A few years ago, things looked pretty bleak for skeptics of transgenderism -- those of us who have great compassion for those afflicted by what the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders long referred to as the "disorder" of gender dysphoria, but who refuse to accept the lie that a man can become a woman or a woman can become a man.
During the 2020 presidential race, then-candidate Joe Biden tweeted, "Transgender equality is the civil rights issue of our time." As president in 2023, Biden followed up by stating, "Transgender people are some of the bravest Americans I know." That same year, the transgender fad achieved unprecedented reach among impressionable youngsters: While Gallup reported that (an already-high) 7 percent of all Americans identified as LGBTQ, that number soared to 20 percent of all Gen Z -- and as high as 38 percent on some elite Ivy League campuses.
But the social craze began to face setbacks. In the UK, the National Health Service's Cass Review cast substantial doubt on the underlying scientific evidence purporting to support "gender-affirming care." Enterprising investigative journalists, such as Christopher F. Rufo, began to expose rampant ethical concerns with America's gender clinics. Polling began to reflect broader concerns with the transgender narrative on issues such as women's athletic competition. President Donald Trump, intuiting that law can shape culture just as culture can shape law, signed numerous transgender-related executive orders in the first few weeks of his second term.
Now, it seems the dam may be breaking.
In a landmark legal judgment on Jan. 30, a 22-year-old biological woman named Fox Varian was awarded $2 million in the Westchester County Supreme Court. Varian, a "detransitioner," had an irreversible double mastectomy when she was 16 years old. The New York court held her psychologist and surgeon liable for $1.6 million for past and future suffering, and an additional $400,00 for any future medical expenses. Varian, whose mother initially opposed the operation but consented following the surgeon's "emphatic" insistence, became deeply depressed following the procedure. Now, she has become the first "detransitioner" to win a medical malpractice lawsuit at trial.
The message out of Westchester County is clear: Doctors and psychologists are now potentially on the hook for irrevocable mutilation of patients in the name of gender ideology.
The response has been swift. On Tuesday, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons became the first major medical association to recommend that transgender "surgeries" be delayed until a patient is at least 19 years old. Immediately, the American Medical Association, in a statement to National Review, reversed its previous enthusiasm for teenage "gender-affirming care": The AMA now "agrees with ASPS that surgical interventions in minors should be generally deferred to adulthood." On Thursday, the American Academy of Pediatrics followed suit: "The guidance from the (AAP) for health care for young people with gender dysphoria does not include a blanket recommendation for surgery for minors."
Transgenderism is having a tough time on the legal front as well. In United States v. Skrmetti, a 6-3 Supreme Court majority held that Tennessee's comprehensive ban on transgender-related medical procedures passes constitutional muster. Justice Amy Coney Barrett, one of the more centrist Republican-nominated jurists, went out of her way to argue in a concurring opinion that transgender-identifying individuals do not constitute a "suspect class" or "discrete and insular minority," in the court's Fourteenth Amendment jurisprudential jargon, such that heightened judicial scrutiny is required. This term at the high court, Idaho and West Virginia recently defended their own laws that prohibit biological males from competing in women's sports; most court-watchers expect the two states to prevail.
The fundamental problem for transgender activists was always easy to spot: Transgenderism is premised on a lie, and in the long run, the truth has a stubborn tendency to prevail. We know from the biological truth of sexual dimorphism, the chromosomal truth of dichotomous XX and XY structure, the biblical truth that "God created man in His image ... male and female He created them," millennia of unquestioned human experience, and basic common sense that there are precisely two sexes. That is not to deny that there are intersex, or androgynous, individuals -- there are, and there always have been. And that is not to deny the very real psychological malady of gender dysphoria.
But one cannot change his or her sex by subjectively identifying as such or by subjecting oneself to either hormonal treatments or a surgeon's knife. It is simply not possible. And the notion that it ever was possible, advanced by so many cultural and societal elites for so many years, was always going to end in pain, suffering, massive legal liability and the desecration of the Hippocratic Oath-based medical profession itself. Clicks and fads may sometimes rule the day, but the truth is eternal. Kudos to the American people for beginning to realign political, legal and social mores with the truth.
To find out more about Josh Hammer and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate website at www.creators.com.