Mick Hartley

Philosopher Peter Boghossian (previously, Against the moral certitude of wokeism) – on Why I Changed My Mind on Gender-Affirming Care:

I’ve changed my mind about certain aspects of “gender-affirming care.” I used to believe that at 18, one should have the ability to make decisions about whether they want to mutilate (and yes, let us be forthright about what it is) their genitals. Basically, one would go to a board-certified physician and undergo certain procedures to significantly alter their bodies for non-medical purposes.

I’ve always been uneasy with my position. While the drawbacks are obvious and ghastly, they still need to be explicitly stated: One becomes a lifelong medical patient; the taxpayer almost always bears the burden; the rate of regret, while hard to precisely ascertain, is significant; the procedures are ghoulish and activate the brain’s deepest disgust and repulsion modules; most of the procedures are irreversible; there is a wholesale lack of evidence for the necessity of these procedures and overwhelming evidence that they’re contraindicated; the medical and psychological establishment has been ideologically captured, thus informed decision-making is almost literally impossible; physicians compromise their professional integrity by doing harm; the ideology preys upon autistic and same-sex attracted people; and the list goes on and on and on.

On the opposing side, I held my principle. In a free society, adults must have bodily autonomy. They must have dominion over their own bodies. Lacking that, we do not live in a free society, by any reasonable definition.

After considerable reflection and frank conversations with Mia Hughes (here and here and here), Colin Wright (forthcoming), Helen Joyce (here), Dr. Eithan Haim (here), Billboard Chris (too many to list, but go here), the work of Travis Brown (here), and many others, I’ve changed my mind. Here’s what caused it to change: Doctors cannot and should not perform any medical procedure a patient desires. Patients should not be able to have their retinas removed because they think it’s a good idea. Nor should they be able to have additional rectums added to their body, or colon vaginas, or cow testicles sewn onto their foreheads, or have their limbs chopped off because it strikes their fancy, nor any other manner of extreme surgery.

Yes, there are people with Body Integrity Disorder, who want a healthy limb removed. Wiki says, “The ethics of surgically amputating the undesired limb of a person with BID are difficult and controversial”. Well indeed. It’s not what medicine is for – “first do no harm”. I’d agree with Boghossian here. The absurdly named “gender-affirming” surgery would seem to be far more fraught with difficulty and danger, mind, than the relatively straightforward lopping off of a limb. Plus all the hormones. And the cultural issue of pretending to be the opposite sex…

Interestingly Boghossian – who as we can see above is a seasoned debater and interviewer – claims to have been unable to get any trans advocate to come along and talk to him.

I recently did a “street event” with Billboard Chris in NYC’s Washington Square Park. That night, Reid and I went out to dinner with Chris and I asked him, “What’s the best argument you’ve heard against your positions?” He responded, “I’ve not heard one. I’ve not heard one because there is none.” While I wasn’t entirely surprised by this, it did stick with me. If anyone would have heard a good argument, you’d think Chris would have. He hasn’t. And as many times as I’ve asked authors and experts who move in this space this same question, every single person has given me the identical answer: There is no good argument for these medical interventions.

A comment:

As a therapist of 30+ years who trained in San Francisco, I have seen it all. The entire matrix of “trans affirming” ideology: children, adults, the Internet, doctors, other medical professionals, schools, parents, churches, big pharmaceutical companies, hospitals, many public spaces with free-for-all bathrooms and locker rooms, sports culture, and more is a mass psychosis the likes of which I never thought I’d see in my lifetime, This is an era of the biggest social contagion, egregious child abuse, and medical malpractice beyond anything one can imagine or recall.