Two major events within the last week signal that, at last, the radical transgender house of cards is starting to fall, marking the triumph of biological reality and plain common sense.
The first major event was a legal decision in which $2 million in damages was awarded to detransitioner Fox Vaian. As reported by Michael Nevradakis, Ph.D., on the Children’s Health Defense Website, “Fox Varian, now 22, underwent a double mastectomy in 2019, when she was 16. Afterward, she felt that her gender transition had harmed her, so she detransitioned. In 2023, she sued her psychologist, Dr. Kenneth Einhorn, and her plastic surgeon, Dr. Simon Chin.”
Sadly, $2 million cannot repay Varian for the lifelong damage that was done to her.
But her case marks a significant legal development, one that should be echoed hundreds or even thousands of times in the years ahead, thereby shutting the door on the genital mutilation or surgical castration of minors.
Financial pragmatism alone, even without any accompanying ethical restraint, will be enough to sink the industry of “transitioning” children.
The second major event was an announcement from the American Society of Plastic Surgeons. As reported by Devi Shastri for AP News, “The nation's largest professional organization for plastic surgeons recommended that gender-affirming surgeries be delayed until patients turn 19, changing the group's stance on the politically charged issue and diverging from several other major medical organizations' guidance.”
Specifically, “The American Society of Plastic Surgeons said Tuesday that it found ‘insufficient evidence’ that the benefits of chest, genital and facial surgeries on minors experiencing gender dysphoria outweigh the risks.”
This, too, marks a significant moment in the transgender debate, since the statement was compassionate, not minimizing the very real emotional stress experienced by some individuals who suffer from gender confusion. Instead, the announcement noted that the “ASPS affirms that truly humane, ethical, and just care, particularly for children and adolescents, must balance compassion with scientific rigor, developmental considerations and concern for long-term welfare.”
Yet, as I argued during a November 18, 2009, appearance on Tyra Banks, real compassion often calls on us to do the more difficult thing, namely, get to the root of a child’s confusion and help them from the inside out, rather than remove (or “remake”) their private parts and/or surgically castrate them.
During that same appearance, I also warned that doctors were “experimenting with kids’ lives!”, a claim that the other panelists passionately rejected. But by 2021, one of those very panelists admitted to serious misgivings about the subject, stating, “We zig and then we zag, and I think maybe we zigged a little too far to the left in some cases. I think there was naivete on the part of pediatric endocrinologists who were proponents of early [puberty] blockade thinking that just this magic can happen, that surgeons can do anything.”
How costly that medical zigging and zagging has been on countless confused minors who have been irreversibly damaged, not to mention the broader damage done to the thinking of an entire generation of young people who have become deeply confused about issues as simple as the difference between male and female.
It is “sociological contagion” that best explains why, according to “a controversial 2021 Barna poll, nearly 40 percent of Gen Z describe themselves as being somewhere on the LGBTQ spectrum.”
In contrast, as it is becoming increasingly evident that the emperor has no clothes, it is no surprise that, “A new report reveals a sharp decline in Gen Z identifying by terms such as ‘nonbinary,’ ‘bisexual,’ ‘transgender’ and ‘queer’ over a recent two-year span while the percentage of Gen Z describing themselves as heterosexual has increased.”
But these changes have been inevitable for some time.
Political leaders who have no problem with same-sex “marriage” realized that boys competing against girls in sports was inherently unfair and that biological males did not belong in the same locker rooms and bathrooms as females.
As for ideological considerations, there is no hiding the folly of judges and medical experts and educators unable to answer questions as simple as, “What is a woman?” or, “Can men get pregnant?”
Added to all this are the many heart-wrenching stories of the detransitioners, victims of “a massive human rights violation,” which are now turning into what could well be a flood of legal cases. Their poignant stories must be heard, both in the court of public opinion and in courts of law.
That’s why voices as disparate as Joe Rogan, Prof. Richard Dawkins, Bill Maher, and J. K. Rowling have spoken out against radical trans activism.
To repeat: the emperor has no clothes. (For the reasons behind the recent closing of Tavistock, the UK’s largest trans-related clinic, which parallels this article, see here.)
More broadly, the larger failure of radical leftist, trans ideology, evidenced most drastically in the disastrous ad campaign of Bud Light featuring Dylan Mulvaney, reveals that woke does not triumph over common sense. (Put another way, you don’t need to be a rocket scientist to figure out that your average American beer drinker would not be particularly thrilled with a biological male being the new “poster girl” for the brand.)
It turns out, then, that biology is quite stubborn and common sense quite resilient, helping steer society back in a saner direction. This is good news.
The only caveat is that we don’t forget compassion, remembering that some people, young and old alike, are deeply tormented by gender confusion. Let all who can stand with them, from psychologists to medical professionals to spiritual leaders, make a serious effort to help them find wholeness and relief.