Earlier this week, City Journal published the tragic story of Yarden Silveira, a young detransitioner—someone who pursues hormonal and/or surgical “sex change” procedures but then seeks to reverse course—whose life ended abruptly after suffering severe complications from a gender-related genital surgery. What led Yarden to adopt a transgender identity in the first place? In 2014, after encountering the growing wave of pro-trans narratives in popular culture, Yarden told his family that he believed he had a “female brain.” Though initially uncertain, his mother was ultimately convinced by scientific papers that suggested that her son could have a female brain trapped in a male body, and that this mismatch caused him unimaginable distress.
“A trans woman (such as myself) was born with a male body, but she has always had her female brain. Literally born with a female brain,” Yarden wrote in 2016.
This belief was widespread back then—and it still is. On January 31, Wisconsin Public Radio featured an interview with a mother, Carri, concerned about President Trump’s new executive order banning federally funded medical and surgical “sex change” procedures for minors. Carri spoke about her daughter, who identified as transgender at 15 and was allowed to medically transition. She said, “Those hormones really helped match his brain with his body which, to me, that’s just the basic level of care we can provide individuals that identify as trans.”
The power of this narrative in persuading people to pursue, or to allow their children to pursue, irreversible medical procedures cannot be overstated. But the notion that males can have “female brains,” and vice versa, rests on a flawed interpretation of “brain sex” studies that in no way demonstrate or even suggest a definitive biological basis for “gender identity.” Little effort has been made to correct this misleading assertion.
The theory is advanced for relatively straightforward reasons. Civil rights lawyers, activists, and researchers contend that people who identify as transgender possess a “brain sex” misaligned with their physical body, thereby establishing a biological basis for “gender identity” akin to immutable traits like race. This framing carries significant legal weight, as U.S. civil rights law offers strong protections for characteristics considered “innate” or rooted in biology.
Hellbound and Down 