Are Conservatives Winning the Debate on Transgenderism?

A re conservatives winning the debate on transgenderism? The Washington Post published the results of a poll it fielded with the Kaiser Family Foundation that showed that, as the headline put it, “most Americans support anti-trans policies favored by GOP.”

Of course, it wasn’t so long ago that similar findings were published about same-sex marriage. In 1996, only 27 percent of Americans favored redefining marriage to include homosexual unions. By 2006, that figure was at 37 percent. By 2016 — post-Obergefell — it was at 58 percent. Today, more than 70 percent of Americans, including 55 percent of Republicans, accept same-sex marriage. Might transgenderism move in the same direction, or is there something different about it?

Let’s start with the evidence that transgenderism is different. The Post notes that “the Pew Research Center found 60 percent last year saying one’s gender is determined by the sex assigned at birth, up from 54 percent in 2017.” It observes, also, that “even among young adults, who are the most accepting of trans identity, about half said in the Post-KFF poll that a person’s gender is determined by their sex at birth.” In the Post’s poll, 57 percent of respondents said that whether someone is a man or a woman is determined by their sex “assigned” at birth. But does this translate into policy preferences?

Around two-thirds of participants favored laws that would prohibit “discrimination against trans people” by medical professionals and in getting health insurance, as well as in housing, in the workplace, in colleges and universities, in K–12 schools, and in the U.S. military. Obviously, definitions are critical here. Today, “discrimination against trans people” doesn’t usually refer to denying a good or service based on someone’s trans identity. Rather, it tends to refer to distinguishing between males and females (e.g., in sports or college dormitories) or to the refusal to administer medically controversial drugs and surgeries that permanently impair one’s healthy bodily functioning.

If sex is determined at birth — or, more accurately put, if sex is determined at conception and observed at birth — then “trans people” are men and women with false beliefs about their sex. While these individuals deserve all the same legal rights and protections as everyone else, they do not deserve special privileges based on their false beliefs (however sincerely held). For now, most people accept that sex is “assigned” at birth. But it’s not clear that they accept that this fact — and not individuals’ feelings — ought to be the basis of law.

Here’s another cause for concern. The poll finds that “a majority of Americans support gender-affirming counseling for youth and teens but oppose medication.” Once again, the language that was used advantages transgender activists. When applied to drugs and surgeries, “gender-affirming care” would more accurately be described as sex mutilation. And when applied to therapy, “gender-affirming counseling” would more accurately be described as encouraging patients to disassociate from their sex in pursuit of the impossible. Given that most participants accept that sex at birth is unchangeable, why would they support counseling that denies this truth? Isn’t counseling that tries to change the unchangeable with false or misleading claims tantamount to conversion therapy?

It seems that when it comes to convincing the public about some of the harms associated with transgenderism (e.g., in irreversible surgeries for children and in women’s sports), conservatives are winning, but when it comes to convincing them on principle (i.e., the importance of objective truth), they’re losing. That makes the issue more like abortion than like gay marriage (where conservatives lost on both fronts). Like abortion, public opinion on transgenderism could settle on some contradictory compromise. As a friend recently reminded me, most Americans believe that abortion is the killing of an innocent life yet support abortion into the second trimester. It isn’t hard to imagine a similar scenario in which most Americans accept that sex is real but also believe that people should have the legal power to veto this truth in most (though not the most egregious) circumstances. That is essentially what the Biden administration suggested in its latest rewrite of Title IX.

Jonathan Haidt notes in The Righteous Mind that liberals are more likely to reject something if they can see people being harmed by it, if they see it as unjust, or if it impairs self-expression, whereas conservatives are also invested in preserving sanctity, loyalty, and authority. With gay rights, conservatives struggled to articulate the day-to-day harms of same-sex marriage — the only line of argument that could have convinced liberals. But with transgenderism, as with abortion, there is a clear conflict of rights: Women’s rights vs. the rights of the unborn in the latter case; transgender rights vs. women’s rights, children’s rights, and parental rights in the former.

Most participants in the Post poll opposed the participation of “transgender women” in women’s sports at the youth level (62 percent), in high school (66 percent), in college (65 percent), and on the professional level (65 percent). In sports, the harms are obvious, and yet without accepting the truth that “trans women” are men and men should not be permitted to compete against females, any compromise will still be grossly unfair to women. Major sports-governing bodies have tried to keep both sides happy by setting an arbitrary level of male-hormone impairment as the threshold of eligibility for men seeking to compete in women’s sports. The implication of which — that male impairment or mediocrity is equivalent to female excellence — is deeply insulting to women.

Likewise, many recognize the harm caused to children who are prescribed irreversible drug treatments and life-altering genital surgeries. But their objection is framed primarily in terms of consent (or the lack of it). While it’s obviously true that children cannot consent to such experiments, the more fundamental issue is that the promises of so-called gender affirmation are false. Human beings cannot change their sex, and there is little reason and even less evidence to think that those with gender dysphoria will be happier for attempting the impossible.

The current objection to transgenderism concerns practice, not principle; harms, not truth. Indeed, some of those who concede that transgenderism can be harmful will simultaneously insist that truth-telling on the subject is also harmful, as in the case of referring to transgender activists by their actual sex or using pronouns that correspond with reality.

If that winds up as the majority position, will conservatives have really “won” in any meaningful sense? Long-term success on the transgender issue means reinforcing the reality of sex in law and in all aspects of American life. This requires making the complete argument and helping people connect the dots: Transgenderism is harmful because it is false.