Beliefs about the world are not coextensive with knowledge about the world. Indeed, sometimes beliefs are in opposition to knowledge. Knowledge is verified belief. Beliefs can encompass fictions. Knowledge seeks the truth. To be sure, it is provisional, because we must be open to new facts. But there are some matters that are settled.
Gender is an obvious example. Gender in mammals is binary and immutable, meaning that there are only two genders, and one gender cannot change into the other. Sexual dimorphism is thus characteristic of species of this class of animal (and, for the most part, other classes as well). Dimorphism means differences representing two distinct forms—in this case, female and male.
There are many such binaries in the world. One that is the subject of conversation on social media lately is parent and non-parent. A parent in biology is an individual who contributes genetically to the formation of a new organism, typically through egg or sperm. Necessary to the perpetuation of the species are parents and offspring. Opposite the parent is what one might call a non-biological parent, adoptive parent, stepparent, or foster parent. This is the person who assumes the social role of parent. Mammals assuming the social role of parent occurs across many species, but it does not make them parents in the scientific sense.
Keeping this distinction in mind is important, since, while non-parents can and often do assume the social and emotional role of a parent—particularly in cases where the biological parent is absent or poses harm—it remains important to distinguish between biological and non-biological parenthood for several critical reasons, including medical considerations. A child’s biological parentage can have significant implications for understanding genetic disorders, hereditary health risks, and predispositions that may affect diagnosis and treatment. Accurate family medical history can be vital in emergency situations, informing decisions about medications, procedures, and preventative care. Therefore, while social bonds and caregiving roles are central to a child’s well-being, maintaining clarity around biological relationships remains essential for ensuring comprehensive and informed medical care. We must therefore preserve knowledge.
The reason why this is being discussed on social media is because Deborah Frances-White, a British-Australian comedian best known for hosting The Guilty Feminist podcast, promoting her new book Six Conversations We’re Scared to Have, used parentage as an analogy on a recent episode of the podcast Triggernometry for why transwomen are women—that is, men who assume the role of women should be regarded as women. Some believe that men can become women by saying they. However, this belief is contradicted by knowledge. The definition of man is “an adult male human.” His gender is determined by gametes, karyotype, and reproductive anatomy, which, as noted above, is unchangeable in our species.
In many ways, this belief—and even the man who assumes the role of a woman—is unproblematic in the sense that belief, expression, and behavior may not harm anyone. I personally don’t care how a person dresses or even thinks of themselves. Why would I? I’m as libertarian. However, in other ways, actions and policies based on belief and practice are harmful. And while government cannot reach opinion, it can reach action. I am here paraphrasing President Thomas Jefferson in his 1802 letter to the Danbury Baptists of Connecticut “that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, and not opinions.” This is the intent of the First Amendment, which I hold in great reverence.
If belief substitutes for knowledge in medicine and science, then it corrupts truth. If the belief is used to justify the dismantling of women’s rights, such as the right to gender-exclusive activities, opportunities, and spaces, it is harmful to girls and women—and to valid practices of gender segregation more generally (there is a reason that society is gender-segregated in particular ways: to achieve more fully the principle of equality through equity. If the justification for men entering women’s bathrooms is based on the belief that “transwomen are women,” then the belief becomes a harmful one, just as the belief that girls should undergo female circumcision—i.e., female genital mutilation—is harmful to girls, as a practice of male domination and the diminishment or removal of sexual pleasure and other functions.
As I watched the discussion unfold, I became increasingly frustrated by co-host Konstantin Kisin (co-host Francis Foster remained mostly silent during this part of the discussion). Why isn’t Kisin making the obvious rebuttals? I thought to myself. And why isn’t he identifying the postmodernist assumptions that underpin her arguments? She is denying that gender is binary because some indigenous peoples don’t work from the gender binary. Why would anybody accept an indigenous people as an authority on science? This is the nonsense of postcolonial studies. Instead Kisin implied that genocide of indigenous peoples was made possible by the technological superiority of the West, thus putting himself in a defensive position with an entirely unnecessary observation.
An obvious rebuttal? Since female genital mutilation (FGM) is practiced in some indigenous African cultures, is it therefore okay that these same cultures, when in the UK or in the US, continue the practice here? Does the fact that they practice genital mutilation in their culture mean that the practice is acceptable anywhere? Is not FGM an expression of misogyny?
The world community has made significant efforts to halt the practice of FGM wherever it occurs, recognizing it as a serious violation of human rights and a threat to the health and well-being of girls and women. The United Nations, through agencies like UNICEF and UNFPA, has led global initiatives (such as the Joint Program on the Elimination of FGM), working closely with governments, local communities, and civil society organizations to raise awareness, enact and enforce laws, and promote education and empowerment. Many countries have passed legislation banning FGM, while grassroots campaigns have been crucial in shifting cultural norms and encouraging abandonment of the practice. The Sustainable Development Goal targets ending FGM by 2030.
Deborah Frances-White is arguing from the standpoint of cultural and moral relativism. From her standpoint, FGM should be perfectly acceptable as an indigenous cultural practice. After all, she defends puberty blockers and gender-affirming care (GAC). More than this, she is advocating for adopting indigenous belief systems, such as those that deny the gender binary. These are pre-scientific societies with unenlightened beliefs and practices. The ideas held by indigenous peoples are backwards. Why would any advanced civilization accept the beliefs and practices of barbarians? This is a pressing matter because the barbarians are no longer external to the West; they are inside the gates. Modern nation-states now have to police the culture-bearers within their own borders who still cling to these backwards beliefs and destructive behaviors (often obstinately). Kisin might have asked Frances-White about human sacrifice? Is this acceptable?
It’s useful to put the question this way because that’s what GAC is: genital mutilation. It’s barbaric. And unlike hailing from backwards cultures, it appears in the context of the modern nation-state, the result of the corrupting effects of postmodernism, a philosophical stance that denies binaries—knowledge of which Frances-White obscures by claiming that all binaries recognized in the West are a product of white Christian doctrine and not the result of scientific reason and investigation. Denying the binaries that exist in nature lies at the core of poststructuralism and postmodernism, standpoints (from which queer theory and postcolonial studies hail) that find their origins in the project to deconstruct scientific knowledge while normalizing paraphilias such as autogynephilia and pedophilia, as well as profit generation in a corporatized medical industry.
Frances-White’s defense of the use of puberty blockers could have been successfully rebutted with a straightforward analogy—albeit this is less of an analogy and more a matter of pushing the use of puberty blockers to its logical conclusion. Kisin hinted at it, but he could have explicitly posed this problem: a child who does not wish to become an adult, grow to an average height, lose her baby teeth, etc. Perhaps she does not wish her brain to mature, so she can stay childlike. The child has anxiety about the natural developmental pathway—neurological maturation, psychosocial development, and so forth.
This is not a hypothetical (which is why this is not really an analogy). There are children who have extreme anxiety about becoming adults. They fear adult responsibilities, losing their childhood, body and identity changes, existential concerns such as aging, death, or what adulthood means in a broader sense. Children with anxiety disorders and OCD often catastrophize the future or feel unequipped to handle it. For them, adulthood seems like an uncertain, dangerous, even hopeless place.
Should doctors prevent children from maturing when this desire is present? Is it cruel to “force” the child to grow up? Is it compassionate to keep such an individual in a perpetual state of childhood? This isn’t science fiction. There are ways to prevent this baked-in developmental pathway. Would failing to intervene fate the child to the “wrong developmental pathway”? Or should those around the child instead help her overcome her anxiety, knowing that once an adult, a lot of these fears will resolve themselves? How could she know what being an adult is unless she experiences it? She might discover that it’s wonderful. She likely will. (There are children who can’t wait to grow up who are disappointed with adulthood once they arrive there.)
The concept of “wrong puberty,” which doctors use puberty blockers to prevent, would suggest all of this, since puberty is a crucial part of the developmental pathway. Indeed, it’s the core of the process I am describing. Why is it okay to give a child puberty blockers but wrong to prevent her from getting taller, elaborating her brain structures, developing the psychosocial skills of adulthood? Or is it wrong? Is the medical industry fine with, instead of helping a child through these difficulties, altering her body forever with drugs and surgical interventions—sterilizing her, even making her an eternal patient? Why not? They’re stopping puberty. They’re amputating breasts and drastically altering genitalia. Why not just keep her in Peter Pan’s Neverland forever?
Medicine is about treating disease and physical and developmental anomalies. If medicine is instead—or also—about engineering eternal adolescence, building androgynous bodies, turning people into something they otherwise would not be—and then only creating a simulation of the thing sought—is it really medicine anymore? Sounds more like something out of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, which horrifies sane and compassionate readers.
What is medicine if it is not a healing profession but a set of practices and techniques that produces customized bodies—simulacra of originals that cannot be possessed? Postmodernists may believe the copy is the original, but knowledge tells us that it is not and cannot be. The practice of medicine based on the postmodernist model no longer addresses problems but manufactures problems to address—for shareholder value. Postmodernism is a projection of the corporate desire to make fantasy a way of life, with all the dehumanization that entails, to generate exchange value.
I know the answer to the question (I have already answered it above), but I will ask it anyway: Why did it ever occur to doctors that, instead of treating anxiety and addressing delusions, the body should instead be modified to accommodate anxiety or delusion? How did it become widely socialized that we would all be required to accept such a practice as normal and good and affirm its results? How did those of us who find something troubling about this development come to be defined not as rightly concerned observers but bigots?
How is any of this compassionate? For sure it’s profitable. In 2022, in the US alone, gender reassignment surgery market was valued at over 2 billion dollars. This figure is projected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 11.25 percent, reaching an estimated 5 billion dollars by 2030. The gender reassignment hormone therapy market was valued at around 1.6 billion dollars in 2023. It is anticipated to experience a CAGR of 5.3 percent from 2024 to 2032, driven by increasing acceptance and demand. But it’s not compassionate. It’s cruel and dehumanizing. This is the barbarism of belief.
freedom and reason 