Few cultural issues in America are more pressing than the proliferation of transgender ideology. It is perhaps the most blatant example in our lifetimes of a pernicious ideology affecting public policy. Transgender ideology is fundamentally anti-science and anti-knowledge. It rejects irrefutable empirical evidence and sound medicine. It is the triumph of nihilistic, irrational power over reason and reality. And the transgender cult leaders, especially exhibitionist, fetishist men, are dangerous misogynists. They are determined to eradicate private spaces for women, abolish women’s sports, and force everyone to participate in their sexual fantasies. The transgender cult will not be satisfied until everyone bows to its violent assault on public institutions. Its adherents flaunt the irrationality of transgender ideology, which makes it even more dangerous.
Compounding the crisis, however, is the challenge of identifying actual cases of gender dysphoria from the nihilistic ideology that dominates the public debate. It is also difficult to distinguish authentic cases of gender dysphoria from the dramatic social contagion that has occurred in the past 10 years or so. Transgender cultists are very heavily invested in recruiting and grooming children, beginning with preadolescents. Sexual fetishists crave confirmation. And they have found it in a medical community that literally has abandoned medical care for pseudoscience. Much of the damage already done to children is irreversible, as medical professionals have abandoned the care of vulnerable children for the lies of transgender ideology.
Virtually everyone reading this article went through the confusing and often stressful periods of puberty, preadolescence and teenage angst. These are experiences that make us uncomfortable with our bodies. We have been self-conscious, or even ashamed, of the natural manifestations of puberty. Voices change, acne blooms, hair grows, odors emanate and confusion reigns. This is also a period of intense social pressure, in which we glom on to the latest fads and fashions so that we fit in with our peers. Sometimes these “fashionable” behaviors are actually dangerous psychological or psychiatric pathologies. Until the rise of the pathology of transgender ideology, we treated these pathologies as abnormal reactions to normal physiological changes. We did not affirm children in their pathologies. Rather, we treated them. Not so with the psychological pathology of gender dysphoria.
The sudden and rapid rise in gender dysphoria
“Social contagion” is the term we use for the sudden and rapid rise of some kind of psychiatric, psychological, behavioral or emotional pathology. For example, eating disorders have long been known to have social contagion components. Especially among teenage girls, bulimia and anorexia often occur in clusters of teenagers at a particular school or within a cohort of close friends. The term “contagion,” of course, is used analogously in this context. Mimicking is probably the better word. There is no bulimia virus or anorexia germ. Rather, closely associated groups of people tend to mimic their circles of friends.
The medical community and scientific literature do not shy from calling eating disorders social contagions. This is because the empirical evidence is both irrefutable and overwhelming. And the medical community rightly considers eating disorders to be dangerous pathologies. They are treated as disorders, and therapies are designed to help people overcome the pathology. What physicians do not do is call a pathological eating disorder “normal” and affirm their patients in this pathology. Doctors do not affirm their patients’ discomfort with their bodies or alienation toward food. On the contrary, they utilize therapeutic techniques to help patients overcome both aspects of the pathology. No one is called a bigot for identifying eating disorders as pathologies in need of corrective therapy. And it would be unimaginable for a city council, state legislature or federal agency to prohibit therapy designed to assist an anorexic person to overcome his or her pathology. Any sane person would call such a law evil.
In the past 10 years, we have seen the rise of a social contagion related to gender confusion almost identical to that of eating disorders. For example, in 2013, there were fewer than 250 referrals to the United Kingdom’s Tavistock child gender clinic (an institution that did enormous harm to British children before being closed in 2022). By 2021, that number had exploded to more than 5,000, twice the number in 2020. In 2013, the numbers of boys and girls referred to Tavistock were roughly equal. By 2019, three times as many girls as boys were referred. In almost every single case of “gender dysphoria,” the patient also presented with a variety of comorbidities. These included autism, ADHD, depression, eating disorders, anxiety, and a history of sexual and/or physical abuse. Even clinic staff members were concerned that these comorbidities were being ignored while children were rushed into gender “affirmation” treatment.
‘Affirming care’ causes permanent injury to children
The social contagion of gender dysphoria is remarkably similar to that of eating disorders. The reaction of the medical and scientific communities, however, is exactly opposite. Rather than assist children and teenagers in overcoming discomfort with their bodies so that they can adjust to the realities of adolescence and physiological maturation, a frightening number of physicians and scientists insist that they be affirmed in their gender confusion. Assisted by a compliant legacy media, children with temporary psychological, psychiatric, emotional and behavioral pathologies are being permanently harmed by cross-sex hormones, puberty blockers and mutilating surgery. These professionals don’t treat the pathology. They affirm it. And many state legislatures have made it illegal to treat children with gender dysphoria, outlawing so-called “conversion therapy.”
This is a monumental public health crisis. Even aside from the elimination of spaces and opportunities for girls and women, we are in the process of causing permanent injury to children with temporary, albeit very serious, discomfort with their bodies and identity. In no other area of medicine do we encourage the disorder. The proper response to gender dysphoria is compassionate, sensitive therapy, not permanent disfigurement.
There is no such thing as a transgender person, just as there is no such thing as a bulimic person or anorexic person. Rather, there are people with bulimia, anorexia or gender confusion. The latter, like the former, need compassionate treatment, not permanent injury in the name of “affirmation.”
