Transgenderism is on the rise.

It seems the media can’t go five minutes without publishing an article on transgender people. There has been a fourfold increase in the number of gender-reassignment surgeries from 2000 to 2014. Psychologists have started talking about ‘sudden onset gender dysphoria’, where young teenagers suddenly announce they are transgender. Documentaries are airing about transgender kids as young as eight, supporting injecting these children with powerful hormones. People in left-leaning circles talk of trans-rights with passionate fervour, and denounce anyone asking questions as ‘transphobic’.

But what does it even mean to be transgender?

Firstly, transgenderism is a separate phenomenon from being ‘intersex’, which is when someone has unique biological abnormalities in their sexual characteristics. Being transgender is, for the most part, a psychological disorder; transgender children usually have completely normal hormone levels and sexual characteristics associated with their biological sex. Some studies have shown identical twins are more likely to both be transgender, even when separated at birth, which could potentially point to some biological basis for the condition, but with sample sizes in the single digits it is hard to really tell.

Many trans-rights activists dispute the classification of transgenderism as a psychological disorder, and indeed the official term for the condition in the DSM was changed from gender identity disorder to gender dysphoria in 2013. But transgenderism is a disorder by definition; since biological sex is an objective fact, a mind that refuses to recognise such a fact is not functioning correctly, it is broken, confused – disordered – even if there is some biological basis for this mental defect. In such a situation, the obvious solution should be to fix the mind of the person, since that is what is malfunctioning. When people go to doctors and tell them they believe they ‘should’ have been born with no legs, the doctors send them to the psychiatric ward, not the surgeon. Why, then, do the trans-rights activists, doctors and media all support treating transgenderism with physical means, namely gender reassignment surgery?

The answer, predictably, is philosophy. Metaphysically, the answer is the primacy of consciousness.

The primacy of consciousness is the belief that consciousness in some way creates reality. It is fundamental to the Christian belief that God, a supernatural consciousness, created reality; to the sceptic’s notion that we each create our own unique mental world; to the Kantian idea that the truth is what a large number of people believe. To the supporter of gender reassignment surgery, the consciousness of the transgender person is superior to reality; the person’s objective biological sex was a mistake, while their feelings are an immutable fact that reality must conform to. The idea of changing the person’s consciousness through therapy, which can and has been done in many cases, is ridiculous to such a mentality. Consciousness is what matters, reality is secondary. Even other people must conform to the power of a transgender person’s consciousness, by using certain pronouns, ignoring certain obvious sexual traits, and, according to some activists, even engaging sexually with transgender people as if nothing was different.

Epistemologically, the rise of transgenderism is an example of emotionalism. The feelings of the transgender person are what matters, regardless of the facts of the situation. But why do the feelings of transgender individuals seem to matter so much to modern intellectuals? What about the feelings of businessmen, or straight white males? What makes transgender people the current darlings of the progressive left?

The answer lies in the modern intellectual’s ethical code.

If modern intellectuals were simply concerned with the plight of the less fortunate, as they always say, the rich should be their heroes – after all, they are the ones who pay the taxes that fund all the government programs intellectuals are so fond of. The fact that intellectuals actually detest the rich, with all the vitriol of old-fashioned, bible-bashing racists, betrays their true motivation – the ethical code of Egalitarianism.

Egalitarianism is essentially moral nihilism; it proclaims that everyone is not just equal before the law, but equal in morality and value, no matter how depraved their ideals and actions, effectively making the concept of ‘moral’ meaningless. What this means is the intellectuals must champion the rights of the damaged, depraved and despicable, while attempting to drag down the rich, strong and healthy – only then will the truly ‘equal’ nature of men be realised. Precisely because transgender people are mentally damaged, intellectuals hold them up as something that should be seen as normal, and even worthy of respect and admiration. Precisely because straight, white, mentally stable men are more likely to be successful, healthy and happy, intellectuals denounce them as privileged oppressors and the cause of all the world’s problems. To the extent that you are a victim, you are a hero; to the extent that you are successful, you are a villain.

What is the common theme running through the philosophical basis of transgenderism? What ties all these corruptions together? What philosophy, or more precisely philosopher, promotes the primacy of consciousness, emotion over reason and a championing of the self-down-trodden over the strong, healthy and happy?

Anyone who has read Ayn Rand will know there can only be one answer: Immanuel Kant.

Moses Mendelssohn once called Kant the ‘all-destroyer’. It is an aptly horrifying title. His theory of innate structures in the mind creating a warped version of reality effectively destroys reality; his separation of the senses from anything real destroys reason (resulting in a reliance on emotionalism); his view of the moral as complete sacrifice, with no personal motive allowed, not even the supposed satisfaction of helping the suffering, destroys morality.

“Hold Peter Keating as a great architect”, Ellsworth Toohey says in The Fountainhead, “[and] you’ve destroyed architecture”. Hold up Kaitlyn Jenner as a woman, and you’ve destroyed the concept of gender. Transgenderism is not just a weird but insignificant fad – it is a symptom of the complete philosophical bankruptcy of modern culture. It is a direct result of Kant’s philosophy, a horrifying example of the Kantian nihilism infecting western civilisation.

It is not transgender people as such who are to blame, as many of them are merely victims of the culture they grew up in. It is the intellectuals who caused this; the media activists who spit their bile in the face of anyone opposing gender reassignment surgery, the doctors who actually do the surgery, taking scalpels to the genitalia of the mentally ill, and the lecturers in the Universities, who now claim biological sex is a myth, there are more genders than you can count, and everyone has a right to be referred to as anything they like.

Transgender people should not be ridiculed or blamed for this problem. The blood is on the hands of the intellectuals – and it is the blood of Western civilisation.

https://www.christianpost.com/news/gender-reassignment-surgeries-rise-study.html

http://www.hawaii.edu/PCSS/biblio/articles/2010to2014/2013-transsexuality.html

https://www.theodysseyonline.com/no-dont-have-to-tell-you-im-trans-before-dating-you?utm_source=Twitter&utm_medium=Owned%20Social&utm_campaign=Aud%20Dev

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s57T27M1ZXk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VMb2xafRMxU

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJAKQKPD5UI