Responses to the Trans Talking Points

If you’re like me, probably reading WAY too many online exchanges regarding trans ideology, you’ve likely encountered the repeated talking points that trans supporters use to “prove” they’re right. Below is a list of the standard points and some suggested responses to them.

Statement: Trans people have always existed and will continue to exist.

Response: This discussion is not about whether trans people exist. It is about whether we should be medicalizing and surgically altering the bodies of vulnerable young people at critical times in their development when their brains are not fully developed. Please stick to the topic.

Statement: If you’re against trans surgeries, then you must also be against circumcision.

Response: These topics are totally unrelated. Circumcision is often done for religious reasons. Is trans ideology a religion? If you’re concerned about circumcisions, please find the group that addresses that topic. This isn’t it.

Statement: No one gets hormones or surgery unless they are fully evaluated.

Response: There are MANY reports from detransitioners about how quickly they were able to obtain hormones and move toward surgery. Also, from Wikipedia: “Historically, many health centers required a psychiatric evaluation and/or a letter from a therapist before beginning hormone replacement therapy. Many centers now use an informed consent model that does not require any routine formal psychiatric evaluation.” *Be aware that Facebook doesn’t allow this link to be posted, claiming it violates their rules about sex and sexuality (not that that’s relevant).

Statement: More people regret knee surgery than trans surgery.

Response: This is a specious argument. What does knee surgery have to do with trans identity? People requiring knee surgery have injuries or damage in need of physical correction. Trans surgery is an extreme form of body modification. It is the removal of healthy body parts.

Statement: Once the ban on left-handedness was lifted, many more people became left-handed.

Response: This is a specious comparison. Left-handedness is in part hereditary. It is also determined by the physical location of certain functions within the brain. It has nothing to do with trans identity. Further, in the current thinking on trans surgery, if someone was bothered by being forced to be right-handed, their solution would have been to cut off their right hand.

Statement: Children know who they are. Believe them.

Response: Did you know who you were at age 12, 14, even 21? In that time period, did you ever make an uninformed decision or one that you came to regret later?

Statement: The experts know what they’re doing. (Variant: Trust the scientists.)

Response: This statement ignores the many mistakes science/medicine has made in the past, many of them extremely damaging:

• Blood-letting to cure disease

• Trephination (drilling a hole in the skull) to treat headaches and mental disorders

• “Snake oil” (many varieties) for whatever ails someone

• Baby-calming medicines that contained alcohol and opium

• Radium to slow aging and cure insanity

• Testicular implants taken from goats to bolster virility

• Thalidomide for morning sickness, which led to severe birth defects in the children

• DES – a synthetic estrogen – to prevent miscarriages, which led to increased cancer risks in the mother and child

• Lobotomies

• Opioids – supposedly nonaddictive -- to relieve pain

These are just a few of many examples. In many of these cases, it took intervention from outside agencies and government to shut down the practice.

Statement: Most detransitioners (and there aren’t a lot), change their minds due to social reasons--getting harassed and bullied.

Response: What is your source for this information? As detransitioners are only starting to speak and there have been no systematic studies done, we have no idea how many people detransition or why. Many just stop treatment without ever telling their doctors. It’s also been reported that some of that bullying comes from trans folk. It will be a long time before the picture is clear.

Statement: Fewer than 1% of trans people regret transitioning.

Response: This statistic is unreliable; the study that proposed it has been debunked on at least two occasions:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-023-02623-5
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8751779/

Statement: Intersex people exist.

Response: Yes, they do, and they are not trans. This is an exploitation of intersex people for a political agenda.

Statement: The decision to transition is a private matter between a patient and their doctor.

Response: In general, this is true. But when a profession seriously deviates from its mission and many people are harmed, it is the obligation of outside agencies and/or the government to step in. This is what eventually shut down lobotomies.

Statement: You’re just a ….[fill in the blank with “transphobe” or any profanity].

Response: First, you know nothing about me and make assumptions based on no information whatsoever. Second, if you mean to be an advocate or activist for the trans community, consider your approach. Insults and name-calling are offensive and immature, not a good look if you want people to take you seriously. And not good representation of the group you seek to protect.