I read Sullivan's April 9 Substack differently.
Yes, he says that people "should be able to identify as they wish, call themselves what they wish, access full medical treatments to be the gender they believe they are, and be protected by civil rights law. "
But he makes two major qualifications.
First, he says these rights ought to apply only to people "over the age of 18." He goes on to say, later in the article, that it might be permissible to help some minors transition, but that "you" (who?!) "need a very good reason". He says: "I would favor a ban on any surgical treatments and hormones until the age of 18 and 16, respectively. I don’t believe in altering a human body permanently in childhood or adolescence." Well, great, and thanks to him for sharing his unsolicited opinion. He is expressing his personal morality, and it is going to be hard for him to demonstrate that *his* sense is truly *common sense* and also *ethically correct*. He borrows and adapts a phrase from the abortion debate: minors' transition should be "safe, limited and rare," as he puts it. But he doesn't have the medical background to determine what's safe. And the "limited and rare" part is unspecific and rooted in his assumption that gender transition is harmful and that the frequency needs to be reduced, just because it is, in his statistical analysis, best described as "insane". It is also unclear from his article whether he would allow puberty blockers before the age of 16. Of course, by age 16, the child has already gone through puberty and so blocking puberty would be largely N/A. He implies that kids under 16 might not be "developmentally capable of making the decision to take puberty blockers," which would essentially mean that puberty blockers ought never be used. This is left very unclear in his article. He is revealing himself as not knowing, or not caring about how to communicate, basic facts and parameters of the topic he's moralizing about.
Second, even in the case of adults, he said *he* would require "some measure other than simply a statement by the person to show that the transition is genuine and sustained," although he does not explain (a) what "genuine and sustained" means and why it matters (b) to whom the transgender person needs to prove this (c) what exactly would be the "some measure" that could prove it. I don't know if he can explain what he's talking about, but he is sure saying that trans people are responsible for doing it, just because *he* has an opinion about it.
Incidentally, in a 2013 post on his website ("An Unconditional Surrender In The Culture War"), he acknowledges that the ex-gay movement has been harmful, and he implies that someone needs to be "an adult" to consent to" reparative therapy that tells them *not* to be gay. Look at the inconsistency: in his view, children *need* therapy aimed at exploring whether they aren't really trans before the child is allowed to be trans, but therapy that might steer a gay kid away from being gay is so potentially harmful that it *shouldn't be allowed* until the person is an adult.
In this April 9 substack, his wording suggests that "the transgender issue" (1st sentence) and "the trans rights radicals" (final paragraph) are monolithic. That is, in his portrait, there's only one trans issue, and all trans people make the same demand about it. Also, whether or not it's conscious and intentional on his part, he is implying that trans people are essentially ideologically radical and that their lives present some kind of problem to be solved, and that he, as a cis person, is appropriately neutral, calm, and rational enough to solve it, despite his apparently lacking an actual knowledge base. He links to some articles and injects his personal morality, and he thinks this makes him able to discuss an “objective reality” that overrides what trans people actually do know more profoundly from their having lived in the world as trans.
Before we can establish whether he indeed supports "full rights for trans people" (as you put it), first we have the problem of who gets to decide exactly what those rights ought to be, as well as why—this, truly, I would like to know—cis people assume they are the neutral and proper arbiters of that. I mean, Sullivan complains about the tendency to focus on "less than one percent of humanity...[to] explain the 99 percent of their peers" as potentially "confus[ing]" the majority—yet he himself wants recognition as the specific kind of sexual minority that he is. He expects that talking about the gay "variation" will not confuse straight people about themselves; he doesn't think *that* should be silenced.
He actually says that schools must teach kids not to recognize trans identity. (His words: "...to teach kids they have a choice over whether to be a boy or girl, should be kept out of the classroom.") How is this consistent with his claim that at least *some* kids—the ones who pass his bar for psychological counseling, whatever that bar is—are actually and validly transgender? How does one read this to make it consistent? Maybe he's saying it's not the kids' choice, but rather the psychologist's assessment, that makes someone validly transgender? Or maybe he is saying that kids shouldn't be allowed to have surgery, and probably not hormones either, and until they have surgery and/or hormones, they don't get to choose their gender presentation, clothing, name, pronouns, either? It is very hard to tell what he means. But whatever it is, it isn't good for trans people.
He doesn't consider that this would be obviously offensive and harmful if it were done to gay kids—that is, if kids weren't allowed to assert their own sexual orientation unless multiple psychologists gave them permission.
He does indeed acknowledge (as you point out) that the alleged "threat of sexual assaults in restrooms" committed by trans people is "non-existent." But he stops short of explicitly saying that trans people should be allowed to use the same bathrooms that everyone else uses. in fact, he goes on to say that some [cis] women "need a space free from any inkling of maleness and penises" and that "separate facilities for trans people is the sanest and least dangerous option." In those two sentences, in context, he seems to be talking about domestic violence shelters and prisons, not about public bathrooms in general, but his actual words are phrased broadly, it is hard to tell exactly what he's recommending. If he believes that some cis women need spaces that are cis-women only, then, logically, he is also advocating for cis-women-only bathrooms, which would leave trans women without a bathroom or required to use some separate bathroom. Given his overall argument, he is strongly implying that, in his view, if a unisex bathroom exists, then it's reasonable to ask trans people to use it. Look where he says that "trans women and trans men" belong to "a separate category" from cis women and cis men. In what way does he mean this? Why is he bringing it up?
If he believes that trans people are the gender they say they are and that they belong in the same bathroom as everyone else, he could just say that. He did not say it, probably because he doesn't believe it.
In this article, Sullivan spends a lot of time worrying about himself. He worries about his hypothetical past self (*what if he had been led, as a teenager, to believe he was a trans girl rather than a gay boy?*) and about his current self (*what if people call him a transphobe?*). He waves his hands suggesting vaguely that transgender people might regret their transitions and that he, as a self-evaluated "sane" voice on the matter, is in a position to recommend they have more therapy before he allows them to live their lives.
I read the public version of approximately 2,000 words. There may be more in the version for paid subscribers. I am surely not going to pay him to produce more of this, however. I have read enough.
The article is offensive for multiple additional reasons. His headline is bad. (Since it's his blog, presumably he, and not an editor or publisher, chose the headline.) His subtitle is also bad. The first sentence is bad, both before and after the comma. Every sentence is bad.
He needs to stop this.
P.S. Cis people on the Internet need to stop telling trans people that we don't "actually READ" what cis people write and that we are not "being honest" in our responses. We read. We are honest. You are deliberately wasting our time. It hurts. We are tired of it. Please stop.
