Wesley Smith and Jay Richards had a great conversation for the Humanize podcast on “What Every Parent Should Know About Gender Ideology and Gender-Affirming Care.” Identifying a remarkable historical echo, Dr. Richards says something I hadn’t thought about. Today’s strange trans ideology with its cruel medical interventions, including surgical mutilation, to affirm subjective gender identity bears a strong resemblance to the eugenics movement. The latter is now recognized as a malevolent and abusive force; but like evolution-based pseudoscientific racism, it was hailed in its day as the best and most responsible science, cheered on by the mainstream media, public school teachers, and the government. All that is true of our contemporary transgender ideology. 

There’s more. Endorsed by prestige academic opinion, eugenics focused on surgical sterilization for the “unfit.” Similarly endorsed by prestige opinion, transgender ideology welcomes the surgical removal of genitalia, and even provides “eunuch” as a new possible trans identify. In the case of eugenics, sterilization was coerced, not a matter personal preference. But as Richard also observes, pushing trans theory on vulnerable young children, molding their brains before they’ve reached the age of consent, is hardly giving them a free choice in how they think of gender. In a final parallel, it was religious people who were foremost in opposing the eugenicists and the pseudoscientific racists. John West makes this clear in his documentary Human Zoos (see it below). Today as well, many traditional religious perspectives resist the advances of trans activism. Download the podcast or listen to it here.