11/09/2022
In this episode of strange philosophy of science, I react to conservative commentator and Christian theocrat Matt Walsh’s belief that trans therapy is immoral. Walsh believes that the belief and desire to transition to a different biological sex is a mental illness and allowing trans people to medically transition is fundamentally immoral. I critique his beliefs about trans theory, medicine, biology, and the morality of trans therapy.
Matt Walsh is an American conservative commentator and Christian theocrat who works for the conservative news outlet The Daily Wire. Recently, he has made it his life goal “critiquing” trans theories and generally making trans people’s lives miserable. He believes that any trans therapy is immoral.
If you’re being nice, you could describe Walsh as a person who is “gender critical.” He doesn’t believe gender exists or is distinct from biological sex at all. To Walsh, being trans (i.e., having the desire to transition to another sex than what you were born as) is essentially a mental disorder. Walsh has compared being trans to having other types of mental disorders like anorexia (which is an eating disorder where people have an extremely distorted body image around weight, and because of this often starve themselves).
To be clear, the contemporary, the medical view (if that’s the appeal to authority you want to make) is that being trans is not a mental disorder, but having gender dysphoria is. Gender dysphoria is basically an extreme form of stress, discomfort, or pain related to one’s biological sex and/or their gender assigned at birth. There’s an incongruence related to their bodies.
The belief that anorexia is similar to gender dysphoria seems to intuitively make sense. In both situations, there’s an incongruence with one’s body that causes extreme discomfort and can be detrimental to your health. But, just because two diseases have the same source (in this case, a body incongruence), does not mean the treatment options are the same, nor does it mean the origin of these diseases are the same.
The reason anorexia is a serious medical concern is not because a person thinks they’re fatter than they are, though that’s obviously the disconnect, but the fact that malnourishment can lead to a person literally dying. Just like gender dysphoria can lead to a person literally dying.
For treating anorexia, besides correcting and monitoring the health effects of malnourishment, it typically comes down to cognitive behavioral therapy until you have a better body image, a more realistic body image.
Walsh basically thinks that intense conversion therapy is the only correct way to treat being trans, cause again, merely being trans is a mental disorder for him. Specifically, the belief that you can transition from one sex to another, and that you would even have a desire to do such a thing.
This is Walsh telling a trans woman why trans therapy is immoral:
The problem for Walsh is there is no empirical, scientific, or medical evidence showing that conversion therapy reduces gender dysphoria at all, or makes trans people feel better about themselves, or gives them better long-term health outcomes. Furthermore, there’s actually studies on these topics going back to the 1970s, but honestly, in another 20 years with even more studies, none of this would change his opinion.
What actually reduces gender dysphoria is transitioning. While not all people who are trans medically transition away from one sex towards another, I would say the majority of them do to some extent. Medical transition means changing one’s sex characteristics. This could mean hormone replacement therapy, surgical procedures to give or remove certain sex characteristics like genitalia or gonads, and even cosmetic surgeries to make one appear more feminine or masculine. Contrary to Walsh’s armchair medical opinion, transitioning or giving someone different sex characteristics than what they were born with actually does solve the problem. And, honestly, I think Walsh’s unwillingness to accept this is the truly immoral thing.
Now, to Walsh, the belief that you could change biological sex is absurd. Right? That’s what makes a person crazy to him. For Walsh, there’s a strict, exclusionary sex binary. You’re either male or female, and there’s nothing that lies betwixt nor are there any other sexes.
However, because changing sex characteristics is an effective treatment to treating this incongruence with the body, this gives us reason to infer you actually can change your biological sex, and if you can go from one to the other, that implies that the binary is not exclusionary, but is in fact a spectral binary. Sex is a spectrum between male & female. Your sex is not some ethereal quality that you have. It’s determined by a constellation of different sex characteristics, none of which are conclusive on their own to fully determine one’s sex.
You might say chromosomes clearly determine sex. Except when they don’t. There are people with androgen insensitivity that have XY chromosomes but develop female sex characteristics. Some can even get pregnant and give birth to completely healthy babies. And because their cells don’t respond to testosterone, they tend to have clearer skin and bigger breasts than the average woman, characteristics that are associated with being female.
You might say actually, it’s gametes: you either have sperm or you have eggs. But, again, you run into problems, a male who is sterile, has no sperm production, is not suddenly non-male. The same with males who have been castrated, i.e., had their gonads removed, or pre-adolescent children who don’t produce gametes, or post-menopausal females who no longer produce and ovulate eggs. We wouldn’t just say these people are not-male or not-female, because they do have at least some sex characteristics associated with their birth sex.
Finally, people tend to agree with Walsh because, it’s believed you can’t change biology. Which is kind of bonkers if you actually think about what a biological entity is. A living thing is living by the fact that it can adapt. Change is literally the defining feature of biology. Because the body is so incredibly adaptable, trans people can, in fact, medically transition, change their sex characteristics, and cure (or, at least, alleviate) a very serious and real problem.
Now, do I as a cis male, and cis just means I was born male, and I don’t want to get rid of any of my sex characteristics, and a trans male have the same biology. No. We don’t. There are significant differences. A trans male is not the same as a cis male…. And they are also not the same as a cis female, which is the sex they were born as. Their biology has changed, and it’s irrelevant if the change was done through artificial means or not; the body still adapts as it needs too.
We are both male, because we have more male sex characteristics than female sex characteristics.
And, those are the facts. And, the facts don’t really care about your feelings.
