The Revolutionary Truth about Transgenderism

We have now sunk to a depth at which restatement of the obvious is the first duty of intelligent men. If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear. In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.

—George Orwell, 1939.

So wrote the great literary prophet and author of Animal Farm and 1984, whose dystopic vision is being realized in our midst day after day. Orwell feared the distortion of language used by authoritarians to get their way, not through logic and evidence, but by intimidation, deception, and force. If the state says that 2+2=5, then it is true, he wrote in 1984. In The Death of the West, Douglas Murray discusses the woke mavens who reject the thinking behind basic math as—you guessed it—white, hegemonic, oppressive, ad nauseum. That, sadly, is not fiction, but fact. But we turn from “the new math” to “the new sex,” or gender ideology, where facts are hard to find.

The Big Sex Lie

The big sex lie today is the way the distinction between sex and gender is treated. We are told endlessly that sex is a biological category and that gender is a personal choice or social expectation which has nothing to do with one’s biological sex. Gender is how one expresses one’s sexuality, and it comes in endless varieties. One article claims there are sixty-four different genders, but that is likely a low estimate, since genders can be multiplied without any limit beyond one’s imagination. Thus, among other things, women can become men and men can become women; they can “transition” from one to the other with the aid of surgeries and drugs. So, while we thought that people were either male or female, it turns out otherwise. We have been deceived throughout all of human history! What was obvious, is now a hateful ideology that insists on “binary” categories of male and female. We are free to be “nonbinary”—free from convention, free from history, free from religion, and free from reality itself. We could speak of the deleterious effects of gender ideology in many areas (such as same sex marriage and the ascendency of pedophilia), but we will focus on transgenderism—the belief that one can alter one’s sexual identity.

The push for transgenderism is gaining strength and hurdling through one area of culture after another at breakneck speed. This was triggered by two main events in recent memory. The first was the extravaganza of Bruce Jenner transitioning to Kaitlyn Jenner in 2015, becoming “Woman of the Year,” and gracing the cover of Vanity Fair. The second was the Supreme Court’s decision in 2015 to allow same-sex marriage, a decision that by sheer legal fiat contradicted the entire Judeo-Christian tradition on marriage. That audacity empowered the LGBTQ+ world to break more boundaries and to insist on more recognition, more rights, and more obedience to their vision. What used to be “Gay Pride Week” has now become “LGBTQ+ Month.” Thanksgiving only gets a day, as does Memorial Day. The letter of choice today is T for trans. I recently spoke at the Western Conservative Summit at the Gaylord Rockies Resort in Denver, a meeting of two thousand mostly Christian patriots. Outside the sprawling hotel and conference center flew the LGBTQ flag. But the influence is more than symbolic. This gender ideology has cultural and political power.

Girls Becoming Boys and Vice Versa?

There is a cultural pandemic among young girls in America, who believe they are better off as boys. Abigail Schrier documents this in her shocking book, Irreversible Damage. Their biology and God-given bodies mean little to them, since their minds want to leave their old biology behind in order to “transition.” Gender ideology teaches that biology has no meaning for one’s identity, which is the domain of arbitrary gender identification. We are “assigned” a gender at birth, but this is nonbinding, a mere cultural construction which can be deconstructed through “gender reassignment” procedures. The Internet provides a supportive community urging these girls to go on puberty blockers, to strap down their breasts, to take cross-sex hormones, and, in the final acts of self-assertion, to have “top surgery,” which is a double mastectomy performed on perfectly healthy young breasts. Some young boys desire this as well, choosing a nonbinary identity that costs them as well their bodily integrity, their ability to have children, and which leads to terrible health implications.

Dualistic Nihilism

What gender ideology applied to transgenderism means is dualistic nihilism, a term I invented. Nihilism is the philosophy that existence has no meaning, purpose, or value. It is always atheistic. Gender ideology is dualistic because the mind floats free of the body and has no organic connection to it. A biological male feels more like a woman, so he goes trans and becomes a she, or vice versa. The original body means nothing and can be carved up and chemically altered according to the whims of the mind. This belief is nihilistic in two senses.

First, the body itself has no intrinsic value or purpose. It is mere meat to be manipulated. This differs radically from the biblical view that God created us as male and female and that we should live true to our identity as such (See Genesis 1-2). We were made for heterosexual marriage and childbearing or being single and chaste. Moreover, God owns us and we have no right to damage his good work. But transgenderism is nihilistic in a second sense. The mind that wants to radically change the body is considered as unaccountable to any higher moral standard. It creates value and expresses it according to individual desire, which is disconnected to any larger meaning of life. There is nothing to constrain it, apart from physical limitations and social standards. This “expressive individualism,” as Carl Trueman puts it, is an unprincipled will afloat in a meaningless universe.

While millions are rushing into this transgender abyss, the facts say that over ninety percent of young people who experience discomfort with the sex of their body (gender dysphoria) will recover from it after puberty. With strong parental support and competent counseling, these troubled children can become happy with the bodies God gave them and express their sexuality rightly. Those who disfigure and poison themselves can find no such happy ending. Further, since “transitioning” is so radically unnatural and abnormal, it is no surprise that there is no magic cure for depression or suicidal thoughts, as various studies have shown.

The distinguished physician, Dr. Hugh McHugh, puts this into perspective. “‘Sex change’ is biologically impossible. People who undergo sex-reassignment surgery do not change from men to women or vice versa. Rather, they become feminized men or masculinized women. Claiming that this is civil-rights matter and encouraging surgical intervention is in reality to collaborate with and promote a mental disorder.”

A hundred years ago, if someone came to a physician and said, “I feel like a woman trapped in a man’s body,” the physician would try to help the man adjust his mind to his male body. Today, many physicians and counselors would advise that man to adjust his body to his mind and to “transition.” But God does not put a male mind into a female body or vice versa. Gender dysphoria, while real, has been historically rare, and is better treated psychologically than anatomically and chemically.

Telling the Truth About Sex and Gender

Remember what George Orwell wrote in 1939. We have sunk to the level today in 2022 that restating the obvious is our duty to God, ourselves, our neighbors, our country, and especially to our children and grandchildren. There is one God, who created one human race with exactly two sexes: male and female. We can no more change that fact than we can make 2+2=5. Moreover, we should live true to our given sexual identity. In a broken and fallen world, this may not be easy and some suffer from various disorders of sexual development. But that fact does not change the obvious fact that boys are boys and women are women. As Orwell said, “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth will be a revolutionary act.” We need more revolutionaries for truth today.