Where the gay rights movement emphasized biological realities (“born that way”, etc.) evidence as “violence”. This risks backlash, it jeopardizes any transgender rights adjustments America is willing to offer — and it probably harms many gay and lesbian youth too, Rauch writes, as a system that encourages “tomboyish girls or effeminate guys” to “get out.” identifying as the opposite sex” ultimately confirms “all the gray gender stereotypes that made generations of gay and lesbian people (and many straight people) miserable.”
And Rauch’s concern about gay youth here also aligns with feminist concerns—particularly the concern that normal anxieties of puberty, the specific challenges of girls’ mental health, are being addressed by the new theories, not reconciliation with one’s body. and biology but through an alienation from femininity itself.
The deployment of teenage transitions
These concerns are then magnified by the second complexity in the current debate: the extent to which the use of medical interventions for youth transidentification – puberty blockers and hormone therapy and then the possibility of surgery in young adulthood – dramatically raises the stakes of the controversy. and undermines the agnostic middle ground.
The moderate position outlined above, the wait-and-see, kids-experimental approach, is plausible to the extent that teen exploration takes the form of dating both sexes, using a different pronoun or name, changing a wardrobe . But it quickly collapses when the choice is for or against a treatment path that even advocates consent to stages which are only ‘partially reversible’, and then sometimes ‘irreversible’, within adolescence itself.
And the fear of parents, in particular, that they may be in the dark about their children’s self-identifications is magnified by the possibility that their child could end up without their knowledge on a path leading to surgical intervention – and that their own aptitude as a parents can be attacked if they object.
But of course this stake cuts both ways, because for the first camp, convinced that these interventions are essential for the mental health of transgender people, the stakes of the debate are literally life and death, delaying the objections too much. of parents making trans suicide more likely. Which also explains why, in spaces where the progressive view dominates, frequent attempts are made to remove trans issues completely from the debate, in order to prevent the mere existence of a controversy from driving trans youth to despair.
The Silent Doubts of Liberals
The effects of this debate ending impulse on liberal discourse is the third complexity lurking behind my initial categorization. Within liberalism you literally cannot know right now, outside of a private conversation, whether someone is completely in the first camp, more inclined to the second camp, or even attracted to the third. There’s a gap between what people want to say in public and what they really think that’s unprecedented on any controversial topic I’ve seen.
