Ben Shapiro Discusses The Issue Of Transgenderism

Interesting. Do you think it's a mental illness?

What happens when some guy with 10 fancy degrees gets paid to say transgenderism is not mathematically equal to cisgenderism? Do you hide under the covers?

That's some pretty cowardly anti-intellectualism.

That's a neat trick. Insinuate that someone might do something they have shown no sign of doing and then accuse them of being anti-intellectual based on your evidence-free insinuation.

Here are my definitions of

Mental disorders/mental illness:

Relatively (as in statistically) unusual mental processes that regularly prohibit their bearer from functioning as they desire (with respect to what is physically and pragmatically possible), as well as prohibiting or interfering with pragmatic ways of functioning that most people can achieve with respect to going about day-to-day affairs such as preparing meals or otherwise acquiring food, performing a job if necessary, taking care of whatever errands are necessary for the person in question, interacting with others socially, etc.

"Severe" mental disorders/mental illness:

The above, where the disorder/illness affects the individual's behavior to an extent where they can't manage to take care of themselves to remain healthy and/or out of legal trouble and/or they can't manage to not put other persons' health/well-being at risk.


Transgenderism doesn't fit that.

Other nonsense from Shapiro:

He says, "What's making people suicidal is that this is a mental illness."

Mental illness does not entail that someone is suicidal. So that something is a mental illness wouldn't be sufficient for someone to be suicidal. There would have to be another reason for being suicidal. If he wants to argue that being suicidal is a mental illness he can argue that, but then he'd have to argue that transgenders for some reason tend to have concomitant mental illnesses, and that would need to be explained.

He says, "It is barbaric to suggest that a man can become a woman and a woman a man with a snip of the knife."

Transgenders wouldn't say that a man is becoming a woman or a woman is becoming a man with a snip of the knife. This is related to him not understanding the basics of transgenderism or the distinction between gender and biological sex. With transgenders, a biologically sexed man can be a woman per subjective gender. There's no becoming there. It's already a done deal. The surgery is simply done to change the body to more closely resemble the subjective gender.

"It's horrifying, it's mutilation . . . "

People can change their bodies however they'd like to change them. It's their body to do whatever they'd like with. They can get tattoos, scarification, implant horns, file their teeth, insert lip plates--whatever.

"The idea that theses are women . . . it's utter tripe."

No one is arguing that they're women per biological sex. They're women per subjective gender. If he's going to debate this stuff, he should at least be able to understand the view so that he can present a non-straw man version of it.

"Female brain existing in a male body"

Isn't stating that literally. It's a manner of speaking for someone subjectively feeling that they're female, but in terms of biological sex, they're male.

Anyway, I can add more later, but I doubt many will read and think about what I've already written, so . . .

A lot of the anti-trans brigade seem to think genital surgery is the only thing involved in the process. Some transpeople never even get the surgery or consider it only of minor importance. Some others only do it because the law where they live requires them to do so to be recognised in their new gender. And some others only do it so they can take fewer hormones.

The point is you're advocating blind faith in authority. If Ben Shapiro had a psychology degree, we ought to be scrutinizing him MORE due to obvious conflict on interest, and never under any circumstances decide that we are "unqualified" to reason. Science is a process not a set of beliefs.