“There Is No Way to Live a Life Without Regret”

But parents have a duty to try to prevent permanent and irreversible harms to their children

All children are born in the right body. Image by bess.hamiti@gmail.com from Pixabay

On December 1, 2023, the New York Times published an op-ed contribution from Lydia Polgreen entitled. “Born This Way? Born Which Way?”.

She opens by musing about how her life may have taken a different course if she had decided to try out for the middle school swim team. In her opinion, as an excellent elementary school swimmer, who was well supported by an encouraging coach, she may have had a different adolescence as a high school jock, rather than what she faced as a “lonely weirdo”. If she had been able to gain a swimming scholarship to a top college, rather than scraping by at a not very competitive community college, her entire life may have been very different to the life she has now.

All of this is too true and I’m sure many of us can look back with 20/20 hindsight and spot the pivotal moments when a decision had a long-term impact that we had no way of seeing at the time.

Polgreen then goes on to give one of the best examples of a false equivalence that I have ever seen. A false equivalence is defined as an argument or claim in which two arguments appear to be logically equivalent when in fact they are not. The confusion is often due to one shared characteristic between two or more items of comparison in the argument that is way off in the order of magnitude, oversimplified, or just that important additional factors have been ignored. 

Why am I making this claim?

Because her example of a child’s choice (other than her own) is embodied through the “war” over gender diverse or transgender children.

Somehow in her mind, her decision about an extracurricular school activity is no different from a child’s “decision” to forgo a normal adulthood that includes the ability to reproduce, to have a pleasurable sex life and to optimize their overall health as much as possible. No child has the capacity or capability to make these profound life changing judgments on their own behalf. And, quite frankly, no parent should have the right to make a decision to allow children to chop off healthy body parts in a vain quest to ease mental discomfort that may only be temporary.

Sloppy terminology doesn’t make a case

Reading this was really irritating because Polgreen didn’t define her terms and she misused “gender” consistently because using the correct word - sex, might have undermined some of her arguments.

As regular readers here will know, when I talk about sex, I am referring to biology and physiology, which are immutable and can never be changed. No mammal can choose which sex they want to be, ever. Gender on the other hand, is a social construct/on a spectrum and subject to change over time and culture. No baby is “assigned a gender”; rather a baby’s very obvious sex is observed and recorded.  

Polgreen flippantly refers to “intersex” people (this term is no longer used in medical settings as it is inaccurate) as if they are babies that parents and doctors can experiment on with abandon. Not to mention that at only 0.018% of the population, they are so vanishingly rare that many doctors and midwives go for their entire careers without ever encountering one child who has a Difference in Sex Development (DSD). Considering that not all DSDs are apparent at birth (some do not come to light until the age of puberty), this makes sense. Plus, a DSD is not an identity that can be chosen, it is a medical condition so is not relevant in a discussion about gender identities. Although not referenced as such here, some trans lobbyists claim that it is evidence of a third sex, which it most definitely is not. In actuality, it confirms that we are a binary sexed species, where sometimes ‘construction errors’ occur during fetal development.

No one is born in the wrong body

To be “born in the wrong body” is a social concept, not a biological possibility. I mean, if one could be born as the “wrong sex” (which is actually what this means), then why couldn’t we also be born as the wrong species? I have had a lifelong affinity for dogs; is it possible this is because I was really meant to be a Canis lupus familiaris (which is the Latin name for our domestic dogs), but a mistake was made, and I ended up earth-side as a homo sapiens (human being) instead? How would I know this? Beats me, but the entire trans agenda is built on the quicksand of fallacious thinking, and this is a foundational concept for a trans identity.

Why can’t gender non-conforming kids just do their thing without being carved up and drenched in opposite sex hormones? As this parent plaintively asked, “Wait – if gender is a social construct, why does my son need to cut off his dick?”

I am beginning to think that trans lobbyists have no sense of irony (along with no ability to see their own hypocrisy). Why do I say this? Well how about their insistence that not just gender, but sex itself is on a spectrum, but boys who like nail polish, glitter and tutus need to consider if perhaps they are really a girl brain trapped in a boy’s body and ditto for girls who are loud and like to build things (which may be food for thought about how they may really be a boy).

If there are only two choices (well three if you believe in the nonsense of “nonbinary”) why are gender non-conforming children being encouraged to harmfully alter their bodies to better match societal gender behavioral expectations, rather than society altering its view on how people can present and what they can enjoy doing? Wouldn’t it make more sense to just accept children how they are, than to tell them that they have the wrong bodies for their appearance and preferences?

No actually we don’t do that

Polgreen states, “We allow children to make irreversible decisions about their lives all the time”. Um, nope we don’t. I cannot think of a single irreversible decision I was allowed to make about myself as a child and I cannot think of one that I allowed my children to make on their own behalf either.

This works both ways. I know several families who have had children suffering from childhood cancers, the treatment for which can be painful and brutal in its side effects. None of those parents allowed their children to opt out of treatments right from the start because the child did not want to endure any pain, hair loss or vomiting; the medical profession considers this to be a parent consent process. This is why hospitals go to court to get approval if the parents withhold it, because the stakes are treatment or death, which is also irreversible.

When Polgreen made that life changing decision to not join her middle school swim team, this was in no possible way an “irreversible” decision. It did not stop her from continuing to swim then or at any other point in her life. She even talks about how she still enjoys swimming and the pleasure that it brings to her life. I suspect that if she had been put on a drug regimen that sterilized her and once she grew up she could never have the children might have wanted as a woman (but not as a child at the point when the decision was made), she might not be so blase about this profound loss and intense regret that detransitioners tell us about:

Before beginning on testosterone, I was asked if I wanted children, or if I wanted to consider freezing my eggs because of the possibility that transition would make me infertile. As a teenager, I couldn’t imagine having kids, and the procedure wouldn’t have been covered by the NHS. I said I was fine if I couldn’t, and I didn’t need to freeze my eggs. But now as a young adult, I see that I didn’t truly understand back then the implications of infertility. Having children is a basic right, and I don’t know if that has been taken from me.

As part of its defense, the Tavistock put forth statements from a few young trans people who are happy with their care. One is S, a 13-year-old trans boy who got puberty blockers from a private provider because the waiting list at the Gender Identity Development Service was so long. S told the court that he had “no idea what me in the future is going to think” about being able to have children and that since he has never been in “a romantic relationship,” the idea of one is not “on my radar at the moment.”

Lots of teenagers, when contemplating future sexual relationships, feel baffled and even disturbed at the thought.  Those same people, when adults, often feel very differently. I know, because this happened to me. I’d never been in a sexual relationship at the time of my transition, so I didn’t truly understand what the transition would mean sexually. 

S’s statement demonstrates how difficult it is for minors to give consent for procedures they can’t yet understand. As the judges wrote, “There is no age-appropriate way to explain to many of these children what losing their fertility or full sexual function may mean to them in later years.”

It is a prime parental duty to protect children from their own immaturity, gently guiding and supporting them in healthy choices until their accumulated experiences and brain maturation make it possible for them to become independently functioning adults.

Supporting, or worse, encouraging children into delusional thinking does them a gross disservice and sets them up for a life of dealing with the continual disappointment of the inability to truly change one’s sex.  

Can you not see the difference between top surgery and a nose job?

Polgreen talks at length about cosmetic surgery procedures done on teens and that some of these end in less than ideal ways, either because the wanted effects didn’t happen or some standard surgical risk occurred which complicated healing and the ultimate outcome.

I posit that the regret around an imperfect nose is nothing compared with the regret felt by women who had both healthy breasts removed as a girls or as young women and now are watching their just born babies fruitlessly searching for breasts that no longer exist.

 It is truly a false equivalency to compare any other merely cosmetic procedure with the removal of a healthy part of the female reproductive system. And it creates intergenerational harm if babies are not breastfed.

Detransitioners are a real consequence, not an anomaly

Polgreen refers to the “handful” of those who regret the gender affirming treatments that have irreversibly transformed their bodies into someone else who they no longer wish to be, but doesn’t mention any factors that may be coloring her opinion. Like the fact that most gender clinics don’t keep records on those lost to follow up, so they don’t know how many of their former patients have been lost to the trans cause. There is no incentive for detransitioners to report back as one problem they have is a total lack of support, which is the exact opposite of those undergoing the many money generating procedures required to maintain a trans life.

From the research that is finally being done now it is apparent that the number of those who finally mature into themselves and realize that trans is not the answer to their problems is going to increase exponentially.  

No sex, no kids

This author also states an untruth when she states that it is, “a mistaken belief that medical transition routinely causes permanent sterility, foreclosing any chance at parenthood”. She disingenuously omits to mention that there are variations in the timing of medical transition procedures that can have different outcomes. But it is a fact that puberty blockers started at Tanner Stage 2 (the very first signs of puberty), followed by cross sex hormones will always result in permanent sterility, precluding the ability to reproduce. This is non-recoverable, even if all drugs are halted and of course any amputated body parts such as having had a hysterectomy or removal of the penis and testicles really are irreversible decisions.

Those “trans dads/pregnant men” having babies? They started their gender journeys a bit late so they can still get pregnant.

And it’s just as well IVF works in the absence of sexual intercourse because not mentioned in the article is the fact that those damaged by becoming infertile will also not be having any orgasms and possibly not even be able to have pleasurable sex lives at all. This is known and acknowledged, even by those trans activists working in the field.

As one of her experts in supporting her point of view, Polgreen has chosen to quote Grace Lavery, who is a biological male living in womanface. He believes that sex change is possible and came out as trans at the age of 35. He teaches at Berkeley and his specialist subject is “trans feminist studies”. So, his experience of irreversible decision making as a child in regard to his identity is zilch/none.

This dude is one of those scolds who understands women better than I ever could (according to him).

Can’t drink, can’t smoke, can’t drive…

There are logical reasons why laws exist to protect children from their lack of judgement due to immaturity. Human development unfolds in a predictable pattern for all of us. Sure, there are always going to be variations, but there are some universals we can rely on. You can’t drive a car until a certain age (rather than having a law based on physical height). Delaying the start time for drinking alcohol and smoking helps to keep an immature brain from permanent and irreversible damage. In many countries underage children cannot get a tattoo or even get their ears pierced without parental permission.

I reject the concept of the transgender child because without adult indoctrination, an imperceptible number of mainly boys might feel that a mistake was made somewhere in their existence. The veritable tidal wave of traumatized young girls seeking relief from our hypersexualized society would not be making decisions that are so incredibly harmful and irreversible. It is not enough to dismiss their regret as a byproduct of allowing them to choose a destiny they don’t understand or appreciate.