When evil is unmasked

First, they said nobody was transing kids. Then, they said it would be no big deal even if people were. You know what comes next, because you’ve seen this movie before: “Now it’s happening, and it’s a good thing.”

“I wrote about what justice looks like for trans kids,” tweets Pulitzer-winning “trans” journalist Andrea Long Chu about his new cover essay for New York magazine, in which he makes “the moral case for letting children change their bodies.” His thesis is shockingly simple: The freedom to change one’s body is a basic human right. Children are humans. Thus, they should have the freedom to change their bodies. (WORLD Opinions editor Albert Mohler covered this story when it broke earlier this week.)

Chu acknowledges that this is different from the common argument that “affirmative” treatments are necessary for “trans” kids’ health. While Chu does in fact believe that puberty blockers will benefit such children, his reasoning is not primarily medical. As his own subtitle states, it is “moral,” according to his twisted definition of “morality.” 

This essay should be read as the logical continuation of Chu’s 2018 essay about his own post-surgical regret, written for The New York Times (which, ironically, he now excoriates as insufficiently pro-trans). That essay’s title frankly admitted Chu’s new artificial body part “Won’t Make Me Happy,” with the subtitle “And it Shouldn’t Have To.” Chu chronicled in excruciating detail how hormones and surgery, so far from improving his health, had actually made it worse. His goal was to subvert the assumption shared by conservatives and liberals alike that the transgender debate should hinge on harm reduction.

From Ryan Anderson to Jesse Singal, all were guilty in Chu’s eyes of “compassion-mongering” and “gatekeeping,” disagreeing only on “how the gate is to be kept.” Maybe trans “affirmation” surgery would make some people happy, and maybe it wouldn’t, but for Chu, that wasn’t the point. The point was that “surgery’s only prerequisite should be a simple demonstration of want,” and “no amount of pain” could justify withholding it. 

Chu revisits some of these beats in his new essay, which reserves its most withering contempt not for the religious right but for people he dubs “TARLs”—“Trans-Agnostic Reactionary Liberals.” These are the moderate centrists who won’t dismiss the benefit of trans “care” out of hand for the handful of people who might “need” it, yet believe its application is wildly outstripping our available data. In particular, they believe gender-confused children should be told to “wait and see” how they feel after they’ve experienced puberty, at which point perhaps the discussion can be reopened if dysphoria persists. Meanwhile, these concerned liberals earnestly wonder why more of their fellow liberals can’t seem to reach across the aisle and join conservatives in protesting “science denial,” which shouldn’t be a “political” issue. We’re discussing objective facts about biology and medicine, after all. Why isn’t this being treated as a bipartisan action item?

With icy clarity, Chu’s essay demonstrates why: Because the driving force of trans rights activism has never been a genuine concern for the physical and mental well-being of trans-identifying people. It has been the demand for absolute emancipation, absolute autonomy, at any cost. This was perfectly summed up in an exchange I filmed last month between outspoken detransitioner Prisha Mosley and a trans-identifying counterprotester outside a Lansing, Mich., Planned Parenthood. As they argue about the risks of cross-sex hormones, Prisha’s interlocutor says in the end he believes he has a right to take those risks, whatever they are. When Prisha asserts that “the goal of health-care should be health,” he shakes his head. “No. The goal of health-care should be health autonomy.” “For anything?” Prisha asks. What if you want to remove some other healthy body part? “That’s really between you and a surgeon,” the young man says.

Apparently, one of Chu’s friends has also experienced post-surgical regret and made a fundraiser for a revision, which Chu linked under his new article, then deleted. Chu also hid replies, many of which were no doubt loudly pointing out the irony. Though Chu would probably argue that if his friend had received puberty blockers, she wouldn’t have “needed” surgery. 

But what if some children regret taking puberty blockers? Chu’s article bites this bullet in terrifying fashion. Yes, he acknowledges, for some people there may well be regret. But the risk of regret is the price of freedom. “Regret is freedom projected into the past.”

Time will tell what ripple effects Chu’s article will have. British lawyer Dennis Noel Kavanagh guesses it will be “devastating” for the trans rights movement. While most people aren’t opposing that movement on religious grounds (including Kavanagh), we can hope there are enough of them in that uneasy concerned middle to hold back the cultural tide.

As Christians, in one sense we might agree with Chu that all their attempts to find a “moderate” compromise are dead in the water. But unlike Chu, we don’t despise the troubled agnostics. We wait ready to welcome them with open arms as they continue to back away slowly, terrified by the face of pure evil unmasked.