Academicians say gender is a construct, one that involves societal norms and behaviors, and which is fluid. Sex is more definitive. It delineates people as male or female for purposes of procreation. In all but the rarest cases, sex is established by immutable biological, anatomical, genetic, endocrinological and other factors that determine whether we are male or female.
Simply stated, gender is what we think, while sex is what we are. One is subjective, one is empirical. Normally, our sex and gender align; I am a man and think I’m a man. This is not to suggest that people whose idea about their gender doesn’t comport with their sex should be mistreated. Quite the opposite. They should be helped by steering them toward what is true and real.
This is what compassion requires. When a 90-pound teenager believes she is obese and demonstrates signs of anorexia, we don’t encourage her to malnourish herself. We don’t affirm what is demonstrably false because promoting self-harm and continued suffering is immoral. Her idea about her body size doesn’t match the facts, so we persuade her toward what is true and dissuade her from what is untrue.
But this is not how many people approach transgender ideology. From Hollywood to state legislatures and the medical industry, transgender ideology is increasingly addressed by steering people away from the truth and corrupting their mental health in the process. People afflicted with gender confusion deserve the same care and compassion as those who falsely believe they’re overweight. But that’s not what’s happening, particularly among young people. What might account for this?
Money comes to mind. The medical establishment hasn’t articulated greed as a motive, but promoting transgender ideology is clearly lucrative. According to the business consultancy Market Research Future, “The Gender Dysphoria Market Industry is expected to grow from 10.28 (USD Billion) in 2023 to 40.3 (USD Billion) by 2032.” That’s a nearly four-fold increase in just nine years. There’s a lot of profit in advocating gender ideology.
Recommended
The increase in the total addressable market fueling this growth has an intriguing timeline. In 2009, the American Psychological Association (APA) estimated the population of transgender-identifying people at somewhere between 115,000 and 450,000. One year later, according to the magazine Harvard Public Health, “The Affordable Care Act of 2010 expanded protections for gender-affirming care.”
As the healthcare industry scrambled to meet the 2014 deadline for implementing Obamacare, the 2013 Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders decided that transgenderism and older terms describing similar behaviors would be reclassified, stating, “Gender non-conformity is not in itself a mental disorder.” Within a decade, the number of people claiming gender confusion exploded from less than half a million Americans to nearly three million. For some, it was a contributing factor in acts of deadly violence.
According to the Williams Institute at the University of California-Los Angeles, “Young adults aged 18 to 24 are significantly more likely to identify as transgender (2.72%) than those aged 35 to 64 (0.42%) and those aged 65 and older (0.26%).” It is this youngest demographic that came of age in the era of Obamacare and the APA’s reclassification of gender ideology.
Transgender doctrine adherents claim broader acceptance of this thinking has de-stigmatized it, and that policy changes have resulted in increased clinical diagnoses of a disorder more prevalent than we knew. Yet the diagnosis itself is dubious because it’s largely based on an idea in someone’s head. When a man tells his doctor he believes he’s a woman, his idea is often accepted and a diagnosis provided. The diagnosis can lead to costly and long-term chemical and/or surgical treatment, all based on his idea. Wall Street calls this recurring revenue, and investors love that.
Then there’s politics and its self-evident motives. Transgender ideology and its promotion is an exclusively liberal issue. Democrats stage rallies lionizing it, fundraise off it and enact policies promoting it. They do this in pursuit of power by persuading voters to agree that gender ideology is a good thing. Politics further corrupted the meaning of the word ‘gender’ itself which, for hundreds of years, was synonymous with sex. Redefining gender was politically powerful, so feminists changed its original meaning into a liberal invention.
If a voting age man wishes to masquerade as a woman or undergo medical interventions to reflect his ideology, he’s free to do so. But when partisan allies malign our language and deliberately target children and their parents to advance political agendas, something is very wrong. Never would we treat other disorders with such cruel disregard for children and their wellbeing. Policymakers must marshal the courage to protect kids from the consequences of this dangerous ideology and encourage improved mental health services. Without it, millions more will fall prey to the evil of “affirming” gender confusion.
Editor’s Note: Do you enjoy Townhall’s conservative reporting that takes on the radical left and woke media? Support our work so that we can continue to bring you the truth.
Join Townhall VIP and use the promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member