Our Bodies, Our Decisions: A Response to Andrew Sullivan’s NYT Essay
In a recent New York Times, author Andrew Sullivan, a conservative British-American political commentator and former editor of The New Republic, argues that the trans movement has gone too far, provoking a conservative backlash against the broader gay rights movement. Worried about rolling back significant gains, particularly marriage equality, Sullivan highlights all the ways transgender people and their challenges make others uncomfortable (from bathroom choice, to sports participation, to decisions about puberty blockers for kids). Unfortunately, in the process he reinforces misguided anti-trans tropes and misses an opportunity to unite us (LGBTQI+ and allies) in the preservation of our rights collectively, and individually, to make decisions about our own bodies.
Sullivan argues that the younger queer generation disdains the ones that came before it. I don’t agree. I’ve been teaching classes on gender, sex, and (more recently) bioethics for over thirty years, and I’ve found today’s young people eager to learn about the activism of earlier generations of LGBTQI+ people. We need more of this history in schools, not less, and the recent ruling allowing kids to opt out of these lessons is a terrible disservice, one to be resisted.
Sullivan says, “I didn’t and don’t believe that being a man or a woman has nothing to do with biology.” Advocates of trans healthcare aren’t dismissing biology either! Of course, even without gender-affirming care, anyone can defy social expectations and adopt a new, preferred gender identity. Boys, for example, can wear skirts, grow their hair long, and discard or adopt other stereotypical gender markers if they want to express a conventional girl gender identity. But biology is all too relevant, and trans kids and their parents are keenly aware of (often unwanted) pubertal biological changes. These need not be a life sentence, thanks to puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones, which can pause or bring about biological changes in the body, improving lives.
Sullivan makes an important point about the importance of informed consent but draws an incorrect conclusion. Worried about children’s ability to truly know their gender identity, he asks: How can we be sure that children are making the right decisions regarding puberty blockers and later cross-sex hormones? If they’ve never experienced orgasms, he argues, how do they know they won’t want to have them in their natal sex? Such decisions are weighty and complicated, and of course physicians should not be prescribing these drugs (or any drugs) indiscriminately. Each child or teenager needs to be evaluated with thought and care. But these are decisions for patients, parents, and physicians to make together. Some kids will benefit from gender-affirming healthcare and others might need some other kind of care to thrive; the blanket denial of trans care is not the answer to questions about potential future regret.
I agree with Sullivan that informed consent is a critical component of all healthcare decisions. My own research has been about the history of intersex (atypical sex development). Sullivan might do well to direct his antipathy toward gender and sex modification to the way medicine has intervened to “correct” those born with innate variations of sex characteristics. Since the mid-twentieth century, doctors have subjected these babies and toddlers to unnecessary genital surgeries, in an effort to make genitals, gonads, hormones, and chromosomes align. And the practice continues. Well-intentioned parents might consent to such interventions, hoping the child will look and feel “normal,” but at what cost? Many intersex adults have attested to damaging physical and emotional scars resulting from their ordeals. Who can know with certainty what gender a baby will grow into, or how they will feel in their mature body?
For several decades now, intersex people who have endured such “treatment” have been trying to convince physicians to forgo performing these so-called corrective procedures, which are irreversible. Advocates suggest letting these children grow up with their intersex variations, allowing them to decide for themselves whether anything needs “fixing” when they are old enough to participate in such critical and permanent decisions about their bodies. At what age can someone make this decision? It depends on the child, just as with trans kids.
Sullivan says that he is not throwing transgender people under the bus, arguing that their protection from employment discrimination provides them with a seat. I strongly disagree. In 2025, in legislatures across the country some 924 bills are under consideration that restrict trans people, severely limiting their rights in countless arenas. Many states have cut off gender-affirming healthcare, not just for young people but for consenting adults as well.
I understand Sullivan’s worry that the current backlash against transgender people threatens hard-won achievements of the lesbian, bisexual, and gay community, but I wish he’d promote a different strategy, one better designed to win over the long haul and that does not betray basic principles of equality and autonomy. Let’s assess the big picture. The Right’s attack is not limited to the transgender community; trans people are merely a convenient (and misunderstood) scapegoat. Anti-trans assaults are a wedge: a beginning, not an end. We need only look at the Right’s plans to ban or severely restrict abortion, its advocacy of the idea of “personhood” at conception, or its explicit efforts to reverse lesbian and gay rights to see that the ultimate goal is to undermine the fundamental human right to make choices about our bodies for ourselves. Appeasing the Right won’t make it stop. Fighting together for control of our own bodies will be difficult, but it’s the right thing to do and our only protection.
Featured image caption: Signs and a pride flag at Capital Pride Parade, Washington, DC, June 2018. (Courtesy Wikimedia)
Elizabeth Reis is a professor of gender and bioethics at the Macaulay Honors College at the City University of New York. She is the author of Bodies in Doubt: An American History of Intersex, which was recently published in a 2nd edition, and Damned Women: Sinners and Witches in Puritan New England. She is also the editor of American Sexual Histories: A Social and Cultural History Reader.
Discover more from Nursing Clio
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
.jpg){kind=link}