Last week, Roy Richard Grinker made an impassioned plea in the New York Times for the American Psychiatric Association to remove “being trans” from its list of mental disorders. His article is worrying, though perhaps not so much for the content as for what it reveals about this present age, as Grinker’s argument is a fine example of the kind of thinking which seems set to carry the day. Its plausibility, however, does not depend upon cogent logic but upon rhetoric that hides its fallaciousness from view. If a case is to be made that transgenderism is not a mental disorder, it will need to be made on far better grounds than those Grinker chose to offer in the New York Times.
The rhetorical power of Grinker’s case rests primarily upon a close analogy between homosexuality and the condition the APA now calls gender dysphoria. As the APA once regarded homosexuals as suffering from psychiatric disorder but changed its mind, Grinker argues, so it should now do the same with those who believe their gender does not match the sex of their body.
