Addressing the Transgender Crisis
In April of 2023, a collegiate swimmer named Riley Gaines was physically attacked while speaking out against the inclusion of transexual women (biological males) in women’s sports. This came just days after Audrey Hale, a transexual man (biological woman), gunned down six people at the Covenant Christian School in Nashville. The rift between cultural progressives and conservatives has become so vast that it seems there is little hope of reconciliation, and that violence is becoming more commonplace, or even celebrated, by both sides. What is lost in this debate, however, are observable and knowable facts that ought to transcend any interested party’s opinions on the matter at all. By removing the clutter from this debate, we intend to shine a light on just what lurks beneath the surface of the transgender movement.
An oft repeated phrase from progressives is something akin to “why does it matter how I live my life? Leave me alone, and I’ll leave you alone.” The first dilemma we must deal with is why this argument is impossible to truly enact. For the secular folk among us, I encourage you to consider the following. John Donne, a famous English poet, wrote in 1623 ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls,’ in which he makes the case that every person is connected by an invisible, yet powerful, type of bond. It reads:
No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.
The bells Donne refers to are church bells, which would be rung for the whole town to hear during a funeral procession. Donne’s crisis was wondering why he felt such dread hearing the bells, for they did not toll for his death, but rather for some other poor soul. After some critical self-reflection, he found that because he is connected to his community, any loss in the community felt like a loss of a part of himself. This is an undeniable facet of life; when somebody in our sphere or community experiences great hardship or suffering, it has an effect on us, and this effect must be understood when discussing social issues.
For the religiously minded, I point you towards 1 Corinthians 14-20:
For the body does not consist of one member but of many. If the foot should say, “Because I am not a hand, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. And if the ear should say, “Because I am not an eye, I do not belong to the body,” that would not make it any less a part of the body. If the whole body were an eye, where would be the sense of hearing? If the whole body were an ear, where would be the sense of smell? But as it is, God arranged the members in the body, each one of them, as he chose. If all were a single member, where would the body be? As it is, there are many parts, yet one body.
Again, what we ought to take from this passage is a profound sense of community that exists whether one wants to be a part of said community or not. Humanity, despite being made of different individuals who have different purposes, is still one connected ‘body,’ and the loss of one part of the body has a profound impact on the system as a whole.
This concept is necessary to understand why it is difficult for people in a cohesive society to watch inappropriate or inexcusable behavior permeate their culture. People respond extremely positively and have higher levels of happiness and inclusion when they spend time with others who look, think, and act like they do. Perhaps even more importantly, people feel extreme stress and anxiety when watching members of their community engage in behavior that is harmful or otherwise intolerable. Therefore, it is not reasonable to expect a society to permit others to engage in harmful behavior. As Donne has said, this would cause all of us to feel as if we are engaging in that same harmful behavior.
For those of you who are more scientifically minded or are not persuaded by Donne or the Bible, I offer you modern research. Humans, compared to all animals known in the world, exhibit shockingly high levels of empathy. Magaret Meade, an anthropologist working in the mid 20th-century, states that a culture becomes a civilization not when the archaeological record shows the use of tools, but rather when the skeletal record shows the existence of skeletons that have healed bones. In the wild, animals with broken bones would be left behind to die. The presence of a healed bone would imply that early humans protected and cared for their injured party, which shows an extremely advanced brain capable of empathy. The scientific evidence for this behavior is found in ‘mirror neurons,’ which are neurons that reflect human emotions. When a baby laughs, you laugh, even if you don’t know what is making the baby laugh. This is why we feel sad when watching a sad movie, and tear up when we watch others tear up. Humans reciprocate emotions, which is the essential building block of empathy. Humans mimicking the emotions and behaviors of those around us is what creates the implicit understanding that Donne and the Bible expound upon when they say that we are influenced by, and feel attached to, the emotions and sentiments of our community. This is also what makes the following statistics shocking and sobering.
Suicides increased 29 percent among adolescents ages 15 to 19 over the last decade, which is concerning because 18% of transgender people fall into this age range despite only making up 8% of the total population. For adult women, the results are shocking. A 2020 poll by Pew Research Center found that 56.3 percent of liberal white women aged 18–29 had a mental health diagnosis, roughly double the 28.4 percent of moderate white women or 27.3 percent of conservative white women, both in the same age category. White women aged 45 and over represent 58 percent of adults who have used antidepressants for five years or more. Forty million adult Americans suffer from anxiety disorders, and depending on the disorder, women are typically at least twice as likely to have an anxiety disorder than men. The reason this is important is because the majority of those who identify as transgender are female. Unsurprisingly, 58% of transgender adults have had a psychiatric diagnosis in their lifetime. The relationship between mental health issues and transgenderism is so profound that the lack of acknowledgement of these correlations must certainly be a purposeful omission.
Likewise, one would expect the percentage of transgender individuals to remain static if transgenderism truly is a natural process. Contrarily, we see in fact that transgender rates are rising extremely quickly. In the U.K., known to be extremely permissive of this issue, there has been a 1,460% increase in Gender Identity Disorder referrals of boys and a staggering 5,337% increase in girls between 2009 and 2019.
Knowing these statistics, one can conclude that the rise in transgenderism isn’t its own problem but is actually part of a much larger mental health problem. Up to 46% of those who identify as trans have attempted suicide, and that number is likely higher due to unreported cases. For comparison, a study by Montana State University (pg. 74) places the suicide rate of African slaves somewhere between 2% and 6%. Even pre-mature death during Jim Crow, not limited only to suicide, was 20%, less than half the trans suicide attempt rate. Either transgenderism is significantly less bearable than slavery and Jim Crow, or significant mental health problems are plaguing our nation.
Transgender advocates will claim that this suicide rate is due to society not accepting people as how they prefer to identify, but this is verifiably untrue. States that allow transgender surgery have a higher rate of suicide – not lower. Even if we ignore the staggeringly high suicide rate, the medical effects of transgender transitions are horrifying. Puberty blockers stunt the body of growing individuals and can induce osteoporosis, bone density losses, muscle development losses, and create (or enhance) severe mental problems. These changes are not reversible. Those who undergo surgery risk severe genitalia complications that cannot be mentioned in this article. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of young people who have made the decision to de-transition (return to their original sex) only to find out that their decisions are permanent and carry significant medical consequences including inability to breastfeed, stunted growth, inability to use the bathroom, as well as increased risk for cancer, stroke, blood clots, STI’s, substance abuse, heart disease, and obesity.
At this point, it is common for transgender advocates to simply ignore these crushing realities and reply with “Why do you care anyway? It doesn’t affect you.” This is where our earlier studies on human interaction become important: it does affect us because we are all part of the same community. For a real-life example, let us consider the following: Ambulance personnel, who are the first to respond to horrific scenes like car crashes, suicides, and shootings, experience rates of PTSD ten times higher than the national average. In fact, thirty percent of first responders will develop behavior health conditions in their lifetime, mainly due to the trauma they experience watching other people suffer. Imagine, if you will, using the same progressive thought process on a first responder who had just witnessed a violent death of a member in his community. “Why do you care? This doesn’t affect you” would be an intolerable response. Watching somebody be harmed or harm themselves affects all of us, and it is the loving thing to do to prevent them from engaging in that behavior.
A thought experiment might go something like this: If you witnessed someone cutting their wrists, what would you do? Would you encourage them to keep going, or would you stop them and try to find help? If a loved one was addicted to heroin, would you give them more, encouraging them to live their truth, or stop their behavior and try to find help? After reviewing the above statistics, transgender behavior can only rationally be equated to an elaborate method of self-harm that hurts individuals engaged in that behavior. Those who encourage self-harm are not engaging in an act of love – only those who stop this behavior can truly claim that they are acting with love. The reason why society is repulsed by this behavior is that we mirror emotions and recognize that we are all, to some degree, members of the same societal body.
To love one’s neighbor is to not allow them to hurt themselves. Our innate disgust at self-harm reflects a deep and profound sense of love for people we may not even know, and ought to take priority over the fear of social ostracization. We do not oppose transgenderism because we hate you - we oppose it because we love you, and we do so enough to not allow you to hurt yourself, and our communities, by engaging in this behavior.
