Transgenderism is retreating.

In a recent piece in The New York Times, Kinnon R. MacKinnon —“an assistant professor who studies transgender care at York University in Toronto” and identifies as a “trans man”— grudgingly admits that the critics were right and that gender ideology, and especially the medical transition of children, was built on lies.

MacKinnon did not put it so directly, of course. Rather, she eagerly bashed the Trump administration’s efforts against gender ideology, complaining that “Under the guise of protecting children from medical harm, the Trump administration is oversimplifying detransition and using it as a political cudgel against transgender health care.” Nonetheless, she quietly makes a series of admissions that, only a few years ago, would have been dismissed as reactionary bigotry.

MacKinnon admits that instances of regret are (much) higher than the 1 percent rate often cited by trans activists.  As she explained, that 1 percent rate was on the low end, even among earlier studies of adults, whereas newer studies of “young people have suggested it could now be higher, 5 percent to 10 percent — an increase that has come amid a sharp rise in the number of young people seeking care at gender clinics.”

She still understates the matter, for some of the better data sets suggest that rates of detransition are even higher, perhaps approaching one in three after only a few years of taking cross-sex hormones. And as critics of gender ideology have long pointed out, studies of transgenderism in general and regret in particular have often been poorly designed or hampered by follow-up losses as subjects drop out. Furthermore, studies of carefully screened Swedish adults are a poor guide to what will happen when American adolescents are medically transitioned with no screening at all.

Nonetheless, even if it is still an undercount, acknowledging higher rates of regret is an important concession, which leads to a second important acknowledgment. MacKinnon’s piece rebuts those who dismiss detransitioners as only a handful of cases. This argument — if may be dignified as such — takes the prominence of a few detransitioners, such as Chloe Cole, as evidence that they are the only ones. But there are many more detransitioners who, though not as outspoken, have still been hurt by gender ideology and the medical malpractice it has committed against them.

MacKinnon’s study of detransition surveyed “nearly 1,000 people about the factors that contributed to their decision” many of whom “felt let down by treatments, sometimes terribly so.” Ah. So, it wasn’t only Chloe.

This brings us to a third admission: Irreversible transition procedures, including surgeries, are being done to children, and these cases are especially likely to result in regret. As MacKinnon explained in her analysis of detransitioners, “33 percent … were much more likely to express strong regret with the decision to transition. Some felt that they had not been adequately informed about the risks of medical treatments.” Members of this group of detransitioners “were more likely to start treatment at a younger age and to begin a medical transition more quickly after realizing their trans identity.” They were overwhelmingly female and, “although fewer than 30 participants in our study reported having surgery as a minor, more than half of them were in this group.”

Thus, MacKinnon confirms trans surgeries are being perpetrated upon children, who are particularly likely to regret them. Furthermore — and unmentioned by MacKinnon — surgery is not the only type of transition procedure that can injure. Puberty blockers and cross-sex hormones also have harmful and irreversible effects from cardiovascular risks to sterility.

MacKinnon’s most important admission might be that the “born this way” narrative used to justify these “treatments” is false. The truth is that “gender identity” is not “fixed from childhood,” which is to say that the prevailing model of “gender affirming care” is based on a lie. As she acknowledged,

For decades, trans medicine has operated under the assumption that gender identity was fixed from childhood and that the goal of gender-affirming care is to align a person’s body with a deeply felt internal sense of gender. Transitioning was a one-way street, often ending with surgery. But many recent studies, including my own, show that gender identity for some youth can evolve.

In other words, the premise of medically transitioning children — that everyone is born with an innate, immutable gender identity that can be mismatched with the body, and that in such cases medical transition is the best, even only, treatment — is false.

And yet, MacKinnon is still a true believer in gender ideology, both personally and in terms of policy. She isn’t surrendering. She is attempting a tactical retreat — trying to walk back from positions that had become too dangerous, perhaps even for readers of The New York Times. The purpose is to moderate — or at least seem to moderate — enough to blunt the fury of the backlash against gender ideology.

But she won’t actually abandon it. She even believes that children should still be medically transitioned. Other activists, and even some Democrat politicians, have also attempted this maneuver, making rhetorical concessions without being willing to change their policies.

We should not fall for this. All of gender ideology is based on a lie, and so we should press our advantage and insist that laws and culture be rooted in truth. No one is born in the wrong body. Men and women are different, and their differences must be recognized and respected. Medical transition is mutilation, and inflicting it on troubled children is especially heinous and must be stopped entirely.