Transgender people are obviously mentally ill and it's cruel to pretend they're not

Joe Rogan this week referred to transgender activist Dylan Mulvaney as “mentally ill.” This generated a little bit of controversy, though really not outside of a narrow handful of online news outlets. Here is something you might not be aware of: Mainstream media are extremely afraid to report on this sort of thing. I mean specifically as it relates to transgenderism. If Joe Rogan had called a nonwhite person a racial slur, or had referred to a prominent progressive woman as a “cunt” or something, news outlets would be splashing it across their front pages, if only in order to try and get his show cancelled. But they show a much higher degree of selectivity when it comes to the transgender thing. They do not like to give any airtime at all to any substantive criticism of transgenderism. Consider Matt Walsh’s watershed film last year, “What is a Woman?”, which really blew the lid off transgender ideology in an effective and delightful way. The New York Times has written about this genuinely important movie precisely once. News outlets really do not like to discuss this sort of thing, in even a negative or critical context.

You cannot blame them. Honestly. The more people are exposed to criticism of transgender ideology, the more obvious the sick fraud of it all becomes. Why would the advocates of this movement want to contribute to its downfall in any way? Better to just try and suppress it. It’s completely understandable.

But Joe Rogan is right. Of course Dylan Mulvaney is mentally ill. He’s a man who believes he is a woman. This is obviously a delusion indicative of severe mental illness. If Dylan Mulvaney claimed to be a tree, or a rock, or a cloud, or a beetle, we’d all recognize that he was a sick man who was in need of significant mental treatment in order to get well. This does not change simply because he declares himself to be a woman. Being part of a contrived sub-group doesn’t mean your delusion is any more real, or authentic, or ontologically meaningful. If you sincerely believe you are a member of the opposite sex, you have a mental illness and need treatment to dissuade you from believing this.

It is not wrong to say this. There is nothing wrong with pointing this out. You can make a very limited, narrow argument that it’s appropriate to go along with this delusion while you are associating with whoever is experiencing it. If a man tells you, “I am a woman!” then it might make sense to indulge him in this fallacy while you are nearby, at least to avoid inciting the sort of unhelpful meltdown or psychotic incident that might result if you challenged him. But when he is nowhere near you it makes no sense to do this and honestly you sound unwell yourself when you do it. Imagine someone told you: “I went on a date last night with Eleanor Roosevelt!” You might smile and congratulate this person in the moment, recognizing that he is having an episode and that your correction would be at present unhelpful. But afterwards you would not say to your friends, “Hey, did you hear Jimmy went on a date last night with Eleanor Roosevelt? Isn’t that so cool?” You are not obliged to pretend that a mental illness is a reality, least of all when the sufferer of it is not in your presence.

We are doing these unfortunate souls a grave and possibly mortal disservice when we act as if they are not unwell. They do not need us to go along with their delusions They need help, professional treatment, counseling, support. They need all of these things because they are mentally unwell. It is not hard to admit this, at the very least not in private, to yourself. Try starting there.