Transgender Orthodoxy As the Synecdoche for Blue Puddle Collapse

 There is no one reason which explains why voters turned against Democrats and returned Donald Trump to the White House, and swept Republicans into control in the Senate and the House of Representatives.

But there is one part of the explanation which contains most of the relevant elements, which can stand as a part for the whole: Transgender orthodoxy.

Male Puberty: Women's Swim Records

There was something, on a gut, if not on a  cerebral cortex level, so wrong with insisting that a person who had gone through male puberty, who still looked male, while wearing a female swimming suit, should be allowed to be seen as a woman, and compete as a woman in Ivy League swimming meets. When that person demolished all the women's swimming records, one had to ask: Why do we have women's sports (as distinguished from men's swimming) at all?

Well, we can see it in the numbers: There are something like 1500 men/boys who run the 800 meters faster than the women's world record. 

Testosterone makes a difference.

We have weight classes in boxing and wrestling for a reason. We want to see like competing with like.

Not in every instance: We don't have short people basketball or lightweight football--in some sports we accept unequal size and strength as part of the game.

But when Seth Moulton, a Massachusetts Democrat, said he did not like the idea of his girls being run over by a field hockey player who went through male puberty, he added that saying that cost him standing among Democrats.

It is the very intolerance to opposition, intolerance to an opposing opinion which characterized and still does characterize many if not most of those who support "transgender rights."

When Dr. Paul McHugh, chief of psychiatry at Johns Hopkins, suggest that gender dysphoria, which lands most patients at Transgender Clinics, might be more like anorexia nervosa than it is like homosexuality, he was vilified and attacked voraciously--medical students refused to speak to him. There was no objective, disinterested exploration of ideas here: a gospel had been violated. Apostasy had to be crushed. 

Paul McHugh: Heretic 

The same thing happened to any endocrinologist who dared question Transgender medicine. When an endocrinologist attended a  session on "Androgen Abuse Syndrome" in which men who look like the incredible hulk demanding ever higher doses of testosterone from Endocrine Clinics, he heard about how these men could be "managed" like anorexia nervosa patients. But when he attended the next session, in the next room, on Transgender Medicine, where the doses of testosterone given transgender patients were three times that requested by the androgen abuse patients, and the endocrinologist asked, "But wait! Isn't this androgen abuse?" 

Absolutely No Gender Dysphoria 

He was admonished. "No, in the case of the transgender patient this testosterone is 'gender affirming' whereas in the case of the body builder it's 'androgen abuse.'"

It wasn't until a famous Scottish pediatrician reviewed practices and records at Transgender Clinics in the UK, and found that a substantial (25%?) number of girls with gender dysphoria, who had been treated with testosterone at at 10 or 11 where no longer taking it by age 17, that the tide began to turn just a little, and questioning Transgender Medicine got some cover.

Intolerance

And when even the most ardent Democrats began grumbling about pronouns, about having people begin their talks with the phrase, "I'm Sue Smith and my pronouns are she/her," the tide began to shift further. When loyal readers of the New York Times and the New Yorker found themselves reading about an individual and the paragraph proceeded to describe how they went to town to get a haircut, that grumblings became a groan.

And some said, after the election--if Trump and his reactionaries can expunge pronouns and the sort of orthodoxy which demands "equity/inclusiveness/diversity" then maybe the reactionary purge will have done some good.

Objectifiying Women

As Clemenza told Michael before the gangs went to the mattresses: "This sort of thing has to happen, every five, ten years. Clears out the bad blood."

I am happy to see my grandchildren have classmates of all races, but I do not think diversity should be a goal in the classroom. Diversity of opinion should be a goal, but not racial diversity. Race blind I like. Race quotas I do not like. In my son's hoity toity private school, twenty years ago, there were maybe 10 to 15% Black kids, but their parents were neurosurgeons, lawyers, business magnates, and if you closed your eyes and listened, you could not tell the Blacks from the Whites.

And I don't know what "equity" in college classes would mean. Inclusiveness sounds like a good thing, but then why at Cornell are Black students demanding a Black dorm where they can feel safe and comfortable? How is that accomplishing inclusiveness?

So, maybe we'll throw the baby out with the bathwater, but at least we may get some fresh bath water.