He is a retired neurosurgeon from Johns Hopkins University, and a graduate of Yale University, but Dr. Ben Carson told delegates to the Republican National Convention being transgender “doesn’t make any sense,” and made an inaccurate comparison of gender identity to ethnicity.
“For someone to wake up and think that they belong to a different sex because they feel different that day is the same as if you woke up and said, ‘I’m Afghani today because I saw a movie about that last night, and even though my genetics might not indicate that, that’s the way I feel, and if you say that I’m not, then you’re a racist,’ ” Carson told The Hill, a Washington, D.C. newspaper.
Carson, who was a former presidential candidate and now supports Republican nominee Donald Trump for president, made similar remarks to the Florida delegation at a breakfast meeting, according to The New Civil Rights Movement.
“For thousands of years, mankind has known what a man is and what a woman is. And now all of a sudden we don’t know anymore.”
“Is that the height of absurdity?,” he asked, adding, “because today, you feel like a woman?” He went on to mock trans people, who actually educated medical professionals say are individuals whose actual gender identity does not match the gender they were assigned at birth.
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Watch Carson’s remarks to the Florida delegation breakfast, as reported by CNN, below.