Dr. Turban's Transmania

Dr. Jack Turban is a San Francisco psychiatrist who has often taken to the media to defend what is incorrectly called gender affirming care.

Countries across Europe-- of late Great Britain-- have shut down the programs that mutilate children, but Dr. Turban is undeterred. Nor are the media organs, like the New York Times, that continue to give him public exposure.

Last November Leor Sapir wrote about Dr. Turban in the City Journal. He exposed the simple fact that the good doctor does not know what evidence-based medicine is.

Now, Dr. Turban offers us a glimpse into his twisted mind, the better to show us how he can rationalize mutilating children.

Anyway, Dr. Turban pretends to be a sophisticated thinker. In so pretending he exposes the mental rot at the heart of a movement that promotes child mutilation.

For example, he writes in the Times:

The most basic part of gender identity is what I call our transcendent sense of gender. In a way that goes beyond language, people often just feel male or female, and some more strongly than others. This can manifest in different ways. Some of my young patients draw themselves as a certain gender and have a “wow, this is me” feeling. Others have strong positive feelings when people use certain pronouns for them, or strong negative feelings when people use other pronouns. As is the case with many emotions, it’s hard to describe this transcendent feeling in words. But it is the foundation of our gender identity, the scaffolding we’re born with. Research, including studies focused on twins, suggests these transcendent gender feelings have a strong innate biological basis.

So, gender is just a feeling. One hastens to point out that psychiatry has long since recognized such feelings, and has labeled them delusional. We are dealing with delusional beliefs and Dr. Turban is trying to validate them, to suggest that they define a child’s reality.

And he is favoring medical intervention to ensure that a child’s body corresponds to his delusional belief. I would add that there is nothing about this that is transcendent, though I think it’s a stretch to imagine that Dr. Turban knows what that word means.

This brings to mind a pithy quotation from one Ben Shapiro: “Facts do not care about your feelings.”

This tells us that Turban does not care about facts, or else, he believes that facts must fulfill the promise of feelings. As for where the transgender children he treats get the idea that they had been born in the wrong body, he seems to have nothing to say.

And then there is the problem with social categories. Other people see us as male or female and treat us accordingly. Does this mean that gender identity is plastic or elastic? Does it mean that we are not male or female but some kind of unholy amalgam of the two. We note in passing that Dr. Turban is openly gay, so we must imagine that his own sense of being male or female is slightly different from that of a heterosexual human being:

What my work has taught me is that very few of us actually relate 100 percent to male or female social categories. Some people may love ballet and wrestling. Or they may enjoy pickup trucks and knitting. To make it even more complicated, these feelings can evolve over time — the way an 18-year-old college student thinks about her womanhood is likely different from how she thinks about it when she becomes a 40-year-old mother of three.

In truth, none of this matters. A male who dances in the ballet is surely no less a man than a woman who drives a truck. 

In truth, there is no reason why anyone should have to relate 100% to social categories. If a woman drives trucks, no one says that she is thereby not a woman or that she is only partially a woman. 

Besides, we consider people to be sons or daughters, aunts or uncles, mothers or fathers, and we do not change the label because the individual has a certain feeling or even is cross dressing.

Otherwise social structure would descend into chaos. About that Dr. Turban has nothing to say. As for the notion that anyone has the right to impose his or her delusional beliefs on someone else, that is the road to totalitarian mind control.

Again, social structure cannot be turned into a confused muddle because some people imagine that their sex depends on what they think, at any particular moment. In truth, making sex into something that depends largely on thought and feeling is a good way to produce solipsists, on a good day.

Naturally, Dr. Turban praises people who reject gender roles. In truth, this has little to do with the way people see you or treat you. Encouraging people to marginalize themselves is not a good idea, certainly not from a psychiatrist.

For some people, rejecting gender role stereotypes is even more vital to their gender identity than adhering to them. I’ve had patients, for example, who hate the expectations placed on women in American society. They began using they/them pronouns as a way to express rejection of those expectations. 

Dr. Turban’s third argument suggests a multiplicity of feelings about one’s body, about one’s gender identity, and whatever. One is inclined to ask why it is a good thing to confuse people by encouraging them to believe that their feelings and fantasies, to say nothing of their beliefs, can define who they are.

The third part of gender identity is the physical domain — how we feel about our bodies. Some people identify as transgender and are happy with their bodies. Others are distressed by their gendered physical attributes. They may feel that their deepening voices or the shapes of their chests are at odds with their senses of self. This incongruence can lead to eating disorders, anxiety or depression, which is when doctors may consider gender-affirming medical interventions.

The truth is, these are lies. The study produced by Dr. Hilary Cass in Great Britain, along with studies from many other countries, have concluded that there is no rationale for mutilating healthy bodies in order to make them conform to a delusional belief. And there is certainly no good reason for imposing such nonsense on children. 

Dr. Turban notwithstanding, most of the research sustaining his belief has been discredited. As I say, most countries where reason and science prevail have overcome transmania. 

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