On the Skrmetti Decision

Pathologizing Normalcy to Normalize Pathology

Yesterday, the Supreme Court of the United States handed down a ruling on a Tennessee law that prohibits doctors from poisoning children. Children have a fundamental right to be protected from harmful substances as well as from sexual exploitation, and medical transition as a minor for profit is as textbook exploitive as you can get, in my view. This includes doing so for the purpose of purportedly addressing their desire to be the opposite sex (Trans Classic) or their desire to not be their sex (Nonbinitarianism). These desires are often suggested by predatory providers or mentally unstable or malicious parents, and then coached into the mentally unwell children - assuming they do not absorb it from their peer group. Of course they think it is their idea. That is how children work.

The Skrmetti decision, which sounds like an onomatopoeia for the sound of checks and balances in action, the noise a machine makes when it is forcibly stopped from eating children by the cold hand of justice, opens the door for other laws in other states that restrict gender-deforming harm for minors.

Bizarrely, the trans lobby remembered sex is real just long enough to complain that legal regulation of medical products, violates a child’s sex-based right to not be the sex they are (!!).

Part of the case pertained to a John Doe character that sounds similar to Jazz Jennings. The author emphasized the “years of psychotherapy” the 10 year old had had prior to being chemically lobotomized. Of course, there’s also a Weeping Jeanette character. A Weeping Jeanette is a kind of stone angel that will transport you into a time vortex loop from which there is no escape, if you take your eyes off her for even a moment.

The pro-trans side had argued that denying a female access to testosterone, but permitting access for a male, constituted sex discrimination. The logic is that females were only being kept from boyjuice because they are females. This would only hold up if Tennessee had banned prescribing testosterone in a female for any purpose, and that is not the case. It’s just a coincidence, and not Tennessee’s fault, that there are no other recognized uses for horse doses of testosterone in a female child.

The majority opinion rejected the ACLU’s logic on the basis that a person’s trans identification would not prevent them from accessing treatments for an intersex disorder, hormone disorder, or some other disorder that might benefit from these interventions. Therefore, the Court reasoned, the law does not target trans people per se, but only those trans people attempting to access these substances for a prohibited reason. This was argued by analogy with precedent that laws targeting pregnant women did not constitute sex discrimination, because women are not universally pregnant at all times.

I find this reasoning concerning when applied to pregnancy and sex generally. I do not like the idea that discrimination isn’t discrimination if only affects some members in the targeted class. Is a law banning women under 85 from voting a form of sex discrimination, if 86 year old women can still vote? I would say it is. If I go to the park and blow a dog whistle, and all the dogs scatter except the deaf dog, does the indifference of the one deaf dog change the fact that I was targeting dogs with my dog whistle? I do not think an action against a class needs to apply to every single member of the class in order to be an action against the class. But here, what is being targeted are people who would receive a harmful intervention with no evidence basis. That’s who the state is supposed to protect from harm being sold as patent medicine. Consumers.

Sotomayor’s dissent was muddled. She attempted to equate a child taking sex-concordant hormones, to normalize function, with a child taking sex-discordant hormones, to derange function. This goes to show the old truism. Trans ideology pathologizes normalcy to normalize pathology. By queering biology in this manner, doctors and patients lose sight of the fact that there is a difference between health and illness, until it is too late, and they learn health is not always recoverable.

Sotomayor trivializes the medical needs of people with endocrine disabilities. A boy taking testosterone because his gonads did not develop properly is not doing so to “look more like a boy,” but because his male genetics and male development mean that his male organs need male hormones for optimal male functioning. Being disappointed with your appearance, and the fact you don’t resemble someone you don’t resemble, is not a medical problem. It’s a psychological problem that should be offered psychological solutions, not the 9 surgery hellscape funhouse ride to hell this woman got.

It comes down to a question of evidence. Is there an evidence basis for the idea that mimicking the hormonal conditions of the opposite sex improves health? No. Doctors should not be permitted to lie about the benefits of these interventions, the evidence basis for them, and then bill insurance as though the person had a true hormone deficiency. Treating a medical condition has goalposts. Treating health to create a look is has no boundaries. The only thing obstructing the sale is convincing the mark of the truth of the ideology that says that all your unhappiness can be rooted in your (until now) inescapable sex. The industry goal is to get children to climb onto the disassembly line. Glad to see the government intervening to protect children.

This would not have been possible without the tireless advocacy of detransitioners like Chloe Cole and Prisha Mosley, who have put their own lives on pause to travel around to legislatures telling their story of medical exploitation as minors and the harm they live with to this day.