Teenagers in North America and Britain increasingly suffer from mental illness, with prominent psychologists blaming social media for the rise of everything from anxiety and depression to gender dysphoria, the belief that one is, in some essential way, the opposite sex.

And yet biological sex is immutable. It manifests itself in multiple ways over the course of every man’s and woman’s lifetime. Most everyone knows this. And yet we are confronted with a particularly aggressive belief system, transgenderism, that demands a complete overhaul of language, law, and social life and which severely punishes people if they don’t comply.

I have nothing but compassion for adolescents suffering from feeling unhappy in their bodies. Indeed, it is out of my concern for them that I write. If you’d asked me at 11 if I wanted to be a boy, I would have said, “Yes.” Until recently, it was normal for girls to be boyish without interference. Some grew up to be gay or bisexual; others didn’t.