Slate Ignores Consequences of Youth Gender Transition, Claims Concerns Are Rooted in 'Eugenics'
As politicians and social activists continue to fuse American politics with transgender activism, concerns regarding the harmful impact of their ideology are often dismissed.
Last week, a Slate article referred to a series of state-level bills looking to preserve children’s biological integrity as a “wave of anti-transgender legislation” rooted in the concept of “eugenics.”
The purpose of many of the bills is to prevent female athletes from having to compete against men who identify as women, and to protect children from experimental transgender therapies.
Still, Slate insisted that “anti-trans campaigners” are trying to ban “undesirable people” from society by “suppressing” and “punishing those people as early as possible.”
“This should sound very similar to the goals of eugenics movements, which seek to encourage the right people to reproduce while discouraging the wrong sort of people from contaminating others with their inferior genes.”
While the outlet may believe it is standing up for a marginalized group, the article ignored the potential consequences of teaching children to deny biological realities.
Female Athletes Competing Against Biological Men
Slate claimed there was “no evidence” to suggest that female-identifying men outcompete women when they are allowed to participate in girls’ sports.
“In the case of women’s sports, the idea being advanced by anti-trans interests is that cisgender girls need to be protected from trans women who, due to a presumed superior athleticism garnered from advantages in height and musculature of cis male athletes, might unfairly dominate them in competition.”
Contrary to Slate’s opinion, men do have a superior biological edge over women, even if they have taken steps to transition into females.
A study published last December in the British Journal of Sports Medicine found that men who identify as women still “retain an advantage in muscle mass, volume, and strength over female controls.”
Before starting hormone therapy, the study reported men were able to perform “31% more push-ups and 15% more sit-ups in 1 min and ran 1.5 miles 21% faster than their female counterparts.”
While athletic advantages declined somewhat after two years of therapy, the men identifying as women still held a 12 percent running speed advantage over their female peers.
Even if female athletes are deprived of the opportunity to earn scholarships or set records, Slate does not appear to see that as an issue. To the outlet, the perceived benefit of allowing biological men to compete in women’s sports outweighs the cost.
“School-age sports are a somewhat different matter, but the primary purpose of these activities is to promote fitness, goal setting, good peer relationships, and healthy competition, rather than setting records or making money,” Slate reported.
“To simply ban some girls from participating outright, without recognizing that they too deserve these benefits or even attempting to find a path toward fair inclusion, is an extreme punishment, and it targets a group of young girls who are already highly stigmatized.”
But people concerned with the idea of biological men competing against women are not arguing that transgender people should be barred from sports altogether. Groups like Save Women’s Sports merely want to maintain athletic parity by preserving “biology-based eligibility standards” in female sports.
The purpose of a women’s sports category is to allow women to compete with athletes on their biological level and prevent their achievements from being overshadowed by men. Ignoring the biological distinctions between males and females sacrifices the integrity of girls’ sports for the sake of a political agenda.
Children Using Puberty Blockers to Suppress Their Biological Sex
Despite the “experimental” nature of puberty blockers, some transgender activists support children taking drugs to delay their adolescent development.
Slate promoted puberty blockers as a safe tool for “gender-variant children” to alleviate the “psychological distress and embarrassment” associated with the development of “secondary sex characteristics.”
But for someone like Walter Heyer, a former transgender woman, hormone therapy and sex-change surgery did not resolve the deeper issues causing his gender dysphoria, and the treatments could not mask his true sex.
Heyer runs the Sex Change Regret website, a resource for people like him who regret their gender transition and need help “detransitioning” back to their biological sex.
Transgender activists may believe they’re helping people by supporting their decision to transition. But as Heyer told The Western Journal in February, affirming transgender individuals’ gender “personas” fails to address the underlying mental health issues behind the decision, and validates the creation of a persona that is “at odds with who they really are.”
“We don’t know if they’re suffering from autogynephilia transvestic fetish disorders, if they have dissociative disorder, bipolar disorder, body dysmorphia. There’s something that is involved in them wanting to destroy who they are so that they can identify as someone who they’re not,” he said.
“So this has been what I’ve been dealing with and talking about working with people. And when an individual contacts me directly and I work with them, that’s the question I always ask them: Why do you want to destroy who you are and try to become someone who you can never be?”
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