Erick Erickson goes plunging over the waterfall of hyperbolic rhetoric in his pursuit of leadership in the conservative movement in this post, and it’s really too bad, at least for me, because it’s on the topic of transgender youth. That is to say, I might actually agree, at least in general, with his point, but he’s so over the top that he ends up throwing his own ideological allies under the bus in his mad rush to get out front and take a bit of credit. Here he is:
The NCAA has decided it will not send an NCAA tournament to any state that prohibits boys from playing on girls’ athletic teams. According to their statement,
The NCAA Board of Governors firmly and unequivocally supports the opportunity for transgender student-athletes to compete in college sports. This commitment is grounded in our values of inclusion and fair competition.
Notice what we are quibbling with over here. No one objects to transgender athletes playing college sports. People just think they need to play with others of their same sex, not those whose gender they identify with if it deviates from their biological sex.
The anti-vaccine proponents have scores of doctors willing to say vaccines cause autism and other ailments. The transgender crowd now has doctors willing to say that, in the case of boys who identify as girls, their testosterone really is not an issue.
The science, on both counts, disagrees with the fringe, but the mainstream media and left elevate the fringe doctors of the transgender crowd and demand we treat them seriously. Real-world experience of boys playing as girls on the field overwhelmingly shows they tend to have more physical prowess.
Ultimately, conservatives will have to decide if they are willing to give up money in favor of not just God, but biology, science, and sanity.
I do notice that he cites science without specific citation, but this statement from Dr. Renee Richards, disagreeing with ideological statements that, athletically speaking, a transgender woman is the equivalent of a standard-issue woman, is enough to permit me to provisionally take Erickson’s statement at face value.
It doesn’t hurt that, to my software engineer sensibilities, the likelihood that two types of entities that have such dissimilar categorical histories can be properly defined as equivalent without extensive testing and discussion seems low, though not impossible. Worse, putting on my communications analysis hat, the presentations of just such assertions have not come across as reasoned and data-driven analytical results, but as ideologically driven proclamations that, quite frankly, grate on my nerves.
Furthermore, the topic really raises questions concerning the entire concept of sex-segregated athletic competitions, questions echoed by the controversy over the South African runner Caster Semenya, the hyperandrogenous woman athlete whose naturally abnormally high levels of testosterone give her an advantage in her sport, resulting in this:
World Athletics (IAAF), the international governing body of track and field, decided that gave her an unfair advantage over other women. The organization created a new rule stipulating that Semenya and other female athletes like her with naturally high levels of testosterone, would be forced to take medication in order to alter their hormones. [MSN]
Is there a simple answer to the question of what constitutes a valid competition? What is the purpose of competition?
BUT … I’m not here to explore fascinating questions like this. Rather, it’s how Erickson reacted to Governor Hutchinson (R-AR) vetoing a law the Arkansas Legislature passed forbidding doctors … from providing gender-affirming “procedures” for trans people under age 18:
Asa Hutchinson, the Governor of Arkansas, chose Mammon. If you watch him closely, you’ll see a Walmart lobbyist with his hand so far up Hutchinson’s rectum as to muppet him into whatever Walmart wants. The Arkansas legislature was not bought off, but perhaps the temptation will ultimately be too strong.
And how did Governor Hutchinson justify his veto?
Arkansas’ Republican governor on Monday vetoed an anti-transgender health care bill that would’ve prohibited physicians in the state from providing gender-affirming “procedures” for trans people under age 18.
Gov. Asa Hutchinson told reporters that he killed HB 1570 because the bill “would be and is a vast government overreach” and because it would’ve created “new standards of legislative interference with physicians and parents as they deal with some of the most complex and sensitive matters involving young people.” [CNN/Politics]
For Erickson, eager to stir the outrage soup, employing a religiously charged term with a political base that is at least more likely to be religious than the average American may seem logical, but it’s an invocation of the forces of irrationality in support of a position that he considers to be rational.
But it’s not. No civil legislature possesses the medical knowledge, nor the situational knowledge, to decide that a class of medical procedures should be banned. To believe otherwise is to indulge in arrogance of the worst sort. Hutchinson, recognizing that governmental overreach that is an oft-used accusation against his political opponents, quite properly vetoed the bill.
Incidentally, the veto was overridden.
So what about me? While I don’t feel obligated to offer an opinion, I will.
First, I have to wonder about performing procedures and treatments which will have profound emotional impact on non-adult patients that may, and, in view of our current knowledge of neuroscience, usually won’t have the capacity to comprehend completely where they are, metaphorically, and where they propose to go. Consider the case of Kiera Bell, who now regrets transitioning to male. In her story, she didn’t understand her own situation, or where she was going; when she arrived, she bought a return ticket back home, but by then she’d had a double mastectomy.
Therefore, performing “gender-affirming procedures” on those below the age of adulthood should not be a first-line treatment, but a treatment of last resort. All of us have been younger than full adults, and remember it as a confusing time. The brain is not fully wired, and the body is awash in natural chemicals that are urging at least half the population to mate and mate now. To expect adult, well-considered decisions from immature members of society is unwise; it is, in fact, betrayal of the adult responsibility to help raise responsible and mature members of society. Do those who think they desire these procedures need support? Yes. Does that include actually performing those procedures? No. Support doesn’t mean delivery, and it doesn’t mean dissuasion. It means delay until they’ve reached an age which we can reasonably hope they know what they’re doing.
All that said, the Legislature has no role here. These should be medical decisions made by professionals who are intimate with the situation, not a bunch of amateurs. Yes, it sounds like the professionals failed completely in the Bell case, and if the Bell case exists, there’s going to be more. However, that is a problem for the medical profession to resolve, whether it be the infiltration of rank ideology into the profession, or simply mistakes being made. A Legislature has little chance of getting it right.
That’s why we license professionals.
But I think Erickson is letting his emotions carry him down a path he really shouldn’t be on.
