“So you think it’s OK for a parent to slash his kid’s ding-a-ling off?” Watters finally interjects.

“Are you circumcised?” Sayed said. 

“Circumcision’s different than castration,” Watters shot back.

“It’s a problem that you think you get to decide what happens between a parent, a doctor, and a patient,” el Sayed argued. “I’m just saying that, yes, circumcision is surgery on a kid’s ding-a-ling.”

Because of el Sayed’s numerous extremist positions and associations with America-hating, Mao-loving, pro-terrorism personalities and organizations, this unhinged position on the mutilation of healthy children hasn’t gotten the attention it deserves.

Circumcision is a minor, low-risk procedure that’s been practiced by humans going back 5,000 years or more. Around 80% of American men are circumcised. Their lives are not irreparably altered. Their natural maturation is not impeded.

Most pediatricians believe the health benefits of circumcising boys outweigh the risks of the procedure. No one compels parents to circumcise their children. And if a 13-year-old boy suddenly demanded to be circumcised for cosmetic reasons, no responsible parent or doctor would needlessly subject them to a scalpel.

Castration has also been around for thousands of years, though chiefly as a tool of torture and subjugation. The children of impoverished parents, slaves, or the abducted young might be turned into eunuchs. Today, affluent parents voluntarily hand their children over to quacks to be forever damaged.

The notion that el Sayed, champion of a socialized healthcare system that would empower the federal government to dictate all our medical decisions, doesn’t believe the state should have a say in your choices is risible.

“Gender affirming care,” however, isn’t medical care; it is elective mutilation. So, of course, society has a responsibility to intervene in the relationship between parent, doctor, and patient if that “patient” happens to be a healthy minor and the actions of the doctor and parent constitute child abuse.

That’s the debate.

And that’s the conversation el Sayed and other progressives would like to avoid. Because the unvarnished truth would disgust any well-adjusted adult. Even the anesthetized description of the process, “gender-affirming care,” is an insidious euphemism that inverts reality to conceal a truth about a process that uses puberty blockers, hormones, and surgery to “affirm” a child’s fleeting self-conception, not their gender.

But let’s take el Sayed at his word for a moment. Does the candidate believe everything should be left up to the parent, a doctor, and a “patient”?

How about female circumcision, or, rather, female genital mutilation, which, though still practiced in parts of the Islamic world, is illegal here? Numerous prescription drugs aren’t approved for children. Should we remove those restrictions? The Food and Drug Administration warns parents they shouldn’t give children aspirin, but el Sayed apparently believes it is fine for society to allow a healthy 13-year-old tomgirl to have a double mastectomy if the parents can find a witch doctor to do it?

Many people have been coaxed into believing that supporting gender-change barbarism is an act of love, compassion, and acceptance. One of the duties — the most vital duty — of any parent is protecting their children from harm, including self-harm. Indeed, one of the most vital duties of all civilized people is protecting children from violence.

We do not give in to the fantastical, fleeting whims of children. Because, despite some modern conceptions of parenthood, children do not possess any deep existential knowledge about gender or anything else. Your job is to protect them from their worst inclinations and social contagions, not follow them into madness.

If a parent rejects biological truths, that’s their business. If a child wants to dress up as the opposite sex, that’s their business, as well. But the state has a duty to step in and protect a child who isn’t old enough to vote, rent a hotel room, order a drink, open a bank account, buy spray paint, or play lotto, from destroying their anatomy.

The science propping up gender ideology has always been rickety. In 2024, the Cass Review, a comprehensive study of “transgendered” children in England, found that there was “no good evidence on the long-term outcomes of interventions to manage gender-related distress.” Europe has largely pulled back from the gender ideology madness since. Not us.

Compassion means giving children with gender dysphoria the psychiatric or spiritual help they need, and perhaps an education. Your “authentic” gender is the one you’re born with, as any normie understands, which is no more “assigned” to you than your height or skin color.

Yet, a smarmy Democrat running for major political office goes on the country’s top cable news network and glibly compares circumcision to procedures that cause irreparable damage to healthy reproductive systems, not to mention infertility, impaired sexual function, chronic pain, blood clots, and forever seeping wounds, as not to offend his activist base.

DAN HANNAN: CANADA WILL WIN THIS TRADE WAR

Now, el Sayed might be an extremist, but he earned a medical degree on top of a doctorate, so he is uniquely positioned to have an educated discussion on this issue. At the very least, it’s mystifying that any progressive candidate running for a seat that may well decide Senate control doesn’t have a prefabricated answer ready to go when he’s asked why it’s OK to alter permanently the lives of children as young as 5.

Then again, maybe el Sayed doesn’t have a good answer because there is no good answer.