Farhad Manjoo’s columns at the NY Times have been hit or miss for me but he occasionally writes something critical of his own side and that makes him more interesting than some of the Times’s progressive die hards. Unfortunately, today’s column is not one of those. Today’s column strikes me as a much belated effort to tell progressives what they want to hear without any hints of criticism or even skepticism. According to Manjoo, America is having a moral panic about trans people.

Unhinged hysteria sows fear and suspicion by inflating unusual ideas and lifestyles into social and political emergencies. Transgender people have long aroused such panic. Have you mustered the courage to enter a public restroom since the great transgender bathroom scare of the mid-2010s? But in the past couple of years, the fears have reached a fever pitch. And in the run-up to the midterms, trans people — trans young people, especially — have become a hysterical obsession of the right.

Eighteen states have recently passed transgender athlete bans, and more are in the wings. Four states have restricted access to gender-affirming care for young people, and more than a dozen are considering restrictions. In Texas, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered that parents who allow transition-related care for their kids be investigated for child abuse. The state’s only clinic for transgender adolescents was forced to shut down. Last month false claims that Boston Children’s Hospital was performing genital surgeries on minors went viral; Boston Children’s and several other hospitals that provide transition-related health care services for adolescents were bombarded with threats…

Joe Rogan — who in other contexts talks up his long-term reliance on testosterone replacement therapy — frequently suggests on his podcast that the way transgender people are breaking norms is a sign of “civilizations collapsing.”

To put this in language that Rogan might understand: Dude, come on. The increase in visibility and social acceptance of transgender people is certainly one of the important societal changes of the past decade. I’m not saying that it isn’t a topic worthy of reporting, analysis and debate, and I don’t think that everyone who raises these issues is transphobic. But there is also a real danger that politicians’ and pundits’ excessive focus on such societal changes can exaggerate their real-world effects. For instance, is it a little awkward and cringey that many advocates now say things like “birthing people” instead of “women” as a way to be inclusive of trans people? Sure. But when an outré neologism inspires multiple critical pieces across several outlets, with pundits and celebrities accusing the inclusive language of the “erasing” of women, that seems to me like it can veer into the realm of pure panic.

All of this is a pretty one-sided presentation. The transgender athlete bans were obviously sparked by Lia Thomas who won a national swimming title and then was nominated by the NCAA as Woman of the Year. Shockingly, a lot of people didn’t think that was fair. Manjoo argues that this was a rare case and that may be true but it’s still obviously a significant one.

Lia Thomas on the podium as a National Champion at Women's Swimming NCAAs will most likely become one of the most famous images in the history of collegiate swimming. pic.twitter.com/OXtjRt0mu4

— Kyle Sockwell (@kylesockwell) March 18, 2022

As for the story about Boston’s Children’s Hospital, I don’t support anyone making threats or harassing anyone but Manjoo can’t have missed that there are ongoing discussions about whether some of these gender identity clinics are practicing substandard care. A lawsuit has been started against the Tavistock clinic in London after a formal review found some patients were receiving “affirming” care that wasn’t up to standards. Even some trans people who work in the field think this trend has gone too far. And some trans people wish they’d been given more information up front rather than simply having their feelings affirmed.

Problems like this are relatively rare but they keep happening precisely because some of the rules that have been adopted don’t make much sense. For instance, rules about allowing biological men in women’s spaces. Not just in spas but also in prisons. Anyway, I’m glad to see Manjoo’s readers are pushing back on some of this. This is the top comment:

Here is what’s worth remembering. Women didn’t have the right to vote until 1920. Title IX, allowing girls and women the right to participate in sports, wasn’t passed until 1972. Both of these were fought for, long and hard, by women – many of whom didn’t live to see the results. They are heroines.

I don’t care how few trans people there. Women have a right to sex-protected sports and spaces. Male puberty creates an irrevocable physical advantage in sports, and once biological males are allowed in sex-restricted areas, such as locker rooms and prisons, women will suffer. I’m all for protecting trans rights, but not at the cost of removing women’s rights.

Another person who doesn’t sound very panicked but does disagree with trans activists:

Moral panic? I don’t think biological males like Lia Thomas should compete in women’s sports. I’m hardly panicked about it since it appears to be relatively rare but I’d certainly support having rules in place to forbid it. I certainly don’t care how kids dress, express themselves, wear their hair, or if they choose to use different singular pronouns. I’m very much against the use of plural pronouns, children under 18 taking any sort of hormones and/or undergoing surgeries.

And one more:

It’s not being “consumed by a moral panic” to have realistic concerns about the erasure of women’s and girls’ boundaries by forcing them to share intimate spaces with biological males. It’s not a moral panic to have realistic concerns about the fairness and safety of allowing biological males to compete against biological females in sporting events.

It’s not a moral panic to have realistic concerns about the deeply Orwellian changes being made overnight to our language regarding sex and gender, including the erasure of words like “mother” and “father.”

It’s not a moral panic to have realistic concerns about providing even just a small number of adolescents with dangerous and life altering drugs.

Manjoo’s article is not convincing. Most people don’t care what adults do with their lives or their genitals. But attitudes change when it has an impact on children. Calling the response to some of these ideas a moral panic doesn’t add anything to the conversation. It’s just another demand that people who disagree with trans activists shut up.