The World Health Organization (WHO), which contributed so generously to the botched COVID-19 response, is preparing to meet and discuss another emerging health concern: the treatment of people who believe in transgender ideology.
A Guideline Development Group of the WHO is scheduled to meet in Geneva, Switzerland, later this month to provide recommendations for a policy on “gender-affirming care.” The group has already faced criticism for the people chosen to serve on this panel, many of whom are believed to have conflicts of interest or lack adequate qualifications.
Two particular qualifications for those serving on this transgender guideline group would be helpful: The ability to search the WHO website and read its earlier pronouncements. As the WHO considers the wisdom of surgical mutilation and pumping people full of abnormal levels of hormones, they might take a few minutes to review the WHO’s February 5, 2024, fact sheet on female genital mutilation.
According to WHO, “The practice of FGM (female genital mutilation) is recognized internationally as a violation of the human rights of girls and women.” This is one of the reasons the WHO called for “the elimination of FGM” as far back as 2008.
The WHO further determined that “FGM has no health benefits, and it harms girls and women in many ways. It involves removing and damaging healthy and normal female genital tissue, and it interferes with the natural functions of girls' and women's bodies.”
As for the mutilation of males, activists have forcefully lobbied to end male infant circumcision, calling it a human rights violation as well. The WHO declined to condemn the practice, which dates back to the time of Moses, recommending voluntary circumcision in the name of decreasing the spread of HIV and the risk of AIDS.
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With these explicit and unequivocal findings, it’s odd that the WHO must now convene a special meeting to figure out what to do about gender-affirming care for people who have been misled into believing transgender ideology.
There is a minuscule percentage of humanity afflicted with a condition in which their biological sex doesn’t match their genetic sex, and they should have access to all the mental and medical health care available to help them and their families deal with these tragedies. But for the exponentially greater number of people who have been deceived by transgender ideology, the WHO’s policy on gender-affirming care should be simple: don’t do it.
Affirming transgender ideology is no less dangerous than affirming the delusions associated with anorexia, which is a “serious mental illness.” Clinicians work with those suffering from anorexia to align their self-perception with reality, and people afflicted by transgender ideology deserve similar treatment.
The WHO defines gender-affirming care in several ways. “Gender-affirmative health care can include any single or combination of a number of social, psychological, behavioral,” interventions, writes the WHO. This might be reasonable. But it continues, saying care should also include “medical (including hormonal treatment or surgery) interventions designed to support and affirm an individual’s gender identity.”
How can an organization that previously declared the surgical mutilation of healthy tissue a “violation of the human rights of girls and women” and which provides “no health benefits” even consider something it previously denounced? Such a reversal makes no sense.
Even The New York Times is recognizing the fallacies of transgender ideology. Among the many issues explored in Pamela Paul’s February 2 NYT opinion piece, about 80 percent of children who claim some degree of gender dysphoria work through the problem as they progress through puberty. Paul’s reporting also shows that many young people claiming dysphoria have “mental health issues unrelated to gender” and that “many health care providers have seen evidence” of rapid onset gender dysphoria, akin to the social contagion others have written about.
Those promoting transgender ideology aggressively dispute this observation. Instead, they fundamentally argue that the 28% of Gen-Zers who identify with something on the LGBTQ ideology spectrum represent an epic mutation of the human species rather than a bunch of vulnerable and impressionable young people who have been coerced into believing a grotesque lie.
The upcoming meeting of the WHO’s gender-affirming care group will have a big impact on how society will address the issue of caring for people who are confused about their sexuality. If they recommend comprehensive mental health care to help people through their confusion, it will be a welcome effort to promote a scientifically and medically appropriate response.
But it’s entirely possible - even likely - that the global health agency that got so much wrong with COVID-19 will contradict its opposition to surgical mutilation and come out in favor of it. In doing so, they would be endorsing a perverse political ideology while abetting what the WHO itself calls a violation of human rights.
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