It’s been said that if you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually believe it. According to the prevailing narrative in the public schools, children get to choose their gender. Those who identify with a gender different from the one mistakenly “assigned at birth” must be “affirmed” in their gender choice. If not, they will suffer a host of mental and emotional consequences that, if left untreated, may result in suicide. Along with the public schools, this narrative is being pushed by the American Medical Association, the American Psychological Association, the American Psychiatric Association, and most other professional medical organizations.  Medical schools also are increasingly under pressure to cave to this woke orthodoxy or risk losing accreditation.

This narrative relies on two essential claims, both of which are false.

False Narrative Claim #1: Sex is Not Binary.

Starting in Kindergarten, kids in the public schools are conditioned to believe that sex is something merely “assigned at birth.” They are instructed by teachers and curriculums that their true sexual identity can only be known through subjective experience and that is has nothing to do with their sexual organs or physiology. So effective has this conditioning been that today:

• One young adult in 20 today claims to be nonbinary or transgender.[1]
• The percentage of American adults who identify as queer has doubled in the last ten years,according to Gallup.
• Within Generation Z – those born during the mid-1990s – polling suggests the LGBTQ population doubled in just four years, from 10.5 percent in 2017 to 20.8 percent in 2021. That is over 1 in 5 of an entire generation of Americans.

[1] https://thehill.com/changing-america/3811406-new-studies-find-millions-of-young-nonbinary-and-transgender-americans/

Is the claim that sex is not binary true? What moral, philosophic, or scientific insight has led so many suddenly accepting this claim?

Our newest Supreme Court Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, was asked during her confirmation hearing if she could define what a woman was. She answered she couldn’t, exclaiming, “I’m not a biologist.” Well, Colin Wright is an evolutionary biologist who recently addressed this question in an article published in the WSJ:

“When biologists claim that sex is binary, we mean something straightforward: There are only two sexes. This is true throughout the plant and animal kingdoms. An organism’s sex is defined by the type of gamete (sperm or ova (egg cell)) that it has the function of producing. Males have the function of producing sperm, females, ova… Because there is no third gamete type, there are only two sexes. Sex is binary.”

 

What about Intersex, or what used to be called hermaphrodite, people born with ambiguous genitalia? As explained by Mr. Wright…

“Intersex people…don’t undermine the sex binary…In reality, the existence of borderline cases no more raises questions about everyone else’s sex than the existence of dawn and dusk casts doubt on day and night. For the vast majority of people, their sex is obvious. And our society isn’t experiencing a sudden dramatic surge in people born with ambiguous genitalia. We are experiencing a surge in people who are unambiguously one sex claiming to “identify” as the opposite sex or as something other than male or female.”

The percentage of Intersex people worldwide is vanishingly small, .018% of the population according to Dr. Leonard Sax, or about 1 in 6000. And we mustn’t conflate intersex with transgender.

 ““Intersex” and “transgender,” writes Mr. Wright, mean entirely different things. Intersex people have rare developmental conditions that result in apparent sex ambiguity. Most transgender people aren’t sexually ambiguous at all but merely “identify” as something other than their biological sex.”

Dr. Stephen B. Levine, a psychiatrist and early proponent of transgender medical interventions helped lead what is now WPATH – the World Professional Association for Transgender Health -and he was chairman of its International Standard of Care Committee.

Out of conscience, he has since resigned his position. In Expert Testimony he has stated:

“Sex is not “assigned at birth” by humans visualizing the genitals of a newborn; it is not imprecise. Rather, it is clear, binary, and determined at conception. The sex of a human individual at its core structures the individual’s biological reproductive capabilities—to produce ova and bear children as a mother, or to produce semen and beget children as a father. As physicians know, sex determination occurs at the instant of conception, depending on whether a sperm’s X or Y chromosome fertilizes the egg. A publication of the federal government’s National Institute of Health accurately summarizes the scientific facts.

“Sex is a biological classification, encoded in our DNA…Every cell in your body has a sex— making up tissues and organs, like your skin, brain, heart, and stomach. Each cell is either male or female depending on whether you are a man or a woman.” (NIH 2022.)

Indeed, if sex – or the more deceptively convenient term “gender” –  is subjective, then why aren’t other inherited personal characteristics also subjective? Why is one’s sexual identity singled out as something that others must acknowledge and accept? What makes it unique from one’s other personal characteristics like: skin color, ethnicity, attractiveness, intelligence, and ethnicity? If you can identify with the sex of your choice, why not these? So far, no answer has been given.

False Claim #2:  “Gender Affirming Care” results in healthy outcomes.

The current orthodoxy in the medical and psychological community is that children experiencing Gender Dysphoria (DSM 5) should be given what’s called “Gender Affirming Care”, or GAC. GAC involves giving children puberty blockers to interrupt normal hormone development. This is followed by administering cross-sex hormones, either testosterone or estrogen, which is followed by body mutilation surgery to carve out the child’s natural sex organs. According to the narrative,  depriving children of such GAC leads to emotional distress ending in suicide. The evidence, however, tells a different story. Dr. Stephen Levine:

“Transgender identity is not biologically based. Rather, gender dysphoria is a psychiatric condition that cannot be identified by any biological test or measurement. (Sections V.A, IV.B.)

“[T]here is no consensus or agreed ‘standard of care’ concerning therapeutic approaches to child or adolescent gender dysphoria.” [Levine] notes that gender identity “is not biologically based… He also warns that social transition “is a powerful psychotherapeutic intervention that radically changes outcomes” and makes it far less likely that young children will “desist” from a transgender identity. 

“Levine explicitly calls transition and affirmation “experimental therapies that have not been shown to improve mental or physical health outcomes by young adulthood,” and warns that these therapies “do not decrease, and may increase, the risk of suicide.” 

So-called puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones can have negative effects on fertility, bone density, brain development, and psychosocial well-being.

“Levine concludes that support for childhood medical interventions “is currently being reinforced by an echo chamber …by…professionals who do not sufficiently consider the known negative medical and psychiatric outcomes of trans adults.”

“Rather than recommend social transition in grade school, the [mental health professional] must focus attention on the child’s underlying internal and familial issues,” he concludes.”

These conclusions are underscored by scientific research conducted by independent researchers around the world and over many decades. The references below are just a sampling. We will amend this list as new evidence is made available:

• Gender Dysphoria is a Social Contagion.
• Parents Report Rapid Onset of Gender Dysphoria as a Function of Peer Group.
• Transgender Mortality Rate Twice As High and Persists for Decades.
  
• Puberty Blockers result in Massive Decrease in Bone Density.
• No ‘gay gene’: Massive study.
• No One is Born in the Wrong Body.
• Israeli Researchers Disprove Transgender Propaganda.
• Intersex Occurs in Fewer Than 2 out of Every 10,000 Births.
• Stigma/Minority Stress does not explain poor LGBT behavior statistics.
• Nearly 50-year Netherlands Study shows increasing Cultural Acceptance of Transgenders does not diminish Elevated Suicide Risk.
• Intimate Partner Violence is a Significant Factor in LGBT Suicide.
• Desistance is the Norm for Gender Dysphoria, unless Affirmed…Conservatively in 85% of Cases by Adulthood.
• Desistance in 61-98% of Gender Dysphoric Cases if no Gender Affirming Care by Adulthood.
• Deficiencies exist in Scientific Evidence for Medical Management of Gender Dysphoria.
• NHS ‘over-diagnosing’ children having transgender treatment as Psychologists fear being branded “transphobic.”
• World-renowned child psychiatrist calls trans treatments “possibly one of the greatest scandals in medical history.”
• Puberty blockers chemically castrate both sexes at the level of the brain.
• Testosterone increases the risk of heart disease in women 4-fold. Estrogen increases the rate of deep vein thrombosis (blood clots) and stroke in men 3 to 5 fold, heart attacks 2 fold. And here. And here. And here.
• Mental and Social Health of Patients undergoing Sex Reassignment Surgery did not Improve.
• Swedish Study of Post-Gender Reassignment Adults Showed a Suicide Rate 19 Times the General Population.