LGBT rights: Is there a right age for people to decide their gender?

Even as some parents in the West are buying kids as young as 5 puberty blockers, concerns are being raised about the age at which children should be allowed to decide their gender. (Photo by Lisett Kruusimae via Pexels)

A few days ago, British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak was asked by an interviewer whether he believes that “100 percent of women do not have penises”. He laughed and said “Yes, of course.”

The exchange may seem bizarre to most Indians, but this is a burning topic in the West. In fact, Sunak was asked the question in direct reference to what Opposition leader Sir Keir Starmer had said some days earlier, that “99.9 per cent of women of course do not have penises”. This also implies that Starmer thinks that one in a thousand women could have penises.

Today, European and American societies are violently split on transgender issues. A highly vocal group, including many schoolteachers and doctors, believe that biological sex is a fictitious concept. No one is born as a boy or a girl. The person decides what their gender is at a later stage. The American Medical Association is recommending that the United States stop the practice of including a “male” or “female” designation on public portions of birth certificates, saying the marker can cause more harm than good for transgender, nonbinary and intersex Americans.

Parents are being encouraged to get puberty blockers and other gender-suppressing drugs to their children if the kids believe that they are not boys but girls. All of this may seem very odd, but it is happening, and with some serious consequences.

On social media, Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling has been receiving rape and death threats for insisting that biological sex is a reality, that a woman has lived experiences that are different from a man. Trans people—mostly men who believe that they are women—take to the streets regularly to demonstrate and even vandalise public property. In America, many parents have alleged that schoolteachers have been secretly prodding their children to change their gender.

It is important here to note that transwomen are not necessarily those who have undergone medical procedures to change their gender. You only have to claim that you are a woman, even if you have a long flowing beard. In Scotland, men convicted of rape have declared that they are women and have been allowed to be lodged in female wards of prisons, leading, unsurprisingly, to rape of women inmates. All over the West, transwomen are agitating to use restrooms, swimming pools and other facilities reserved for biological women.

The effects are also visible in sports, the most controversial being the case of young American swimmer Lia Thomas. Born a biological male, Thomas was a junior member of the University of Pennsylvania swimming team. After turning woman through hormone treatment, she today competes with women and wins races at the national level. It is obvious that even though she is now technically a woman, her body retains the muscle mass and strength of the man that she once was. Many of her naturally female-born competitors have protested, but as yet to no avail.

Some sports associations in America and Canada are now allowing men who identify as women—with their male genitalia intact—to participate in female events. In boxing, there have already been incidents of serious injury—fractured skulls—caused by these self-identified women. Last August, the World Boxing Council was finally convinced enough to say that it has “serious health and safety concerns” about transgender boxers competing with boxers who aren't transgender.

Obviously, it is biological women who are the worst sufferers in all this. In fact, the more hard-core pro-trans activists are even trying to cancel terms like “woman” and “mother”. In September 2021, the leading medical journal Lancet carried this line on its cover: “Historically, the anatomy and physiology of bodies with vaginas have been neglected.” Facing an uproar—is that all women are, “bodies with vaginas”?, the editor issued a half-hearted apology.

Other ways being used by these newbie intellectuals and academics to refer to women are “individuals with a cervix”, “people who menstruate” and “menstruators”. Mothers are “birthing parents”, “pregnant people”, or “gestational parents”. The American Civil Liberties Union censored texts from the late US Supreme Court Justice and feminist icon Ruth Ginsberg, substituting “women” with the gender-neutral word “people”. After an outcry, the ACLU vowed never to do it again.

How on earth did the word “woman” become offensive? This is surely an attack on half of all humans who have ever lived!

A pushback is beginning. It had to. In January 2022, Glenn Youngkin, a business executive with no previous political experience, became governor of the US state of Virginia, defeating Terry McAuliffe, the seniormost Democratic Party leader of the state and a former governor. He won on the wave of anger that followed the discovery that a government school had actively hidden the fact that a boy who called himself “gender-fluid” and wore a skirt had raped two girls in the girls’ toilet. The county school board had in fact gone to the extent of getting the father of one of the victims arrested when he brought up the matter at a public meeting.

Some weeks ago, Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, was forced to resign. Though she did not say so, it was because of rising public indignation over her transgender policies. The straw that broke the camel’s back was the Gender Recognition Reform (Scotland) Bill passed by the Scottish Parliament in December. The bill allowed anyone who is 16 years or older to change their gender in Scotland, with no need for a medical diagnosis of gender dysphoria.

“All a man needs to become a woman is to say he's one,” commented J.K. Rowling. The British government blocked the bill, the first time it has done so in the 25 years since Scotland was given semi-autonomous status.

Some days ago, American beverage company Anheuser-Bosch began promoting its bestselling Bud Light beer via Dylan Mulvaney, a biological male who dresses and prances around like a woman on TikTok and Instagram where he has millions of followers. Within three days, Anheuser-Bosch lost more than $5 billion of value on the New York Stock Exchange.

So there is hope. Even though some parents in the West are proudly posting on social media that they got puberty blockers for their five-year-old child who claimed he is not male.

There is a perfect reason that nowhere in the world are people allowed to vote in elections or drink alcohol unless they are at least 18 years old. In America, you can’t even get a tattoo till you are 18. But people are allowing little children to decide if they are male or female? In fact, the White House has recently confirmed that President Joe Biden does not believe that there should be an age restriction for changing one’s gender. How is this logical in any way? The child could grow up and realize that he made a mistake, but there will then be no way back. I can’t begin to imagine the trauma of that poor person. It’s beyond horrendous.

One hopes that in India, we won’t fall for this agenda. It does not help people with genuine problems and ends up degrading all women.