America’s Surgeon General Vivek Murthy wisely advised this week that thirteen years of age is too young for kids to be on social media. Hear, hear. But we must ask: if thirteen is not old enough for Twitter or Facebook, how is it, according to the Biden administration, totally old enough to opt for life-changing hormone blockers if a child just knows deep down they are a different gender?
According to Murthy, thirteen-year-olds are still ‘developing their identity’. Therefore, he rightly reasons, the experience of social media with all of its mean-spiritedness and self-aggrandisement may harm a child who stares too long into its distorted funhouse mirror.
But if a thirteen-year-old is still ‘developing their identity’, then how on earth can we allow him or her – yes, him or her – to decide on a course of medical treatment that could have negative long-lasting effects solely on the basis that he or she is fully aware of what their ‘gender identity’ is? You see the problem here?
The proponents of treatment, be it in the form of hormone blockers or even surgeries, assure us that these horrors are ‘gender-affirming care’.
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