Iconic social and political critic Camille Paglia says “transgender propagandists” are committing “child abuse” when they spread “a lot of lies” to gender-confused children and their parents that encourage transgender treatments and surgeries in young people.

“I think that the transgender propagandists make wildly inflated claims about the multiplicity of gender,” said Paglia during an interview on Roda Viva Internacional.

CNSNews.com reports on the interview in which Paglia, a professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, states:

In sex-reassignment surgery, even today, with all of its advances, cannot, in fact, change anyone’s sex. You can define yourself as a trans man or a trans woman or one of these new gradations along the scale, but ultimately every single cell in the human body, the DNA in that cell remains coded for your biological birth. So there are a lot of lies being propagated at the present moment, which I think is not in anyone’s best interests.

Paglia, 70, a lesbian who also described herself in a recent interview with the Weekly Standard as “transgender” because “I was donning flamboyant male costumes from early childhood on,” says those who encourage transgenderism in children are committing “child abuse.”

“What I’m concerned about is the popularity and the availability of sex-reassignment surgery to someone who doesn’t feel that he or she belongs to the biological birth gender, and people are being encouraged to intervene in the process,” she says.

The author of Free Women, Free Men: Sex, Gender, Feminism, explains:

Parents are now encouraged to subject the child to procedures that I think are a form of child abuse, either with hormones to slow puberty, actual surgical manipulations, etcetera. I think this is wrong, that people should wait until an informed age of consent. Parents should not be doing this to their children.

“I think that even in the teenage years is too soon to be making this leap,” she adds. “People change, people grow, and people adapt.”

Paglia’s view is consistent with the American College of Pediatricians, which asserts gender ideology is harmful to children and that transgendered children are psychologically confused and at risk for mental health disorders.

The College states:

No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one… According to the DSM-V, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty … Conditioning children into believing that a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthful is child abuse.

The self-described “left-leaning” pro-LGBT rights professional association, Youth Gender Professionals, has also weighed in with concerns about forced gender ideology being propagated as a civil rights issue without concern for the well-being of children.

The organization, which is composed of psychologists, social workers, doctors, and other professionals, asserts it is risky to affirm young people who claim to be transgender and provide them with hormonal and surgical treatments to change their bodies.

“Our concern is with medical transition for children and youth,” they write. “We feel that unnecessary surgeries and/or hormonal treatments which have not been proven safe in the long-term represent significant risks for young people.”

“Policies that encourage — either directly or indirectly — such medical treatment for young people who may not be able to evaluate the risks and benefits are highly suspect, in our opinion,” the group adds, noting its alarm that many immature teenagers are deciding they are a member of the opposite sex simply as a result of “binges” on social media sites.

“There is evidence that vulnerable young people are being actively recruited and coached on such sites to believe that they are trans,” the professionals say.

“I am highly skeptical about the current transgender wave, which I think has been produced by far more complicated psychological and sociological factors than current gender discourse allows,” Paglia also told the Weekly Standard. “Furthermore, I condemn the escalating prescription of puberty blockers (whose long-term effects are unknown) for children. I regard this practice as a criminal violation of human rights.”

She further asserted:

It is certainly ironic how liberals who posture as defenders of science when it comes to global warming (a sentimental myth unsupported by evidence) flee all reference to biology when it comes to gender. Biology has been programmatically excluded from women’s studies and gender studies programs for almost 50 years now. Thus very few current gender studies professors and theorists, here and abroad, are intellectually or scientifically prepared to teach their subjects.

Paglia continued that while all individuals deserve to live “free from harassment and abuse,” she condemns groups who have demanded “special rights, protections, or privileges on the basis of their eccentricity.”

“The cold biological truth is that sex changes are impossible,” she said. “Every single cell of the human body remains coded with one’s birth gender for life. Intersex ambiguities can occur, but they are developmental anomalies that represent a tiny proportion of all human births.”