"I'm pretty sure I'm right."
I love it when I get that feeling, as I do when I open up solicitations from the Southern Poverty Law Center where they tell me my contributions will go to fighting gerrymandering in Alabama or Missouri.
Why can't I get that feeling when I declare the best thing to do is withhold puberty blockers from kids under sixteen because it would lead to faulty bone development and because most kids then go on to do serious damage with hormone treatments and eventually surgery.
I just watched one of my favorite German satirists, Jan Böhmermann, take up the topic. He sneers at the question by the unenlightend segment of the population who worry about men in women's changing rooms. No doubts. Why should they be allowed in? "Because transwomen are women!"
There you go. Truth by declaration. He goes on to celebrate the rejection of the 1980-something law requiring trans people to jump through all sorts of hoops before being allowed to change their gender and congratulates Germany for catching up with fifteen other nations that allow the change on the basis of a simple declaration. Böhmermann has enough confidence that he's on the right side of history not only to declare what's true, but to sneer at those who disagree with him.
Why does this question continue to plague me? Why do I continue to want to hear from the other side, from the religious folk who tell me you need to stay in the gender you were born into because it's God's will. (And I hate it that I have to use "gender" here because "sex" is an outmoded concept) And from others of the political right wing. Why can't I just do what I always do and go with the leftist flow? Not merely the leftist flow, but apparently with the majority of LGB people who are in solidarity with the transactivists?
A couple days ago, I blogged about how I was persuaded that professional theologians of the Christian persuasion had some of the most clear-headed arguments against transgendering and for detransgendering. I deliberately chose them because I knew they'd be on "the other side" and I needed to push the strength of my own convictions. Sean McDowell, the interviewer, makes clear he knows he's right because his convictions are biblically based. In another interview, with a more gay-friendly evangelical who sees no conflict between his faith and being gay, McDowell insists he's got it right and isn't going to be persuaded by any modernist attempt to restructure traditional theology. I sit here, in my lived gay experience, listening to a man who believes my soul depends on giving up my marriage to a man and my entire circle of friends and family who whole-heartedly believe, as I do, that God, if he exists, doesn't care what I do with my naughty parts. And I'm supposed to believe this man when he pronounces on the trans question? Because I am pre-disposed to believe him anyway? So much for listening to "people in the know" when you haven't got the time or the energy to dig for truth and understanding on your own.
This is the thorniest issue I've come across in a very long time. Reason doesn't help me out here. Arguments on one side are offset by equally convincing arguments on the other.
Have a listen to this Swedish documentary, for example, on efforts to get folks at the Karolinska Institute who enabled transgender kids access to hormones and surgery as part of "gender-affirming" care, and the disastrous results which followed.
Then listen to this Frontline Program which makes an equally powerful argument for listening to your kids when they describe the need to change sex (sorry - I know I'm supposed to say gender, but I just can't) as a life-and-death issue.
And then tell me you don't have the same doubts about declaring "I'm pretty sure I'm right."
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