Armstrong Williams: The rise of transgenderism | STAFF COMMENTARY
Over the past several decades, the United States has seen a rise in power of the transgender movement. Once a small subset of the gay rights movement, it has now become mainstream and embraced by the left. As a result, the question “Can you define the word ‘woman’?” has become politicized.
The roots of the modern transgender movement in America can be traced back to 1952, when Christine Jorgensen publicly announced that she had physically transitioned from male to female through gender reassignment surgery, turning her into an overnight celebrity. The next year, the film “Glen or Glenda” debuted, with a promotional poster proclaiming: “I changed my sex!” In 1960, California chemist Virginia Prince launched a bi-monthly magazine titled Transvestia: The Journal of the American Society for Equality in Dress; it published for the next 25 years.
Following the launch of Transvestia, the transgender movement experienced rapid expansion, as did awareness of it. In 1966, a group of trans women confronted police in a San Francisco cafe in response to perceived harassment, leading to a riot that spilled into the streets. Three years later, more riots erupted, this time in New York’s Stonewall Inn, with trans activist Marsha Johnson playing a pivotal role in the resistance.
In the 1970s, Minneapolis outlawed discrimination against transgender people, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a transgender woman was eligible to play as female in the U.S. Open. In the 1980s, “gender identity disorder” was added to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), though the term was changed to “gender dysphoria” in the 2010s.
Today, the term transgender is widely known, and the left has adopted it as a social cause, even though only 1.6% of adults in America assert that they are transgender or nonbinary, according to a 2022 Pew Research Center survey. Younger adults within that group are most likely to identify as something other than their sex assigned at birth, with 5.1% of those between the ages of 18 and 29 saying they are trans or nonbinary.
Despite the small number of transgender persons in the United States, the movement has permeated many facets of life. This can be attributed to changing education environments in classrooms and social media, among other factors.
The “marked incongruence between their experienced or expressed gender and the one they were assigned at birth” is how the DSM defines gender dysphoria. Its cause remains unknown, and it does not have an agreed-upon course of treatment. The term “gender dysphoria,” has itself become a subject of political controversy.
In some classrooms across the country, educators are raising LGBTQ flags and teaching students in the elementary age range that one’s designated gender at birth may not always reflect their true identity. Such a serious injustice necessitates immediate rectification and reform. Students in elementary school have limited knowledge regarding sexuality. Being informed that they could be a different gender is confusing to them, and, worse, it could influence them.
It is worth noting that research, albeit controversial, has shown that as many as 94% of children who experience gender dysphoria eventually grow out of it and opt not to identify as transgender in their adult lives. However, according to the Trevor Project, a national organization dedicated to preventing suicide among LGBTQ youth, around 60% of transgender youth experience symptoms of depression and 70% experience anxiety.
Depression affects the general population at a much lower rate of approximately 5-6%, according to the World Health Organization. In addition, around 0.5% of the general population in the U.S. has attempted suicide, according to the National Survey of Drug Use and Mental Health. Meanwhile, nearly half of transgender youth have considered suicide and nearly 20% have attempted it.
The first question we must ask is: What is this depression caused by? Could it be, like the media would have you believe, that transgender rights are persistently violated? Of course not. On the contrary, transgender people are thriving. They are protected by numerous state laws, and they are often given more protections by schools than many other classes of students.
Of course, we can’t forget drag story time, where libraries throughout the country invite males dressed in women’s attire to read books to children. It is absolutely unnecessary to expose children to males flamboyantly dressed in women’s clothing in order for them to hear stories. The mind of a child is sacred and must not be exposed to these sorts of things. It can corrupt the mind and may lead innocent children down the road of gender dysphoria and ultimately depression.
Tragically, transgenderism has compromised the rights of biological women. Undoubtedly, women continue to advocate for equality in the United States as they face significant disparities in the workforce and in public life. However, prior to the complete realization of gender equality for women, transgenderism emerged and complicated the situation. As a result, males are now beating women in all aspects of life. Do you recall in 2015, when Caitlyn Jenner was named one of Glamour Magazine’s “Women of the Year”? The recipient of that award was not a woman who had struggled her entire life to be a woman in a world dominated by men. The recipient was a biological male formerly known as Bruce.
Likewise, transgenderism has entered the realm of athletics. Unsurprisingly, biological males identifying as transgender have emerged victorious in athletic competitions against biological women on a multitude of occasions. Biological men have won significant accolades against biological women in swimming, golf and even weightlifting, the sport that exemplifies strength disparities. Men who have undergone the “transition” from male to female are often found to have been mediocre, at best, among their male counterparts, but they prove superior when they begin competing against women.
How about sex changes for minors? It should be obvious that the notion that a confused child should undertake surgical gender transition from their biological sex to an alternative gender is utterly absurd and repugnant to the average person. However, 54% of Americans oppose legislation that criminalizes providing medical care for gender transition to minors. Both science and common sense support the notion that it is not until the mid-to-late 20s, that the brain reaches complete maturity and development. This is the reason why children often engage in foolish behavior without contemplating the repercussions and why a contract formed by a child is deemed void in legal terms. Yet, when it comes to transgenderism, all of that goes out the window and delusion seems to take over.
The facts are quite simple: Men are not women, and women are not men. This is the reality that everyone on Earth must face. Those who experience gender dysphoria need treatment, not encouragement in their confusion. For too long, America has allowed itself to be divided and degraded along lines of common sense by the transgender movement. Unless those with rational minds lose their reluctance to opine on the matter, the utter insanity of the the transgender movement will, like a cancer, continue to persist.
Armstrong Williams (awilliams@baltsun.com; @arightside) is a political analyst, syndicated columnist and owner of the broadcasting company, Howard Stirk Holdings. He is also part owner of The Baltimore Sun.