Thinking Deeply About The Trans Issue

By Leo Gura - April 10, 2023

Having grown tired of the talking points and platitudes, I’ve been taking a much deeper look into the facts behind the trans gender issue. I’ve been thinking more deeply about the possible effects it has on kids and teens. I think it is a legitimate topic of debate to question it, and a mistake to shrug it off as mere transphobia. It’s important to take seriously cases where transition fails to work. I like hearing from people who have actually gone through it, rather than listening to political activists mouthing off. I don’t think the standard progressive position on this issue is fully correct because I don’t see them seriously contending with cases like the following:

Yes, Jordan Peterson is pretty biased on this issue. But his biases are not as unfounded as Progressives love to claim. Yes, the trans issue IS full of transphobia, but it is not just transphobia. Not everyone who is concerned about their children changing genders is a transphobe. On this issue Jordan Peterson offers an important perspective. Obviously his perspective is not the full perspective, but he makes some good points that should be taken seriously and not just dismissed with Progressive scorn or outrage. If I had a kid who told me that he/she wanted to change genders, I would be very concerned, because this has huge life-long consequences and it should be a very rare phenomenon. Parents are not crazy for being concerned here. I see a problem here of gaslighting parents by calling them transphobes.

I encourage you to make up your own mind AFTER doing some ACTUAL research. And listening to political pundits does not count as research. Understanding this thorny issue requires direct experience with it. Or at least closer to direct experience. You need to listen to people for whom it has worked as well as people for whom it hasn’t.

From the metaphysical point of view, it is the case that your identity is relative and fluid. On this matter conservatives are dead wrong — and that is the elephant in the room which they do not want to acknowledge. However! — that is not the end of the story. On the pragmatic level — at the level of everyday human life where most people reside, have sex, have families, and experience emotions — identity is not some willy-nilly thing to be toyed with. If you get this wrong your self-esteem will be shot, your dating and sex-life will be miserable, and you will become depressed and suicidal. So the stakes are high. I do not buy the notion that there is zero social contagion to the trans issue. Which is not to say that all transitioning is social contagion. The truth lies somewhere in the middle.

Remember, on this issue the primary concern should not be political activism, nor even the well-being of your children, but TRUTH. Forget about all the human emotions and suffering for a minute and consider what is purely true. Are there actually more than 2 genders? Can gender actually be disconnected from sex? Can gender actually just be a state of mind? Is it actually healthy to change genders? Don’t take any of this for granted. Set all your personal feelings and politics positions aside and question it all from scratch. You can start by admitting to yourself that you don’t actually know what a man or a woman is. You don’t know what gender is. You don’t know what identity is. And you certainly don’t know what role culture plays in influencing gender identity. None of this is well-understood by anyone.

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