In the postwar era, few norms have changed as fast, as dramatically, and with so little input from ordinary citizens as has the public status of gender dysphoria. Twenty years ago, observes Helen Joyce in her definitive new book Trans: When Ideology Meets Reality, the idea that a man who hadn’t taken estrogen or undergone surgery could identify as a woman and expect others to affirm that identity “would have seemed nonsensical to almost everybody.” But now “this very concept of transness has conquered medicine, law, public policy and the media.” And more.
