A Reddit Dialogue Goes Unusually Deep over Trans Biology/Ideology
u/SteelTruth88
XY = man
XX = woman
Glad I could help.
u/GrayMatter1978
There are men with XX chromosomes.
There are women with XY chromosomes.
Glad I could help.
It’s another sunny day at America’s new favorite social media site. The article making the rounds on Reddit is from the conservative magazine, National Review, arguing that medical elites are redefining health by prioritizing patients’ beliefs over “normal physiology.” In other words, let’s not get carried away with this trans stuff when biology has the final word. The article’s central claim was deceptively simple: human biology hasn’t changed, and medicine loses its ethical grounding when it departs from conserving natural bodily functions in favor of fulfilling subjective identities.
Got that?
Health, the author suggested, is biologically given, not socially negotiated. Puberty, fertility, and sex differentiation are treated as privileged physiological norms. Intervening in them without disease, the argument goes, represents ideology masquerading as care.
The comments section, predictably, did not remain clinical for long.
What continues is some fragments from that thread — two users circling the same words (normal, biology, health), but inhabiting very different worlds.
Reddit Thread: “Medical elites are redefining health. The human body didn’t get the memo.”
u/GrayMatter1978
Cancer is normal physiology. A rare disease is just biology doing what it does.
And before anyone jumps in — biology doesn’t issue value judgments. Cells divide. Sometimes they divide badly. That’s still biology.
So what exactly is the “normal physiology” this article talks insists on? Is it the physiology the anti-transgender Right happens to favor at the moment?
A serious argument would at least acknowledge that function, proper function, dysfunction, health, disease aren’t handed down by nature like The Ten Commandments. (I thought this crowd would like that.) They’re negotiated. Constantly. By scientists, doctors, and societies. I’m just waiting for the conservative justices on the Supreme Court to step into it, putting themselves forward as biologists.
u/SteelTruth88
You think cancer is normal??!!
If cancer were normal, everyone would have it. Most people don’t. Ergo, it’s not normal.
Normal physiology means healthy physiological processes functioning as designed. Cancer is cells going haywire. That’s not biology “doing its thing.” That’s biology breaking.
u/GrayMatter1978
You’re already importing values while pretending you aren’t.
If “normal physiology” means what naturally occurs, then cancer is normal.
If it means what promotes flourishing, then that standard isn’t biological — it’s ethical.
We fight cancer not because it violates nature. Nature produces cancer just fine.
We fight it because it causes suffering, shortens lives, destroys projects and relationships.
That decision is social, moral, and human.
The article’s logic is as follows:
biology → normal → ethical medicine.
This doesn’t survive contact with reality.
What actually happens is:
biology → variation
society → valuation
medicine → intervention
u/SteelTruth88
Sophistry.
Cancer and infections occur when normal physiology suffers an insult — asbestos, radiation, poor sanitation. Medicine helps the body return to normal.
“Gender-affirming care” doesn’t restore anything. It mutilates healthy bodies and permanently ruins their function.
And spare me the call for “nuance.” We already know most gender-dysphoric kids, with therapy and support, come to accept their sex. Many realize they’re gay. What you’re defending is irreversible harm dressed up as compassion.
u/GrayMatter1978
You just made my point.
You’re calling cancer “abnormal” because of its consequences — suffering, loss, death. That’s not a biological criterion. It’s a moral one.
Let me offer a more difficult case.
Trisomy 21. Down syndrome.
Is that “normal physiology”?
Because a lot of people with Down syndrome live rich, meaningful lives. They don’t experience themselves as errors. So where exactly is the cutoff? At what IQ does physiology stop being “normal”?
Please be precise. A lot of families would like an answer.
u/SteelTruth88
That’s absurd. Down syndrome is a chromosomal abnormality. Compassion doesn’t change biology.
And stop pretending the article is ideological. It’s defending medical sanity. XY is male. XX is female. Puberty exists for a reason. Fertility exists for a reason.
Redefining health around feelings is how societies lose their grip on reality.
u/GrayMatter1978
Some babies are born with ambiguous genitalia. For decades, surgeons “normalized” them at birth — cutting away healthy tissue to satisfy parental and social expectations.
So which was the “normal physiology”? Before surgery? Or after society imposed its preference?
And while we’re here — are you also against circumcision? Or does “mutilation” only count when it works for your politics?
u/SteelTruth88
XY = man
XX = woman
Glad I could help.
u/GrayMatter1978
There are men with XX chromosomes.
There are women with XY chromosomes.
Glad I could help.
(The thread slows. Then one last exchange.)
u/SteelTruth88
Biology sets limits. You can’t wish them away. The body doesn’t care about ideology.
Once medicine stops anchoring itself to objective physiological norms, it becomes belief-directed. History shows where that leads.
u/GrayMatter1978
And once medicine pretends those “objective norms” arrive without interpretation, it absolves itself of responsibility.
The body doesn’t speak. It doesn’t issue memos, as the article suggests. We interpret it. We always have.
The danger isn’t admitting that health is negotiated. The danger is pretending it isn’t — while quietly enforcing one’s hierarchy of values as if nature itself had signed off on them.
Unbelievable. And yet, you and I would take different sides on this one, right?