Actually, Ice Cream’s a Fine Metaphor for Gender-Affirming Care
The conservative talking point version is dumb, but the analogy itself is perfectly acceptable.
by Evan Urquhart
Is a kid experiencing gender dysphoria similar to a kid who likes ice cream? On its face, the two seem so obviously different as to make any comparison entirely facile and unfruitful. Nonetheless, this is a simile beloved by conservatives. Most recently, the comparison between gender-affirming care (an individualized approach to treating gender dysphoria that in some cases can include medical treatments such as hormone therapy) and ice-cream (a sweet treat beloved by Americans of all ages) was made by Representative Wesley Hunt, a Republican from Texas, in a presentation for the Judiciary Committee last week. Rep. Hunt illustrated the dumb way conservatives think gender-affirming care works with a poster showing the food pyramid with everything replaced by ice-cream.
screenshot from KHQA 7, a Sinclair affiliate
The idea is that responsible parents act to restrain their children’s unwise impulses, such as eating ice cream for every meal or undergoing a gender transition. The comparison only works if you believe the false narrative that gender-affirming care is a fast track to permanent medical interventions instead of the fact that clinics who treat gender-dysphoric youth only prescribe hormone blockers or cross sex hormones to about half of their patients, and then only with parental consent after a thorough assessment process.
However, a better comparison to how gender-affirming care works in the real world would be to consider how kids eating ice cream in the real world actually functions: In the real world, we don’t ban children from eating ice cream because it would be unhealthy if all kids only ever ate ice cream. In the real world, we let parents decide how much ice cream their kids get to eat, and how often they get to eat it, but kids get to choose their own favorite flavor. In the real world, most kids get to eat at least some ice cream, and try at least a few favors, which is how they know what they like and, hopefully, how they learn to enjoy ice cream in moderation in adulthood.
Think about how strange it would be if we treated a child who likes chocolate ice cream the way conservatives think we should treat a child who expresses that they’re experiencing gender dysphoria. What sort of family would tell a child who says “I like chocolate” that they don’t, really, and insist they say that they like mint chip? What sort of family would insist that a child’s preferences didn’t exist, or that they were sinful for having them? That’s roughly the sort of family conservatives believe in, a family where children aren’t believed to have their own preferences, differences, gifts, or talents but instead seen as completely moldable by their parents through authoritarian discipline. This is arguably harmful even around small things like taste preferences, but is truly damaging when a child’s natural differences cannot be accepted or respected by their family.
Parents have a role in making sure a kid’s not eating all ice cream all the time, but it’s weird if they tell them they can’t like a particular flavor, or that there’s something wrong with people who do like it. While a lot fewer children want to be another gender than like ice cream, the principle of not contradicting a child or shaming them for an innocent preference is similar. If a child says they feel like another gender, all the affirming model does is say that parents and doctors shouldn’t tell them they’re not feeling what they’re feeling, or that there’s something wrong with them for feeling it. That’s it. That’s what conservatives are so scared of.
What happens after a child expresses that they feel like another gender isn’t a one-way track to gender transition, but a slow, careful process where parents and doctors try to work out what’s best for the child. The child doesn’t dictate the pace or the end-results, but what they say about what feels right for them is listened to and taken seriously because ultimately it’s the child who knows what their own tastes are, not their parents. A sensible family doesn’t rush into medical treatment options, but they don’t ignore the medical evidence that says they are the best option for some children either.
