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Responding to the Transgender Moment

By Ryan T. Anderson $27.99 Add to Cart

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Publication Details

Hardcover / 408 pages ISBN: 9781594039614 AVAILABLE: 2/20/2018

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When Harry Became Sally Responding to the Transgender Moment By Ryan T. Anderson

Can a boy be “trapped” in a girl’s body? Can modern medicine “reassign” sex? Is our sex “assigned” to us in the first place? What is the most loving response to a person experiencing a conflicted sense of gender? What should our law say on matters of “gender identity”?

When Harry Became Sally provides thoughtful answers to questions arising from our transgender moment. Drawing on the best insights from biology, psychology, and philosophy, Ryan Anderson offers a nuanced view of human embodiment, a balanced approach to public policy on gender identity, and a sober assessment of the human costs of getting human nature wrong.

This book exposes the contrast between the media’s sunny depiction of gender fluidity and the often sad reality of living with gender dysphoria. It gives a voice to people who tried to “transition” by changing their bodies, and found themselves no better off. Especially troubling are the stories told by adults who were encouraged to transition as children but later regretted subjecting themselves to those drastic procedures.

As Anderson shows, the most beneficial therapies focus on helping people accept themselves and live in harmony with their bodies. This understanding is vital for parents with children in schools where counselors may steer a child toward transitioning behind their backs.

Everyone has something at stake in the controversies over transgender ideology, when misguided “antidiscrimination” policies allow biological men into women’s restrooms and penalize Americans who hold to the truth about human nature. Anderson offers a strategy for pushing back with principle and prudence, compassion and grace.

About the Author

Ryan T. Anderson, Ph.D., is the President of the Ethics and Public Policy Center, and the Founding Editor of Public Discourse, the online journal of the Witherspoon Institute of Princeton, New Jersey.

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Praise

Praise “ During this “transgender moment,” a government-enforced tyranny of false presumptions about nature besieges the American family. When Harry Became Sally provides the empirical information needed to refute the transgender suppositions. — Paul McHugh University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry, Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine Praise “ Ryan Anderson’s analysis of the ideas that are fueling the transgender movement, their human costs, and their political implications will be a valuable resource for parents, educators, and policymakers. — Mary Ann Glendon Learned Hand Professor of Law, Harvard University Praise “ For an informed and sensitive presentation of gender identity issues, When Harry Became Sally is a must-read book. — Paul Vitz Professor Emeritus of Psychology, New York University Praise “ I always read Ryan Anderson with great admiration. When Harry Became Sally is an always focused, informative, fair-minded, lucid, and fact-based guide. — John Finnis Professor of Law & Legal Philosophy Emeritus, University of Oxford Praise “ Regardless of political persuasion, all concerned citizens, especially parents, policymakers, and health-care professionals, should give serious consideration to the evidence presented in this thoughtful and balanced book. — Melissa Moschella Assistant Professor of Medical Ethics, Department of Medicine, Columbia University Praise “ Everyone concerned with the welfare of children should read When Harry Became Sally.  — Margaret A. Hagen Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences, Boston University Praise “ As Ryan Anderson shows in his rigorously argued critique of transgender ideology, we can speak and stand up for the truth while loving those who identify as transgender as our neighbors. — Robert P. George McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence, Princeton University Praise “ Ryan Anderson succeeds in his goal of providing “a sober and honest survey of the human costs of getting human nature wrong.” — Maureen Condic Associate Professor of Neurobiology and Anatomy, University of Utah

Excerpt

In 1989, the classic film When Harry Met Sally dealt with one thorny issue: Can a man and woman really be “just friends”? That question may still be up in the air, but Hollywood took on a more fundamental one with the 2015 film The Danish Girl: Can a man really become a woman? The answer from Hollywood was a resounding “yes.”

The Danish Girl is based on the true story of Einar Wegener, a painter in Copenhagen who in 1930 became the first known subject of “sex reassignment” surgery. He had long thought of himself as having a female identity that he called “Lili Elbe,” but whether those drastic medical procedures made him truly a woman is another matter. The idea that a person could have been born into a body of the wrong sex and might be transformed into the other sex by surgery and hormones would remain marginal for some time. Now it is rapidly becoming a mainstream view that social and medical “transition” is the appropriate treatment for people, including children, who feel at odds with their biological sex.

America is in the midst of what has been called a “transgender moment.” Not long ago, most Americans had never heard of transgender identity, but within the space of a year it became a cause claiming the mantle of civil rights. A discordant gender identity is said to represent who the person really is, by contrast with the sex “assigned at birth,” and therefore any failure to accept and support a transgender identity amounts to bigotry. We are told that not treating people as the gender they claim to be is discriminatory. But is it true that a boy could be “trapped” in a girl’s body? Is our sex merely “assigned” to us? Can modern medicine “reassign” sex? What is the most loving and helpful response to the condition of gender dysphoria, a profound and often debilitating sense of alienation from one’s bodily sex? Should our laws accept and enforce a subjective notion of gender?

These shouldn’t be difficult questions. In the late-1970s, Dr. Paul McHugh thought he had convinced the vast majority of medical professionals not to go along with bold claims about sex and gender that were being advanced by some of his colleagues. McHugh received a world-class education at Harvard College and Harvard Medical School. As chair of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School and psychiatrist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital, he put a stop to sex reassignment surgery at that facility in 1979. Many other medical centers across the country followed the elite institution’s lead. But recent years have brought a resurgence of these procedures—not in light of new scientific evidence, mind you, but under the pressure of ideology.

The people increasingly in the spotlight of the transgender moment are children. In 2007, Boston Children’s Hospital “became the first major program in the United States to focus on transgender children and adolescents,” as its website brags. A decade later, more than forty-five pediatric gender clinics had opened their doors to our nation’s children. Parents are told that puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones may be the only way to prevent their children from committing suicide. Never mind that the best studies of gender dysphoria (studies that even transgender activists cite) show that between 80 and 95 percent of children who express a discordant gender identity will come to identify with their bodily sex if natural development is allowed to proceed. And never mind that “transitioning” treatment has not been shown to reduce the extraordinarily high rate of suicide attempts among people who identify as transgender (41 percent, compared with 4.6 percent of the general population). In fact, people who have had transition surgery are nineteen times more likely than average to die by suicide. These statistics should be enough to halt the headlong rush into “transitioning” and prompt us to find more effective ways to prevent these tragic outcomes. Most of all, we shouldn’t be encouraging children to “transition,” or making heroes and role models of those who have done so.

In this book, I argue that Dr. McHugh got it right. The best biology, psychology, and philosophy all support an understanding of sex as a bodily reality, and of gender as a social manifestation of bodily sex. Biology isn’t bigotry. Every human society has been organized around a recognition that men and women are fundamentally different, and modern science shows that the differences begin with our DNA and development in the womb. It is true that men and women differ among themselves, and that some people have difficulty identifying with their bodily sex. But this doesn’t mean that sex is either fluid or subjective, as transgender ideology maintains. This book is an effort to provide a nuanced view of our sexed embodiment, a balanced approach to policy issues involving transgender identity and gender more broadly, and a sober and honest survey of the human costs of getting human nature wrong.

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