Dr. Martin Hash Podcast

Succumbing to social norms is the greatest challenge to individuality; specifically, males face the absolutely frightening prospect of puberty. People will try to exert control over their life anyway they can, and an effective way is to make everything subjective, so it becomes about you; only you can say whether you're male or female: not medicine, not biology, not science; nothing can come between you and your claim; and becoming female has turned out to be an effective method of avoiding the Male Dominance Hierarchy Right-Of-Passage.

In the past, this attempt at transcending gender was considered a mental illness, and still is. In psychiatric parlance, it's called a paraphilic disorder, most famously, transvestism or cross-dressing to become sexually aroused, and though transgender is in the same realm, it's more about control, and so confuses the diagnosis. Plus, switching genders has become fashionable. However, grandiosity and self-importance show a distinct lack of regard for the needs of other people. It takes true self-centeredness to demand to simultaneous use the bathroom of the opposite sex, which are gendered for courtesy. Unilaterally declaring yourself to be another gender can certainly collapse social expectations, but those strictures didn't get there by accident; it's the very fabric of society that's being threatened because courtesy works both ways, and the people who's courtesy is being abused will eventually decide to respond in kind.