Supreme Dysphoria

Just give me that old-time religion

In a 1967 episode of Get Smart, a KAOS agent posing as the beauty contestant Miss Formosa shoots two agents from Transmania. When one of the Transmanians, Dimitri Sokolov, protests that they are all members of KAOS, she declares, “Your brand of KAOS is weak and confused; only in my country is there pure KAOS.”

Just as this post goes to press, the Transmanian Supreme Court will hear United States v. Skrmetti. It might take until June 2025 before there is a ruling. At issue is whether Tennessee Senate Bill 1, which prohibits all medical treatments intended to allow “a minor to identify with, or live as, a purported identity inconsistent with the minor’s sex” or to treat “purported discomfort or distress from a discordance between the minor’s sex and asserted identity,” violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

The climate for such a case is not auspicious. In late November, South Carolina Republican Nancy Mace introduced a bill barring transgender women from “women’s private spaces” across all Transmanian federal property two months before Sarah McBride, the first-ever openly transgender Congresswoman, is sworn in.

It seems likely that soon after January 20th the new Department of Justice will drop its representation of transgender adolescents and their parents…