Most Americans feel some confusion when it comes to transgenderism.  In my opinion, the idea that one can become the opposite gender just by getting hormone therapy and by making an identification wish (“I identify as a woman”) is just bad science fiction. Gender is not a social construct.

  Perhaps the most famous sex change in modern history was Army vet George William Jorgensen’s transition in 1952.  Jorgensen, after becoming Christine, became an instant celebrity. In interviews after her surgery, Jorgensen expressed concern that too many people were clamoring for sex change operations in a fad like way.  She was adamant in cautioning prospective transsexuals to be very, very careful before taking this irreversible step.  She also hinted that there were very few “real” transsexuals.

  In today’s world it seems to me there is far less caution than there was in Jorgensen’s time when it comes to switching genders.  Has Jorgensen’s warning has been forgotten? I’ve heard of children as young as eight who are coming out as transgender and for the first time ever they are being encouraged to do so by parents. What get’s to me is that these parents are sending their children off sex reassignment operating rooms.     

  As a boy I often took bed sheets from the family laundry closet and dressed up as a nun. For whatever reason, I enjoyed running through the fields in a long flowing veil. Indulging in such behavior did not prevent me from dressing up as a Native American chief in a full war bonnet or pretending that I was Davy Crockett in a ‘coonskin hat. Naturally, I was embarrassed by my pretending to be a nun and I took great pains to hide this indulgence from family members. I did not know then that child-like games where gender roles get reversed was considered normal.  Just because I fantasized about being a nun for five minutes when I was eight didn’t mean that I wanted to become a girl.    

  But suppose I was that same 8-year old boy today. Suppose my politically progressive parents caught me dressing up as a nun. Would they dismiss my indulgence as Kiddy Theater or would they search for a sex reassignment surgeon where I’d be asked the question, “Do you feel like you are a girl trapped in a boy’s body?”  

  A study at Vanderbilt University and London’s Portman Clinic of Children, reported that 70 to 80 percent of children who come to identify with the opposite sex lose these feelings over time.  The startling fact is that too many children in the throes of gender role play are assumed to be transgender and then put on hormone therapy routines.  This assumes that a pre-adolescent child knows what he/she wants. I feel that encouraging kids into changing their gender because they feel a ten minute affinity for the opposite sex is madness.

 Other universities and hospitals have also taken a stance: Johns Hopkins University, which used to do sex reassignment surgery on a daily basis, halted all such operations when Paul R. McHugh, the former psychiatrist-in-chief there wrote in a statement that transgenderism is a mental disorder which merits treatment and that a “sex change is biologically impossible.”

 McHugh added, “People who promote sexual reassignment surgery promote a mental disorder.” He cited the suicide rates among trans people after surgery. The suicide rate among transgender people is 20 times higher than among non-transgender people.

  Now, before I’m accused of transphobia, let me say that I respect the right of anyone to do whatever they want to do with their body: Tattoo it to smithereens; punch holes in your forehead or earlobes; pluck an eye out and replace it with an emerald or a rhinestone. Have a ball.  And if you want to be a MTF or a FTM, go right ahead and do that too. I’ll respect your decision and your civil rights: I will even call you “they,” “he” or “she” and stand at the urinal next to yours as the sound of your stilettos echoes throughout the men’s room.  I won’t look askance, judge, snarl, roll my eyes. But I will not stray from my feeling that trans people suffer from what used to be called gender dysphora or gender identity disorder (GID).  

   Just as one can loathe or disapprove of the doctrines of Islam or Christianity, that doesn’t equate with hating individual Muslims or Christians. People have the “right” to disapprove of the theology/or ideology of any given sect. But, in today’s poltically correct society, I feel that the transphobic label is applied to anyone who questions the current  politics of transgenderism.

  I recently watched a video with Breitbart News senior editor Ben Shapiro and Zoey Tur, a reporter and trans activist. The topic was a Courage Award given to Caitlyn Jenner. Shapiro, who maintained a gentlemanly demeanor throughout the discussion, stated that he thought that transgenderism was a mental disorder, while clearly going out of his way to say that he respects Tur as a human being, but that his issue was with “the philosophy” of transgenderism.   

  Tur went on to call Shapiro’s criticism of transgenderism hate speech and told him, “You can cut that out or you’re going home in an ambulance.”

  Other members of the panel let the threat pass, although the People’s Pundit Daily reported that “after the taping, Shapiro alleged that Tur further threatened him, saying, “I’ll see you in the parking lot,” which Tur did not deny. In fact, Tur doubled down on staement the next day, stating she would like to ‘curb stomp” Shapiro.’”

  I have also watched a fair number of online videos of female-to-male (FTM) and male-to-female (MTF) transitions. In the MTF videos I wacthed, I felt that the MTF speaker often seemed captivated by the cosmetic glamour of being a woman. It came across as though these young people were generally more concerned about looking glamorous and sexy than they were about the more interior, substantive aspects of being a woman. The fixation on cosmetic beauty (blue hair, Vogue accents, etc.) is daunting, as if being a woman was only about the thrill of fashion. Exceptions exist, of course, but the focus in most of these videos came across as superficial and narcissistic.  

 The FTM videos were equally as fascinating for me to watch. I saw trans men with muscled chests, beards, tattoos, great legs and deep voices, many of whom might “out macho” many men in the Riverwards. But having said this, these men are still biological women because they do not have a penis.    

   As Camille Paglia, an American writer and social critic, wrote, “Sex reassignment surgery, even today with all of its advances, cannot in fact change anyone’s sex… You can define yourself as a trans man, or a trans woman, as one of these new gradations along the scale. But ultimately, every single cell in the human body, the DNA in that cell, remains coded for your biological birth.”

 Paglia added: “… History is cyclic, and everywhere in the world you find this pattern in ancient times: that as a culture begins to decline, you have an efflorescence of transgender phenomena. That is a symptom of cultural collapse.”

  These words can indeed be perceived as dangerous or “transphobic.”  

  In Iran, sexual reassignment surgery is legal while homosexuality is a crime and punishable by death. The vast majority of Iranian men and women who undergo sex reassignment surgery are not women or men trapped in the bodies of the opposite sex, but gay people who don’t want to be executed. Surgery is their only hope. As post-op trans women, Iranians may live openly as women although they are bound by Iran’s strict female behavioral codes. Since trans women in Iran have difficulty finding employment, many turn to prostitution. In Iran, a man can marry a woman, trans or otherwise, then divorce her 30 minutes later, making the sex act between them legal. This can be done multiple times a day, all of it sanctioned by the countries strict Islamic law.

  Is the transgender implosion happening in today’s world something that Christine Jorgensen would embrace? I doubt it. While nature sometimes does make mistakes, and while there are undoubtedly some legitimate transgender cases worth considering, I feel this is not the case generally.  I believe the world has lost its footing on this one.