"Trans activism is sexist and delusional"

 

That's the position of Jordan Peterson, who lays out the medical, biological and human facts of the matter with devastating clarity in an article for the Telegraph in London.  That article is paywalled, but a non-paywalled edition may be viewed here.  Here are a couple of excerpts.  They're long, but I think they're essential to understanding the Nashville tragedy a couple of days ago.

What is a woman?

A defining question of our times, and the title of a now infamous documentary indicating the breadth of the political chasm dividing us here in the West.

Here is an answer, summarising current scientific understanding and coming from a research psychologist and clinician.  

Let's start with the basics. Sexual differentiation, on the biological front – where the whole woman/man dichotomy originates, after all – happened two billion years in the past, long before nervous systems developed a mere 600 million years ago. The brute fact of sexual dichotomy was already a constant before even the basics of our perceptual, motivational, emotional and cognitive systems made their appearance on the cosmic stage. Thus, it could be argued that sexual differentiation is more ‘real’ than even ‘up’ or ‘down’, ‘forward’ or ‘back’– more so than pain or pleasure – and, as well, that its perception (given the necessity of that perception to successful reproduction) is key to the successful propagation of life itself.  

The fact that such perception and sex-linked action was possible even before nervous systems themselves evolved should provide proof to anyone willing to think that the sexual binary is both fundamental objective fact and primary psychological axiom.

There’s more: sexual differentiation is observable at every level of biological function. Sperm and egg are sexually differentiated; the 40 trillion cells that make up the human body each have a nucleus containing 23 paired chromosomes. Every single cell (with some minor exceptions) in a woman is female, and every single cell in a man male.  

Physiological differences between the sexes, in addition to those that obtain at the cellular level, are manifold. Human males and females differ, on average, in hormonal function, brain organisation, height, weight, strength, endurance, facial features and patterns of bodily hair, to take some obvious examples. But the differences are not limited to the physical. Men and women differ enough in temperament so that they can be distinguished with about 75% accuracy on that basis alone. If differences in interest are taken into account, that distinction becomes even more accurate. Such temperamental and interest differences are also larger, not smaller, in more gender-neutral societies, a strong indication of their biological basis.

Identity is not subjective

The claim of the so-called “progressives”, however, is that feelings alone are sufficient to define personhood. This claim is simultaneously ignorant, preposterous and malevolent. Even if biology was ignored entirely, identity is not and cannot be deemed merely subjective – not least because the environment to which each individual must adapt is social, as well as natural, and not solipsistic. This means that every person must, by the very nature of being human, adopt a way of being that he or she cannot entirely choose.

. . .

This essential truth – that subjective feeling does not and cannot define identity – is now being willfully ignored by those who have a duty to know better.

The American Psychological Association and other ideologically-captured professional bodies have recently claimed that “gender-affirming” care constitutes the proper clinical standard. Furthermore, under the deceptive guise of anti-“conversion-therapy” legislation, this so-called standard has been rendered something legally required.

This is a problem so serious that it threatens not only the utility and integrity of both the clinical and medical professions, but the stability of society itself.

Subjective feeling is not a negotiated identity of the sophisticated and socially-integrated form. It is instead, something akin to raw emotion – something shallow, impulsive, and mutable; something that does not iterate well, in its hedonic excesses, across social situations or time. Thus, those who argue that that emotion (in its most short-term manifestation) must be, ethically and by law, the determining measure of “identity,” of clinical and medical practice, and of legal personhood, are insisting with force on the adoption of an idea as imprudent and immature as can possibly be conceptualised.

. . .

What constitutes “female” has now been reduced to “any human with a hole, however produced, that a man can use as a substitute or replacement for masturbation or dyadic intercourse.” That definition is the ultimate in sexism. That is far and away a more reductionist and derogatory conceptualisation of woman than anything previously foisted on women by even the most oppressive of patriarchal and misogynistic tyrants.

Holding people accountable

The use of puberty blockers, hormone treatment, and surgical intervention on confused children is one of the worst moral crimes that clinical counselors and physicians have perpetrated in the history of their respective professions. It’s at the level of the Tuskegee-syphilis-experiment or widespread-casual-lobotomy-professional conduct. It’s forced sterilisation-eugenics level malpractice, unconscionable and unforgivable. What happened in the UK at the Tavistock clinic was a travesty. To dub it “bad science” is to barely skim the surface. What is happening in the name of narcissistic compassion has crossed the line from self-serving ignorance to the outright felonious.

There is simply no excuse whatsoever, clinical, ethical, political or medical, for this outrage to continue. We are going to look back on this period as another epoch where a form of contagious insanity took hold in multiple forms. First, the trans epidemic itself; and second the epidemic of enabling false virtue, masquerading as compassion that impels those who should know better to insist on the surgical mutilation and sterilisation of children to further terrible claims to a non-existent moral propriety and depth of “care.”

This has to stop, and the perpetrators held responsible. There is every bit of evidence available to suggest that sex is not only immutable, but fundamentally binary, and that the perception of such is as fundamental as any perception conceivable. There is simply no excuse for counsellors and physicians to validate the claims of all-knowing subjective identity put forward by the gender radicals and their “allies.” There is no evidence whatsoever that minors have the wisdom to grant truly informed consent to those delusional and greedy enough to offer them an enticing physical solution to their primarily psychological problems.

There is sufficient evidence to assume that enabling such behavior – even promoting it – has already caused a psychological epidemic among confused young people, whose intensity is still mounting and spread still increasing. There is no data indicating that early transition is in anyone’s best interest, and plenty to suggest that “first do no harm” is the proper course of action when dealing with children who are expressing bodily dysmorphia. The counsellors who refuse to grant credence to this multitude of claims are lying; the physicians and surgeons who rush forward to offer serious and irreversible intervention when mere delay resolves 90% of the cases are acting in no one’s interest but their own (as was clearly the case with the Tavistock clinic).

Enough truly is enough – and there has already been plenty more than enough.

There's more at the link.  I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

I think we owe Dr. Peterson a debt of thanks for daring to speak out against the politically correct perspectives surrounding "trans activism", and laying out the factual, biological, medical truth of the matter.  I strongly suggest that you pass on the link to this article, and/or the link to the full version (provided above), to your friends and relatives.  We need to make sure that the truth is heard.

Peter