At What Point Does Transsexualism Become A Conservative Value?

I want to quote from my late friend Steven Goldberg’s (he went to his judgement in 2022) book When Wish Replaces Thought: Why So Much of What You Believe is False, a work all of you should own. The book came out early 1991, summarizing his decades of thought. Chapter 3 is “What Is Normal? The Question of Homosexuality”.

You do not hear much about causes of homosexuality these days. From academia, I mean. There was in the whole of the last century, up until about when Goldberg wrote, “active” research on the topic. There were, of course, various theories: overbearing mothers, immaturity, genetic predisposition, recruitment and so on, even viruses. We don’t need to concern ourselves today with any of these, except to notice that people then thought that curious, non-reproductive, and therefore dysgenic, behaviors like homosexuality should have a cause, or causes, and that it was well to discover what these might be.

Individual disposition toward homosexual acts was treated as an abnormality, or dis-ease if you like, by the American Psychiatric Association, and so noted in its early editions of its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual. Perhaps you recall seeing one of those old black-and-white public service films shown in school recommending the kiddies stay away from weirdos who take too keen an interest in young boys. The APA agreed back then. Until, as you might know, under the pressure of activists during its annual meeting in 1973, they voted to remove homosexuality from its list of mental maladies. Follow the science. Goldberg:

However, it is worth noting that a poll of thousands of APA members taken after the APA vote found that two-thirds of those polled feel that homosexuality is a disorder. The difference between the original vote and the poll may merely reflect a theoretical distinction between two types of abnormality; if this is the case, then—despite the fact that the APA vote is invariably invoked as evidence that the members find homosexuality normal—the original vote did not indicate that the members considered homosexuality normal. More likely, the difference between the vote and the poll indicates, as Arno Karlen has suggested, that many members publicly argued that homosexuality is normal (and voted this way) while privately believing homosexuality to be abnormal. Many members do, in fact, admit privately that they did this. They justify this in terms of humanitarianism. It used to be called lying.

About the current almost complete lack of interest in causes, a search through recent research reveals papers with sentences like “‘conversion therapy’ to ‘cure’ homosexuality”. The scare quotes are theirs, and reveal an ignorance of many documented instances in talking people out of homosexual behavior. But notice this: the research has been inverted. It went from asking why one would engage in homosexual behavior to asking why any one would object. In both cases, then and now, the underlying premise was the same: bad behavior. Either (then) in those engaging in non-creative sex-like activity or (now) those stating opinions against such activities. Causes for the bad were and are sought, it’s only what is good and bad inverted.

Incidentally, causes for the good are rarely pursued by utilitarians.

It’s anyway obvious that in 1973 there were still many cultural proscriptions against homosexual behavior, and that these gradually declining until 2015 when the Supreme Court, like stalwart archeologists, discovered the heretofore hidden “right” for people of the same sex to claim they were “married”. There were of course movements before the 1973 vote, but that vote made the movement official, as it were. We went from proscribing homosexual acts to prescribing them (hello, Pride events) over a span of fifty to sixty years. So acculturated are we now that even the necessity for Pride parades is not felt as strongly.

At this date, homosexuality is fully conservative. I don’t mean there is complete unanimity on the subject, there isn’t on any subject. But “sodomy is good” is seen at all levels of society as the default position. Of course, no one puts it that way, because there are still lingering doubts about health. But that people “are” homosexuals is rarely doubted. The cause believed is that people are “born that way.” No evidence is adduced for this: it is merely assumed. Evidence against it is dismissed or ignored, and lies unknown.

All named conservative organizations take homosexuality as normal. When two men, both self-labeling as homosexual, purchase a baby boy for them to recreate with, we see a pile on of prominent conservatives offering fulsome praise and hearty congratulation. What remains conservative about this is that the men don’t demand special consideration because of their activities. Here’s a fair summary, got from searching X using Grok:

Dave Rubin is the prominent conservative who, along with his husband David Janet, welcomed twin boys via surrogacy in May 2022. He announced the joyful news on X with photos of the couple holding ultrasound signs reading “Baby 1 Coming Soon” and “Baby 2 Coming Soon,” writing, “It’s true. All of it.” The post received widespread support from fellow conservatives, including congratulations from Megyn Kelly (“WHAT?! This is AMAZING NEWS! So happy for you!”), Christina Pushaw (“Congratulations!”), PragerU (“So happy for you!”), Meghan McCain (“OMG YESSSS!!!!!”), Brandon Straka (“That’s such exciting news!”), Sara Gonzales (“Congratulations!”), and Kat Timpf (“Yay!!”). This moment highlighted unity within conservative circles, despite ongoing debates about family structures.

We have already reached the point in transsexualism, or crossdressing-up, “transitions” being impossible, where the Supreme Court discovered a hidden “right” to “sexual orientation”. That “right” was teased out in 2020 by Neil Gorsuch, who is labeled a conservative. (The Kabbala doesn’t hold as many secrets as The Constitution, it seems.)

There was, and remains, however, a conservative counter-reaction to crossdressing-up, because of two things: its relative newness, as most new things are seen as suspicious by conservatives, and doctors with drugs and knives chasing after kids. Newness never lasts, obviously, and objections based on novelty always fade. The desire for some Experts and doctors to drug and cut up and drug the kids remains, and many still recoil from this in horror.

But notice that a great number, perhaps even a majority already, believe it is the “right” for a “consenting” (self-consenting?) adult to crossdress-up. Many may still tease those who crossdress-up, especially for their absurd looks, but only a minority still argue that crossdresser-upers ought to be outlawed in public and punished for their behavior, much as homosexuality used to be.

Research has already greatly made the switch, as before. Here’s a recent article which even correctly observes men who undergo surgical beauty treatments to better resemble females still kill themselves in large numbers. Instead of arguing that therefore have oneself disfigured ought to be banned, they conclude “the necessity for gender-sensitive mental health support following gender-affirming surgery to address post-surgical psychological risks.”

Yet crossdress-up is not yet a fully conservative value. Though, as to be expected, we have already seen the odd “The Conservative Case For” articles on the subject. These always originate in “elite” conservative organs, because the “elites” are those who always surrender first. To become a conservative value a thing has to be accepted, and even promoted, by a sizable majority at all levels of society. We’re not there yet, but we’re close. Even though some recent data seems to argue against his.

Newsweek has a headline recently announcing “New study finds young Americans are increasingly identifying as heterosexual again.” Which, as is clear, means “sexual orientation” isn’t fixed and depends on environmental stimuli after all. Though that conclusion won’t be drawn or recognized by elites.

Here is a picture which the gentleman posting it says shows “trans identification is in free fall among the young”.

These are particular places and not society at large. He next says (and shows a similar chart) “Non-conforming sexual identity (queer, questioning, etc) is also in sharp decline. Gay and lesbian are stable while heterosexuality has rebounded by around 10 points since 2023.”

It is the stability that our eyes should be drawn to. When crossdress-up hit it was as a fad. Entire classrooms of girls, as girls are prone to, suddenly announced one day they were “trans” and the like. This publicity engendered similar stunts. That is the nature of fads. It was the sharp rise of this fad that alarmed conservatives (and delighted progressives).

Ardor cools and fads fade. Gaining popularity by announcing one is some fantastical new sexual creation was guaranteed in many places. “Genders” exploded in number. The adults were suitably shocked, fun was had, but focus on such things is hard to sustain, especially when one is threatened with drugs or surgery. Calm returns.

“Sexual orientations” per se have not faded, however. Here is another source of data, this one not just at fad-prone universities, but conducted more generally:

This kind of trend is similar all over (he shows later in his thread). There are hints of a leveling off in areas which were exposed to the idea longer, but there’s no sense the base idea of “sexual orientation” is going away. Crossdress-up is merely the latest addition to “orientations”.

We still await the abatement of about moms, anxious to score popularity points, bringing sons to convert them to “daughters”. This will happen, and the outrage over the matter will also wane. There will still remain a core of children who are put through the procedures, but it will all be dressed up in medical verbiage and technical jargon. The philosophical idea that one can be “born in the wrong body” will have been accepted to great degree.

Like with homosexuality, searching for causes for these conditions will find less and less interest. Instead, work in diagnosing “correct” forms of “being born wrong” will be chased, as we saw above. Academics will ask why people object to this obvious tenet.

If the fifty to sixty year mark has any bearing, then we are almost there. Say another decade, plus or minus. It was the late 1970s that witnessed many sympathetic portrayals of crossdress-up in entertainment. We’ve already had the Court decide in favor of “sexual orientation”. And we see “elite” conservative organizations like the Manhattan Institute employ, loudly and unapologetically, crossdress-upers.

Some kind of compromise in lower education with boys crossdressing as girls and playing in girls sports will be reached. My guess is that once the percent of crossdress-upping levels off, then there will then be, in many or most sportingh contests, an equal number of boys on either side, which will seen as “fair”. But we might just as easily see the medical profession declare it’s “unhealthy” for crossdressing-up boys at that age to engage in sports. In any case, some way of seeing it as “normal” will emerge.

Once that battle, if you like, has been won, the next thrust will be lowering the age of “consent”. Which, of course, has begun. And we have already seen (and no counter-arguments were brought forward) that if we accept “sexual orientation” as a good, then children, seeing things like two men claiming to be married and buying children being congratulated by the great and mighty, then they will find good reason to experiment in this line.

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