Wesley J. Smith
\nThe EpochTimes<\/p>\n
Commentary<\/em><\/p>\n What comes after transgender<\/a>? It\u2019s an important question. We know the transgressive cultural revolution is never-ending<\/a>. Thus, once biological men can instantly identify as women and biological women as men\u2014and bind society to accept their self-definition, or else<\/em>!\u2014the revolution will look for other norms to devour.<\/p>\n That next degeneration is already gestating\u2014people who want healthy limbs amputated or other normal body functions disabled. Known as Body Integrity Identity Disorder (BIID), able-bodied people with this (still) mental illness obsess that their \u201ctrue\u201d self is disabled.<\/p>\n BIID is an awful and agonizing condition. These anguished people believe that by removing healthy limbs, snipping spinal cords, or causing the loss of sight\u2014as the case may be\u2014they would live fulfillingly as their true selves.<\/p>\n These sufferers deserve our empathy, support, and intensive mental health interventions. But it should go without saying\u2014but no longer can\u2014that doctors should never be allowed to remove healthy limbs or snip spinal cords, which would be, by definition, to cause harm in contravention of the Hippocratic Oath.<\/p>\n But alas, the concept of \u201charm\u201d is becoming increasingly malleable; witness the transforming of euthanasia\/assisted suicide from a crime into a \u201cmedical treatment.\u201d Moreover, BIID sufferers have learned from the triumph of transgender advocacy and now often refer to their condition as \u201ctransabled.\u201d (Get it?)<\/p>\n BIID activists have noticed the overwhelming success transgender activists achieved in persuading the medical establishment to bless surgically removing the healthy genitals of transgendered individuals, inhibiting natural puberty in children diagnosed with gender dysphoria\u2014even perform mastectomies on teenage girls who identify as male. So, the question is being asked: Why should transgendered people be allowed to have their bodies fundamentally altered based on their self-identified gender, while transabled people\u2014who believe similarly that their true identity is as a disabled person\u2014cannot receive similar relief?<\/p>\n If there is a logical distinction, I can\u2019t think of what it might be. Not only that but defining one\u2019s personal identity became a fundamental right in the same sex marriage case Obergfell v. Hodges, in which Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy ruled (my emphasis): \u201cThe fundamental liberties protected by this [Due Process] Clause include most of the rights enumerated in the Bill of Rights. In addition these liberties extend to certain personal choices central to individual dignity and autonomy, including intimate choices that define personal identity and beliefs<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n That includes sexual orientation, which is why Kennedy ruled that same sex couples have a constitutional right to marry. But Kennedy\u2019s words cannot be limited to issues of sexual attraction. Indeed, \u201cchoices that define personal identity and beliefs\u201d contain no logical boundary lines at all.<\/p>\n Principles and lexicon have become shape shifters, leading to a constant deconstruction of societal norms in which it is almost impossible to keep up. Thus, leap frogging from Obergfell, last year the Supreme Court ruled<\/a> 6-3 that the term \u201csex\u201d in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act is not limited to the objective biological understanding of the term, but also encompasses sexual orientation and identification\u2014even though that was not the understanding of the Congress when the bill was passed.<\/p>\n If the essential meaning of sex can be so fundamentally redefined with the snap of a finger, why not<\/em> expand the meaning of \u201cdisability\u201d to also encompass the \u201ctransabled?\u201d This argument is finding sympathetic\u2014although certainly not unanimous\u2014reception in the bioethical discourse. For example, last year, University of Manchester bioethicist Richard B. Gibson argued<\/a> in the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry that healthy limbs of people with BIID could ethically be amputated because doing so would not cause a \u201cdisability,\u201d but rather, an \u201cimpairment.\u201d<\/p>\n What\u2019s the difference you ask? Gibson and some in academic disability studies believe that disability should not be viewed mechanistically\u2014i.e., if one cannot walk or see, that person has a disability. Rather, they advocate a \u201csocial disability model<\/em>\u201d in which disability is a wrong \u201cimposed\u201d by society on the individuals with \u201cimpairments,\u201d such as through social isolation and failure to accommodate \u201catypical needs.\u201d Thus, Gibson argues, \u201cthe imparting of impairments on previously unimpaired individuals could be ethically permissible\u201d since the amputation would not actually disable<\/em> the affected individuals.<\/p>\n It isn\u2019t just the \u201clearned\u201d journals. Popular media has also started to take up the cause, often advocating<\/a> for permitting surgeons to remove healthy limbs. Then, there was the uncritical story<\/a> of Jewell Shuping, a woman with BIID who self-identified as blind\u2013and a psychologist helped take away her sight by dripping a caustic substance into her eyes, and now she is \u201chappier than ever.\u201d Good grief, even Today\u2019s Parent got into the act<\/a> as the mother of a child with cerebral palsy concluding it is \u201cinclusive\u201d to accept people voluntarily creating the circumstance in which they must use a wheelchair.<\/p>\n We are entering a world where only the subjective matters<\/em>. Among other harms, this is leading to the medical disciplines being reconceived and redefined into technocratic functionaries in the service of radically individualistic, and entirely subjective \u201chow I feel\u201d ideologies.<\/p>\n Unless this cultural moral bleeding is staunched, I give it 10, maybe 15, years before disabling surgery is permitted in Western hospitals\u2014all covered by health insurance or government benefits. What the next step will be beyond the social acceptance of transablism is more than I can imagine.<\/p>\n Award winning author, Wesley J. Smith is the chairman of the Discovery Institute\u2019s Center on Human Exceptionalism. <\/em><\/p>\n Views expressed in this article are the opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.<\/i><\/p>\n