On Thursday night, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro responded to arguments from the Left concerning transgenderism during the question-and-answer portion of a Young America’s Foundation’s Fred Allen Lecture Series event at Stanford University.
“You’ve talked a lot tonight about how important it is to let people believe what they want to believe and how the government and us have no say telling people what they should think or what they should be able to say,” posited a left-leaning Stanford student.
“I just wanted to ask, what’s the harm, if someone is gonna be a happier person because they say that they’re a man or a woman, what’s the harm in letting them do it?” he asked.
“I’m not in favor of banning people who are adults; children I’m in favor of banning because now you’re talking about somebody who’s not capable of consent,” Shapiro clarified, with regard to gender transition.
“All of our laws are based on the ability of people to consent,” the conservative radio host continued. “If you’re a child, you can’t consent. So, I’m very much in favor of banning gender transition for kids. I think that it’s, frankly, evil. I think you’re making decisions for children who are not capable of making decisions for themselves that are permanent and have long-lasting, significant and severe impact.”
Shapiro then focused in on the “real question being asked in our society today.”
“I don’t think there are that many people who are like, ‘We wanna ban gender surgery for a 30-year-old.’ I’m not seeing the campaign for that. What I am seeing is a campaign on the Left that says my child is gonna be removed from my home ten years from now if I don’t agree with the Left’s view of how I should treat my child’s gender confusion at age four,” he explained. “I see the Left suggesting that they want to fine me if I refuse to say that a man is a woman, as a general proposition. If I say that men and women are separate, then the Left says that this is discrimination.”
“Turns out, gender does mean something and it does have an actual meaning to people outside of you,” the 35-year-old continued. “I am not going to go along with the general societal willingness to rewrite basic facets of human nature and human biology, and, frankly, mammalian biology, in order to suggest a delusion is true.”
Shapiro then differentiated between denying biological reality and general politeness, explaining that he wouldn’t go out of his way to reference the biological sex of a person who is gender-confused and would also not deny biological truth while speaking at a public forum.
As noted by The Daily Wire, Shapiro’s Thursday night speech focused on the “dangerous game” being played between the radical Left and alt-right, detailing how the two groups “feed” off one another.
Ironically, while the “Right Side of History” author was denouncing extreme, anti-Semitic rhetoric by leaders of the alt-right, left-wing students chanted for Shapiro’s removal.
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