yeah, it’s heavily ironic when the anti-trans activist Matt Walsh led the “Rally to End Child Mutilation” while he continues to support non-consensual genital mutilation of intersex infants born with ambiguous genitalia to conform them to our mythologized concept of two sexes. Trans kids don’t get surgeries, so the only “child mutilation” happening is to intersex kids. Very rarely, some 17 year old trans minors might be approved for gender-affirming surgeries before they are the age of the majority, but that’s what Matt Walsh is calling “child mutilation” here, gender-affirming care already offered to cis people without an age limit, being also offered to trans people that are nearly adults.
It’s also heavily ironic that trans people are accused of having a gender ideology since the two-sex model is clearly only propped up by ideology - otherwise why do they need laws to enforce the concept of two sexes and interventions to mutilate children to enforce it?
As one of those intersex kids that didn’t get a say in their own genital configuration and then came out as trans, it’s just barbaric to perform a surgery that is not medically necessary. Decades later and I’m now suffering consequences of this surgery, both physically and mentally, because someone else decided I needed to confirm to a male configuration.
This article comes across as having anti-trans bias.
State laws restricting hormones for transgender people allow continued genital surgeries on intersex infants.
Even if not the intent, this can come across as saying that neither hormones nor genital surgeries should be allowed.
Although some think that transgender people can choose their identity
You can’t make a statement like this and not refute it. Not refuting it implies that the statement has legitimacy. Trans people do not choose to be trans; they choose to transition (which for many is really a choice between transition or suicide). People who are not trans constantly conflate this fact and see being ‘trans’ and ‘transitioning’ as the same thing. They are not the same thing.
Why would laws prohibit puberty blockers, hormones, and surgeries for a small number of transgender adolescents, with patient and parent consent, but allow genital surgeries on many more intersex infants, without patient consent?
This apparent contradiction can be resolved if the primary goal is not to protect children, but instead to enforce the widespread (but false) idea that biological sex is strictly binary—that everyone is simply female or male. Intersex infants with atypical genitals are surgically altered to make them fit better into either the female or male category, while transgender and nonbinary adolescents are prohibited from altering their bodies away from one of these two categories.
This is the only trans-supportive part of the article. The article is about intersex people, but the rest of the article seems to highlight and fight for intersex people while undermining trans people, even though intersex and trans people are so often intertwined.
In short, laws and regulations promoted as preventing sex change in children and preventing boys and men from competing in girls’ and women’s sports have instead encouraged the continuation of surgeries on infants’ bodies to make them look more typically female or male and destroyed the athletic careers and lives of many intersex women.
Again, this can be read as implying that it’s okay for the law to restrict trans people’s bodies as long as it doesn’t restrict intersex people’s bodies. This sentence should have been followed up with stating that neither is okay and the law doesn’t respect medical science, best medical practices, or current medical guidelines.
Checkout the author’s other articles:
https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/contributors/ari-berkowitz-phd
I suspect the author is a clueless cis person who is attempting to write educational pro-trans articles, but are trying to make their writing “balanced” so as to not be alienating to potentially anti-trans audiences.
Not writing in the most pro-trans way is not necessarily synonymous with having an anti-trans bias, but it’s hard for us to not see it that way since it basically entertains anti-trans perspectives as plausible or reasonable opinions to have, etc. even while trying to gently dismantle those perspectives.
<sighs> liberalism
It’s tough to write most anything online because the audience could be anyone and the writer should take that into account. I suspect that this person was writing for a good-faith, academic audience.
yeah, agreed - it’s tough
though you should know Psychology Today is a consumer magazine, their audience is definitely not academic but rather lay people, a bit like Scientific American
