OPINION: Letter signers admit what it really comes down to is their opposition to President Trump
When Professor Alex Byrne helped write a Trump administration report critical of injecting kids with puberty blockers or removing their healthy reproductive organs, he helped “[perpetuate] harm toward the trans community.”
So says graduate students and professors both inside and outside of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology where Byrne teaches. The aggrieved current and aspiring academics say they “are not here calling for official or unofficial sanctions.”
On May 1, the Department of Health and Human Services released a “comprehensive report” about transgender drugs and surgeries for minors and concluded there is little scientific evidence for their use. (Of course, no amount of evidence can make a boy a girl or a girl a boy.)
While the authors were not listed, it had been speculated Byrne (pictured) helped write it, which he later acknowledged in a Washington Post essay.
This generated the letter at dearprofessorbyrne.wordpress.com, which says his work “constitutes a failure to uphold your responsibilities as an academic” and “is the result of an extremely misguided decision to collaborate with the Trump administration.”
In fact, that is what the whole opposition really comes down to – later in the letter, the signers complain about Trump’s immigration agenda and battles with higher education.
“Indeed, were the Trump administration to suddenly decide tomorrow to support gender-affirming care for minors, we hold that it would be equally shortsighted and reprehensible if trans advocates were to then overlook everything else the administration is doing and join them as collaborators,” they wrote.
The signers also alleged Byrne acted against the American Association of University Professors’ guidelines on “professional ethics” because he shared his views on a topic that he is not an “expert” on, according to the letter.
“Given your lack of the requisite expertise, we believe it is inappropriate for you to engage in the shaping of national medical policy on gender-affirming care for trans youth,” they wrote. “Familiarity with theories of gender made from the armchair does not equip one to make expert judgments about the quality of medical studies, nor about the lived experiences and needs of trans youth and their families.”
A couple of thoughts
It is entirely appropriate for a philosopher to weigh in on a pressing ethical issue of our time. What really bothers the signers is that there are people still left in academia who disagree with the surgical and chemical mutilation of children.
In fact, I would argue, the issue of transgenderism is really not a scientific issue in the way it is portrayed. While I assume conservative legislators and policy experts frame the transgender issue around the scientific issue for legal reasons or to convince those in the middle, it really does come down to philosophy – what is sex, can it change, and should we help people change their sex?
If sex is immutable, no amount of evidence showing the benefits of injecting kids, or adults, with hormones, or removing their breasts or testicles can change that fact. It is like the debate about abortion – if what is inside a woman’s body is a human being, we do not need studies about abortion regret or how abortion helps women make more money or any other “evidence,” to come to a decision one way or another. We just need to acknowledge it is a human life and treat it as such.
If sex is mutable, and someone who is confused about their gender would be helped by drugs and interventions, then it is worth looking at the data about procedures and seeing if they are helpful.
But simple philosophy proves sex is immutable – no advocate for the transgender community can explain what a woman is or at what point someone changes their sex. Does putting on a dress make a man a woman? Does he need to remove his testicles or just take estrogen and grow breasts? No one can answer this.
Furthermore, the letter underscores a point conservatives need to remember – academic freedom, and open debate in universities, is a myth.
These are not just misguided graduate students who are publicly attacking Byrne for contributing his expertise; they are also professors.
Listed professors who currently oppose an MIT philosopher offering his insights into this important topic include: University of California Santa Cruz Professor Carolina Flores, Cornell University Professor Willow Starr, MIT Professor Michel DeGraff, California State Los Angeles Professor Talia Betcher, and Northeastern University Professor Adam Hosein, along with dozens more.
These are not professors who are serious about engaging in open debate about transgender topics – they want it shut down. And they also are on the record as saying professors should never collaborate with the Trump administration.
Granted, they are not directly infringing on Byrne’s academic freedom, as most of them are not even at his university and have no power over him. But this false idea that universities are places overflowing with open debate and free exchange needs to be put to rest.
Professor Byrne should be commended for using his expertise and position of authority to warn against the harms of surgically removing healthy organs from gender-confused kids. Years from now, many gender-confused kids will have grown out of their dysphoria and will be able to live normal, healthy lives because brave state legislators restricted the procedures. Others will be physically and mentally broken, because their states let them permanently destroy their fertility and ability to breastfeed.
Those who were saved should be thankful to people like Alex Byrne (and his equally brave wife, Carole Hooven) for sounding the alarm and defending ethics in medicine.
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IMAGE CAPTION AND CREDIT: Professor Alex Byrne; AlexByrne.org
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