* This is a link to an essay I wrote for the Christian Post:
Transgender Ideas Never Stand Alone and Never Stand Still
_______________________________________________
Here is the essay with the endnotes included:
Transgender Ideas Never Stand Alone and Never Stand Still
March 2018
“Therefore everyone who hears these words of
mine, and acts upon them, may be compared to a wise man, who built his house
upon the rock. And the rain
descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against the
house; and yet it did not fall, for it had been founded upon the rock. And everyone who hears these words of
mine, and does not act upon them, will be like a foolish man, who built his
house upon the sand. And the rain
descended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and burst against that
house; and it fell, and great was its fall.”
--Matthew 7:24-27
In these famous words of Jesus he is, of course, making
profound claims about his teaching and its centrality to one’s life but notice
also the view of truth implied in these words. (1) Truth exists and can be known and (2) Truth has
consequences. To live in accord
with truth brings human flourishing and to live against the grain of reality is
ultimately destructive. These are
important points to remember as we think about the issues surrounding
Transgenderism today.
Our culture is awash with controversy in regards to
transgender issues and everyday seems to bring another fault-line of division
in the realms of education, law, medicine, sports, and entertainment. These flashpoints of controversy are
like the tip of an iceberg.
Underneath these visible markers of cultural foment are deep worldview
presuppositions. Differences of
understanding about sexuality involve differing conceptions of the human
person. It is these underlying
philosophical beliefs that must be understood and examined.
It should be noted, as a crucial aside, that what is under
discussion here is transgender ideology
and not, necessarily transgender individuals. Those individuals who experience gender
dysphoria should be treated with compassion and understanding even as we speak
the truth in love. Transgender
ideology, on the other hand, is a set of ideas and philosophical assumptions
that must be challenged and refuted.
At the heart of ideologies are ideas
and it is helpful to think of ideas operating in two ways:
1.
Ideas never stand alone—Ideas are
always based on fundamental worldview commitments and have a philosophical
substructure.
2.
Ideas never stand still—Ideas always
have implications and applications that naturally flow from them into the
social and cultural arena.
These two points provide a template to analyze transgender
ideology. Examining the underlying
the worldview and philosophy as well as watching for the logical entailments
and applications allow one to see exactly what is at stake in the debates about
Transgenderism.
Ideas Never Stand
Alone
One of the core ideas of transgender ideologues is that the
mind can be at war with one’s body.
In many other cases this dynamic is considered a disorder to be treated
with psychological counseling and therapy. For example, there are those who experiences Body Integrity
Identity Disorder (BIID) in which a person identifies as a disabled person and
feels trapped in a fully functional body.
In such cases therapy is seen as the solution and the pathway to health. The idea here is to correct a misalignment
between one’s perception and reality.
But in the case of gender dysphoria transgender ideologues
do not seek to change a person’s feelings of gender identity to match the
body. Instead, they engage in a
process of changing the body through hormones and surgery to match the
feelings. It is important to
recognize that this form of thought rests upon two convictions. First, there is a de-coupling of sexual
identity from the body. Second, it
is by an act of the will that one seemingly creates gender identity. These two convictions are indicative of
what Nancy Pearcey has called a “postmodern view of psychosexual identity.”1
A number of scholars have noted that transgender ideology
rests up postmodern, anti-realist assumptions. The idea that “gender is fluid” is itself a postmodern
idea. Transgender activist Judith
Butler states as much when she writes in her work 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.”2
Ryan Anderson in his recent book When Harry Become Sally perceptively notes this connection between
transgender ideology and philosophical commitments.
“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.”3
More simply, Anderson later concludes: “At the core of the
ideology is the radical claim that feelings determine reality.”4
Philosopher Elliot Crozat in an important essay entitled “
Reasoning
About Gender” speaks of the claims by transgender ideologues in the
following manner: “These claims appear to rest on the postmodern antirealist
assumption that what one takes as reality is a mere subjective or sociocultural
construct.”
5 He goes on to give the implications for 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.”6
It is this radical notion of postmodern philosophy that
underlies much of transgender ideology.
This commitment to postmodernism will have consequences for how the
ideas of Transgenderism play themselves out in the marketplace of ideas.
Ideas Never Stand
Still
Ideas have trajectory—they go somewhere. The philosophical notion of
postmodernism underlying transgender ideology leads to specific patterns of
thought that are actualized in the realms of education, law, medicine, and
culture. As Ryan Anderson notes,
“[T]ransgender policies follow from transgender ontology.”7 These
patterns of thought and action have negative implications and harmful
effects. Consider three such
problems.
First, transgender
ideology hurts and undercuts women’s rights. Nancy Pearcey has effectively captured this reality with her
reasoning in her excellent book Love Thy
Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality:
“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.”8
This is not a mere philosophical abstraction. Ashley McGuire in her book Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and
Female speaks of “the unintended consequences for women” that result from
transgender ideology.9 She gives an example of a court case (Kimberly v. Vancouver Rape Relief Society)
in which a rape crisis center had to fight to keep a biological man out of the
crisis center. The mere claim to
be “female” by a biological male was used in an attempt to allow his
admittance. Prominent liberal
feminist and pro-choice activist Kathleen Sloan argues:
“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.”10
One need not agree with all of Sloan’s historical
characterizations to grant the fundamental point she is making—namely, that
Transgenderism’s philosophically motivated presupposition of postmodernism will
undercut and harm women and women’s rights.
Second, transgender
ideology undercuts the notion of human rights in general. Recall professor Crozat’s words from
above about how within a postmodern, antirealist conception “there are no
objective natures, no human nature, no male nature, no female nature…” But, as
Crozat argues, this conception of reality is in logical tension with the notion
of objective rights. He
convincingly argues this in the following manner:
“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.”11
There is, thus, a deep internal contradiction between
transgender philosophical presuppositions and the quest for rationally grounded
human rights.12
Third, transgender
ideology harms children by legitimizing unhealthy medical procedures and
penalizes alternatives that recognize the reality of gender desistance. The standard plan of action set forth
by transgender activists for children who feel that their gender does not align
with their biological sex is fourfold:
a)
Social transition: the buying of new clothes,
the use of a new name and pronouns.
b)
Puberty blockers: with the onset of puberty
hormones are administered that will arrest the natural development of the body.
c)
Cross-sex hormones: around the age of 16 these
begin to be administered and will have to be taken for the rest of one’s life.
d)
Sex reassignment surgery: age 18 or above these
major surgeries are performed.
It needs to be realized that this process can begin as early
as five years old as a 2012 Washington
Post with the title “Transgendered at Five” proclaims. Two other caveats should be noted as
well. The age for each phase is
getting lower. In July 2016 the Guardian reported that “a doctor in
Wales is prescribing cross-sex hormones to children as young as 12.”13
Ryan Anderson notes the second caveat: “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.”14
It is important to stress the fact that these medical
practices are not driven by science but by a postmodernist ideology.
Dr. Michelle Cretella is a board
certified pediatrician and president of the American College of Pediatricians and
she writes in the 2016
Journal of American Physicians and Surgeons:
“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.”15
So what are the facts that can be known? What does the evidence indicate and how
should this be applied to the current situation? At least three facts warrant attention.
First, there is the fact of gender desistance—a growing out of their gender dysphoria—in the
vast majority of children who experience feelings of misalignment between their
gender identity and their biological sex.
As Dr. Cretella notes:
“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.”16
If children are not encouraged to “transition” then the vast
majority of them will naturally grow out of their gender dysphoria. In light of this fact, puberty should
not be seen as a disease to be halted but, rather, a time when children perhaps
need greater care and counseling as they navigate this part of their journey to
maturation.
The second fact to reckon with are the side effects of
puberty-blocking hormone therapies.
Ryan Anderson summarizes the research on this issue in this way:
“No one really knows all the
potential consequences of puberty blocking as a treatment for gender dysphoria,
but there are some known effects of puberty suppression on children who are
physiologically normal, and these carry long-term health risks. Children placed on puberty blockers
have slower rates of growth in height, and an elevated risk of low bone-mineral
density. Some other possible
effects are ‘disfiguring acne, high blood pressure, weight gain, abnormal
glucose tolerance, breast cancer, liver disease, thrombosis and cardiovascular
disease.’ And, of course, all of
the children who persist in their transgender identity and take puberty
blockers and cross-sex hormones will be infertile.”17
The third fact to consider is the “self-fulfilling nature”
of transgender activists’ protocols for puberty suppression. By this is meant, that once the
four-fold procedure outlined above is initiated then the child almost always
goes forward with the gender transition.
Dr. Cretella draws attention to this dynamic and its problems:
“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.”18
These facts about the health concerns related to children
and transgender ideology ought to concern all people. The use of transgender procedures that treat gender
dysphoria in children with hormones “effectively amounts to mass
experimentation on, and sterilization of, youth who are cognitively incapable
of providing informed consent.”19 Surely, even among those who
differ about adult transgender issues there could be some common cause and
consensus about the dangers of transgender ideology for children.
Truth and Human
Flourishing
The daily reverberations of our “transgender moment” are
fueled by deep philosophical undercurrents that flesh themselves out in
practical ways in the arenas of law, education, medicine, and culture. As Nancy Pearcey poignantly states:
“Every practice comes with a worldview attached to it—one that many of us might
not find true or attractive if we were aware of it.”20 Underlying
Transgenderism is a radical postmodern notion that the human will determines
reality. Rather than discovering
the natural functions and purposes of the human body and its relationship to
our core identity the human will imposes itself in a god-like quest to define
the world. This will ultimately
fail. As Francis Schaeffer taught
us a generation ago: “Non-Christian presuppositions simply do not fit into what
God has made, including what man is… Man cannot make his own universe and then live
in it.”21 The attempt to live by these faulty presuppositions has
serious and negative implications in the realms of human rights, women’s rights
and the health of children. Jesus
is still reminding us that the failure to live in accord with his reality—his
word—will ultimately lead to destruction.
May we heed his warning.
--Richard Klaus is a
graduate of Phoenix Seminary and is currently the Ratio
Christi Chapter Director for the
campus of Glendale Community College (AZ). He blogs at White Rose Review.
Endnotes
1.
Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2018), 201.
2.
Quoted in Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2018), 202.
3.
Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (New
York: Encounter Books, 2018), 29.
4.
Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (New
York: Encounter Books, 2018), 48.
6.
Elliot R. Crozat, “Reasoning About Gender” Evangelical Philosophical Society Website
(2016), 3.
7.
Ryan T. Anderson, When Harry Became Sally: Responding to the Transgender Moment (New
York: Encounter Books, 2018), 39.
8.
Nancy R. Pearcey, Love Thy Body: Answering Hard Questions About Life and Sexuality
(Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker, 2018), 211.
9.
Ashley McGuire, Sex Scandal: The Drive to Abolish Male and Female (New Jersey,
Regnery, 2017), 166.
10. Ashley
McGuire, Sex Scandal: The Drive to
Abolish Male and Female (New Jersey, Regnery, 2017), 168.
11. Elliot
R. Crozat, “Reasoning About Gender” Evangelical
Philosophical Society Website (2016), 5.
