The Emperor's New Binary: Colin Wright's Latest Attempt to Dress Scientific Consensus in Ideology

PITT

09 May 2025 — 7 min read

An Inconvenient Truth about "Time for a Shift in the 'Gender-Affirming Care' Debate" by Colin Wright

Hey, folks. I've spent enough time wading through the murky waters of anti-trans rhetoric to recognize when someone's trying to pass off a personal belief system as scientific fact. Colin Wright's recent article is like watching someone insist the Earth is flat while standing on the International Space Station – impressive commitment to the bit, but wildly disconnected from observable reality.

The Binary That Isn't

Wright builds their entire argument on a foundation made of sand: the claim that "sex is not a spectrum. It's a binary biological reality." This is where we need to pause and check in with actual biology.

In their article, they confidently assert that sex is defined solely by reproductive function – males produce sperm, females produce ova – as if biology textbooks stopped being updated in 1950. This simplistic view of sex has been thoroughly rejected by contemporary biological science. ^[¹^][²^]Wright is essentially trying to sell us a scientific textbook from 1950 at 2025 prices. It's like watching someone argue that computers are just fancy calculators while tweeting from their latest iPhone.

Modern scientific understanding recognizes that sex encompasses various biological characteristics such as chromosomes, hormones, and secondary sexual characteristics that exist on a spectrum rather than in two neat categories. ^[³^] Biologists now acknowledge that the binary model is overly simplistic and fails to account for the natural diversity we observe. ^[¹^]

This isn't some fringe view – it's published in leading scientific journals. As Scientific American puts it, "biologists now think there is a larger spectrum than just binary female and male." ^[¹^]

The Evidence They Don't Want to Discuss

Wright claims the evidence supporting gender-affirming care is "almost nonexistent" and cites the Cass Review. But here's where their selective reading becomes apparent.

Research consistently demonstrates that gender-affirming care improves mental health outcomes and overall well-being for transgender individuals. ^[⁴^][⁵^] Studies show reductions in suicidality, depression, and anxiety alongside improvements in mental well-being. ^[⁴^][⁶^]

The Columbia University Department of Psychiatry states unequivocally that "gender-affirming care saves lives" – not exactly the "pseudoscience" Wright tries to paint it as.^[⁶^] Multiple longitudinal studies have demonstrated that "gender-affirming medical care was associated with improved body image" and other positive outcomes. ^[⁷^]

The Brain/Body Connection

Wright dismisses the concept of gender identity with remarkable confidence for someone whose argument depends entirely on ignoring decades of research. They claim the notion that a person can have a gender identity incongruent with their assigned sex "defies both biology and logic."

Folks, this is where things get particularly wild. Wright is essentially arguing that the lived experiences of millions of people worldwide are... what? Mass delusion? This isn't just scientifically inaccurate – it's deliberately dehumanizing.

Gender identity is recognized as a core aspect of human identity by major medical and psychological organizations worldwide. The World Health Organization acknowledges that rigid notions of gender can negatively affect health and wellbeing. ^[⁸^] Research consistently documents health inequities faced by transgender and gender diverse people due to stigmatization and marginalization. ^[⁹^]

Wright's Fallacies

The Exorcism Fallacy: False Equivalence

Perhaps the most glaring fallacy is Wright's comparison of gender-affirming care to exorcism – a textbook false equivalence. Gender-affirming care is evidence-based medicine endorsed by major medical organizations worldwide.

Comparing gender-affirming care to exorcism is like comparing vaccines to crystal healing. One has centuries of scientific development behind it; the other involves priests dramatically yelling at demons – it deliberately misleads by associating established medical practice with something completely unrelated. If Wright can't tell the difference, perhaps they should reconsider their career in scientific analysis (we he pretty much has - more on this later).

The Binary Trap: False Dichotomy

Wright presents a false dichotomy throughout their article – either sex is a simple binary or gender-affirming care is pseudoscience. This ignores the possibility that both biological sex can exist on a spectrum AND gender-affirming care can be legitimate.

The Fallacy of Composition

Wright argues that because reproductive function is binary (producing sperm or ova), all aspects of sex must be binary. This is a fallacy of composition – assuming that what's true of one part must be true of the whole. Modern science recognizes that biological sex comprises multiple characteristics (chromosomes, hormones, secondary sexual characteristics) that don't always align in a binary fashion.

Cherry-Picking Evidence

Wright selectively cites the Cass Review while ignoring substantial evidence supporting gender-affirming care. Multiple studies show positive outcomes including reduced depression, anxiety, and suicidality – evidence Wright conveniently overlooks.

Begging the Question

Wright's entire argument assumes what they're trying to prove – that sex is strictly binary. They use this unproven assumption to argue that gender-affirming care is pseudoscience, essentially saying "Gender-affirming care is pseudoscience because sex is binary, and sex is binary because that's how I define it."

The Conflation Confusion

Throughout the article, Wright deliberately conflates sex and gender, despite these being distinct concepts in scientific literature. By treating them as the same thing, Wright creates confusion that serves their argument while ignoring scientific consensus that distinguishes between these concepts.

These fallacies reveal that Wright's article as primarily rhetorical rather than scientific – designed to confirm existing beliefs rather than evaluate evidence objectively. Wright's arguments collapse under scrutiny precisely because they're built on logical errors rather than sound scientific reasoning.

This kind of rhetoric isn't just intellectually dishonest – it's dangerous. It's the kind of rhetoric that gives cover to policies that harm vulnerable, while lining his pockets from the fear and discontent he stirs in his audience.

The Real Agenda

Now let's talk about what's really happening here. Wright isn't simply concerned with scientific accuracy – they're advocating for the dismantling of medical care that helps a marginalized population. Their call to "dismantle the pseudoscientific terminology and concepts" is a political position dressed in scientific language.

When they talk about "halting the medicalization of confused, distressed, and vulnerable youth," they're using emotionally charged language to obscure the fact that they're advocating for denying care that medical professionals have determined to be beneficial. ^[⁵^][¹⁰^]

Wright has strategically constructed what can only be described as a professional anti-trans career ecosystem. They've gone from studying beetles to becoming a full-time professional opponent of transgender healthcare – a career transition that appears suspiciously more lucrative than entomology.

The Professional Anti-Trans Advocate

When examining Wright's article, it's crucial to understand that they aren't merely a disinterested scientist analyzing evidence. Wright has built an entire career around opposing transgender rights and healthcare. He has a vested interest in propagating this political rhetoric.

Consider Wright's current professional portfolio:

CEO/Editor-in-Chief of Reality's Last Stand, a publication specifically dedicated to opposing transgender healthcare and contemporary gender theory
Manhattan Institute Fellow, a conservative think tank that routinely opposes gender-affirming care
Member of "The Killarney Group," which Wright themselves describes as "the world's leading think-tank on sex and gender"
Serves as an "expert witness for several court cases on gender-affirming care" (as mentioned in their article)
Contributing Editor for Quillette

Wright has formal connections to multiple organizations specifically focused on opposing transgender healthcare:

Society for Evidence-based Gender Medicine (SEGM)
Genspect
Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism (FAIR)
- which is anything but...

This context doesn't just add color to our understanding of Wright's article—it reveals the fundamental conflict of interest at its core. Wright presents their argument as a dispassionate scientific analysis, but in reality, it comes from someone whose career, reputation, and financial interests are all tied to a specific ideological position.

This isn't a scientist following evidence wherever it leads. This is someone whose entire professional identity and income now depends on maintaining a specific ideological position. This is how he pays his bills.

The Professional vs. The Humanist

While Wright has built an entire career and financial ecosystem around opposing transgender rights, many defenders of these rights operate from a fundamentally different value system. Humanists and allies who advocate for transgender rights often do so without monetary gain, driven instead by a commitment to human dignity and equality.

This stark contrast in motivation raises important questions: When someone profits from promoting ideas that restrict healthcare access for a vulnerable group, how can we distinguish between genuine scientific concern and financial self-interest?

Wright's evolution from evolutionary biologist (of beetles, no less) to professional anti-transgender advocate follows a troubling pattern we've seen with figures like Matt Walsh - transforming opposition to transgender rights into a lucrative career path while presenting it as (mostly) dispassionate scientific analysis.

The monetization of transmisia isn't just morally troubling - it creates perverse incentives that work against objective analysis. When your subscriber base, speaking engagements, book deals, and consulting opportunities all depend on maintaining a specific position, how likely are you to honestly engage with evidence that challenges that position?

The Bottom Line

Here's the thing about Colin Wright and others in the professional anti-trans industry: they present themselves as brave defenders of scientific truth while cashing checks from organizations with clear ideological agendas. They claim to care about 'confused, distressed, and vulnerable youth' while advocating for policies that the American Academy of Pediatrics says will harm those exact young people.

They demand rigorous evidence for gender-affirming care while requiring none whatsoever for their own claims about an immutable binary sex. And they wrap it all in scientific-sounding language that falls apart under even the lightest scrutiny.

The most devastating part isn't just that Wright is wrong – though they absolutely are. It's that behind every misleading claim, behind every false equivalence, behind every cherry-picked study are real transgender people whose healthcare is being threatened not because of sound science, but because some people have figured out that transmisia pays.

And when we allow ideology dressed as science to determine healthcare policy, we're not protecting anyone. We're simply sacrificing the well-being of an already marginalized group to satisfy those who've built careers on opposing their very existence.

That's not science. That's not medicine. That's not protection.

That's just cruelty with a CV attached.

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