(264) - - - ;

Elon Musk said that there should be no transgender surgery for people below the age of consent (the age of majority, I presume). The problem with this position, admittedly just adumbrated in a tweet and not some thought-out policy, lies in the fact that it is the standard conservative strategy—a strategy that always fails. Think about it à la Trump: you go into a negotiation—and you start the negotiation with a ridiculously low figure and then the other person tries to draw it up. You set an “anchor”, in other words. The left, being fanatics, do this as a default: so their start position is “gender surgery at four” and conservatives try to meet them in the middle, “Couldn’t we wait until 18?”.

So the left sets the context and then the question is just “how much can the left get?”—and if they only get “consent at 18” they can whittle that down over the years, as they did with the gay age of consent, easily enough. It’s partly down to liberalism itself: the default position is “when can you consent to this operation, does it affect anyone else?”—not “this operation is Satanic”; but the problem has arisen in America, a country that was founded on a repudiation of God, so I don’t expect anyone to put the case in anything less than liberal terms (which the left will always win on—because in the end, in liberal terms, chopping your dick and balls off doesn’t hurt anyone else).

Further, on the trans issue the age will always be as low as possible for “scientific reasons” because, obviously, if you’re going to do the procedure in a minimally invasive way you need to start as early as possible—the science will always show that “rationally”. So the best way to oppose the transgender issue is to say it’s all wrong altogether and make no concessions whatsoever. The enemy has staked out the best ground for negotiation, so don’t engage.