Validation Without Endorsement
How We Can Provide Validation And Compassion To Trans People Without Endorsing Regressive Gender Ideology
‘She’ can identify how ‘she’ likes but ‘she’ shouldn’t be allowed to play in women’s sports. We’ve heard this from many different sources now from current and former sports stars to scientists and biologists with regard to a transgendered swimmer for the University of Pennsylvania. But reread that sentence, does anything sound off to you? Why wouldn’t SHE in this case Lia Thomas be allowed to play in women’s sports? The reality is, this isn’t a SHE that’s playing in sports, this is a HE. And HE shouldn’t be allowed to play in women’s sports. It is discriminatory and frankly cruel to say a fully qualified SHE cannot play in women’s sports. And this is the cognitive dissonance within gender ideology activism. Polls suggest that most people disagree with biological males playing women’s sports. But if transwomen are women why can’t these ‘women’ play in women’s sports? The reality is transwomen are not women and that’s why they shouldn’t be allowed to play in women’s sports.
Many well intentioned people buy into this argument that transwomen are women and transmen are men in an attempt to be kind, compassionate, and inclusive. There is also a bizarre belief that if trans people are not affirmed in their new identity they will commit suicide. If this were true, this should be treated as a mental health crisis and these people should be hospitalized, not have their sex organs cut off. Someone who is suicidal may not be in the right head space to make a decision to sterilize themselves. Yet their decision to do so is not only not questioned, but celebrated even though we have data that shows 20% of those who move forward with surgery actually commit suicide years after surgery.
But most people are not thinking this issue all the way through. We cannot say transwomen are women but should be prohibited from playing sports. Or transwomen are women but should be prohibited from changing in women’s locker rooms. This would be discriminatory because if they were indeed women they should be allowed to be in these women’s spaces. These people are not women and we all know this. Presenting in a stereotypical female fashion, having strong personal beliefs that one is a woman, or even taking hormones and having surgery does not change one’s biological sex. Most rational people know this to be true. But this movement is not based on rationality. If it were, we could recognize that transwomen are a subset of men and transmen are a subset of women.
The cognitive dissonance and what one would call doublethink within this movement is truly something to behold! We are expected to accept that men using only the power of their thoughts can be women but at the same time also recognize who the real women are without saying that out loud to offend those men. Men and women, males and females are a biological reproductive sex that will still exist regardless of any newfound bizarre ideology. Because males and females are different and have different bodily functions and purposes, it is highly relevant to understand who these people are. We need specific terms to refer to males in their healthcare and especially females and their healthcare. And so while this movement insists we call men with penises female we have to know internally it is a lie. And we have to know this because we know the definition of female and what that denotes and we need to have these separate terms in order to differentiate in many different senses, especially healthcare the males from the females to ensure they are receiving the proper care and protections etc.
Although we should be sympathetic and compassionate to the suffering of others, we must also not lose sight of reality. There is a point when we are no longer ‘being kind’ and actually being cruel. To humor the delusions of others is only to prolong their suffering and furthering their disconnection to reality. When we enable the addiction of an alcoholic by providing him alcohol, we may be providing temporary comfort to him. We may even be saving his life because of a possible suicide attempt or even death from physical dependence but we are not saving him in the long run. What causes short term alleviation may lead to long term consequences including death. It is important that we recognize our own ‘savior’ feelings and not let our desire to be seen as kind to override doing the right thing for someone which may cause discomfort for us all. We can provide validation and reasonable accommodation without enabling delusional ideations which can lead to unrealistic expectations in the future because as we all know no one change their sex.
As a trained therapist I understand the power of validation. In my experience, validation may be one of the most important things we desire even more so than love. To feel seen, understood, and heard can be life changing. But we can validate others without agreeing with them. In order to accept trans people we do NOT have to agree that they can truly change into a new identity. We can respect transwomen without believing they are actually women. When we show that we understand (or are attempting to understand) the identities of others we are providing a form of validation. When we accept those as they are, we do not need to accept their personal beliefs.
As a Catholic it is illegal to discriminate against me, even in a private business. One cannot throw me out of a business or fire me from a job because of my religious beliefs. However, one also does not need to accept my religious beliefs either. You may hate Catholics and everything about the faith but that doesn't impact my identity or faith at all. What you believe about Catholicism has absolutely no bearing on my identity as a Catholic. As long as you do not openly discriminate against me or physically harm me you are free to hate everything about me and my religion . And I cannot make you validate my faith by saying you believe in Jesus or the Trinity or any other tenets of my faith. And this is the way the framers of our country intended it. We are all free to live as we wish in peace as long as we do not harm others. However live and let live is not what militant trans rights activists are fighting for.
Trans people have and should have all the same rights as everyone else. No one should be permitted to discriminate against them based on their gender identity. We frequently hear from trans activists that they are fighting for their rights. When asked what rights they do not have, we often hear rights to healthcare. Trans people not only have rights to healthcare (all of us do, including those here illegally, without insurance, or the means to pay for their care), increasingly insurers cover many if not all of their ‘gender affirming care’. They receive more coverage for procedures and medications than the average citizen does. Breast augmentation is not covered for dysphoric women but it often is for a dysphoric transwoman (man). Many men with low testosterone cannot afford testosterone increasing medication because of lack of coverage from insurance but this is covered for transmen (women). So this argument for healthcare is a fallacy.
We also hear from activists that a lack of affirmation and acceptance from the general public and access to women’s single sex spaces is a ‘right’ they are denied. This is where women’s, children’s, parent’s, and the rights of us all clash with this movement. It is not a ‘right’ to enforce anyone to affirm the identity of anyone. It is a violation of MY rights to force me to believe a man can become a woman. It is a violation of my rights to force me to use ‘preferred pronouns’ that I do not believe align with reality. There are currently cases making their way throughout the courts on this very issue. Teachers in school districts are pushing back on being forced to affirm gender identities in school. So far they have been successful in pushing back. No doubt more free speech cases will come about. We are seeing a number of court cases in the UK where women have been fired and even visited by police for stating their beliefs that biological sex is real. This should be incredibly alarming for ALL of us in a democratic society. Not just because this is an attack on reality and truth, which is it, but because a hallmark of a democracy is to have the freedom to express oneself in a pluralistic society. A push to chill free speech would be a massive blow to democracy and a huge push toward tyranny.
If this were a movement of freedom of expression and fighting for the right to live as themselves all forms of transism would be ‘accepted’ (transracialism, ableism, ageism, speciesism, ect). Currently because of the political nature of this movement, oddly only transgenderism is ‘accepted’ among the elites. Additionally if transgenderism were just about being seen as the opposite sex why is there a need to appropriate every single aspect of the physiology of the new sex in which they wish to identify as by pretending to suffer from physiological functions such as menstruation? Social media is riddled with stories of men claiming to menstruate and even accounts of fake pregnancies and abortions. This is obviously impossible and clear evidence of appropriation. And so those pushing this movement may appeal to the public to accept them as they see themselves. But its important to establish boundaries as to how we see them, as those presenting as the opposite sex but not actually the opposite sex.
In a free democratic society the freedom to believe as we wish is essential. We will cease to exist as a free society if we do not have the ability to speak, believe, and express ourselves as we wish. Human civilization has always known the difference between men and women. For THOUSANDS of years we have understood the biological differences between male and female. Our society as well as EVERY other society on earth separates men and women, males and females where appropriate. To try to demolish human norms that have been in place for millennia and cast aside human sexual reproduction in place of ‘gender identity’ or regressive stereotypical male/female presentation would be a lesson in futility! Humans will always consist of TWO sexes, because we are a sexually reproducing species. No matter how uncomfortable or dysphoric one may be, we cannot erase biological sex. To suggest as some do, that biological sex is ‘socially constructed’ is delusional. Reproducing ourselves and continuing the human race is almost as essentially to us as food, water, and air. If our parents (ONE male and ONE female) did not create us, none of us would exist! NO ONE exists without human sexual reproduction. There is nothing ‘socially constructed’ about that!
It is high time we accept truth and focus on what we can change within the bounds of reality. I have sympathy for those who wish to have been born in another body. But billions of others (myself included) wish we were as well. We cannot swap bodies. And so we must make due with what we have. For trans people, a superficial presentation is as close as they will ever get to being the opposite sex, and this must be enough. They must look inside themselves and find their own validation because they cannot force it from others. And we as a society must find a way to truly be kind to dysphoric or confused people while not furthering detachment from reality.