Free Republic

Twenty-eight years ago, the release of “When Harry Met Sally” highlighted one big debate: whether men and women could really be just friends. That question may still be up in the air, but now we are being forced to confront a more fundamental debate: whether men can really become women. America is in the midst of what has been called a “transgender moment.” In the space of a year, transgender issues went from something that most Americans had never heard of to a cause claiming the mantle of civil rights. But can a boy truly be “trapped” in a girl’s...

Sex reassignment is as natural as being born, some in the media tell us. And many Americans are buying it. But a growing chorus of dissenters made up of physicians, researchers, and even transgender individuals is beginning to paint a far different picture of the truth. These dissenters are now coming forward to expose just how harmful gender transition and reassignment are—both medically and sociologically speaking. First, consider recent revelations about how problematic sex reassignment surgery is as a therapy for gender dysphoria. In an interview with The Telegraph, world-renowned genital reconstructive surgeon Miroslav Djordjevic said his clinics are experiencing...

California is first in the nation to agree to pay for a transgender inmate's sex reassignment operation, but the state's settlement of a recent court case sidesteps the question of whether such surgery is a constitutional right. The state concedes that Shiloh Quine, who entered the California prison system in 1980 as Rodney, suffers severe gender dysphoria that can be treated only by physically conforming her body to her psychological gender." The agreement to settle Quine's federal lawsuit seeking the surgery was announced late Friday, with a brief statement from the corrections department that "every medical doctor and mental health...

The idea that one’s sex is a feeling, not a fact, has permeated our culture and is leaving casualties in its wake. Gender dysphoria should be treated with psychotherapy, not surgery. For forty years as the University Distinguished Service Professor of Psychiatry at Johns Hopkins Medical School—twenty-six of which were also spent as Psychiatrist in Chief of Johns Hopkins Hospital—I’ve been studying people who claim to be transgender. Over that time, I’ve watched the phenomenon change and expand in remarkable ways. A rare issue of a few men—both homosexual and heterosexual men, including some who sought sex-change surgery because they...

Greg referenced this article by Paul McHugh (former psychiatrist in chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital) on the show Tuesday, and it's worth posting an excerpt here, as well: [P]olicy makers and the media are doing no favors either to the public or the transgendered by treating their confusions as a right in need of defending rather than as a mental disorder that deserves understanding, treatment and prevention. This intensely felt sense of being transgendered constitutes a mental disorder in two respects. The first is that the idea of sex misalignment is simply mistaken—it does not correspond with physical reality. The...