J.K. Rowling’s Twitter feed “creates trans phobias,” writes Washington Post gender columnist Monica Hesse. Listening to Rowling, says Hesse, is exhausting. “It’s exhausting because it requires constant vigilance.” And the constant vigilance, says Hesse, is necessary in order to determine when Rowling’s words stray into “transphobia.”

I confess my own “exhaustion” reading opinions like Hesse’s. I understand that “transphobia” has a very extensive Wikipedia page citing supposed medical experts who give the concept a veneer of legitimacy. But let’s be frank: “transphobia” didn’t enter the popular lexicon until the last decade, and, as Hesse’s column so lucidly demonstrates, is used by pro-trans activists as a rhetorical cudgel, menacingly waved about to silence their detractors.

The “phobia” ad hominem also obscures the more essential question raised by skeptics of our popularization of transgenderism: is it actually good? And is it so good that we must censure and punish the skeptics?

[I’m tired of all the ‘-phobia’ claims. It’s an old Soviet trick dressed up for Western societies: to declare opposition to the party line as a sign of psychiatric illness, either neurosis or psychosis. — Ed]