It didn’t happen overnight, but it sure felt like it. My own copy of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, the standard American reference book in the field — which is also the standard almost everywhere else in the world — is the fourth edition (DSM-IV), published in 1994. As I noted in The American Spectator’s fall 2022 print magazine, when I wrote on the explosion of transgenderism among children, the DSM-IV included an entry on gender identity disorder, whose sufferers experience the delusion that they are, as the saying went, “a woman trapped in a man’s body” or vice versa. The book treated this delusion quite frankly as a mental disorder that is an eminently suitable subject for psychiatric treatment. The book’s subsequent edition, the DSM-5, published in 2013, reflected a major change in the profession’s view of this phenomenon, and the “text revision,” DSM-5-TR, issued in 2022, contained further changes, largely involving the introduction of, in the publishers’ own words, “updated culturally sensitive language.” 

As the editors explained: “The term ‘desired gender’ is now ‘experienced gender,’ the term ‘cross-sex medical procedure’ is now ‘gender-affirming medical procedure,’ and the term ‘natal male’/’natal female’ is now ‘individual assigned male/female at birth.’” In short, by the time of the DSM-5-TR, gender identity disorder was no more; in its place was the newly redefined gender dysphoria, which had formerly been synonymous with gender identity disorder but was now defined as “the psychological distress that results from an incongruence between one’s sex assigned at birth and one’s gender identity.” In other words, if you think that you really belong to the opposite sex, then you are no longer considered to be suffering from a psychiatric disorder, unless you are experiencing distress as a result of the incongruence between what used to be called your biological sex (but which is now referred to as “one’s sex assigned at birth”) and your delusion (which is no longer viewed as a delusion but as a scientifically legitimate “gender identity”). 

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This radical transformation in the American psychiatric community’s official view of transgenderism reflected the burgeoning impact of an ideology that had been familiar in the academy for many years but that, during the years between the appearance of the DSM-IV and the DSM-5-TR, had exploded into mainstream Western society, largely thanks to the efforts of gay rights organizations, which, after the Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, had become full-time propaganda organs for transgender ideology. Only a few years earlier, individuals who claimed to have a gender identity that differed from their biological sex, most of them biological males, were extremely rare, tended to keep a very low profile, and said they had experienced these curious feelings since childhood. Now being trans was, bizarrely enough, a fad among teenagers (and even preteens), especially biological females, many if not most of whom already suffered from other mental disorders (such as autism), and whose conviction that they were really boys often seemed to manifest itself between one day and the next (hence the coinage of a new diagnostic term: rapid-onset gender dysphoria). 

Far from keeping a low profile, these young people shouted their alleged transgender identity to the world — often with the enthusiastic support of parents, teachers, counselors, classmates, and neighbors who had been informed by the media that the proper response to such self-identification was to affirm and to celebrate. To anyone with common sense, it was clear that these young people were being caught up in a dangerous new trend (a few years earlier, it had been cutting). It was also clear that “feminine” boys and “masculine” girls, who once would have been recognized as children who would likely grow up to be gay, were now being told that they were trans and being encouraged to pursue “treatments” — hormones, surgical butchery — that were once reserved for adults who had been through years of psychiatric treatment but that were now routinely being pushed on teenagers after a single brief consultation. In the last few years, mainstream publishers have put out countless books for children that don’t just normalize but actually romanticize and celebrate the idea of being trans, and even toddlers are being introduced to terms like “gender identity.”  

As I noted in my fall 2022 piece for The American Spectator, many parents of kids who claim to be trans have bought into the ideology fed them by teachers, school counselors, psychiatrists, and others — some reluctantly, others eagerly. Nowadays, in progressive social circles, having a trans child is a badge of honor. This new, widespread brand of transgenderism seems especially common among the offspring of celebrities. Ally Sheedy, Jamie Lee Curtis, Charlize Theron, Cher, and Annette Bening and Warren Beatty have all boasted that they have trans kids. For aging actors who fear being seen as has-beens, being the parent of a trans kid seems to be a surefire way of seeming au courant.

Consider Cynthia Nixon, who announced at a protest for “trans health care” that was held last February at New York University that she was “the mother of a proud trans man” and “the aunt of a proud trans man”; also, “My best friend’s kid is trans, and my kid’s best friend is trans.” (A few years ago, such an assertion would have been dismissed as the statistically impossible raving of a narcissistic lunatic; at NYU, Nixon was cheered.) Not to be outdone, Marcia Gay Harden has said: “My eldest child is nonbinary. My son is gay. My youngest is fluid.” (Nonbinary — “Gender-wise, I’m some kind of intermediate thing”  — and fluid — “My gender identity shifts with the winds” — are just two of the many identity labels, all of them falling under the trans umbrella, that have proliferated since transgenderism became all the rage.)

But not all parents are like Nixon and Harden. In 2022, I wrote that many of them are “in torment,” recognizing that their children are being led down a dark road but unable to do anything about it, given that “school authorities, medical institutions, and the judicial system” were “increasingly on the other side.” Fortunately, that is no longer the case — for many reasons. One reason is that parents around the country have shown up at school board meetings to protest the fact that trans girls (i.e., biological boys) are being permitted to use girls’ bathrooms and gym showers. Videos of these meetings that have been posted online have opened the eyes of parents across America to the dangers their children face. 

Then there are the brave young female athletes, most notably the former University of Kentucky swimmer Riley Gaines, who, having been forced to compete with “trans women,” have spoken out eloquently about this injustice. In 2022, I noted that leading Democrats were on the side of William Thomas, a mediocre swimmer who had been collecting medals ever since changing his name to Lia. As of 2022, the Biden administration was entirely on the side of America’s Lias. Since then, it has become obvious that the overwhelming majority of Americans consider this whole business absurd and obscene. 

In 2022, I noted in passing that “gay men and women who resent being yoked against their will to the trans phenomenon” were starting to speak up. As more and more of those gay men and lesbians have realized that in a world where trans ideology is taken seriously, sexual orientation is effectively rendered meaningless, their voice has grown into a roar. The group Gays against Groomers, founded in 2022, describes itself as “fighting back from inside the community against the sexualization, indoctrination and medicalization of children under the guise of ‘LGBTQIA+.’” More and more gays and lesbians, indeed, have finally seen through — and rejected — the label of LBGT that (along with its many variations) was forced upon them years ago by cynical activists who figured that by yoking the ancient phenomenon of same-sex attraction to transgender ideology, that modern concoction, they could convince people that if they supported gay rights they were also obliged to climb aboard this crazy train. 

Also important for the trans debate in the U.S. during the last three years has been the growing clarity with which authorities in Europe have addressed the subject. In April of this year, for example, the British Supreme Court ruled that a woman is someone who was identified at birth as biologically female, period — this in a country that had for years been issuing “Gender Recognition Certificates” to biological men who claimed to be women. In addition, the rising numbers of outspoken detransitioners — people who’d been talked in their youth into “gender reassignment surgery” only to regret it afterwards — has made a positive difference in public concern about the issue, just as the lawsuits many of these detransitioners have filed against their former doctors have made at least some members of the medical community think twice about pushing young persons onto the trans assembly line.

Since 2022, moreover, Americans have had more opportunities to witness the sheer aggressiveness of transgender activists — an aggressiveness plainly rooted in their mental illness. They are congenitally incapable of debate: Simply to challenge their delusions is to risk bodily harm, as Ben Shapiro discovered when, appearing on a TV show hosted by Dr. Drew Pinsky, he addressed a fellow guest, a bewigged man who calls himself Zoey Tur, as “sir.” In response, Tur placed his big hand threateningly on Shapiro’s skinny neck and growled: “You cut that out now, or you’ll go home in an ambulance.” The veneer of womanliness is apt to disappear very quickly when M-to-F people are confronted with their own flight from reality. 

Also illuminating is that, as the number of self-declared trans people has ballooned, there has been an explosion — at wildly disproportionate rates — of violent crimes by trans people. On March 27, 2023, Audrey Hale (who called herself Aiden Hale) murdered three adults and three 9-year-olds at a Presbyterian school in Nashville. And on the very day that I am writing this — August 27 — the latest news is that a 23-year-old gunman named Robert Westman, who transitioned as a minor and changed his name to Robin, has killed an 8-year-old and a 10-year-old while they were attending Mass at a Catholic school in Minneapolis. 

The statement made by Minneapolis Mayor Jacob Frey should go down in infamy: “Anybody who is using this as an opportunity to villainize our trans community has lost their sense of common humanity.” More to the point was the comment by Fox News’ Jesse Watters: “Statistically, the trans population has been prone to violence. That’s not villainizing, that’s reality.” Steadily, the American public has become aware of this fact. In the last three years, more and more state legislatures, in a reflection of the overwhelming and increasingly vehement public consensus on the multitude of threats that transgender ideology poses to American life, have banned “gender-affirming care” for minors.

Last but not least, there is Donald Trump. A not inconsiderable part of the reason for his landslide victory last November was parental outrage over the trans agenda. And Trump has wasted no time in overturning as much of this madness as he can. On the day of his inauguration, he signed several executive orders addressing the issue, such as one that eliminated the “White House Gender Policy Council” and another that was titled “Defending Women from Gender Ideology Extremism and Restoring Biological Truth to the Federal Government.” On January 28, he signed an order called “Protecting Children from Chemical and Surgical Mutilation.” 

There’s much more. Trump banned trans people from the military. He prohibited “trans men” from playing on women’s sports teams, and he sued states for permitting it. Various Cabinet departments were instructed to seek out and eliminate pro-trans documents, policies, and practices that were under their purview. The effort to put a total end to “gender-affirming care” for children has been particularly comprehensive. Trump’s actions have even extended to the United Nations. Transgender ideology is, needless to say, an American concoction, but it has long since been taken up aggressively by the UN, and, since the beginning of his second term, Trump’s UN team has been crusading vigorously to remove words like “gender” and references to “transgender people” from UN documents. 

Transgender activists and groups like the ACLU have reacted to these moves with predictable hysteria, depicting them as a full-bore attack on “LGBTQ+ rights.” Nonsense. For one thing, none of Trump’s actions will have the slightest negative impact on the LBG people — lesbians, gays, and bisexuals. For another, individuals who call themselves transgender still have all the rights they ever had. What they are increasingly losing, thanks largely but not entirely to Trump’s bold actions, are — among other things — the power to force their fellow Americans (under credible threat of legal punishment) to affirm a lie and the power to redefine words like “man” and “woman” that have meant the same thing since the beginning of time. Trans activists, some of them with degrees in medicine and psychology, are being put on warning not to propagandize children into opting for surgical butchery and a lifetime on powerful hormones. And the socially compelled practice of stating one’s pronouns at every turn is patently on the way out.

No, it’s not over yet. The trans lobby is still raking in donor money, still has a lockhold on the Democratic Party, and is still regarded as authoritative by the mainstream media. Many circuit court judges, in acts that palpably extend beyond the reach of their powers, have sought to block Trump’s actions. Then there are judges like the one in New Hampshire who ruled in April for a school district that had jettisoned two men from their daughters’ soccer game for wearing “XX” wristbands to protest “trans male” athletes. The judge wrote that the symbol of female sex chromosomes “can reasonably be understood as directly assaulting those who identify as transgender women.” So, yes, there’s still a long way to go before we’re rid of this dangerous nonsense. But the tide has definitely turned. 

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