The Folly of Eliminating Friction

The world is getting more comfortable all the time. As any proponent of modernity will tell you, the world's “material standard of living” is constantly on the rise, and “the average citizen lives more comfortably now than kings did a few centuries ago.”

At the same time, suicide rates, after many years in decline, have risen sharply—a trend that began before the pandemic. In America, suicide is gen Z's second leading cause of death, and the rates for girls age 10 to 15 rose 12.7% a year over a several year period. In England, “record demand” for suicide phone support has begun outpacing providers' ability to keep up. In Australia, younger girls presenting with suicidal ideation and self-harm pack emergency rooms. Meanwhile, mental illness is on the rise, including a 38% increase among kids 13 to 19. Half of millennials and 75% of Gen-Zers have left jobs over poor mental health. Antidepressant use is up. Deaths from drugs and alcohol are at historic highs.

Social psychologist Jonathan Haidt suggests the “coddling” of young minds could be a factor—the helicopter parenting, the trigger warnings, the impulse to “scrub campuses clean of words, ideas, and subjects that might cause discomfort or give offense.” Evolutionary biologist Heather Heying says students who arrive to her classes “too comfortable” are “at considerable risk—of being gamed, of getting angry, of becoming incoherent.” She adds in a more recent article: “Having students stew in their own uncertainty, their own confusion, their own dashed assumptions, forces awareness and capability in nearly all of them.”

This dangerous sense of entitlement we're fostering in kids thrives in choice and affluence. Author Barry Schwartz, in The Paradox of Choice, shows that the explosion of options in everything from jeans to lifestyles “no longer liberates, but debilitates. It might even be said to tyrannize.” It turns out achieving a high degree of control over one's life is not the path to happiness. It turns out a little hardship is good for the soul. Psychologist Jordan B. Peterson argues that a meaningful life comes of enduring “the largest burden you can bear.” “Prepare the child for the road,” goes an old saying. “Not the road for the child.”

“What should we do about kids who are deeply dysphoric?” journalist Jesse Singal asks on Gender: A Wider Lens (a podcast I've appeared on, too). Especially when “They've felt that way for a while... and nothing changes this horrible feeling?” He's responding to psychotherapist Stella O'Malley's assertion that she “[doesn't] really agree with medical transition of children,” but thinks we should “leave space until they grow up.”

I believe the assertion that gender dysphoric kids experience a “misalignment” between their minds and bodies in puberty, and one that causes a tremendous amount of distress. Female-to-male transsexual Buck Angel makes the case convincingly. So does Stella herself, in early episodes. Though she grew up to be a straight, feminine woman who married a man and started a family, she suffered excruciating gender dysphoria as a child.

“I suppose I think that there's a lot of things we have to experience in childhood,” Stella responds. “In a way, that's the deal of life.” Later she adds: “There's lots of ways to alleviate pain. There isn't just one way.”

In an earlier episode, she put it even more eloquently. Her desistance “wasn't about gender at all,” she said—and I'm paraphrasing, because podcasts aren't searchable—it was more about “coming to terms with a reality that did not suit me.”

And so it's fair to ask: what's the value in pursuing “alignment” for kids with gender dysphoria? Is it valuable to remove the presumed cause of their suffering? And if so, is it also valuable to remove the causes of other kids' suffering? Or, is it better to accept suffering as part of the human plight, and following the insight of Haidt and others, to provide kids with the tools they need to manage their suffering? Gender variance disproportionately affects the young; is that because they grow out of it as they learn life skills? Is that why “watchful waiting” allows the vast majority to eventually desist?

Is the distress of other pubescent kids different in kind? In my experience, girls with large breasts feel freakish and sexualized, while those with small breasts feel insufficiently feminine. Boys go through things too—worrying if body hair seems insufficient, too profuse, or distributed oddly. Kids of both sexes are unhappy with their height, their weight, their skin tone, the size of their nose. Acne is a thing. Few are as attractive as they'd hoped.

I went through school with a girl whose kidney-shaped, elevated, dark brown birthmark covered her entire right cheek. Did her body match her self-image? “Why doesn't she cover that with makeup,” my mom once wondered aloud. I knew why, because I'd given it some thought. The birthmark was a reality she'd been forced to reckon with, and she'd risen to the occasion.

If she covered it part of the time, she'd have to cover it all the time. Friends who stopped by unexpectedly would be shocked. Anyone she pursued a relationship with would eventually be in for an unpleasant surprise. She'd still be living with the unconcealed birthmark—in the shower, in bed, in the morning before she applied her makeup—no matter how well she hid it from everyone else. The fact is, she was a confident and happy girl. She'd found a way forward that didn't involve hiding the source of her distress.

I don't buy that some must escape their bodies while others should learn self-acceptance. I don't buy that some need a scalpel and others need coping skills. I want to help kids craft their own unique and happy lives with whatever combination of strengths and imperfections life has dealt them, instead of rushing to rescue them from themselves.