Last week, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, a Republican, vetoed a measure that would have barred minors from receiving harmful transgender interventions such as puberty blockers and wrong-sex hormones. Amid intense backlash, he’s since tried to run damage control, signing an executive order on Friday that bans only trans surgeries for minors. We hope Ohio Republicans still override DeWine’s veto.
There’s more going on behind the scenes of the medical establishment, however, especially as it relates to the “gender dysphoria” diagnosis. Gender dysphoria must be addressed in conjunction with contributing factors, such as adverse childhood experiences, but instead licensed clinicians rush children toward life-altering medical interventions.
If you pay any attention to the conversation surrounding so-called gender identity, you might be led to believe sex is not real and that its binary nature is a created concept that can be altered to align with a person’s psychological beliefs about his or her sex. Such is the thinking that undergirds gender dysphoria, a condition listed in the Diagnostic Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM). The diagnostic criteria hold that gender dysphoria is “a marked incongruence with one’s experienced/expressed gender and assigned gender.”
The key to the gender dysphoria diagnosis hinges on the presence of distress. If a person experiences marked distress about being identified as transgender, that distress can be labeled a disorder. If a person does not experience marked distress, advocates hold that person’s transgender identity ought to be considered normal.
In 2013, the gender dysphoria diagnosis
