Online: http://www.epsociety.org/userfiles/art-Crozat%20(Reasoning%20about%20Gender-final).pdf.
[34]
For more on the general issue of grounding human rights see John Warwick
Montgomery, Human Rights and Human
Dignity (Dallas,Texas: Probe Books, 1986 and Paul Copan, “Grounding Human
Rights: Naturalism’s Failure and Biblical Theism’s Success” in Legitimizing Human Rights: Secular and
Religious Perspectives (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2013)—Online: http://www.paulcopan.com/articles/pdf/Paul_Copan-Grounding_Human_Rights_in_Menuge_2013.pdf.
[42]
Michelle A. Cretella, “Gender Dysphoria in Children and Suppression of Debate” Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons
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