Why Did the Transgender Revolution Catch Us by Surprise?

00:00:00.000 | Why did the transgender movement catch us by surprise, and how should we respond now?

00:00:12.400 | That's the theme this week on the podcast, and with that goal in mind, we welcome Rob

00:00:15.880 | Smith to the podcast.

00:00:17.480 | Rob is a theologian who lectures in systematic theology and ethics at Sydney Missionary and

00:00:23.160 | Bible College in Australia.

00:00:25.220 | He also serves as an honorary assistant minister at St. Andrew's Anglican Cathedral in Sydney.

00:00:32.080 | Rob approaches the topic of the transgender revolution as a biblical theologian, as a

00:00:35.920 | historian of the movement as well, and as a pastor whose own family has been touched

00:00:41.000 | by gender dysphoria.

00:00:43.240 | It hits rather close to home for him.

00:00:46.080 | And we are all being hit by what he has called a "transgender tsunami" of gender fluidity

00:00:51.520 | in Western culture.

00:00:53.960 | Rob has completed extensive research of the history of how we got to now.

00:00:57.400 | The transgender movement, as you will hear, did not appear out of nowhere.

00:01:01.560 | There is a backstory.

00:01:03.120 | And to tell it, here's Rob Smith.

00:01:04.920 | Yes, well, thank you, Tony.

00:01:07.440 | That's a marvelous question.

00:01:09.560 | It certainly didn't come out of nowhere.

00:01:11.880 | You can trace the roots right back, really, I think.

00:01:14.840 | Well, you can go back to Genesis 3 if you want to, but certainly in the modern period,

00:01:18.720 | you can go back to the Enlightenment and then various developments subsequent to that.

00:01:24.240 | But you're right to focus on the 1960s.

00:01:27.120 | That's certainly where a number of revolutions came together.

00:01:32.600 | And I guess we're familiar with the label of the sexual revolution, which is, of course,

00:01:36.600 | this sort of broad umbrella.

00:01:39.120 | But there are a number of things going on there, I think, that really set the stage,

00:01:43.120 | as you say, for the transgender revolution.

00:01:45.200 | Let me just run through a number of aspects, I think, that are relevant.

00:01:49.520 | You've got the advent of the contraceptive pill in 1961, which has the effect of severing

00:01:55.480 | sex from procreation.

00:01:57.680 | And that itself then changed people's view of sex.

00:02:02.040 | It became a leisure activity and something for pleasure rather than having a procreative

00:02:08.680 | purpose embedded in it.

00:02:10.600 | And that, of course, then, I guess, opened the door to increased sexual freedom in a

00:02:15.880 | very new and pronounced way.

00:02:18.640 | So that's one factor.

00:02:20.960 | Also on the medical front, you've got the development of antibiotics.

00:02:25.480 | I mean, they've been around for some decades before the '60s.

00:02:30.680 | But I guess the more effective treatment of various sexually transmitted diseases and

00:02:35.480 | a perception that therefore developed that really people didn't need to worry about the

00:02:40.600 | danger of STDs.

00:02:43.000 | And that, again, increased sexual experimentation.

00:02:47.200 | So those things are going on in the broader society, and I guess you could say sort of

00:02:52.280 | pushed on by medical development.

00:02:55.960 | Alongside of that, you've got various social revolutions, the feminist revolution, perhaps

00:03:00.200 | is the most obvious thing to pinpoint here.

00:03:06.080 | And again, at the heart of that, you've got a, well, I guess the deconstructing of the

00:03:12.080 | way that people tended to think about sexuality and gender.

00:03:16.000 | You've got Simone de Beauvoir's very famous statement that one is not born a woman, but

00:03:21.840 | one becomes a woman.

00:03:24.160 | That becomes very, very important for later queer theory and transgender ideology.

00:03:30.600 | You've of course got the problem that feminists are grappling with, that biology equals destiny,

00:03:36.080 | although they're trying to work out how to stop biology equaling destiny.

00:03:40.280 | And one of the solutions, of course, advocated by various feminist writers at the time was

00:03:45.680 | to eliminate sex distinctions.

00:03:47.640 | So that's, again, a big part of the background to the transgender phenomenon.

00:03:56.120 | And then, of course, you've got the homosexual revolution, which is happening again in the

00:04:01.000 | late '50s, '60s, and '70s.

00:04:06.200 | I guess there's a broader acceptance of sexual nonconformity.

00:04:10.640 | You've got the idea that biological sex perhaps does not determine a person's sexual orientation,

00:04:18.520 | and therefore begs the question, well, does it then in fact determine a person's gender?

00:04:23.920 | Does there really have to be this necessary connection between biological sex and gender

00:04:29.600 | identity?

00:04:31.000 | So all of those things, I think, are bubbling out of the sexual revolution of the '60s and

00:04:37.280 | paving the way for the transgender revolution.

00:04:40.520 | You asked the question, why didn't we see it coming?

00:04:43.800 | It was there to be seen, interestingly.

00:04:44.800 | One of the things I've done is sort of trace back some of the history over the last 100

00:04:50.040 | years or so of the development of the transgender movement.

00:04:53.880 | I mean, back in 1964, you've got the creation of the Erickson Educational Foundation, which

00:04:59.520 | was designed to promote both gay equality and transgender equality.

00:05:04.360 | And that was set up by a trans man named Reed Erickson.

00:05:09.160 | In '66, you've got a significant publication of a book called The Transsexual Phenomenon,

00:05:15.880 | as well as the famous Compton Cafeteria Riots in San Francisco.

00:05:21.840 | So there are things happening there in the '60s.

00:05:24.480 | Even '68, you've got the International Olympic Committee wrestling with, well, what do we

00:05:27.640 | do with transsexuals who want to compete in the Olympics?

00:05:30.720 | And they had to make a determination about that.

00:05:35.240 | And then perhaps the little known fact is that in the Stonewall Riots in '69, there

00:05:41.440 | were transgender patrons involved in that whole episode.

00:05:46.400 | And so the transgender revolution, same-sex revolution, they've really been tied together

00:05:53.400 | in a variety of ways from the start.

00:05:56.100 | But I think it's just a prominence of the homosexual revolution that perhaps has obscured

00:06:03.120 | the transgender revolution that was, as it were, just tucked in behind.

00:06:07.840 | And now that same-sex marriage has been realized in many parts of the Western world, it's in

00:06:14.920 | some ways moved to one side so that the transgender movement is now, as it were, stepped forward

00:06:22.160 | to be the sort of major point of social and legislative and other kinds of engagement.

00:06:29.680 | So there you go.

00:06:30.680 | It's just an attempt to try and make sense of how we've got here, how this has sort of

00:06:36.280 | come upon us seemingly out of nowhere, but in reality, not out of nowhere.

00:06:42.040 | No, that's a great summary of the backstory.

00:06:45.440 | I wish we had time for more of the history, but I want to stay focused on the here and

00:06:48.240 | now from here on.

00:06:50.040 | As you can imagine, we get a lot of questions on transgenderism in the inbox of this podcast.

00:06:54.840 | And one of the most common questions, it seems, is that many Christians who are so far removed

00:06:58.960 | from transgender impulses themselves ask whether gender dysphoria is itself a phantom impulse,

00:07:06.880 | something that's merely culturally engendered, or is it real?

00:07:12.160 | Is it tangible?

00:07:13.160 | And if so, how real is it?

00:07:16.160 | You're not far removed from this question.

00:07:17.920 | I mean, in your own pastoral care and your personal experience, is gender dysphoria a

00:07:23.960 | real condition?

00:07:24.960 | Yeah, well, thank you for that.

00:07:26.760 | Let's perhaps just be clear for the listeners about what we're talking about here.

00:07:32.080 | Gender dysphoria, that expression is really, I guess, it's the latest medical diagnostic

00:07:40.280 | term for the experience of distress, which some people have when their psychological

00:07:47.320 | or emotional gender identity or sense of gender doesn't match up with their biological or

00:07:54.640 | birth sex.

00:07:55.640 | Previously, and certainly in earlier versions of what's called the Diagnostic and Statistical

00:08:00.840 | Manual of Mental Disorders, that phenomenon was referred to as gender identity disorder.

00:08:07.720 | But I guess there was a move, again, amongst the American Psychiatric Association to try

00:08:11.920 | and destigmatize that disorder.

00:08:15.840 | And now it's, I guess, being normalized in society.

00:08:21.280 | And so what's happened is that it's simply now the distress that the person feels it's

00:08:27.840 | being focused on.

00:08:28.840 | If a person has a mismatch between their sense of gender and their biology, and they're not

00:08:35.520 | distressed by it, then they don't have any condition according to the APA.

00:08:40.520 | They don't have gender dysphoria.

00:08:42.360 | Gender dysphoria focuses in on the distress that a person may feel, and of course, most

00:08:49.040 | do feel if they have this mismatch.

00:08:53.040 | So I hope that wasn't too convoluted, but it's just important to understand what exactly

00:08:58.400 | we're talking about.

00:08:59.400 | Now, is it a real condition?

00:09:01.600 | Well, certainly it's a real experience condition for those who have this sense of mismatch.

00:09:08.280 | For many, if not most, it's profoundly distressing and anxiety producing and shame producing

00:09:18.040 | and depressive.

00:09:19.040 | It's an awful condition or affliction to bear.

00:09:26.120 | But I guess the key question lurking in there is what kind of condition is it?

00:09:31.000 | This again, I think, is where our culture is easily confused.

00:09:36.360 | And one of the perhaps confusing factors is that there is a number of conditions that

00:09:41.800 | fall under the umbrella of intersex, where a person is born with some kind of genital

00:09:47.080 | or biological ambiguity, and that certainly can give rise to gender dysphoria.

00:09:54.040 | Or you've had some tragic stories, for example, of a circumcision gone wrong and then doctors

00:10:00.240 | making a decision to turn a boy into a girl, as it were, trying to deal with their mistake.

00:10:07.280 | And then this boy later on, of course, he's going to have profound gender dysphoria.

00:10:12.760 | So there are those kinds of, I guess, biologically created instances of gender dysphoria.

00:10:21.720 | But for those for whom there is no biological ambiguity or any kind of intersex ambiguity

00:10:29.480 | or anything of that kind, then we need to ask, well, what is gender dysphoria for them?

00:10:35.600 | Well, I think the answer is quite clearly it's a psychological condition, not a biological

00:10:41.520 | or you might even say ontological condition.

00:10:45.920 | The problem is in the psychology, they feel like they're in the wrong body.

00:10:50.120 | They're not actually in the wrong body.

00:10:52.360 | It's not that you've actually got a man inside a woman's body or a woman inside a man's body.

00:10:57.480 | But clearly the person feels as if they've been perhaps given the wrong body or they

00:11:04.640 | feel that mismatch.

00:11:06.440 | And as I said, a very distressed by it.

00:11:09.120 | So if we understand that and understand that people really do suffer from this, it ought

00:11:14.000 | to evoke our compassion because it's a horrific affliction to bear.

00:11:18.520 | That's one of the reasons why the suicide or attempted suicide rate for those with gender

00:11:22.840 | dysphoria is as high as it is.

00:11:27.120 | So I hope that sort of helps perhaps.

00:11:28.920 | I know it's not a simple answer, but I hope it perhaps clarifies issues.

00:11:33.320 | - Yeah, it does.

00:11:34.640 | It does, yes.

00:11:35.760 | So is it safe to assume the biological ambiguity is the minority condition with the psychological

00:11:40.760 | condition being in the majority of cases?

00:11:44.080 | - Yes, I think that that's certainly true.

00:11:46.080 | I mean, it's enormously difficult to get accurate figures, but I think that is certainly the

00:11:53.240 | case.

00:11:54.240 | - Interesting.

00:11:55.240 | Thank you, Rob.

00:11:56.240 | We have only begun the week.

00:11:58.040 | Rob will be with us all week answering a number of questions, and there are many.

00:12:02.320 | So what causes gender dysphoria?

00:12:05.040 | That's the next question I have for him tomorrow.

00:12:07.520 | Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast with guest Rob Smith from Sydney,

00:12:11.760 | Australia.

00:12:12.760 | For more details about this podcast, to subscribe to the audio feed or send us a question of

00:12:16.320 | your own, go to our online home at desiringgod.org/askpastorjohn.

00:12:22.360 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.

00:12:23.360 | I'll see you tomorrow.

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Why Did the Transgender Revolution Catch Us by Surprise?

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