The Affirmation Model Must End

Some people live with deep loneliness, isolation, shyness, or chronic low self-esteem. For some, abandoning the expectations of their sex role feels like relief. Pretending to be the opposite sex can bring confidence, social ease, and a temporary sense of safety. Their relief is real. But relief does not mean society should erase sex as a basic fact of reality.

We can acknowledge that individuals feel better while also refusing to reorganize the world around a choice to imitate the opposite sex. The model of “affirmation” demands more than kindness. It functions as coercion: a system of escalating punishments for anyone who declines to play along. What is sold as compassion is in fact a denial of reality.

This model has warped medicine. Procedures that should be reserved for clear medical need are offered on the basis of desire and financed from the collective purse. The public pays, the patient bears the risks, and the treatment is declared “medically necessary” by fiat.

It has warped society. Pity for a troubled person has been inverted into celebration of a supposedly new category of being. “Trans” is treated as ascendant, as if human sex can be transformed. But it cannot (I know—I’ve tried).

Worst of all, it harms those who follow the path. The interventions damage healthy bodies, shorten lives, and trap people in an endless performance that brings long stretches of anxious disorientation.

The culture of “affirmation” should end. Activists and NGOs should abandon the demand for universal acceptance and settle, at best, for tolerance. Yet even tolerance may be hard to sustain after years of policy built on erasing sex.

As my Heterodorx co-host Nina Paley observed, “sex is real, people are weird.” A society can live with a few outliers. It cannot remake reality to normalize them. Queer theory tries to do just that, and the result is chaos.

We would do better to replace the term “transsexual” with the plain description “sex pretender.” Children should learn that adults who play lifelong games of make-believe deserve compassion, not admiration. Some people will persist in the game. Responsible adults should help them quit if possible, with kindness but without capitulation.

This article first appeared as an 𝕏 thread by @heterodorx on September 24, 2025