How Much Does it Cost to Change Biological Reality?

I've been thinking more about how meaningless Critical Race Theory is in the sense that proponents can't say what it entails. Instead they note that critics are being unfair with what they include to attack it. My writing plans have taken a somewhat unplanned detour. I had an experience which grows more disturbing with distance. I posted an image on Facebook from USA Today's Twitter account using intersex people to promote the idea that there are three sexes. I said the following:

I wonder how much money needs to be invested in a campaign to change biological fact. There are two sexes because there are two reproductive strategies in humans-- impregnate or be impregnated. "Intersex" isn't a third sex it's an umbrella term for over 40 congenital conditions in males and females. It's incredibly dehumanizing to tell people they are not really men or women because of a medical condition.

It's not clear how denying biological fact benefits society just because there are people who dislike those biological facts.

I fully expect people to disagree with different interpretations of fact. I especially expect disagreement around how best to utilize facts. What I didn't expect was disagreement over such an essential fact like sex in humans is binary. 

I encounter strangers almost daily promoting the idea that sex is a spectrum or at least not binary. I shouldn't be shocked that people I know share that confusion, but admittedly I was. Surely, my friends are too smart to be pushed by propaganda into believing something so absurd. It's not a lack of intelligence. It's a lack of skepticism in the face of effective propaganda. They haven't considered what it means to suggest that sex is not binary and the conditions needed for that to be true. They were very sure that I was wrong, but couldn't explain who was excluded by the idea that sex is binary.  It was disturbing because I had my answer. However much it costs to make people believe biological facts are incorrect, the price had already been paid.

When I moved to Spain in 2006 I went as a straight man. When I returned to the US in 2012 I learned that I was actually a cis straight man. I hadn't changed, but somehow I had acquired another "identity". I accepted this because I couldn't see the harm at the time and bought into the idea that it was just part of being inclusive. The harm is in the undermining of language to assert a new reality which dilutes legal protections for women and children. What's worse is that the ideology actively promotes extensive harm to children. The point of creating "trans kids" out of confused children is to justify the ideology. It uses the idea that children are suffering and that transition is an inherent good to attack deliberation around any trans activist demand as transphobic. It's compelling that this ideology is accepted in the name of justice to such a degree that examples of its harm are dismissed. 

Perhaps even more surprising than personal associates believing that sex as a binary is not inclusive enough, though the binary contains everyone, is the degree of institutional capture by trans/gender ideology. How did The Endocrine Society come to back a low evidence protocol which treats puberty like a disease needing treatment? What led the American Psychological Association to accept gender affirmation as a goal as if the perception that one is in the wrong body is fact rather than a psychological issue to be explored?

It would seem that the institutional level is where the investment in trans ideology was made. Even more than the demands of trans activists it's the support of once trusted medical associations shielding the ideology. It's popular science magazines like Scientific American and Nature promoting the idea that sex as a binary is an outdated concept. Many of these associations were making statements against bans on medical transition of children at the same time the UK and a major Swedish hospital were calling gender affirmation for children unethical. Placing children in a therapeutic protocol on the basis of their self diagnosis that will almost assure that they are sterile adults isn't in their best interests or best practices. It is, however, one way to build a profitable growing market.

I think that it's a huge open question of how much profit plays into medical institutional support for low evidence gender affirmation therapy. I'm not completely sure how to get at the answer, but I'd like to take a step back to try. Either these institutions were influenced to believe that evidence based medicine was unnecessary with people who may experience dysphoria, or they were paid not to care. Neither option brings comfort.