In his latest book Pandemic of Lunacy, philosopher J. Budziszewski dismantles the delusion that manhood and womanhood can be whatever we wish, exposing the lack of scientific basis for transgender ideology and the real harms of “transitioning.”

There are plenty of lunacies out there. The latest book by J. Budziszewski lists 30 of them. If you are not familiar with this important American philosopher, I have discussed him before. And given that I have most of his 20 books, it is clear that I believe he is well worth being aware of.

In his brand-new volume Pandemic of Lunacy (Creed & Culture, 2026), he looks at the prevailing madness that has overtaken much of the West. One should not be surprised that trans insanity is one of the lunacies he focuses on. Chapter 14 examines the lunacy that “Manhood and womanhood can take any shapes that we wish.”

Budziszewski starts the chapter by making two observations:

• “Plainly, some aspects of the roles men and women play really are variable.”
• “Equally plainly, some people are uncomfortable with their sex.”

He goes on to discuss these matters in more detail:

As to the first observation—sex roles are culturally variable—there are limits to cultural variation. Psychological research shows that many sharp differences between the sexes hold consistently across countries, educational levels, ages, and years in which the research was conducted. And guess what? The contrasts correspond closely with traditional views of sexual differences—for example, concerning average levels of aggressiveness and nurturance. In fact, not only do we find the same differences everywhere, but we also find much the same views about these differences everywhere—even in countries like ours, where confessing that we hold them is slandered as prejudiced and retrograde. We can now confirm, by advanced sociological methods, that what everyone used to know without them is really true.

As to the second observation—some people are uncomfortable with their sex—thinking one is a member of the other sex doesn’t make it so. There is no scientific basis whatsoever for the idea that a biological man can be a woman, or that or biological woman can be a man, or that one can change into the other. All the evidence for “transmen” really being men, and for “transwomen” really being women, comes down to the mere fact that they say they are or feel they are. How could a man who says that he “feels like a woman” know what a woman feels like anyway? He only feels what he imagines a woman would feel, or he feels a desire to be one.

He goes on to say this:

We are embodied persons. Our minds are parts of what we are, but so are our bodies. They are not just containers or prisons for our true selves, but aspects of them. Indeed, the brain is indelibly stamped male or female. Injecting hormones doesn’t erase the stamp, and general surgery doesn’t affect it at all; sewing a penis on a woman does not make her a man any more than sewing a trunk on a man makes him an elephant. Brain physiologists tell us that large parts of the brain cortex are thicker in women than in men. Ratios of grey to white matter vary, too. The hippocampus, which plays a role in memory and spatial navigation, takes up a greater proportion of the female brain than of the male brain….

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