Forgetting the maxim, “Where fools rush in where angels fear to tread,” over at First Things, I weigh in on the “T” of GLBT, and what creating rights around that issue might portend.
I describe some of the latest developments surrounding transgender rights, and then explore where they might lead. From, “A Fundamental Right to ‘Personal Recreationism’?”
To be frank, at age sixty-five, I don’t fully understand the cultural dynamics driving these startling social transitions. People want to be fulfilled and lead happy lives as “themselves.” Very well.
But I also worry that once we accept the premise that we have a fundamental right to be physically remade to comport with how we feel about ourselves—and to have society act in accordance—we will have crossed a cultural Rubicon, leading to extreme outcomes.
Take the anguishing condition—often compared to gender dysphoria—known as body integrity identity disorder (BIID). People who suffer from BIID are convinced—they know—that they inhabit wrongly intact bodies, that their real and true identities are as amputees or even as paraplegics or quadriplegics.
Over the last ten years, arguments have increased in medical and bioethical journals for permitting the amputation of healthy limbs as a treatment for BIID—and for many of the same reasons that treatment of gender dysphoria can now include surgical alteration.
And that leads me to transhumanism, which claims a right to recreate humans in any form technology can take us.
I conclude:
The current controversies surrounding gender dysphoria seem to be leading toward the establishment of a fundamental right to (let’s call it) personal recreationism. I understand why many see this as the most humane and liberating course. But nothing happens in a vacuum. Once that principle is accepted, there will be no limits.
Human logic, once set in motion, is an unstoppable force.