A recent article in Vice described how certain “life-altering” surgeries had been deemed “non-essential” during this COVID-19 crisis. The author was talking about gender-transition surgeries, and worried that, “in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic trans communities . . . are being flooded with reports of postponed and canceled surgeries in the U.S., U.K., Spain, Thailand, and elsewhere, leading to enormous stress and disappointment on top of a global health crisis.”
Despite what the article claims and largely takes for granted, the benefits of so called “gender-affirming” surgery (a strange name for a procedure that denies one’s biological sex) in order to treat gender dysphoria is strongly disputed. The best studies, as I described in a recent BreakPoint commentary, “found that medical transition was not the solution to the patients’ problems, especially in the case of male-to-female transitions.”
In other words, such “treatment” is driven by ideology, not evidence. One of the fundamental tests of a worldview is what I call “the test of the real world.” In other words, sometimes an ideology looks great on paper, even realistic and compelling and compassionate, but fails miserably when lived out. For example, Communism.
Contemporary gender ideology not only fails this test by failing to deliver the green grass on the other side of mutilating surgery, but in a way made even more obvious in this time of crisis.
Reading the Vice piece, it occurred to me just how rare this kind of article suddenly is, when just a month ago, they were ubiquitous. In fact, in our present crisis, the piece comes across as indulgent and out-of-touch.
While the author acknowledged that “medical facilities may soon become overtaxed for everyone,” it didn’t even mention other procedures deemed “non-essential,” such as (in Massachusetts for example) colonoscopies, which can prevent colon cancer and save lives. Or hip replacement surgery, which would easily fall into the category of “life-altering” for people suffering from chronic pain.
SOURCE: Christian Post, John Stonestreet and Roberto Rivera
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